What's in a blog?

Well, what should be in a blog?  I guess it depends on why you set it up in the first place.  I started blogging because I enjoy writing and showing off my photos.  I wanted somewhere to put news so that family who live elsewhere could see things we'd been doing, like the greenhouse project.  I wanted to be able to write about my work so that customers could find out a little more about me if they were interested.  And I wanted to be able to just share things widely when I felt like it.

There.  Like that.

Actually, the sort of things I really meant were perhaps recipes, book reviews or other topics which interest me.   It's ok, I'm coming to the point.  What I never really wanted to do was use the blog as a personal/public journal.  I hope people like to read it, though I sense that the friends who started off reading every post may not read it at all now.  In any case, though, I do want people to feel it might be worth coming back to see what I've got to say next so I have tried to avoid writing when I've got nothing positive to say.  Which is why the blog has been more sparsely written of late, to be honest, and I decided it was time to say something about this, without moaning too much if possible.

I have been suffering the ill-effects of gallstones and I am due to have my gallbladder removed next week.  There will be some weeks of recovery from surgery but then I hope to feel considerably better.  And about time, too!  It was a long time before a diagnosis and the knock-on effects of not being well enough to work a full week since Christmas have been widely felt.  With regard to this blog, when I've felt well, I've snatched the chance to do some work and when I've felt ill, well, as I say, I just didn't want to write when things just felt gloomy and I had nothing positive to say.   There, hardly a moan at all, but now you know.

And the weather hasn't helped.  Well, quite.  And here I'm not even going to try to avoid moaning.  I do try to be phlegmatic about weather.  We live in a climate with seasons and I'm usually comfortable with that, indeed, I've written quite a few happy blog posts on the subject at different times of the year.  But the last three months' weather has been just dire-bollockle.  The sun is shining now, it's July and approximately eight o'clock in the morning, so I would expect to be able to sit with the door open, letting in the warmth.  If I do open the door, though, a howling gale sweeps through the study.  As it is, I am sitting here tense with being not quite warm enough.

And the garden!  The vegetables don't know whether they're coming or going.  Well, the squashes are definitely going.  In the two months they've been out in the garden they haven't grown at all, the flower buds they had are still flower buds and the leaves are turning yellow.  No squashes for us this year.  The fleece over the leeks (to prevent leek moth) is being torn by the wind.  The beans are holding their own, making their way up the poles at about a quarter of their normal speed.  Fair enough, the spinach is growing well and I suppose the leaves on the root vegetables probably indicate that the roots themselves are swelling up.  But the onions!  Some of them are flowering!  What's that about?

I don't ever remember a spell of weather as bad as we've been having.  I don't know a single person who isn't fed up and saying so, and considering the number of cheerful, practical, back-to-nature types I know, that really is surprising.

So there.  Some legitimate moaning.  We all do it and the weather has given us plenty of cause.  You don't really need to know that some of the time I've been moaning, it's been about something else.

Coming back into fashion again

When I wrote about coming back into fashion back in January, I didn't say much about how I got into it in the first place.

The course I was on was in Dress and Textiles.  Most people on the course had either or both of Art and Textiles "A" Levels.  I had neither, (having done languages at "A" level) but I did have a Housekeeper's Certificate.  This was issued from a wonderful institution called Eastbourne School of Domestic Economy (which seems, unsurprisingly, to be no more.)  The course was three terms long and we had five main subjects: dressmaking, needlework, cookery, laundry and housework.  Yes, really.  And in the seventies, not the fifties.  The observant amongst you will have noticed a distinction between needlework and dressmaking.  Needlwork involved children's clothes, nightwear, embroidery and smocking.  Dressmaking was everything else.  But you can tell from the tone that precision and method were of prior importance.

Fast forward a year or so and you find me on the Dress and Textiles course, still imagining I would get good marks for precision and method.  My grades went down termly.  Eventually we had a half-termly module on jewellery and my life turned a corner and I found myself on the path I'm still following today.  The jewellery module was something completely new to all of us.  We were encouraged to make use of a wide range of materials and just go for it, so I did.  I received my first A grade and finally understood:  the point of it all was to be creative, express my own ideas and come up with original designs.  I applied this to the next fashion garment module and never looked back.

So having come back into fashion earlier in the year with my silk scarves, it's not really surprising that my latest product launch is of earrings.  I have discovered friendly plastic, which, put simply, you soften and cut to shape with metal stamps.  I've made my own stamps by and large so that I was able to make earrings to co-ordinate with my scarf designs.  I've also moved on to some other designs since.  As soon as my new website is built, you'll be able to buy them directly online, but in the mean time they're for sale here in Stroud or in By Local in Cheltenham.

Enjoy.  I am!

Not all doom and gloom

Well, actually, the weather is all doom and gloom.  Not only is it the worst summer weather I remember but more people than I can remember are getting cheesed off with it and saying so.  So here, to cheer us all up and because I've been rather lax in posting pics of what's around, are two photos from two weeks ago, just to remind us all that we have had some nice days and it's always possible we'll get some more.

More new pots

As promised, some more of the recent lustred pots.  I'm making these more or less individually, in other words some might be similar but I'm not recording the colours and shapes so they are all different.

These are small mugs.  I've done more of those than any other shapes with underglaze and lustre decoration.   I'm very fond of these serving bowls, though:

New pots

I've recently come to the end of a batch of firings, ending with two lustre firings, and these plates were a long overdue order.  I've said for a long time that plates decorated with lustre can be ordered but this is the first time anyone has done so.  Usually cereal bowls are decorated with stars but this customer wanted one each of the four designs to go with the mugs and the same in large and small plates.  I think they do look pretty stylish.

I've been looking back over the last year or two and it seems the pattern of firings works out that I probably only do lustre firings twice a year, but then when I do, I do more than one of them.  I'm not sure if it has to work out this way - it might be more convenient for supply and demand to have them spread out more evenly - but suspect it does because of the way kiln-loads need to be distributed.  In any case it always does feel that lustre firings happen and then that's the end of a big cycle.  I probably don't have enough pots to do another ordinary firing until I've done some making. 

At the moment I'm not making pots, I'm catching up with life tasks, especially getting the vegetable garden planted up.  My health problem seems to have been diagnosed as gallstones.  It's great to feel a step forward has been made but the diagnosis is only the first step in a long wait for appointments and treatment so I'm still not able to work full days or weeks and gossip about waiting times indicates this may continue for some months.  Deciding what work to do in restricted time is tricky, but I think I've decided to move on to the new project I hinted at earlier in the year.  Watch the space for this.  

In the mean time, I was so pleased that the firing cycle meant I could produce these for a "Happy Holly Party" (instead of a christening.)

The beakers are new and seem to have worked out well.  (This shows back and front of the same beaker.)  The firing cycle problem means it's not very convenient to offer as a christening present to order because these are decorated with lustres.  However, they might work ok in the chicken design with the name written in blue.  I'll have to give it some thought.

And finally ...

...  a whimsical idea I had which turned out well.  Heather glaze with purple or carmine lustre spots.  I didn't make many but will certainly make more.  The heather glaze is the most variable according to kiln position so lots of variations to play with.

Next time - more recent lustred pots.

Win-win.

Just to say that I haven't been entirely idle on the writing front.  My latest musings are just in a different place, for once.

Take a look here: By Local Blog and read some of the other posts while you're there.  You never know, you might find you want to subscribe to it.

A potter's day

For many years a regular feature of Ceramic Review was “A Potter’s Day”. Always on the last page of the magazine, it was a whole page written by a different potter each month and always showed as much about the personality and lifestyle of each potter as it did about their work. Recently this feature seems to have been stopped so I thought it would be interesting to write one of my own.

I usually wake quite early. I’m a lark rather than an owl and rarely need an alarm. I generally aim to get up around 7.00 - 7.30 on a weekday. A lifelong Archers listener, I now have the luxury of “Listen again” via the internet so listen to yesterday evening’s episode while I have breakfast and start on desk work.

Today I need to finish a newsletter for Crafts In Gloucestershire. I love admin tasks and am a bit of an internet addict so this is an ideal vehicle for my technological skills, which are increasing all the time. The newsletter is fun too because it’s a bit of design that doesn’t need me to be good at drawing. As usual, other arts and crafts folks, who mostly don’t like any kind of admin work, are slow in sending me any news so I try to find work I feel is vaguely seasonal from the photos I already have. If I haven’t got too much admin to do, I’ll probably fit in a household chore at this point, like putting in a load of washing.

By nine or nine thirty I’m in the pottery. Time markers feel important to me so if it’s gone 9.05 then I’ve definitely missed the 9.00 start and continue with the desk work or chores till it’s 9.30.

Pottery work has a rhythm and life of its own. You don’t just pick it up for an hour or two and put it down. Most days the first work of the day is already mapped out by what was done yesterday or the day before and the last is in preparation for the next day. Today the first task of the day is to turn some fruit bowls I made two days ago. They’re just right now but by this afternoon would be too dry without a lot of faffing about. I don’t turn many things (fruit bowls, colanders and lids) but it’s a process I enjoy.  

After finishing the fruit bowls I put them on the ware trolley in the unheated part of the pottery where at this time of year they’ll dry out slowly, along with some large colanders with handles and some teapots that were finished earlier in the week. Then, after a coffee break (more newsletter work) I make some cereal bowls. It’s a lovely sunny, spring day and I want to take advantage of that. You can hurry the drying of most pots just after they’ve been thrown and cereal bowls take up so much room in the workshop until they’re bone dry and can be stacked so it’s good to get them outside to start drying, where today there’s a light breeze as well as the sun.

Once the bowls are outside drying, I go in to the house for lunch. Lunch is usually toast - light, quick, and cheap! With a coffee afterwards I often weaken and have a little chocolate. I spend at least an hour, often an hour and a half on my lunch break. I have an occasional back problem and varying activities is essential so this is a good way to break the day up with more desk work. After my fix of catching up with Scrabble games on Facebook (did I mention I am a bit of an internet addict?) and answering an email from a prospective workshop student I make good progress with the newsletter and leave it at a point where I know it can be finished by the end of the day.

Back in the pottery I put on an audio book. I listen to music in the morning - usually Classic FM or my own CDs - but by the afternoon I often want more distraction. The teapots will need lids so that’s this afternoon’s work mapped out.
 I make the lids “off the hump”, which means you centre just the top section of a large “hump” of clay and throw the lid from that. The lid (currently ‘upside-down’) is then cut off the hump with a length of thread which you allow to twist around before you pull it straight out. The lids are left to dry to leather-hard and then tomorrow or the day after the lids go the right way up, the top of the lid is turned to its final shape and a small piece of soft clay attached, which is thrown into the knob.

By the time I’ve finished the teapot lids, the cereal bowls I made this morning are firm enough to be handled and have their bases smoothed and finished and my potter’s stamp pressed into the base. The day is losing its warmth now, so they can stay inside. I get some clay out to firm up overnight so it’s ready to throw with tomorrow.

It’s about five now and I usually stop for a drink of some sort. Often I’ll go out to the pottery again but today I’m finishing earlier. I pick purple sprouting broccoli from the garden - broccoli cheese for supper - before it gets dark and then go in and finish the newsletter before switching off for the day at around seven.