October 13 - Carolina Clay Matters Pottery Festival

Saturday was the Fall Pottery Festival and as in the Spring, I had my own booth.  Sales were good and the sun was strong.  A lot of friends stopped by to say hello and lots of new and returning customers made lots of purchases.

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October 12 - Raku firing

I raku fired my pods and like the results.

You can see the rest here.

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October 8 - Firing results

We had another good cone 10 firing.  Here are some of the results.

You can see the rest of the work here.


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October 1 - Bogota, NJ visit

Wow.  A whole month has gone by again without posts.  It's just so easy to post a quick photo to Facebook it's hard to keep the discipline of updating the blog.  I will do some catch up and hopefully get back to more timely posts (we've heard that before, haven't we?).  Get some popcorn and hang on.

At the end of September I caught a cheap flight so I could visit my brother, do some fossil hunting, celebrate my parents' 55th anniversary, and visit the place we grew up in NJ.  It was a great trip.  We found some nice fossils, spent some great time together, and ate way too much.

Here are some photos of our hometown of Bogota, NJ.

Almost in Bogota.

The wall from Preston Street.

Our old street.
(It's tiny!)

The dead end.

Our old house.

The top of our street.

The Dewey school used to be across the street.
We often played stickball there.

The old strike zone is still there.

This used to be the paved school yard.

View from the top of our street.

Me at the wall at the end of our street.
I spent many hours of my youth here.

This is Preston Street.
We used to sled on this street and it seemed so steep.

Under the Main Street overpass.
We spent a lot of time be the railroad tracks
but they're fenced off now.

The stairs up to the overpass.

The graffiti under the bridge has changed over the years.

Bogota High School.

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September 27 - More awards

On Thursday the Second Harvest Food Bank had their awards luncheon for organizations that regularly help them.  Clayworks was awarded for supplying 300 bowls every year to the Empty Bowls event.  Adrienne asked several of us who make the bowls to attend the luncheon with her.  It was a nice event with good food donated by Best Impressions Catering.

We've already started making bowls for the 2013 event in March.

The big screen.

The award, the table placard and the program.

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September 23 - Meredith's award

On Sunday we went to watch Meredith's award ceremony.  She is one of the few people at the barn that has completed level 6.  She showed the crowd several different skills that I wasn't even aware existed, like stopping the horse with both front feet even, and turning the horse around pivoting at the front feet so only the back end moves.  She even backed the horse up while turning her.  After showing us some other skills she received her certificate from Kathy, the owner.  We are very proud of her achievements. 

But you knew that.

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September 22 - Parent's weekend

We went to visit Stephanie on Saturday for parent's weekend and wanted to see her new dorm room.  Since she is a big Batman fan, it was no surprise that she had her side of the room decorated for her favorite hero.

We had fun meeting her friends and taking her to lunch.  It was a very nice visit.

The desk.

Her white board.

The refrigerator.

The closet.

Stephanie.

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September 16 - Elaine's Demo

On Sunday Elaine gave her pinch-pot demo for the Carolina Clay Matters Pottery Guild at Clayworks.  She did a great job explaining all the steps she goes through in making her pots.  I have never been able to make a good pot by hand and I found out the reason was that I was missing some steps.  I will have to revisit hand-building pots again to give it another chance.

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September 15 - FIRE!

Saturday was firing day in Lawndale.

We fired the kiln by throwing wood in the firebox until we achieved the correct temperature and the pots were done.

We had a lot of fun during the day and a great lunch, not to mention lots of boiled peanuts.

Afterwards we had a beer and visited for a bit before heading down the road to home.

I can't tell you how great it is to be a part of this firing.  It's fellowship, the joy of making, the anticipation of the finished pots, and enjoying time with the great people doing it.  Hal and Corine have such a wonderful home you can feel the good karma all around you.  It's a magical place and I feel honored every time I visit.

If you have a chance to attend one of their home sales, you can see what I mean.  Don't miss it.

Back to the firing...

During one of the breaks I snapped some photos of the various artwork that sits atop the kiln.

The crew taking a breather.
Adrienne, Hal, Dave, and Chad.

That's over 2000 F.
If you don't think so, stand next to it for a second.

Hot stuff.

Finished with the final blast,
some of the pots are visible behind the flames.
Time to close it up and let it cool slowly.
A job well done.

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September 14 - Loading the kiln

After catching up last month I have fallen woefully behind again.  I have too many things to make one big catch-up post so I am going to throw these posts up quickly to get current but not leave out any fun stuff.  Hang with me, here we go.

On Friday we loaded the wood kiln at Hal and Corine's place in Lawndale.  Hal climbs in the groundhog kiln and loads the pots using a very sophisticated transport system:  a laundry basket that we slide back and forth over the firebox on two boards.  Hey, it works.

There were a lot of pots to load but he got them all in and the basket made many trips.  After that, it was time to shovel the old ash and charcoal out of the firebox so we could fill it up again when we fired it.

After everything was done it was time to go home.  We'd be back tomorrow to heat it up.

Hal loading the kiln.

Chad taking a bucket of ash from Hal.

Hal digging out the ash.

Yup, it's really Hal.

You can see him standing in the firebox.

That's a hard-working man.

That's a finely loaded kiln.

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