bodner046

I was up early this morning and unloaded the kiln before Jeff even got out of bed. It went quickly because he had un-bricked the door last night. It was a really good firing with a variety of work from piggy banks, sugar & creamers, mugs, and our 50+ bowls for the Empty Bowls event next week. Early in the week I posted a "before" photo, here is the "after" photo... This is the BEST looking mug from the STARworks FireFest wood/salt firing. It's also the one with the small S-crack, so it's mine to keep. 

Jeff was part of the wood firing crew at STARworks last week during FireFest. He brought of few my pots to be fired in the salt chamber. These were made with Highwater Loafers Glory. I had some lackluster ones and a few with some good toasty-ness. Of course the ones with the best color had other issues, like a slight separation at the handle join and one with an s-crack. I plan to keep the s-crack mug for myself, which I rarely do. The others are still sale-able but at a reduced price. That's the crap shoot of wood firing. The plan this weekend was that when Jeff was done his shift of stoking the wood kiln, he would come back to Seagrove and bring me to FireFest at STARworks, in Star NC. I really wanted to see this year's giant sculpture, that was firing throughout the event, being unveiled. At 7pm it was drizzling and 46 degrees outside. I opted to stay home in my pajamas, curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine. Jeff had a few great photos and there was some cool videos po...

It's that time of year again. The Second Harvest Food Bank is having their Empty Bowls event next week. I think this is the third year that we agreed to make 50 bowls for them. They pay us $5 a bowl, which probably pays for materials and firing, we donate our time and energy. Jeff threw all the bowls, since he can throw a nice soup bowl that doesn't need trimming... thanks to his many years of production work. My contribution was prepping for bisque, waxing bottoms, and dipping into the base glaze. Jeff did the all of the glaze trailing. Half are "nuka" glaze with blue and green trailing, the other half are shino with copper red. We were really happy that we had a bright sunny day to work outside. Tomorrow is firing day. I hope to get some photos of all the bowls before they get picked up by volunteers this weekend. Stay tuned for updates!

"EDEN" came out of the kiln yesterday. Isn't she sweet? The buyer made the perfect choice of color and carving for a little girl named Eden. March was the month of the big piggy bank. Most every order I had was for our large size bank. The larger piggy banks are about 8" in length and 7 1/2" from hoof to ear.  The problematic part of making larger piggy banks is that you can't stand them on all fours until the legs have stiffened some. I typically put legs on a few then let them rest on their butts for any where from a half hour to an hour, depending on humidity. The trick is not to forget about them before it's too late to make leg adjustment. I try to get them as wobble free as possible. After making a round of these hogs, our standard size seems so small to work on. As soon as this kiln was unloaded we started to load it again for another bisque firing. April is a busy month with the Celebration of Spring Pottery Tour in a couple of weeks as well as o...