Wow my last blog post was about ten months ago, I must be really slacking! To be fair I've been pretty busy, I will try to condense the last year or so into a concise and amusing blog post.
When I wrote my last post we were just about to move house. That took a lot of time just to unpack boxes, to be honest there are probably still a few knocking around somewhere. I then had to unpack my studio. This didn't take so long as I really don't have that much stuff.
Then I got majorly distracted with a pond. We had a pond but I really didn't like where it was situated so I decided to fill it in. The problem was it being built with huge rocks that I could only move by ingeniously using my steel barbell as a lever. Then I found a load of fish in the pond as I was draining it and I felt sorry for them. This meant I had to build another pond at a more convenient location, in which to put the fish. For a good few months I didn't do any pottery. This is the new little pond I built, with pots drying in the baking summer sun.
When I did finally get around to thinking about pottery I had the major hurdle of a workable kiln to overcome. I had transported my old-school electric kiln from the old house but due to technical mumbo jumbo it was going to cost a tonne to get it connected to the electric in my new house. I have always been interested in doing gas firings so decided to convert my electric kiln to gas. You can read about my exploits in more detail here if you wish.
Whilst I was converting my kiln I put up some shelves in the garage studio, made a workbench, ware-boards, and set up all my other equipment needed for making pots.
Before I took my kiln outside I built it a kiln shed. It feels like a den, and I really love being out there when I'm firing pots now. I've recently modified it a bit more, adding some windbreaks to the sides, and some shelves for putting boards of pots on when I'm loading the kiln.
Around the time I started to become productive again my daughter started her first year of school. This lead me to decide to change my working days as a chef. Having always worked weekends before, I've now started having Sundays and Mondays off for family time, and work on my pottery on Tuesdays. Cutting down my full time hours at work down was a bit scary. I've been selling pottery for a few years now, but to sell enough to pay for a missed days work every week was quite daunting. Luckily just as I was starting this new work pattern the nice people at Open House put in a big order of mugs. This has kept me very busy over the last few weeks. Hopefully the run up to Christmas will also provide sufficient income to keep bread on the table. I do hope so, I really love bread!
