Squatter

A neighbor decided, seeing as I wasn’t using my kiln, he would move in. It has finally gotten warm enough to get outside and I un-bricked the door of the kiln after having run test firings before Christmas and the cold spell. When I got the door down, I found all sorts of leaves and grass.



When I took out the last pair of shelves, I found a very upset rat. (and I do mean rat, not mouse) He was quite ticked off that I was disturbing the excellent nest he had finished building in the last two weeks.



He got evicted without any notice at all. Hopefully the weather will stay warm enough so I can finish off throwing pots, glaze and load the kiln for its first “real” firing.



Got to watch them neighbors here in Tennessee. Just before Christmas, we had a mountain lion (and I do mean eastern cougar, not Bobcat) walk across the edge of our yard. Maybe I could introduce them...

Back to work

I finally gave up waiting on the rain and started working on the kiln between showers. Row 14 is done leaving only 4 more rows to go before the arch goes in. I am going to do some electric kiln testing today, with some test tiles thrown in, but should be able to dodge the showers and get a layer or two more completed. I have a friend who is going to do the metal work for me. I need to get him a material list so he can order the angle iron and square tubing. I briefly thought about buying a welding machine and learning how to weld, but my mother's voice still rings in my ears about risking my one good eye (I lost an eye to an accident when I was about 3 years old).

After several years I finally got around to trying Wes Smith's suggestion of "marks of addition". He noted during a critique, that my work was all "marks of subtraction". He was right - but it takes me a while to get around to things (just ask my wife, Elise). Here is the vase I was coil-throwing. It is about 23 inches tall. The medallions and dragons are from a sprig mold that I bought.



Here is a shot of the sprigs.



Not all experiments are successful. These are the extruded hand built bowls that I was working on. I am not happy with the results, but will fire them and glazed them for the Habitat for Humanity Bowlathon in Cookeville. They may be bad bowls, but they will help in a good cause.



As you can see, I have been playing around with the HTML and CSS. I still need to fuss some more, so expect things to change a bit more - when I get around to it.

Rain

Middle Tennessee got a good dose of rain today. There was some flooding over in Cookeville which is about 30 miles away. So I decided to work in the studio and actually do pottery. I extruded some square tube that I am going to try and make bowls out of. And I did some coil-throwing as you can see below. I tried using a fan and a light blub to stiffen up the clay instead of my usual weed burner. It seems to be a gentler way. The weed burner brutalizes the clay.



The other task was to check the kiln's temperature readings versus my pyrometer. As expected it showed that the kiln is reading cooler than it should. It was colder by 20 to 30 degrees. So it over fires by about a cone at cone 6. So now I can calibrate the controller. I made up some cone packs for that.