Hey Bruce,

I had an epiphany about php at some point today….I get it…it’s all about includes.  After a tech support call to Bruce I think I have it.  Of course….a total website rebuild is in the works tonight but so be it….I wanted to make some flow changes anyways.  

I’m starting to feel a slight disconnect from my pots.  I’ve been making work for a while now and when I start feeling like this it usually means it’s time to start glazing and seeing some finished work.   Once I unload the kiln I remember how excited I was at the beginning of the cycle…if the firing goes well. Making pots is obviously a process driven endeavor but we do need those few sweet pots out of the kiln that send us right back into the studio to start again. 

I got a bisque kiln loaded today and it’s started with a long soak.  Time to make a few more pots today and tomorrow.  Then, it’s time to start cleaning up and get ready to do some glazing.  I still haven’t figured out which glazes I’m going to mix up for the firing.  I would like to try out a new celadon glaze.  I haven’t had a celadon in the studio for a while so it’s time to hunt down that box with all of my recipes in it.  

I’ve been getting tons of requests to get more of my recent work up on our website.  I was trying to wait until I get the webstore up and running but that’s clearly not going to happen today. Anyways, I added a few photos to my current work page.  It’s a quick update but at least I have some more images on there.  

I got the webstore software plug-in and I definitely don’t understand it.  We’ve designed our basic site with basic HTML which I don’t understand but with Dreamweaver that doesn’t matter. I’ve been able to update the site and add pics and pages and links without any knowledge of web design.  Bruce, who has helped me with the site so far, is going to be changing the site to a php code….which, again I don’t understand but will make updating easier.  

Busy day today.  I want to throw the last of the white stoneware and move on to some regular stoneware tomorrow.  Things to do:

Happy Mother’s Day!

Not a bad day. Even though we had a sort of a late night I was able to get some of my catching up done. We even had a very decent amount of people through the gallery on a rainy Saturday. I guess I should have advertised a Mother’s Day Sale or something. Anyways, I got the cups above trimmed and slipped as well as cleaned up the mugs that waited so long for their handles.

Below are a couple covered jars that I managed to throw. As I said earlier, covered jars had left my pottery world as of late in lieu of boxes but maybe their back. This cycle I feel like I am re-visiting forms and decorating ideas that I haven’t seen or used in a while. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting ready for a reduction firing for the first time in ages. Regardless of how I’ve gotten here…or back here…it’s fun to try these distantly familiar ideas with pottery skills that I didn’t have last time. A lot of these ideas I haven’t put on my pots since my first summer opening up shop. I’ll try to snap some pics of some old pots lying around the studio that I never got rid of….maybe there is a reason I kept them.

My soup bowls were still not quite ready to trim. If I can sneak over to the studio for a little while tomorrow maybe I can trim those and the serving bowls I threw yesterday.

Off to a birthday party tonight….and it’s not for children….Woohoo!!!

Really. At least the mugs have handles…finally. It’s now time to trim everything that I made while not putting handles on those mugs during the latter part of the week. Soup bowls, cups and serving bowls all are asking to be trimmed. The weather isn’t agreeing too much lately…the studio is awfully damp because it hasn’t stopped raining for a few days. So, I’ll trim what I can and then make a few covered jars while I wait for the rest to dry up a bit more. I haven’t made covered jars in a while. It seems as though pitchers and covered jars had left my vocabulary of pots for a little while. It’s nice to have them back…I made one jar yesterday…Let’s see where it leads. I’ve been working with Laguna’s B-Mix clay most of the last couple of weeks and I think today is going to be the last day for a while. I’m going to switch back to some stoneware clay tomorrow and try to finish up throwing next week. After that, It’s time to mix up some glazes and start cycling some of this work through the kilns and into the gallery. Hopefully, It can all get done before Memorial Day Weekend.

Somewhere between now and then I’ll have to find some time to get out to Western Massachusetts and get some pots from everyone out there for gallery. There was a good wood firing last week out at Mark Shapiro’s Stonepool Pottery and I’m going to hopefully get some work from Mark, his current apprentice Daniel Garrettson and his former apprentice and good friend Michael McCarthy. So, with my firing, some pots from Stonepool’s woodfiring and a quick trip to Dogbar Pottery to get some work from Sam Taylor and we should be overloaded with pots here at Kreeger Pottery for the beginning of summer. I guess I’ll have a lot to photograph shortly.