Two days to firing time

Ooooooooooh man it's been a hectic time recently in Hollyford Potteryland, making frantic last minute pots for Monday's firing. I haven't even had time to write a blog post for a week it's been so crazy.

On the home front, Luke's been spending his half term holidays revising for his GCSE's and my 'little one', Joey turned fourteen on Thursday.



Different Dave called by yesterday to service my wheel as the bearing's become a bit noisy. He was the wood machine shop technician at the art college before we were both made redundant and used to be responsible for servicing all the machines, so he knows how to use a grease gun.



These are his two little ones, Kieran and Tayla, getting proper messy with some of the red stuff.



Some bowls I made earlier in the week. These will be unglazed on the outside and will hopefully pick up some good flame marks. I have black slip versions of the same thing.



This pot is for an order. The green will burn away, it's felt tip pen scribbles that I used to work out the composition. The 'flower trees' and birds are heavily influenced by the naive stylised designs typically found on old North Devon harvest jugs. There's another one that I still have to finish, It's been a mammoth project and has taken me hours....



and hours....



and hours....



and hours, scratching away, night after night, into the early hours. I really hope it comes out. It's about 16" tall, so there's a lot of surface area and there's more removed, than left behind.



Lots of glazing done, I'm off to the workshop now to finish it off. Marky Mark's meeting me there and we'll start the pack. I bricked the door up last night and lit a fire in the firebox, that, plus the scorching weather that's forecast for the next few days, should ensure a nice dry kiln.

Hannah's driving down from Scotland today and bringing some pots to fire too. Well I'd better get to it, catch you later.