All day tomorrow (well, actually starting 10 minutes ago), I’ll be offering 20% off storewide in my Etsy shop.  I have a kiln load of Christmas pieces coming out of the kiln tomorrow, so I’ll be adding to my shop as the day goes on. If you purchase something early, then go back to find something new later in the day that you want, I will honor my combined shipping discount. 

Ornaments will be coming later in the week.  Not sure what happened this year–seems like the holiday season snuck up and whacked me on the back.  I took a look at my stock and it seemed to be all rusts and browns right now, with a handful of spring colors mixed in. That won’t do for the holidays…

Now to watch the clock…evenings like this make me wish I had a digital controller on my kiln. Oh well…

Good News! After the kiln broke down again for the second time in three firings, my hubby looked at it and discovered it was the OUTLET and not the kiln. One quick repair job to the outlet, and we’re cookin’ with fire again!  I completed orders last night and also fired a number of new pieces for fall. As soon as the sun comes out tomorrow, I’ll get them listed in the shop. In the meantime, here are the pieces that went into the shop today. These are available immediately.

Do you hear the sound of Taps playing softly in the background? That’s for my little kiln. She is NOT reaching temp. Hubby will be fooling with it this weekend, but until further notice custom orders are on hold.  If he can’t get her working again, I’ll be using Big Mama kiln, which means it will take forever to fill.

That figures. I played with some reactive crystals in this load, along with some fun new pendant designs and glaze combinations.

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

The past couple of weeks have been interesting. They involved some seriously nasty weather (three tornadoes touched down in Maine…MAINE!!!), a very close lightning hit (next door, but managed to blow our modem up), little Jeep that I love failed her inspection twice (piddly little stuff, all fixed, but still), the truck that I borrowed in the interim broke down on me (fixed). …Anyway, enough about all that. Lets sweep  it under the rug and start over.

Right now I’m working on samples for a gift catalog that recently contacted me. I’m excited about this and hope it works out well for both of us.  I also managed to get some pieces glazed and fired this past week, with more to come (lots more….hoping to fire on Monday).

I don’t think I mentioned it yet, but I was one of the lucky winners of Denise Yezbak Moore’s big bead giveaway. I ended up with a delicious new green bead stash–thanks again, Denise!

And here are a few things that came out of the last glaze firing:

Yeah, I know, the green bead stash and the bisque beads are showing up in  the gallery, but I don’t feel like fooling around with it.

Next time I drop off the face of the earth, toss me a rope, will you?

Perhaps yesterday was not the best day to run the kiln; luckily, it’s located in the garage which is about 250 ft from the house, and it’s a little kiln, so it doesn’t throw off heat like Big Momma does. I had to do this firing, as I have orders that have to get filled. The bowl towards the front shows the results of my resist experiment.  I’ll get better pictures once they’ve been glazed; it’s very hard to get contrast between white and white

My hands have been sore the past few days, so I’ve tried to take it easy on the craft front. They’re a little better today, so I’m hoping to do some glazing once the Boy goes to bed.

These pieces went up in the shop today: