I live in a cathouse...that can't be right.

It has been a house of revolving cats. Poor Willow is confused about who really lives here I think.










After Atticus died, my sister visited for her birthday and brought Lester. (He didn't know how to play nice and frightened poor Willow so such she peed on the floor.)







After he left, our friend Claude came for a visit. (He' s very well behaved)








After he left, we picked New Cat 2 up at the shelter on Monday. We haven't settled on a name yet. The last one took several months. She is so obese I've taken to calling her Beach Ball. We may make it Bea or Beatrice permanently (it has the bonus of being a Shakespearean character)
We've also tried Jupiter (for her mass)
Hooty (for the yellow eyes)
Lydia (the eyes make her look stunned)
Cordelia (to go with Willow; also Shakespearean)
Many other trees, both English and Latin.
I asked Willow what she thought, and she suggested Yum Yum.
Nothing so far has stuck.
Now Claude is back for the weekend. (And sitting on my lap as I type)

Any suggestions will be considered.

Test Tiles

This is a picture of my hard working little kiln. The inside dimensions are about 2 cubic feet. It is sold as a test kiln or jewelry kiln for doing pewter or glass. 2 cubic feet doesn't hold a lot, on this day it was holding 1 pot. The thing I like about this picture is that you can see the front wheel of my motorcycle reflected in the side.The bisque firing of the plant pot turned out well on Sunday, by well I mean the pot didn't crack.

My temperature gauge ( the box hanging off the side there) wasn't working properly for the first three hours. The Other One fixed it by cleaning the contacts on the wires. And I couldn't see the cone in the kiln because the pot was behind it and was glowing at the same temperature (of course). I usually try to leave a clear space behind the cone, so that the elements on the other side of the kiln outline it, and I can see it bend. The pot itself just fits inside the kiln with only and inch around the circumference so it completely blocked the brighter glow of the elements. Consequently I over-fired the kiln a bit. The (now working) temperature gauge read about 15 degrees hotter than 1860 for about 30 minutes. Not sure how this will affect the final result.
Today I made test tiles of various glazes I mixed up. I don't custom make my own glazes because I don't have enough room in my teeny studio to keep all the chemical ingredients that go into glazes. And let's face it I don't really know what I'm doing most of the time and this is one bit of the process I can experiment with later. So mixing up glazes for me means opening the pre-mixed bag of ingredients from the supplier and adding water. It does take a long time though because I have to sieve it through a very fine mesh to get the lumps out. I mixed up a mossy green, a speckled cinnamon that looks more like oatmeal to me, and a clear glaze today. The dark blue I already had mixed earlier for the bathroom tiles. The reason there are so many more tiles in the picture, is that you can combine different colours in layers for different effects, and blue on green will look different than green on blue. You may notice that none of these tiles look like they are green or blue, but after they are fired they go a completely different colour. All with the magic of chemistry I don't begin to understand. Also, I have 2 different clay bodies that I use, and the glazes will look different on them, so essentially 4 colours turns into many possible combinations. I also have some underglaze paint like they use at those paint your own pottery places, so some of the glazes are used with them underneath, just in case it turns out interesting. I suck at underglazing, but if you want to see a delicious version, check out Lucky Rabbit Pottery from Annapolis Royal.
Here is a close up of the plant pot as it came out of the bisque firing. You can just barely see the fine imprint of leaves on the surface. They may not show up at all when it is finished.

Slow Sunday

Firing the kiln today for the first time since May. How many potters need to move two motorcycles and a golf cart to fire their kiln I wonder?
We are moving forward, though, with getting larger kilns operational. Yesterday the electrician was here to prepare for getting a new 200 amp service to the house. Currently (no pun intended) we have a 100 amp service with 60 amps going to the garage/barn/workshop/kiln room. Good enough to fire the small test kiln but not quite enough for the other two.
I went to the designer craft show in Halifax yesterday while the other one stayed at home with the electrician. Lots of potters there, ...and glass makers, jewelry artists, knitters, felters, silk makers and wood workers. One potter I spoke to did wood firing. Her 30 hour marathon of stoking a wood kiln makes my 12 hour -check it occasionally- electric one seem so easy. We have loads of room in the back yard to build a brick kiln and give it a try, but I think I will stick with the electric for a while yet.
Last weekend we began working on the shower again, because both the Other Ones parents are visiting for Christmas. We had to put drywall on the outside wall of the door to be able to bring the tile around the door opening, and that required us also drywalling the ceiling. That required that we strap the ceiling to hang the drywall on. That required that we take the temporary shower curtain down. There always seems to be three steps back to one step forward. We should be working on the tiling again today, but I have a test to make for my class tomorrow.
It is harder and takes longer to make a test than it does to take one. Given the choice I think I would rather have to clean up the mess of tiling than make a test about irrigation and lighting in a greenhouse. I'm sure that would be my students choice too, but these things must be done.

Just Potty

Today. I finally got back into the studio after a too long absence. The lovely weather conspired against me. It has been a beautiful fall here for the last two weeks or more, the temperatures were 12-16 degrees and usually sunny with very little breeze. Beautiful gardening weather in fact, and that was what I was concentrating on. The garlic is planted, the asparagus weeded and mulched. I even managed to re putty the windows in the greenhouse. All the leaves were mulched with the mower and piled onto the compost heap to rot, and the butternuts are in piles waiting for more room in the green bin. If I put those in the compost pile they germinate and I have dozens of trees to weed out in the spring.
Today the weather began to be more Novemberish and we made a fire for the first time in days. The new insulated back door and porch really help to keep the heat in and the draughts out, so lately there wasn't even a need for a fire in the evenings. As I type, I'm roasting at 25 degrees!
I woke up this morning knowing I really needed to get going on a pottery project that has been on the back burner for about 5 weeks. I had one day, two weeks ago when the weather was cold and damp that I started to make a plant pot for a friend. He requested it ages ago, to give to his wife for Christmas. At the time I thought, 'no problem', but after 8 months of no pottery, I'm a little rusty.
Because it it quite large, and I haven't thrown anything since March, I thought I would make a coil pot. (Plus I love making coil pots, they are fun and easy to clean up.) My first attempt two weeks ago, started out well, but at about the half way mark I realized it had become so wide that it wouldn't fit in my little kiln. Oops. This is a picture of it before it was smooshed. The plant sitting in it is for scale, it is a standard 8" wide plant pot.
Also, I felt the walls were a little thin for the size of pot I was making. I thought I was using a 1/2 inch hole to extrude the coils, so I found a 3/4 inch drill bit and made a new template. The second attempt with the larger coil made the walls too thick. That was when I realised the first hole was only a 3/8th inch, so I found a 1/2 inch drill bit and made yet another template. Truly, I think 5/8th would be best, but by this time I'm a little annoyed at myself and just want to get on with making the d@r* pot! I managed to get 3/4 of the work done on the next attempt, and then stopped for the day.
That was two weeks ago. Today I finished constructing the pot and decorated it by imprinting some leaves that I picked up while walking the dog. Some of the leaves were dried up after laying around on a shelf for so long. I soaked them in water and put them in the microwave to make them more pliable so they would stick better as I pressed them into the surface. The idea, is that the leaves will burn up in the kiln, but their vein imprint will remain in the clay. The imprint will hopefully catch some of the glaze and give the pot some texture.
I also made some extruded test tiles of the same clay body to use for glaze tests to see which colours look good on this clay. If all goes well, my friend will have his Christmas pressie in time. Fingers crossed.
Just for the fun of it, I also tried throwing today. It is not really like riding a bike, you do forget. I found I was making all the old mistakes I thought I had corrected, and I had to relearn all the techniques that I once knew before my attempts at cylinders started to take shape again.
If I keep at it, I may have something made for my own Christmas presents. Here's hoping the weather stays cold and damp!

Atticat

If you tuned in for a bit of a laugh today, sorry.

I've been avoiding posting for the last week, because last Monday Nov 2, Atticus was hit by a car at the end of the driveway and died. Even a week later, I can't believe how hard that is to type.

I am also surprised at how much we miss him. He was mostly just small, and quiet, and there. (Unless you were a small animal, in which case he was a terrorist. But even terrorists have people that love them.) We buried him in the back yard under a walnut tree with his catnip mouse in his paws. He was a most excellent creature.

Maybe tomorrow I can be funnier.

Psst. Wanna Buya Golf Cart?

For reasons too complex to explain, I am selling a golf cart. It is a 1986 Columbia model gas powered engine with oil injection (no mixing gas). One cylinder, 243 c.c. Columbia is a subsidiary of Harley Davidson, so my golf cart is a Hog.
It Runs well, has a new battery and spark plug and a hard shell canopy. I would like $800, but will consider trades, such as:



Antique Wingback Armchairs
Rain Barrels with lids
Antique kitchen hutch
Maple Hardwood suitable for cabinets
Slate flagstone suitable for patios
Cedar Hedging suitable for blocking annoying neighbours
Any reasonable combination of the above.