Disaster Averted

Had my first kiln disaster this week. Almost. I'm still waiting for power (still, yes still) to fire the larger kiln so I have become adept at packing the small one as full as possible. And I guess I got a little cocky.
Lots of bad things can happen when firing a kiln.
Things can stick to the shelves or each other.
Things can explode.
Things can crack.
Things can get stuck inside another and this is what happened to me.
I placed a smaller bowl inside a large one and then decided to put a trimming chuck inside the smaller bowl. This can be dangerous because pots shrink in the kiln, but at a certain temperature they also got through an expansion stage, and if stacked pots expand and shrink different amounts they can get stuck together. My trimming chuck got stuck in the bottom of the bowl. At first, I was uncertain if it was because of the shrinking or because I had slipped the bowl with the dark colour and they got fused. I'd never made slip before (new skill for me, yay) and I was perhaps overconfident when I packed the kiln. I tired to pull them apart but no go. I wondered if I should just say it was a chip and dip bowl, or fill the centre with wax and say it was a very large table centre piece. I figured at the very least I could break the bowl and keep the chuck, but my Knight in Ceramic Armour managed to twist them apart and they released with out breaking. Crisis averted. Whew.

February Blahs

It happened a little late, but I think I have the February Blahs. It didn't happen when we had lots of snow and cold weather, it happened when we got the February thaw. All the snow melted and the muck got me down. I take full responsibility for the rain storm and melting snow. We bought snowshoes two weeks ago which pretty much guaranteed no snow for the rest for the year. We did get 10 days in before the big melt. Now they hang sadly by the door in hopes that the winter will come back.
When you have a dog, spring muck is not your friend, and Willow has learned the routine of paw cleaning for treats every time she comes in. Between the rain and trench we dug in the drive she can't help but be a dingy retriever.
Attempting to banish the February blahs today, I gave up on trying to decorate pottery which has defeated me for a week now, and I began spring garden clean up instead. I pruned the fruit trees and tried to start a fire of the dead wood that didn't get burned last fall. The fire didn't light, which is just as well because the pruning didn't take that long and I came in much earlier than expected.

We Have Good Friends

Today is Wednesday, which means it is weekly cancel the power upgrade day. (Oh, and Ash Wednesday as it turns out.) The first three times our electrician couldn't book off his regular job to come on a week day. Last week it was cancelled because the inspector couldn't come. Today Nova Scotia power cancelled because we got snow last night and they are busy reconnecting power to customers in Windsor.
But in anticipation that it might really happen this time (ha) we dug a trench last weekend to bury the new service from the house to the garage. Most people would not attempt to dig a 40 foot trench by hand. Most people would not attempt to do it in winter either, but I think we all agree that we are not like most people.
We must be OK people though, because we managed to coerce 5 friends to help us dig. We began Saturday morning at 8:30, and paused long enough to give the boys an egg and bacon burrito for breakfast.
Then we paused long enough to rent a demolition hammer once we realized that picks were not going to make it through the foot of frozen ground on top. Then more pausing as they excavated a 500 lb rock from the trench. I kept thinking this was an excellent history and archaeology experience and we should have organized students to come help. History because this must be what it was like to dig trenches for World War 1. Archaeology because excavating that rock without large machinery must be what it was like to build the pyramids. Fulcrums and levers.
We also found a layer of thick ash about two feet down all the way along. I wondered if this was a brush clearing fire when the land was originally cleared for farming or from when the Acadians were deported in 1755. We also found a layer of burned glass and what looked like cinemoid in one spot about a foot down. Did the New England Planters have cinemoid?
They dug all morning while I made fish chowder to feed them lunch. After lunch I joined them and we accomplished 3/4 of the required length by beer o'clock. Now I know what the phrase "Colder than a well diggers ass" means.
Sunday morning Peter and I finished off the digging and buried the conduit.

Lessons learned:
1. Dig trenches in summer.
2. Hire a back hoe.

Thank you to Andrew, Peter, Peter, Tony and George.

Happy Birthday Peter

It is a beautiful sunny day, and it is my sweeties birthday. Which we both forgot until we were up a few hours and he looked at the date on the computer.
So, as tradition dictates, I am making an Angel Food cake. I don't much like Angel Food cake, and I used to think it was because it came out of a box, so one year I tried making it from scratch just to see if it was better. It was exactly the same, so now I just make it out of the box. It takes 5 minutes, and that is only because I always have to wash the dust out of the bundt pan and the mixer bowl.
You know how the directions say immediately invert the pan on the neck of a bottle to cool? My bundt pan has too narrow a neck to do this, there is no bottle narrow enough to fit. Every year I forget this until I take the cake out of the oven, and then I have to hunt around for various objects in my kitchen that might work. This year it was the knob on the butter dish that worked.

Peter got three tonnes of sand for his birthday. Not terribly romantic, but it will help to bury the power cable that runs to the garage when we get the power upgrade. Which, yet again was postponed until next Wednesday. That makes the fifth time it has been postponed by our electrician, if anyone is counting. If anyone ever wonders why it takes us so long to renovate the house, this would be one example of a delay that is not our fault.
The delay has not been all bad. The temperature has warmed up to freezing, which will make digging easier. Sometimes we are very lucky.

Like last weekend for example, we went and got a new snow blower. Notice I didn't say buy. We stole it out of my father's shed as he can't use it anymore so he decided this year to get the local plow operator to clear his drive instead. Our last snow blower died during the last snowstorm, and we were lucky enough to get the new one the day before the next snowfall. Lucky. Thanks Dad.

Some days are like that.

Went back to coiling a pot this past weekend. Mostly because I was struggling to centre on the wheel. Some days are like that.
I like to coil on the days when I don't want to be messy, or don't have time to clean up the mess, or when I don't have any ideas about what I want to make. Coiling is slow enough, that by the time the pot starts to take shape, I know what I'm making. Which is a bass ackwards way of going about it, but some days are like that.
This shape emerged from the coil. It reminded me of a traditional Greek pot shape, except the handles which remind me of that singing demon from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.




Some days are like that.
But the pot shape got me interested in finding real ancient Greek pot shapes that I could try to make. One of the classes I took a few years ago had us make composite shapes based on traditional Greek designs. Remembering this put me onto a new idea of what I could make as a series. Which lead me on a merry Internet search for several hours. Some days are like that.
The usual way to go about these things is to think about the shape first, draw it and then execute. But last weekend I executed, then researched and drew, and now I'm ready to begin, if you see what I mean. Some days are like that.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, I will try to throw some bits that go together to make a Greek-like looking thing. I can do it tomorrow because our electrician called to say the new power upgrade scheduled for tomorrow is postponed, again. Some days are like that.

Snowblower - R.I.P.

We got a real blizzard today. Not just the typical over-reported panic inducing few flurries that we usually get, but a cold, blustery snow storm that hit fast and hard. At 6:30am it was calm. There had been a light snowfall overnight and the trees looked pretty. By 7:15 the wind had picked up to 60km/h, snow was falling and being driven into drifts a foot deep. We couldn't see to the end of the drive. But we are hardy Canadian folk, and the other one went off to work, crossing three exposed dykes in white out conditions while I took the truck to get the MVI as planned.
It is a strange human phenomenon that if you are faced with treacherous driving, you automatically turn on the radio to listen to the road report/school closure announcements just to make sure it really is as bad as it seems. It was.
It pretty much kept up all day, and when the other one got home from work, he couldn't get the car up the drive because there was a 3 foot high snowdrift running down the middle of it. Dutifully he started up the snowblower. The snowblower is old, and cranky. It stalls repeatedly and needs gentle coaxing with the throttle to keep it running. Anytime I have tried to use it I make it half way down the drive, it stalls and I end up lugging it back uphill to the garage, or just leaving it there to rot until the other one gets home.
There is a division of labour in this house that is drawn along gender lines and snowblowing is definitely on his side of that line.
He did manage to remove most of the drift impeding the car before the machine conked out. At first he thought it was gunk in the fuel line. Once that was removed he discovered a different problem; the drive wasn't driving. The wheels would go round, but they didn't have enough umph to propel the machine forward. He took it all apart and found that squirrels had made a nest inside it. He also found that the bits that drive it* were so worn they were unrepairable. We knew this day would come, but like the grasshoppers we are, we hoped it wouldn't be during the one true blizzard of winter. Tomorrow we need to call the snowplow guy and hope he can fit us into his schedule before Monday.

*I don't pretend to know what they all are, I just nodded and smiled while he talked: it's better that way.

I've Got the Power

Well, actually I don't.
For the second time, our electrician cancelled our power upgrade, and for the second time the power company came anyway. Instead of new power, they straightened the pole at the end of the drive. I'm a little concerned that it was only the leaning pole protecting my mailbox from the snowplow. I'll have to wait and see on that.
We are in a thaw right now, it was +12 here yesterday, which is ideal for digging a trench to the garage for the new cable to power a bigger kiln. By the time we actually get the power upgrade (rescheduled again for next Wednesday, 3 times the charm do you think?) I'm sure it will be -10 again and several feet of snow.
We better get it soon, the pots are piling up.