Kilns cooled, unloaded and now I am home, sore, and very very tired

Ok, Here we go. As you could see from my last post, I was away this past weekend firing the salt and soda kilns out at the Shaw Centre at Medalta in the Historic Clay District of Medicine Hat.
We (Me, Lorraine, Kathy, Claire, Keli, & Sumaya and her little guy and husband) left Calgary early Thursday morning, and we arrived at the centre just after noon, and began glazing etc at around 1 ish. I made waaaayyyy too many pots, but I had lots to choose from. We ended up loading just after 6 and then the kilns were turned on low over night to help dry out the wads so they wouldn't freeze and then explode in the firing. Thursday and Friday were the COLDEST to date this year. I believe we got down to -28 over night on Thursday. In fact, when we left the centre, my car's power steering froze and I had to drive to the hotel without any power steering and that is quite a feat when the roads are all rutted with snow and ice, and it's dark and in a city I'm not familiar with.
Friday was firing day, and we were at the centre by 9am turning on the kilns, but as salting would not happen until cone 9 or 10, we had a few hours to kill and Aaron, the artistic director, took us on a tour of the Medalta museum, and some other areas that have not been restored/preserved yet, and some parts that are under construction for the new museum. The Medalta factory had been in operation since the very early 1900's, where they fired beehive kilns and produced functional stoneware items for everyday use, and then began making semi vitreous white ware etc. At 2:30 or so we charged the soda kiln with 2 pounds of soda, and then sprayed 1 pound of soda and then added another 4 or 5 pounds of soda over then next 45 minutes. Salting began around 4 pm in the salt kiln, and I believe we were all done and buttoned up around 5:45.
On Saturday, while the kilns were cooling, we toured the Hicroft factory with Aaron. Hicroft was another pottery in Medicine had that was in operation up into the 80's. The factory is in an as is condition. When it closed down, nothing was moved, or sold off, so all the old machinery is still there, the slip pits still have dried slip in them, there are aprons on the hooks and time cards still by the time clock.

The bag wall on the right hand side of the salt kiln fell over and will need to be rebuilt, but that was expected. I had a pot on that bag wall, so it was pushed against the kiln wall and was blocking one of the salting ports, even though I had to chip it off, it still looks great.

Inside the soda kiln before unloading

Inside the salt kiln before unloading

close up of the ware carts after unloading

Keli and Sumaya's salt pots

My salt pots

Kathy and Lorraine's salt pots

Lorraine and Claire's salt pots

My soda pots

Sumaya and Keli's soda pots

Lorraine and Kathy's soda pots

Close up of the back side of the salt kiln. Very crusty...

The same for the soda kiln, but not quite as bad

interior of the salt kiln

Interior of the soda kiln

To tired to say anything...so here are some pictures

vacuuming shmackuuming....gotta make pots!

TGIF! What  a week. I have been super busy at work, and my personal life, such as it is, has been suffering. Not that I’m complaining, gotta work to pay the bills.  

On a good note, the 2 days I requested at the end of the month were approved, and I can now go to Medalta to fire up the salt & soda kilns. I will be making up a flashing slip, a few stains, a terra sig, and a nice opalescent liner glaze, and a couple of stains to augment what Medalta will already have down there for us to use. I am very excited, and it is only 2 weeks away! I am keeping my fingers crossed that the weather will remain mild. It can snow all it wants on the 28^th, just please stay dry until then.

The Studio had a pot luck a couple of weeks ago, and apparently I was nominated in absentia to provide the entertainment and comic relief. A few people brought their spouses, and many of the attendees were students from nights that I don’t teach so Dave asked me to throw a demo. He then had me do another demo of his choice. The only proviso was that I had to be blindfolded. The sighted pot I threw never made it, I got too cocky and it collapsed after throwing a rather dramatic spiral into it that the thin walls, and rather bulbous form could not support. On to the blind pot...no issues, was able to get a rather well made bowl off (nothing complicated). Just goes to show you, throwing on the wheel has very little to do with the eyes, and a whole lot to do with touch. The food was fantastic too, it always is.

If I can, I will be firing a glaze load or 2 this weekend. I need to get stocked up for the spring. I have a couple of sales this April, and wouldn’t you know it, it is already almost half way through Feb and that means I only have 2 months to make sure I have everything I need, plus keep the galleries stocked up. Tonight I will wash my bisque, wax my feet, and let the pots dry overnight before I get at the glazing (sounds like a very strange spa experience to those that don’t know what I’m talking about)

 

Bloated ... And not from beer

I fired a glaze load on the weekend and I finally got a look at the results on Tuesday. It appears that I have a case of bloating. Most, but not all of the pots look like they have small pox. This has never happened to me before. The only change that I made was to hold at top temp for 15 minutes, and the elements had just been replaced. I will fire again shortly and eliminate the hold and see if that solves the problem. I am not really impressed.

random reminiscences

My sister and I were often subjected to really long boring road trips with my parents when we were younger. These road trips were made even more agonizing than most children would have been/are subjected to. Kids today have the option of watching a DVD in the back with wireless headphones, MP3 players, portable video games etc. In the 70’s and 80’s, we did not have these feats of technology.  We usually drove to Vancouver in the summer to visit both sets of Grandparents and we would all pile in the Ford Fairmont Station Wagon and take off. These trips would take upwards of 13-15 hours. My Dad was also not one for stopping for anything unless it was gas. The only entertainment was a pitiful collection of 8 track cassettes (Cher, Commodores, The Muppets, The Carpenters, Carol King, etc...). The pain actually increased when we would drive out in a car with a cassette tape player (I think that was the Cadillac). Anyway, my parents would pop in a Phoenix Seminar tape and listen to selling/listing techniques for Real Estate agents (I think there were a total of 12 tapes?) To anyone that is not a real estate agent, this would have been enough to make you want to poke your tympanic membranes just so that you could listen to the ringing in your ears instead. Imagine what it would have been like for small children. My parents should have been reported to child services. Anyway, as you can tell, we were severely lacking in fun road trip stuff. So, as most children will do, they will invent their own fun. Here are a couple of the games we invented during these times of trial.

Disco Lights: When the sun is setting just right and you are driving through areas with a lot of trees on the side of the road, you can close your eyes, face in the direction of the sun and watch it make “disco lights” behind your closed eye lids.

Flying house: My sister says she does not remember this, but I do. We imagined what it would be like to go wherever you wanted to go without having to leave your house because it flew. We imagined all kinds of thing that the flying house would be able to do and have. Like a special separate house that flew with the big house but was just for my sister and me and we could take it out on our own etc...

My sister played her own games too, and they usually involved things like “see how fast you can embarrass an older sister”. This would take the form of sticking your tongue out and staring at the car behind you out the back window.

To add insult to injury, my Mother would stock up the car with road trip food, like sandwiches, juice& snacks. The snacks would be along the lines of Scotch Mints, Eat more candy bars, and All Sorts. That is the most revolting assortment of road trip snack food that you could give a child.

 

Left overs for another load

Just a few large bowls

Kiln all loaded on Sunday

Great Goblets Batman!

This is a few days old, but just to give u an idea about how crazy Calgary weather is, it is now -25is outside...

Looks like Calgary is Canada’s hot spot again today. We are sitting at 13 ^oC (55.4^oF) right now and it’s still January. Sure beats the -29 we had a few weeks ago.

Fairview Studios is having a pot luck dinner tomorrow night. Kind of a “Throw Your Winter Blues Away” party. Apparently I will be doing a demo of my choice and then a demo of Dave’s choice, but he is not telling me what it is. All he would say is that it didn’t involve naked throwing (nobody needs to see that).

I have been working on 1 piece goblets lately. I don’t normally make them, but for some reason, I have been making a lot of them. I have always made them in 2 parts in the past, and I think that is why I never make them. Too hard to make them all the same, and they are a pain in the neck to put together. These however are relatively easy to throw, and then the final shape is revealed in the trimming,. I have been trimming really slender stems on them, so that is the next step – see if they make it through the firing without bending over and kissing the pot next to them.

Long Day

I am sitting here in the YYC (Calgary) airport (terminal 49 to be exact) waiting for my 49 minute flight to Edmonton(YYG airport). It is rather hilarious that it took me longer to drive to the airport than it will to fly to Edmonton (it was rush hour and the roads were jam packed), and that I have now been waiting in the airport since 6:15 and it is now 7:32, and I have been waiting longer that it will take to fly. 
I am not driving to Edmonton because I would have had to leave after work, and it takes 3 hours to get there blah blah blah. Oh well, at least I get to catch up on my blog reading/writing.
I will be staying in the Holiday Inn, and I need to be at my training session by 8am tomorrow morning. This training runs until 5pm, and then my flight leaves at 9 pm tomorrow night. What the heck am I going to do for 4 hours in Edmonton? Nothing, just sit in the airport and maybe eat dinner, read a book, read all the blogs that have been piling up.
Anyway, I plan on going into the studio after work at Ceramics Canada on Saturday, and then again first thing in the morning. I have to do this whole airport waiting thing again Sunday evening though, so I wont be playing in the mud all day.

Did not get a chance to post this before the plane boarded, so this is part 2:

We boarded at 7:40 pm, and we took off at something like 8:15, and then we circled the airport for a few minutes, so we were late landing (9pm). The Airport in Edmonton is so far away from ANYTHING. I wouldn't even say it is in Edmonton. Add to that that the roads here are so sloppy with at least 5 inches of melting snow and slush, the cab ride took about 45 minutes and so I did not get to the hotel until about 10 pm.
I requested a wake up call for 6am (yuck!!), and I have absolutely no idea how long it will take me to get to were I need to go tomorrow morning. Oh well, I will get a cab for 7ish and and if I get there early, then I get there early.
Anyway, it is now late, and I need to get up very early, so I'm going to hit the sack.

too busy to blog

It's been a while, I know. I have been getting used to working in a new office, on the other side of the city. It actually takes me less time to get there in the morning, I think. The weather has been really cold and snowy here, so traffic is always stupid. The drive home however is horrible no matter what the weather is like, so it takes me longer to get home after work. The studio is on the opposite side of town from the new office, so I have to fight even more traffic to get there after work. I also used to be able to log into blogger on my iPhone and write my blog entries that way at work as I could use the wireless connection without needing to use the cell network. Now however, the new office blocks blog sites and that includes their wireless network. So, now I am forced to write my blogs at home as well as read all the blogs I subscribe to. Don't know about anyone else out there, but when you spend all day looking at a computer screen, the last thing you really want to do is look at a computer when you get home. So, it seems that my blogging with be greatly curtailed, but I am sure that is no loss, it's not like I am writing the next great masterpiece or anything :)
I also just found out that I will need to travel to Edmonton a couple of times in the next week and half for some training sessions for work, and it will seriously impinge on my time in the studio. I will need to fly out Thursday night, spend the day there, fly back Friday night, and then fly up again on Sunday, spend the day there on Monday and fly back that night. so, the only full day I will have at the studio will be on Saturday (maybe some time on Sunday, but not much). I have lived in Calgary for the past 36 years, and even though Edmonton is only approximately a 3 hour drive north, I have never been to Edmonton. I have passed through on a Greyhound bus, but that's it. I've been to Australia, Ireland, New York, Montreal, etc, but never Edmonton.
I finally managed to get some pots down to the Galleria in Inglewood today at lunch. I needed to get some more stock down there before their annual pottery sale. I didn't have much (Christmas pretty much cleaned me out), but I did have some new stuff, and I have some more on the way, I just need to glaze it, and then I can take it down.
Other than that, I have returned to my regular schedule at the studio, and have been working on some new things. I have begun to exaggerate the rims on a few teapots by forming a really recessed gallery and then further pulling up the rim, flaring it out and making it undulate around the pot. I have also begun the make goblets. I don't normally make them, but I have begun to make them in one part, whereas in the past, I had always made them in 2 parts, and I hated making them cause they never really worked well. These ones have so far proven to be relatively simple to throw, and time will tell if the shape and construction fires well.
Anyway, that's what I've been up to and I will try to set more regular blogging time, I actually found that I missed being able to put my thoughts and activities down "on paper". It's late, I'm tired, and I'm going to sleep.

What I did on my Christmas holidays

I spent the holiday with my parents, my sister and her fiance, our great Aunt and our Cousin Wayne. The dinner was excellent. But after that I was pretty much always at the studio. I opened and closed mon thru fri and got a lot of work done. I fired a glaze load with some pretty great results. Here are a few pics of what I got up to

 

And then I was struck down on New Years eve. I came home from the studio, had dinner, and then almost instantly, I had a fever, with chills and everything but my teeth hurt. The weird thing is that it began at 6pm and ended at 9:30. I have not developed any other symptoms, so whatever I had, it was not too serious.