New House - Maybe

We're planning to make an offer on this place tomorrow.  It's got a lot of what we've been looking for but is lacking some too.  It does have a huge two car garage but it's not attached and there's quite a bit of snow removal to do between the garage and the entryway to the house which is a downside.  Even though the house does have a second floor there are two bedrooms on the main floor so it fits our "one floor living" requirement if needed at some point.  It has great windows and is facing south so lots of sun.  It has room for a garden which was another requirement and it's only about 12 minutes to Hallowell and/or work for me.  Rick will have to drive fifty minutes to work each way but he drove from Gardiner for two years which was even farther.  

It needs some upgrades: new carpet or some kind of flooring in the main room and perhaps one or two bedrooms. Definitely needs some new paint colors on some walls.  I'm disappointed that my pottery studio will have to be in the basement but it's dry and doesn't smell so once I put down some cheap linoleum and some wall paint I think it'll be okay.  I'm hoping I can put the kiln in a closet just off the studio room so that will be an improvement, not having to take everything out to the garage to fire.  

A definite selling point is the one minute walk to the public beach which is tiny and I suspect is not heavily used. The beach is on Cobbossee Lake which connects to Cobbossee Stream where our camp is.  And it's probably just about 15 or 20 minutes drive to camp.  Or I suppose we could kayak to camp though it would require portaging over at least two dams and would probably take several hours.   

It's only about 1600 square feet so it's definitely downsizing which was a goal and will be a challenge to get rid of "stuff."  We'll get an inspection and if all goes well could probably be in it by sometime in June. Our plan is to get into that house before putting ours on the market though we may change our minds and decide to just go ahead and list ours before being completely in the new place.  Of course all of this is contingent on the owners accepting our offer . . .   

Here's the description:  Beautifully maintained cape style home near Cobbossee Lake. Desirable open-concept floor plan with vaulted ceilings provide a spacious main living area. Kitchen features gorgeous cabinets and tiled back splash. Walk to the lake!

UPDATE:  5/16/14 - we made the offer, it was accepted but the inspection revealed some issues with a very wet basement and a deck that really needs rebuilding, along with some other issues that made us decide against the property.  The search continues. . .

Designs for pottery

I may want to use some of these designs in pottery sometime.

Making a casserole dish for a wedding shower gift.

I hadn't thrown for a while but decided I wanted to make a casserole dish for Adri and Jason as a wedding shower gift.  I was really "on" that day and threw three pretty nice pieces.  I figured I'd ought to have a back up in case one of them didn't make it for some reason.  I'm glad I did.  

Here's the one I made for them: their names and the date of their wedding carved in the bottom; hearts stamped onto the lid.  And the lid fit perfectly onto the bowl - a nice little lip that came out just right.  I was very pleased with it.

You can see the heart stamps on the lid.

Perfect little lip to catch the lid.  

Here's Plan B - no names or hearts carved on but the lid fit very nicely with the bowl.  

And here's Plan C.  I decided to shape it into more of a square, along with the lid.  It came out ok but the lid didn't fit as nicely as the first two. 

 I figured I'd have an extra casserole or two all set to go for the next fundraising raffle or something.

But when I opened up the first level of the kiln I was sorely disappointed.  The lid survived but the dish exploded in the kiln.

So I want to level two to see how Plan B looked.  Not so good.  Plan C made it for which I was very grateful but Plan B also exploded in the bisque firing for some unknown reason.  

However, here's Plan C with a Deep Firebrick red glaze.  I like it well enough but the cover doesn't fit the bowl except in one direction.  The experience was a reminder not to get too attached to any piece before it comes out of the glaze firing unharmed.  

And I'm happy to report it made it via UPS to Sierra Madre, CA without mishap.

Thanksgiving 2012

Here are some pieces I made especially to use at Thanksgiving this year which I was hosting for the first time in many years.  A couple of serving bowls and a big platter.

 And here's a vase I made back in September but hadn't gotten around to glazing yet.

And here are the results.  The platter obviously cracked rather severely.  C'est la vie.  The others came out pretty nicely though.  I love the firebrick red and the others are all done in celadon froth.

And here we are all hard at work preparing dinner.  Justin mashing potatoes, Linda and Glen making gravy, me getting the ham out of the crockpot, and Rick carving the turkey.  Donnie's sitting back there supervising, I guess.

Paul, Linda, Jared, Chris, Justin, Glen, me, Rick, Donnie, and Cece. Bill took the photo. 

Me and sister, Linda.

Buttering my delicious yeast roll that Cece made.

The beautiful 24 pound turkey.

Brother Bill and Paul preparing the deviled eggs.

In all we had 11 people at the table.  We had invited our friend Robert Pangman but unfortunately he declined.  We played a few rousing games of Party Pictionary after dinner - always a fun time.   

Mugs for Cindy and Grace

I'd been meaning to give Cindy and Grace some pottery so took these mugs up to them when I visited this past weekend.

A batter bowl I made for my sister, Linda.  Done in firebrick red.  

Here it is in the raw.  It's the one on the left.

Mug

A gift for Sarah H who interned with us for the last year.  

I like going to a friend's house and seeing a piece of pottery that I gave them.  I usually recognize it as mine but really have no memory of it till that moment.

One of the things I like about this piece is the handle.  It was very easy to make; I was able to cut several of them out of a small slab and they mould so nicely to the side of the cup.  No pulling required.  And it fits nicely in your hand.

Pottery weekend

I think this is a link to a video - not sure if it will work.

http://youtu.be/m0hB4ic8ZMY

The bottom to a casserole dish.  I made a video of throwing this piece.  I'll try to post it.  

The top to the above casserole dish.  

Batter bowl #1.  I made a batter bowl as my Yankee Swap Christmas gift this year and it got swapped (stolen) two times.  Both Jenika and Linda were quite disappointed to lose it so I thought maybe I'd make one for each of them.   

Batter bowl #2

Lisa's son, Josh, was unable to make it to our Christmas Eve celebration/yankee swap this year but asked his mom to be sure to bring home a piece of pottery for him.  I put out a table full of pottery each year and ask people to take whatever they'd like.  They are often not my best pieces - glazes didn't come out quite how I'd wanted them or the shape didn't turn out quite as I'd expected.  Anyway, Josh has a new apartment and I thought I'd make him a couple of cereal/soup bowls.  

This is the bottom part of a covered h'ors doeuvre plate.  I have a couple others of these and I use them quite a bit.    

Not sure how much I like this.  I think it's too tall.  We'll see how it looks after glazing. 

Serving bowl.  Maybe I'll make a cover for it.  I like my food to stay hot.

Mid December 2011

I've been really busy with work and trying to get a few pieces of pottery made before Christmas.  I was surprised that the tall vase below came out so nicely.  I'd glazed this piece quite some time ago and but the red chun I'd used on it was turning out gray on every other piece I'd done so I decided to dip this piece into the celadon blue (the color of most of the other pieces in this photo) figuring it might come out some color in between but lo and behold, the red chun came through beautifully!  

My small bounty from the most recent firing.  The red chun actually came out nice this time.  

On Wednesday, December 14th, in response to our idiot Governor's effort to cut 65,000 people off our state's Medicaid program, we helped to organize a rally at the State House.  Reports said over 500 people attended, many of them staying to testify afterwards.  

It was a hectic week working with folks on their testimony and trying to close cases and getting things wrapped up so that I could be gone for two weeks.  Rick sent me a nice bouquet of flowers on Tuesday. Thursday evening we went to The Liberal Cup and listened to Back Woods Road.  Rick came down and sang a couple of songs with them.  Tammy Trask joined us as well.  

I had planned to go out shopping on Friday but ended up staying home and throwing a couple of pots.  Went to Eddie's Christmas party for a bit and then to The Mad Dog in Gardiner to listen to Rick Dosedlo and Logan.  On Saturday we went out and bought our Christmas tree and hit a couple of stores.  I got home by mid afternoon and then just puttered until about two a.m. decorating and cleaning.  

Emmy had been acting pretty sick and not eating so I gave her the bed I'd bought for her for Christmas early and she lied close to the fire and seemed to feel better after a few hours.  She even ate some canned food and was back on dry food this morning.  

Overall a very nice start to my vacation.  

Test Glaze Firing

So I fired my test glaze pieces a couple of days ago.  I had numbered each piece on the bottom when I threw them so that I could track what I did to each one in terms of glaze thickness and placement on upper or lower shelves.  I wanted to test two different glazes:  the first, red chun, has always been a difficult glaze but when it works out well, it’s really beautiful and probably my favorite all round glaze.  However, instead of coming out red my pieces have been coming out rather gray and I couldn’t tell whether it was because the glaze was too thick, too thin, the kiln was too hot or too cold.  So I put one with thick glaze and one with thin glaze on each of the 3 shelves.  There’s about a whole cone’s difference in temperature between the top shelf in the kiln and the lower as you can see from the photo below.  

These are 5, 6, and 7 cone packs.  I'm trying to fire to cone 5.  I had to put a cone 7 in the kiln sitter and I think it still turned off the kiln a little too early. The single ones are cone 5 which I put right in the peep hole to be able to see it best while firing.  You can see that the cone 5 and cone 6 bent fairly nicely on the top shelf; just the cone 5 bent on the middle shelf; and the cone 5 on the bottom shelf only bent slightly.  

So . .

#1           red chun – thick glaze – bottom (cooler) shelf 

#3           red chun – thick glaze – top shelf

#4           red chun – thick glaze – middle shelf

#2           red chun – thin glaze – bottom shelf

#5           red chun – thin glaze – middle shelf

#7           red chun – thin glaze – top shelf

Starting from the left front they are numbered 1, 2, 4, and 3, 5 7 coming down from the back on the right.  The larger piece in the back is a red chun when behaving well - the color that I'm going for.  

There really seems to be almost no difference overall.  Each of them are fairly gray but each has a section that's got a little red tinge to it.  So I can't say that the test firing taught me anything.  Bummer.  It's still just red chun behaving badly.  Maybe it's just a bad batch.  I buy my glazes all mixed.  The glazes I'm accustomed to using are ones that my pottery teacher, Malley, mixed herself.  

The other glaze I wanted to test is the royal blue which has always been a really solid glaze, didn’t run much and showed off embellishments fairly well.  However, mine had been blistering and running and again, I didn’t know why. I think I did learn something from the royal blue test glazes.

It seems the thinner glaze on the cooler bottom shelf works best for the royal blue, though they all seem to have some blisters.  I really need to get this one right because I'm going to use it for a nice covered casserole dish and don't want to mess it up.  

dVerse dSires

I was headed to my pottery wheel when I remembered it was dVerse poetry night

Oh no!  What am I to do? 

Poetry or Pottery?

I guess I could write an ode to my pottery

If I knew what an ode consisted of

A haiku perhaps

But I was already well beyond all syllabic limitation

I gaze at the glaze

The evil red chun creates

Havoc wherever it goes

Clay desires my hands

Oozing mud through my fingers

What shall I become

Pulling it upwards

Sensuous shaping into

A tulip vase p’haps? 

The best I can do in a pinch. 

Off to play with mud. 

Will check out some poetry postings in a bit. 

Love to all.

This poem written
for and contributed to
dVersePoets Open Link Night  Week 11

Test The Glaze Firing

The witness cones on the far left are from the top shelf.  They are Cones 4, 5, and 6 and the two single ones are Cones 5.  Cones in the middle are also 4, 5, and 6.  You can see the 4 bent completely and the 5 just a little.  The cones on the right are all from the bottom shelf - again 4, 5, and 6, and the single one is a 5. But as you can see none of them really bent.   

These two pieces are both done in Celadon Froth.  There was no blistering but I need to make sure I hold it in the glaze long enough to get it thick.  You can see the blue is where it was double dipped and the brown is just a single dip.

Again, Celadon Froth - this was on the bottom shelf which only got to about Cone 4 but it came out nicely.  Even the Celadon Froth pieces on the top shelf came out fine - no blisters.  A great glaze!

This is red chun but it came out mostly grayish.  When not layered with other glazes it did not blister.  These were on the top shelf so it got hot enough and the glaze was plenty thick enough.  So maybe it got too hot or maybe it was too thick.  Gotta try to figure this one out because I love red chun when it works!

This is cappucino with the rim dipped in red chun.  This was on the top shelf and apparently got too hot because it's all blistered.  I think it's the cappucino that blistered because the pieces that were just done in chun and were on the top shelf didn't blister.

Another blistered cappucino and red chun.