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Brad's Blog
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August 1, 2006
I'd been eagerly awaiting the shipment of clay and glaze
materials yesterday, because I ran out of dolomite a couple weeks ago,
and had been stretching my bucket of black glaze till the shipment came
in. (The way to stretch a bucket of glaze is to pour it into a smaller
bucket so pots can still be dipped in it.) I was dismayed to find
that the clay supplier had put a 50 lb. bag of whiting in the order instead
of the dolomite. It was an interesting mistake, since they both provide
calcium in the glaze, but the dolomite also supplies magnesium. There's
little recourse when dealing with a dealer 200 miles away, and since I
use whiting regularly, I'll just blow off the mistake, although it means
an extra trip (85 miles) to Spokane to get some there...
August 2
It's been a roller coaster year. Just as sales
are at their peak, and my one big art fair of the year approaches this
weekend, my back got sprained this morning. Although I do a set of
back exercises daily, which I think has greatly reduced the incidence of
back pain, I strained my back picking green beans to give to the local
food bank (there is no justice...). Fortunately my family is
stepping up to the plate, since mighty Casey has struck out...
August 3-4
Unless I re-strain it, my back goes out the same way
everytime, and recovers in about a week. In the meantime I list to the
right a bit... I've enlisted my son to help pack pots and haul and
set up for the art fair, so things are looking manageable. And, compared
to nearly everywhere else in the US, the weather is great, with highs in
the 80's and lows in the 40's. There are times when I've done a fair
this weekend where I'd repeatedly dunk in the lake with my clothes on to
keep moderately cool.
August 5-6
The good thing about this art fair was sharing responsibilities with 3 other local potters. Also the weather, though leaning towards hot (90), was tolerable all three days. I had most of the sales, particularly in number, as the others had more expensive and decorative pottery. So I should feel good, as the "winner," but I've never been comfortable in the role. Cooperation is a more comfortable model for me to live with than competition (yes, I wrote an article about this years ago).
August 7
An art fair takes 2 more days than the event itself--one
day before to pack, and one after to unpack and recover. I did glaze
a kiln load of pots, but also took a nap in the afternoon.
The electrical problem referred to yesterday was not
an absence of electricity in the circuit (the black wire), but a disconnect
in the way it would return to the ground (the white wire).
August 8
The wind is blowing tonight, dispelling the heat of a
couple of 90 degree days. We've got a bunch of relatives visiting,
so it's good the sweet corn is ready and plentiful.
Today I received orders from 2 individuals for 16 chicken
cookers. They're a pot I was hoping to discontinue--basically a wide
bowl with a tube sticking up in the middle, into which beer or other liquid
is added, which humidifies a chicken from the inside while it bakes.
I don't like them because they're difficult to make the two parts stick
together in a way that they don't crack apart in drying or pop apart in
the kiln. I'm guessing about 30-40 % of them fail on the way to completion,
so it's little wonder I'm not enthused about making them.
But they wouldn't be the first pot I've made that I'm
not personally crazy about.
August 9
We heard a wise old saying from a 90 year old woman years
ago. "One boy working is one boy, two boys is half a boy, and 3 boys
is no boys at all."
I thought of it because of guests-- one set of guests
is something special, two sets is a major occasion, and three sets is a
family reunion and constitutes a major logistical challenge.
There's coordinating meals, airport trips, sleeping
arrangements, and activities. Meanwhile sales and orders are keeping
the pottery business jumping. Some years I've charted my sales, and
the 4th of July and the first week in August are the two peaks of the summer.
Everyone seems to vacation now, partially because of the big local craft
fair last weekend, and another one this weekend in another nearby vacation
mecca town. In fact this family reunion on my wife's side happened
for the most part serendipitously, as various members contacted us with
this time as the best to visit. About a month ago I scheduled my
own personal vacation for this weekend--a bluegrass festival an hour away.
I'm glad I bought the ticket early. If I waited till now I'd probably
decide I was too busy to go.
August 10
The day got more tense early on as one of our troupe
was leaving today on an airplane. It was like being in a media storm--every
talk radio show on NPR was about how tough it would be to fly today, with
the thwarted terrorist plot in England. Only one of them interviewed
someone who had actually flown today--and that person just said the lines
were maybe a little longer, and someone near him had to toss his chapstick.
So our relative went to the airport the recommended two
hours early, and had no troubles at all getting through security in a few
minutes. I'm sure the large airports, particularly in the East, were
more troublesome.
Tomorrow the family reunion will be totally disippated,
a family "shower" ending with the meteor shower tonight...
August 11
August 12-13
August 14
I glazed a couple kilnloads of pots today. The
day was also notable for a lack of sales.
It's almost eerie how group psychology and/or the weather
can influence sales. The weather's been really accommodating (hot days,
cool nights), but the sky is smoky from a large fire in central Washington
State. Usually at this time the local farmers start burning
their grass fields to stimulate seed production (and produce lots of smoke
as a byproduct), but it may be too dry here currently to allow burning.
Just as bees react instinctively to save the hive when they smell smoke,
I think humans are affected by smoke at a subliminal level as well.
While clouds and mist on a mountain make a lovely picture, smoke makes
the same scene ominous. The sun set this evening as a red ball in
a smoky sky.
Another psychological factor affecting people currently
is a feeling that fall is approaching. We have cottonwood trees in our
yard that start losing leaves in August since they need a lot more water
than they're getting.
Also it seems most people take their vacation the first
two weeks of August, which have just completed.
Finally I'd like to mention I'm not nervous about sales
(they've been very good this year), but these are just observations...
August 15
August 16
A consensus of two birders identified the birds in yesterday's
picture as juvenile red-throated phalaropes. Indeed as I perused
my bird book, they seemed the likeliest candidates, but they only
matched the winter plumage. The summer plumage includes red throats...
All our guests are temporarily gone (another arrives
tomorrow), so it was a day to pick corn (about 100 ears) and blanch and
freeze it (21 pints). The first sign of rain in weeks is happening
this evening.
August 17
No rain yet. Our lawn is looking very brown.
We used 54,000 gallons of water on our two gardens last month. The
lawn only gets water by accident...
I fired two glaze kilns today, one for a rush order for
a pie plate promised for tomorrow morning. It may be a hot pie plate
when they get it...
When I unloaded my bisque kilns today, nearly every chicken
cooker in it had the middle part popped free. This is, of course,
frustrating, and the main reason I wish to discontinue making these baking
dishes with a cylinder sticking up in the middle. I've tried many ways
of assembling them. If they're thrown as one piece, they tend to
crack in drying. So I switched to combining the two pieces, which
is similar to adding a knob on a thrown piece. I thought the problem
was using extra water to attach them, which later keeps it from drying
and turns to steam in firing. So I quit using any water at all, and
just applied extra force when attaching them. That didn't work.
When I've had similar problems with knobs, I've solved it by making a pin
hole leading into the interior space, allowing gases to leak out.
So I'm trying that on the next batch. I wouldn't be making any if
I hadn't gotten that order for 16 last week...
August 18
Sometimes you just need to look at information
in a new way to make it useful. I got this email today in response
to yesterday's blog:
"My name is Sharon Warwick. I am a potter in Washington.
I just happened to browse your site today. I read your blog and I
think that this trick might work for those chicken roasters.
Take some of your clay and make it into a slip.
Then add about 1/4 to 1/2 of a cup of soggy torn up toilet paper (clean
of course:) ) to approx 1 cup of slip. Blend it up in a blender and
you now have paper clay. I have used this method to patch many pots
and handles. It can be used on Bisque ware aslo, but the ware needs
to be bisqued again before glazing."
I've known about paper clay for a couple years, and even
have some mixed up, but never considered it as a joining slip, and seldom
bother to fix cracks with it, as I tend to remake the pots as quickly as
I could patch them, but this may be just the application to use this unusual
clay mixture. So thanks, Sharon...
August 20
August 21
This was the hottest day in quite a while (into the 90's).
It's tolerable, because the overnight temps drop down into the low 50's.
This evening I rode my bike around the periphery of town, observing that
even most of the nice new houses in town have not been able to keep up
with the American Dream Yard (deep green bluegrass), with the hot dry temperatures
we've been having. I don't waste water on grass, but do try to keep
the garden and orchard alive and functioning.
Currently in the garden we have spam spam, corn, spam,
cukes, carrots, blackberries, spam and zucchini. Sorry about the
spam--I got that list mixed up with my email inbox... The sweet corn
is the 3rd planting, couldn't be better, and a current supper staple, since
the season is so short...
August 22
August 23
Megacyllene robiniae (Locust borer--yes we have locust trees in our yard)
August 24
The summer is slowing down, cooling down. I spent
some time raking leaves out of the pottery display and washing the dust
off pots today. The leaves usually start falling now, from lack of
water, and it's been dry for a couple months so they're more than ready.
Any time there's dry lightning or a tossed cigarette butt, there's a new
forest fire in the region, and if there wasn't enough smoke from that,
the local bluegrass farmers torch their fields at this time to stimulate
seed production. So the last couple weeks of August often seem a
bit blighted around here.
Anyway it's nice to slow down a bit. I'm still
working on restocking pots and filling a few orders. The chicken
cookers continue to be a challenge. I've tried using paper clay slip
to join the pieces, but I'm feeling like the thin layer of slip can't really
work wonders, so I switched to making the pots all in one piece.
That eliminates the joint problem, but makes them more likely to crack
in drying. The cooler weather may help with that, as slower drying
helps cut down on cracking... The next couple of bisques should show
which system works better...
August 25
August 26
So the beetle of a couple days ago turned out to be a
Locust Borer (thanks to an insect newsgroup I follow). And I just
checked on the orb spider and it's building a new orb right in the rosebush
where I left it. My relatives in Northfield, Minnesota reported baseball
sized hail there a couple days ago, that naturally did a lot of damage.
Things aren't that interesting here currently. A favorite author
of mine, Terry Pratchett, named one of his books "Interesting Times."
He said it was a sort of curse--"may you live in interesting times..."
It's true that boring sameness usually includes relative security, while
exacting its own price (boredom)....
August 27
I've been adding more videos--accessible from my
video page. "Send me not away" I wrote about 30 years ago, and
just recorded it now. The "Friendly Crosses" combines a lot of my
nature photographs, which were kaleidoscopically transformed into decorative
crosses, with "What a Friend we have in Jesus." Currently my videos have
been clicked on about 48,000 times total, with an average rating of about
3 and 1/2 stars (out of 5 possible, i.e. above average). It's sort
of a curious, pointless kind of fame, but some of the comments have been
encouraging.
August 28
The spider, mentioned a couple days ago, now has a nice
orb higher up in the grapevine that grows above the rose bush. It's
a curious thing about spiders. I routinely kill them when they make messy
webs inside the house, but outside I generally figure it's their environment
and leave them alone. But when they get big, like this orb spider,
they enter into the realm of potential pets (like tarantulas). I
don't get too attached to orb spiders, though, since they die with the
frost (as Charlotte's Web points out).
Another bit of the wild that's been intruding lately
are the coyotes, which are easy to hear several times a night, and probably
are within a half mile. Since it's not me they're hunting, I enjoy
listening to them, as a unique natural sound in a class of its own.
August 29
Not to get fixated on spiders, but it seemed to be gone
today, including its orb. (Late August is always a slow news time...
)
The winds blew today, a mixture of smoke and dust to
recoat our recently cleaned pottery display. The warmth and winds
made local fire wardens fear a repeat of the 1910 fires, when strong winds
caused a lot of fire blowups across the region. There were a couple
sprinkles today, and a slightly greater chance of rain tomorrow with highs
in the mid 60's, which is the coolest it's been predicted for a long time.
August 30
We maybe got a quarter inch of rain today, enough to
settle the dust for a day or so. Possible frost tonight. 90's predicted
again in a couple days. Roller coaster weather... The
largest fire in Washington State went from 100,000 acres last week to 140,000
this week. The cooler weather hit with the winds that blew all night,
apparently reducing the fire danger temporarily rather than triggering
a firestorm.
August 31
The spider was back--I think the wind had temporarily
destroyed its web.
I made some sculptures this spring which I dubbed lawn
sculptures, as I thought of them as yard accoutrements. They weren't
a big success, so I'll point my artistic urges in other directions.
But someone did like one of them well enough to ask me to make two copies
in other colors, which I started today. My rather foolish policy
of not taking payment in advance may catch me up on this one again, like
the two boxes of bowls I have sitting waiting to ship against the (fading)
hope that the person will send the money to pay for them.
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