Personal Victories

What a week! I'm just racking up the Personal Victories here, right, left and centre!

First, my garbage got picked up yesterday! Don't laugh, these days getting rid of your garbage is not that easy. We only get garbage garbage picked up every second week... the alternate week they pick up paper re-cycling and compost. Cans and bottles go the same week as garbage. Since I don't have much garbage, I tend to only put it out every 4 to 6 weeks, and of course I get totally confused. When I got to the road Sunday night I noticed my neighbour had his compost bin out. So I turned around and drove home (my driveway is l-o-o-o-n-g) and checked my calender. Still looked like garbage week to me so I put my 3 bags out. It worked! Garbage is gone! Yahoo!

Garbage is so complicated these days my husband threw up his hands and quit. He hasn't thrown anything out since 1976.

Then today I managed to cancel the insurance on the car we haven't had for more than a month! I thought it would be simple, but it took a number of phone calls, waiting for the right person, discussion, negotiation, deliberation, looking up of rates etc etc until I really felt I should just forget about it and let them insure it in perpetuity. But we got 'er done, folks! And with all the nifty deals and discounts my agent was able to get for me, it will cost hardly any more to insure my truck now than it used to cost to insure both it and its late stablemate.

 I never did understand economics, but I used to understand insurance. Not anymore.

I'm delighted to report that I did not leave the portable phone outside in the rain yesterday! Alright, so maybe I did, but it was under an old pail and didn't get wet. That counts, right?

My phone handsets have a rough history. I take them along with me while I'm gardening and stuff happens. I'm pretty sure at least one got planted, and one got carried away by an enemy critter. I found it years later in the woods in a place where I have never gardened, so I don't think I should be blamed. They should sell replacement handsets, really.

And the laundry is almost done... ha, take that, underwear! No doubt you, Dear Reader, do yours on a reasonable schedule, but I operate on the 'wait until you have absolutely nothing left to wear' system. Then I do several loads in a big hurry and forget all about laundry until next time... today I did some work in the Studio, dashed into the house to move the wet into the dryer and re-load the washer, did some work in the Herb Garden, dashed into the house to move the laundry on one step, went out on an errand, came back and dashed into the house... you get the idea. In between I searched for the phone and had an earnest discussion with my insurance agent... maybe the laundry basket should 'ping' like my oven does.

If I won a lottery, I'd buy enough clothes to last a year, and would throw them out as I went along; wait, would that work? Are t-shirts and jeans garbage, re-cycling or compost? And I wonder if I could get insurance on my phones, then I could put one in the garbage bag and phone the road and if the ravens answer maybe they could sort out the whole compost/re-cycling/insurance thing for me... After all, they are garbage experts.

And it's only Tuesday.

Getting Ready for the Carp Market

Busy day! Got up early and threw some bowls - need to fill a kiln and need bowls... think I can get them done by next Saturday? The Carp Farmers' Market opens next Saturday, May 9 and I'm getting all kinds of good stuff ready.

Then I went off to the Market to get my booth ready. Spent 4 hours painting my furniture! Painted the shelves, the tables, even the chairs. Chairs are a beast to paint, and wicker chairs are the beastiest. I found out that the paint roller does a pretty good job; who knew. Of course there were still all the legs, edges and trim to do with the brush. It was a bit cramped working in my booth and I kept bumping the wet paint. I was nicely decorated when I got home!

Any alert reader who would like to hazard a guess as to the new colour, leave me a comment or zip me an email and if you are right I'll give you a free mug! (Course, you'll have to come to the Market to get it!)

I hope there is asparagus at the Market on Saturday. I've made some serving dishes, and sauce jugs, for serving asparagus in its various guises. Did you know you can roast it? Just sprinkle some olive oil over, add a pinch of coarse salt, and roast for about 15 minutes. Leave it a bit crunchy. Yum!

Hint: Your Mother needs a nice dish to serve asparagus on, and it is Mother's Day on Sunday May 10!

One Bird Walkin'

I've been busy making stuff for the Carp Farmers' Market which will be opening soon (May 9 in fact) and I plan to have some Bird mugs, bowls and plates.

To me, this is a Blackbird, hopping around on the ground looking for whatever he can find. Since it is Spring, I've given him some large flowers to hop under, lots of little seedlings and even some snow drifting down.

The bird is just a little cut-out slab attached when the clay is leather-hard. The only tricky bit is where he sticks up above the rim, where I add a little blob of clay to support his head and to make the rim smooth and even.

Here is a finished mug:

Now to make bowls!

Scope Creep

Beware of Scope Creep!

Yesterday I began making the items for a certain customer's order. She asked for, among other things, 4 Onion Soup bowls. Getting my clay ready, I thought '4 onion soups... better make an extra just in case... actually, onion soups would be a good thing to have on hand and the shelves are empty, better make 4 extra, no, better make about 8 extra'. So that was 13 bowls. Then I was throwing them and realized that I could put the handles on a different way than I have been doing if I made the rims differently. So then I decided to make 13 the old way and maybe a dozen or so the new way.

But wait! From needing 4 onion soup shapes for an order, here I was making 25 of them.

Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but in this case it meant I wouldn't have time to make all the items in that order that day, or trim them all the next and then I'd be behind on the next order, etc etc etc.

That is Scope Creep. Where the project expands until it's more than you can handle and gets you bogged down so you get behind on other things and you can't get it all done so you get discouraged and it's no fun and maybe you should quit...

Mind you, a table full of items not suffering from scope creep doesn't impress anyone - one of these and one of those and so on. But at least one customer's order will be done, and in reasonable time.

    Not impressive, but done.

Note: Over the next few months, I will be writing an occasional post about, to quote Robin Hopper's book title, 'Stayin Alive'. After 25 years as a self-employed craftsperson, I feel I have learned a few things and want to pass them on. Lots of the things I'll talk about you will already know, or at least have heard about, but it you learn even one thing it will be worthwhile, both for you to read and for me to write. You'll be be able to access them under the category 'Stayin Alive'.

Fern-y Thoughts

A blog I follow (Hortus 2) had a post about a new fern nursery in Nova Scotia. Naturally, I immediately became totally obsessed with all things Fern...

The first thing I did was to consult my handy-dandy Smartass calender and pick a day for my annual Fern Day. I picked June 28, if you want to know. You can find out more about Fern Day on my other blog, but basically it's a garden tour and tea and some fern items for sale, including plants. I do have almost all the native Ottawa Valley ferns... brag brag.

Then I started thinking how I could plan to make some fern-decorated pottery. I did make a few pieces a while back, but never had time to do more. Maybe this year! Here is one I liked:

Hmmm. Maybe a vase would be good too. Or tiles, tiles are always good. Nobody buys them, but they are a dream to paint on.

Then, of course, I started thinking about the garden and thinking about visiting some of my favourite nature areas and going off photographing and getting more ferns and before I knew it my mind was off in 17 different directions and I had to stop and have a nap instead.

Ah, Spring!

The Valentine Tree, A Saga In One Parts

"I know," she said, slogging through the snow to the Studio,  "I'll make a Valentine Tree. It'll be fun, totally cute, and I'll take a picture of it and put it on my blog, and people will see it and want one and buy my pottery and I'll get rich and famous." (An aside: she's always wanted to be rich and famous, but is finally approaching the age where she might have to accept that this is not going to happen. Still.)

The daydream was interrupted, briefly, by actual Work, but eventually she made a slab, cut out hearts, stamped interesting designs into them... then stepped back and realized they were all too big and started over... and eventually she had some hearts.

Then she sprayed them with a High Gloss Finish No Fumes spray. About 20 times until the can was empty and the hearts were well stuck to the newspaper and the studio reeked of fumes.

Then she put threads on to hang them by and added some beads that were wandering around the Studio. It was at this point that she remembered how much she loathed macrame.

Not wanting to sacrifice another evergreen (and not wanting to wade around in the deep snow but that's another story) she cut a couple of branches, jammed them into a vase and hung the hearts on them. The vase had a slight tendency to tip over but by being very cautious and lightning-quick on the rescue, she managed to get them all hung. They pointed in every direction and swayed in the slightest breeze. All the best Studios have slight breezes, usually caused by an ill-fitting front door that freezes up in the winter, so they swayed a fair bit.

She then tried to get a good picture of the Valentine Tree. After several (well, maybe quite a few) hours, she went in for lunch and told her Significant Other that trying to photograph the Valentine Tree (except that that is not what she called it at that point) was going to drive her nuts. He said it was too late.

Eventually, with the assistance of a stray visitor, an old photo flood duct taped to an old pole, a rare gleam of actual sunlight through the window and Photoshop, she got a picture of the Valentine Tree.

Rich and famous may have to wait.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Air Plant Holders - A Little Diversion

Sometimes a potter needs a break. Much as I love making mugs and bowls and plates, sometimes I want to play a little.

This week I indulged myself by making some Air Plant holders.

They are just slabs, cut into shapes I like, painted with underglazes and dipped in a clear glaze. Fired to cone 6. They are between 4" and 10" tall and have either holes for a string or a small loop for hanging.

Air plants (Tillandsias, do the Google) need a solid something, such as wood or rock, to be stuck to, and then a good bright but not hot window. You have to spritz them with tap or rain water a couple of times a week and give them some weak fertilizer once a month. Dipping them in a bucket is good too. In other words, you need a substrate that is waterproof and scrub-able. Pottery is perfect!

Here are a few pretend-planted:

Near the bottom of each one I made a little platform or loop for the plants to be tucked into. I glued  mine on with E6000, the magic glue but you can wire or tie them on too if you prefer.

There is more info on my Garden blog. Tillandsias are quite nifty little plants, and many of the florists and nurseries around here have some. I got mine at The Hive in Carp.

That was fun!