Progress

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Anyone who visited us at the log cabin studio,  knows how jammed packed our small space was. It’s now empty, and last Wednesday we did a final cleaning!

 It was a huge relief to get it done. All that’s left to move is the kiln. We will fire it once more before the Celebration of Seagrove Potters show and then start deconstruction. It’s a small kiln so it should go quickly.

The rest of our days and evenings have been spent scraping paint and priming walls in our new space. The ceiling is painted plywood. Power washing removed a lot of peeling paint but there was still quite a bit of scraping to do. After scraping, we washed it with TSP and water. 
Last night Jeff started to texture the ceiling with a mixture of paint and joint compound. It will help to hide roughness of the plywood. He experimented with a few textures before deciding on what looks and works the best. Such a messy job! He was covered in paint and joint compound by the end of the night. His time spent as a drywall hanger, in his youth, has served us well.

It’s exciting to see our new space come together. Progress this week should be very big…
stay tuned for updates!

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A Home Filled With Light

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One of the biggest challenges of living in the log cabin, was darkness. Lights needed to be on throughout the day. The only sunlight that came in the through the windows was in the bedroom, on the second floor. Upstairs was where Sophie cat and the house plants lived. Sophie descended the spiral staircase for meals and evening cuddles, but pretty much spent her days sleeping on the bed.
Our new home has BIG windows everywhere! I am loving the sunlight as much as Sophie. She spends her days following the patches of light shining in. Her mornings start at the end of the hallway, then she works her way into the living room.

Our houseplants have also been flourishing in the light as well. The other day Meredith, over at Whynot Pottery, posted on facebook that she had spider plant babies to give away. Of course I immediately said, “me, me, I will take some”. Monday afternoon she delivered my new babies. I can’t wait to watch them grow and have babies of their own. I haven’t had a spider plant in forever… as Meredith said on fb, spider plants are so 1982. I think it was the 80’s the last time I had one! I think they are coming back into fashion. I noticed that my sister has one at her house, and she is always very fashionable.

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Weekend Update

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My weekend update isn’t nearly as fun as Saturday Night Live’s, but it was a milestone for us! 
The sign went up, Friday evening, under the cloak of darkness…

 We even have a “Pottery Highway” sign in our front yard. Check out the crazy pruning job the utility company did to our tree. I call it the big “Y”.

Our temporary gallery was all set up and ready for customers, by early Saturday morning.
I was pleasantly surprised at how many people stopped in throughout the day. Sales weren’t stellar, but they were sales, and we were happy. Sunday was slower, but that’s typical around here.

We celebrated on Friday night with the first lighting of our “new to us” fire pit. We brought it back from NH this summer, and it was finally cool enough to fire it up. Nothing tastes better than hotdogs cooked on an open fire. The downside…
They are salty and I was up drinking water half the night. It reminded me of why I don’t usually eat hotdogs.

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Crazy Corn

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In a crazy corn dish!

Sometimes when you move, you unearth some cool stuff that you forgot about. I just happened to have this wacky ear of corn in the fridge, to go along with the dish. This piece is from the 2006 Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, Salad Days event. The artist that year was Patrick Coughlin.
Jeff did a residency at Watershed, some years back, and went to the salad days event a number of times. He has a cool collection of plates from the fundraiser. Here is a link to 20 years of Salad Days Plates – Watershed Center For Ceramic Arts – Newcastle Maine.
Happy Friday, and don’t forget to eat your vegetables.

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Team Lift

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Workday breakfast omelette – green onion and Chinese chive
John Zentner plate – antique tile

Today is the final push of the studio move. Aside from the gas kiln we should have everything packed and moved by tonight. Yesterday we moved the large raku kiln, with the help of a neighbor, and our landscape guy. It’s a giant, one piece, electric kiln that Jeff converted to gas. It’s a bear to move because it doesn’t come apart in rings, like most electric kilns. We finally feel like we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!
The town of Seagrove approved our sign at 505 and tomorrow it’s going up. Our gallery isn’t finished but we will be open for business this weekend. Since we had to dry our tent out from the rainy show last weekend, I decided to set up the booth and use it as our sales venue for the next two weekends. We can’t afford to not be open for another couple of weeks… I can’t survive on Etsy alone. At least not yet.

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Sketchbook

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This morning I was reading Ben Putnam’s blog post about “sketchbook practice”. At the end of the post is a link to a sketchbook practice project that he did some time ago. Ben had approached me about participating and sadly I had to decline. I have been terrible about keeping a sketchbook. I realized when he asked me, that the only time I have regularly kept up with one, was when I have been part of an art journal group. I have a collection of sketchbooks of varying types. Most have lots of blank pages with postcards, letters, and newspaper clippings tucked in between. Right now I can’t even find my favorite one, the one that probably has more sketches in it than any other. I am sure it is tucked in a box in the office, which is a horrid mess right now. Someday it will get unpacked and organized. Someday I will get in the habit of keeping a sketchbook.
But not until this studio move is complete. Until then, there is no creativity happening here.
Just manual labor.

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The end is in sight!

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Remember back in 2010 we bought a school bus and moved south? Well, we still own that bus. It has sat in the yard for five years. We were neglectful school bus owners, and didn’t keep starting it every week. Thankfully, Jeff did take the batteries out of it. Last week we had those batteries charged, and after bleeding the fuel line (we had it replaced shortly after it’s last trip North) the beast started in no time at all! 

This news makes us very happy. The bus is loaded with all of our glaze buckets, chemicals, and assorted pieces of equipment. It can now make the one mile trip up the road. Once it’s unloaded we will put it for sale on Craigslist. In the past we contemplated a mobil studio/gallery, but with the maintenance, fuel costs, insurance, it just doesn’t seem like a wise financial endeavor. I would rather sell it and see the money in my bank account!
Today we will unload the trailer from our very wet, outdoor show, and pack it back up with more studio stuff. The rain has stopped, the weather is cooler. A good day for working.

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I am still here!

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Tired and worn out… but still here.
The past two weeks have been a mad rush to move out of 1423. I will be honest. It has been totally overwhelming for us. Not only did we have a September 30th move out deadline to meet, we had to orders to fire and a wedding to go to. Despite hard work and long hours, we didn’t meet our move out deadline. We fired the gas kiln on the 30th, and on October 1st we were on the road to New Hampshire for my niece’s wedding. I wanted to cancel the trip at the last minute. The trip was not only bad timing, but a financial strain as well. Even with lower gas prices, driving 1800+ miles is hard on the pocket book. My sister was so disappointed that I couldn’t let her down. Her disappointment made me realize that this was her first child to marry and she was sort of going it alone. Her husband passed away two years ago, and my Mom last year. Sure she has Dad, but he needs a lot of care and needs someone to care of him.
So we packed our bags and went.

And I am so glad we did. The bride was beautiful, the groom handsome, and my sister was so proud. Look at my Dad standing there without a walker!!! Back in June this moment seemed impossible for him.

 My great niece, the brides daughter, loves her Pepere. She spent a good part of the reception sitting with him, when she wasn’t dancing that is.

There was no wedding cake, instead it was wedding pie. Perfect for a fall wedding in chilly New Hampshire.

Our whirlwind trip lasted 6 days. Four days on the road and two days with family. We returned home in the nick of time for the town council meeting on Tuesday night. Jeff took our application to the meeting and came home with our business license.

It’s official, we can now sell pots in the town of Seagrove! We were very relieved that they gave us approval that very evening.
The last two days have been spent packing up the gallery at 1423 and packing for the CCM Fall Pottery Festival in Charlotte. That’s happening on Saturday- detail in the side bar of the blog.
Did I mention that I am exhausted?
Well I am.

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Onward…

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Jeff and I are done making pots at the log cabin. We will fire the gas kiln once more before the end of the month. This weekend I started to pack the studio. I am taking time to wash my tools and tool containers. It will be good to get a clean start in the new space.

When I left my studio in New Hampshire it was very emotional. Yes it was exciting to start a new life in a new state, but I was leaving so much behind. I don’t have an emotional attachment to this studio. I am happy to have had the opportunity to work here, it has been a great place to get established in Seagrove… but it’s definitely time to move on to our own space.
…and to make it our own..

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Each day brings us something new

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Yesterday we became the new owners of an 8 foot drainage pipe and 2 yards of gravel… how is that for excitement?! The drainage pipe at the end of our driveway is completely plugged up. The DOT is doing drainage work in the area and they are going to clean it out. Since the end of our drive is quite narrow, they agreed to extend the pipe and cover it with gravel, if we bought the materials. We had to jump on this opportunity quickly and our new lawn guy delivered everything in time for the work to be completed. Of course the DOT let us know yesterday that they were coming on Monday… it was a scramble to organize it all while trying to finish loading the gas kiln. In the end we held off firing until today so that it wouldn’t be an all nighter.

What is really exciting is that our lawn guy bush hogged behind the house and we now have a sweet spot cleared for a nice big garden. Our plan is to clear a few more trees and brush, which will give us a nice view of the neighboring pasture. We’ve also discovered that we have quite a few pecan trees and more blackberry bushes!

And now for something completely different…
Last week we were a little disappointed that we would not be able to watch Steven Colbert host the late show. None of the streaming services that we have were going to carry it. There was no way we were going to pay for another service to watch one show. So what was our low tech solution?

We bought an old fashioned antenna! It was cheap ($40) and arrived yesterday. Last night Jeff took it out of the box, placed it on top of our empty CD rack (still haven’t unpacked those) and, VOILA! Crystal clear picture and lots of channels. Imagine how much better it will be when it’s on the roof.
Our home sits on top of a small hill, overlooking Seagrove. We figured we were in a good spot for an antenna…
Now if  DISH network and Time Warner would stop sending me junk mail, every other day, with all those fabulous “deals”.

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…Better Living Through Handmade Pottery.