I have a cunning plan...

So I was off work last week, well Tuesday through Friday, and was able to spend a lot more time in the studio.  That’s why there were so many blog posts so quickly, but now I’m back at work and back to spending only about an hour or so a night in the studio.  So these posts will also slow down, just because I won’t be able to do as much.  Which is okay I’ll just have to make the time spent there count a little more, try to plan what I’m going to do in advance so I don’t spend my hour trying to figure out what to throw or build.  That’s what happened tonight, I went out there without a plan and nothing I tried to throw worked out.  Everything was off center, too heavy, or just collapsed under the guidance of hands that didn’t quite know what they wanted to do.  So now I’m going to spend a little time each day figuring out what I want to do in the studio that night, and what I want to accomplish for the week.  So I’m off to make some kind of plan for tomorrow night so I don’t repeat what happened tonight. Thanks for visiting.

A Table to Work On

Let’s play a little catch up, I made this table a month or two ago. 

                After looking at my studio I decided I needed more table space dedicated to pottery.  The other table I have is used for everything else so it gets bits of dirt and sawdust all over it, not that good for pottery.  So I set out to build a large table.  I decided to stick with the dimensions of a standard piece of plywood (3/4 inch in this case), which is 8 foot by 4 foot, and I went with 3 feet tall.  I also wanted a lower level that I could use to store clay off of the floor.  I used 4 by 4 treated posts for the legs so that if they ever got wet it wouldn’t matter that much.  I built the frame out of two by fours; both the top and the lower shelf have supports running the four foot length to give it a little more support.  Once it was all assembled I covered the top of it with canvas to give me a nice work area.  It took me the better part of a Saturday afternoon but I was able to get it finished, and now it’s in full use and working out quite nicely.

An update and an inquiry.

Ewan has become an outside baby since the last time I posted here.  So here is the obligatory baby picture.

And now for something completely different...  I’m thinking of starting a Kickstarter to buy a kiln, and I just wanted to run a few things past my “vast” audience.  I’ve been trying to think of gifts/incentives to give out for various levels of giving.  So far I have:

5- Hand written thank you card.

10-spoon rest/tea bag holder

20- Japanese style tea bowl (chawan).

40- Two Japanese tea bowls (chawans)

50- Four large(ish) matching tumblers or tea bowls

100-four Japanese style tea bowls (chawans), honey/sugar container, and creamer container.

150-3 hour lesson where I come to you to teach hand building or throwing, or you can come to the studio.  Lessons can be for any age.

If you have any ideas for other or better incentives please let me know, I’m completely open to suggestions.  I seem to be moving fairly slowly on this front, but I would like to have a kiln set up within the year.  I think the goal for this project would be around 7,000.  I’m looking at this kiln, the Olympic DD14 Down Draft.  It’s the largest kiln I can get without needing to use a forklift.  It will cost around 7,000 after I add the shelving kit and get a larger gas meter.  Thanks for reading.

Compost II

We threw this compost container together the other night (which is why the pictures are so dark). We took this idea from our friend Andy, because our other composter wasn't big enough for all of our compost and this was really easy to put up.

What we did was hammer in about 6 stakes in a roughly circular shape.

And then wrapped some chicken wire around it to keep all the compost together.  Later we'll go back and cut the tops off of the stakes and start to fill it with compost.  We also put some hay down in our garden, mostly over the soaker hose, in hopes that it will help keep the plants moist and cool during the summer heat.

What’s Better than a Good Soak…

I knew I had today off from work I had a long list of jobs I wanted to get finished and/or started today.  What I wasn’t expecting was to not be able to sleep last night; I ended up going to bed around 3:30am.  I’m not sure why I couldn’t sleep, but I was able to research a few things that I was thinking about doing later this year, so it wasn’t a complete waste of a non-sleeping night.  When I woke up this morning at about 7am, I thought I would get an early start on the day but after I ate breakfast I was right back to sleep until 10am.  When I woke up this time I was really groggy, and very dazed.  At the time I didn’t think I would get anything done, but after a sleepy talk with my wife at her work (over the phone of course), and some homemade guacamole I felt suddenly energized.  So I headed out to the garden to have a look around, and saw a length of soaker hose my mother-in-law had given us.  I figured it had been sitting there long enough (about 3 months), and it was time I put it to use. 
I cut a length of garden hose long enough to go from our rain barrels to the garden, attached it to the rain barrels and the other end to the soaker hose.

I then began to twist and loop the soaker hose around half of our garden.  It wasn’t long enough to reach the cucumber, squash, zucchini, a tomato, and the eggplant; I will be watering those by hand for a while until we get more hose, or maybe a drip system.

 

Here you can see the soaker hose just beginning to get soaked…  That’s one of our Thai hot peppers!!

Here it loops around two of our tomato plants, with some tomatoes on them!!

Here it twists around a tomato, some tomatillos, and two different beans.  There is also a mystery plant in there, we’re not sure what it is but we think it might be a pumpkin.  How it got in the middle of our garden we haven’t the slightest…

These are our cucumbers, they are a little spikey at the moment, but hopefully they will be tasty…

Our first zucchini, these guys are starting out a little slow…

 

 Our yellow squash on the other had is exploding with fruits.  We already picked a few the other day and already there are a bunch more almost ready to eat!!

We let some of our leeks from last fall go to seed, and the flowers they have are a lot like the onions but these have a slightly purple tint to them.

I set up this little trellis the other day for our watermelon to grow up onto.  We didn’t have any luck last year with watermelon, so hopefully these guys will survive and produce some melons!!

Here are our volunteer veggies (they grew up out of our compost pile we had last year), there are a bunch of cucumbers (with fruits on them already!), and a couple of tomato plants with flowers on them.

Here is another shot of our complete garden; we think it’s looking pretty good so far!

  I picked up this log from the side of the road the other day after driving past it a few times.  Stay tuned I’m going to try and make a couple of things out of it…