The shopping cart on my site is all glitchy again. Glaze choices are not coming though, and you can’t even order the beads. I know I spent a day working on this, and when I was done I added every single product to my shopping cart to make sure it was all set. A few days ago I added a new glaze choice to the menu, so I wonder if I was working off an old copy of the designs page. Time will tell–I’ll be back at the office tomorrow, and from there I’ll upload the copy of the designs page that is on that computer.

I dropped off the earth for a couple of days at the beginning of the week. I added a few listings to my Etsy site, then I had a meeting early Monday afternoon. About 20 minutes after Becky left, I began to feel funny. I thought it was just hunger, so I grabbed some lunch. It didn’t help. Finally I realized that I had a migraine coming on. I dumped my purse upside down looking for my meds, but apparently I used my last “travel pill” already. By the time I got home I was driving with one eye open. My husband met me at the car and took Isaac, while I stumbled in the house and down the hall to try to sleep it off. Apparently once the headache takes hold, my meds won’t work. To top it off my cold was breaking up and I was having coughing fits which felt just peachy. I fell into a fitful sleep around 11, woke up at 7 the next morning, sat up–still there. Not as bad as the night before, but I still felt awful. I still have a residual headache from it, but nothing like the first night. I haven’t had one that bad in years. Soooo….I haven’t been very productive this week.

It’s terrible. You start to feel better, but you don’t trust yourself. Any false move can get it going again. I’ve been riding this roller coaster for 20 years, and although I’ve accepted it as a fact of life, it still sucks the life out of you. I know many of you can identify with this. It’s sort of sad that a three year old knows to go grab the ice pack, you know?

Well, I’m off to do some glazing. The pieces in this post have been listed in my etsy shop. If I find a quick remedy to the shopping cart issue, I’ll be adding more pieces to Etsy tomorrow.  

Thanks for listening.

I’ve created a Flickr group for my customers to show off their finished work. Be sure to add your photos; I’d love to see what you made!

Heading off to pick up the boy after a somewhat productive day. I managed to get these listed this afternoon–enjoy!

It was 95 in Sanford yesterday. So naturally I had to fire the kiln, right? 

I needed to fill a couple of orders and get some samples glazed up and fired, so  that’s what I did. Apparently the trick is to fire on a really hot day so the stuff can get a head start, because this is what came out of the kiln:

The wire to the far right, along with the pieces to the right of that, are for orders. Most of the pendants to the left are samples and are unglazed on the back. The exceptions are the square beads up top and that wavy oval piece that is glazed with a beautiful copper glaze.  You can’t tell from the picture, but when that glaze is fired it’s sort of glittery.  I LOVE the green beads that are heading to their new home. I had my doubts when I saw the customer’s color choices, but the combination of sage and bells of Ireland is fantastic.  I’ll be repeating that combination soon.

There was also a handful of stoneware pony pendants in this load that I have to glaze and fire tonight for samples.  I’ll be glazing Pete’s mug with a light blue shino (I think, 98% sure) and firing that as well, so at least I don’t have to spend the day glazing a zillion little pendants. 

Here’s an example of the unpredicability of glazes:

This is the same glaze, fired in the same kiln.  The square pieces are white earthenware, and the other piece is terracotta.  The only other difference is that the sample was fired flat (unglazed on back) and the squares were hanging from the wire.  This variety is great if you’re firing for “fun” (i.e. not firing for custom orders), but it’s hard to offer glaze samples when they do stuff  like this.

I only had two rejects in this load, which is fantastic!  I’ve lost whole loads before (the decal load of 09),  and I think that they might have been too close to the kiln posts, so they got fried.  They were kiln fillers anyway, so I’m ok with that. Lesson learned.

If it brightens up a little today, I’ll get pictures taken of the other pieces and get them in my shop. If you’re interested in any of them, drop me a line and I’ll set them aside for you