What's This?

This doesn't happen here in October! It actually snowed last night after a brisk cold front moved through. Brrr..... My good friend (and artist blogger) Meagan Chaney, is visiting here with me this week while she takes John Britt's glaze chemistry class. Meagan and I used to be roommates back when we lived in Asheville, but she moved down to sunny Florida the past two years. Needless to say, she certainly wasn't expecting snow this morning! It's fun having my friend back to chat and catch up on things.

I'm on my afternoon tea break, which happens continually now that it is cold. Lately, I've been using one of my old teapots to brew my tea in. I love making teapots but for some reason I never really used them even though I always drink tea. I'm enjoying using it so much, but now I want to try out one of my new ones because I know they have gotten better than this one. It's bringing to mind all the things a potter thinks about when you make teapots. I think I might have to do some serious research to really learn about what it is that tea connoisseurs want in their tea and teapots so that I can make one that really works perfectly. This favorite teabowl I'm using was given to me by Minnesota potter Jeff Oestreich back when I assisted him at a Penland class a couple of years ago.

Old Growth Forests and Sore Muscles

Dramatic would be one word used to describe the Linville Gorge area. The first day hiking down and in the gorge was beautiful sunny fall weather. The gorge floor has been carved out through the years by the Linville River, which is littered with all sizes of rocks from small insignificant pebbles to truck sized boulders. Among this river of all moods were deep pockets of old growth forests shielding gigantic trees that have never been logged. This trail, being in a wilderness area, is maintained very little and you have to keep your head about you to be able to scramble across the rocks and fallen logs inhibiting this unmarked trail. The next day hiking out of the gorge was pretty tough due to the cold, raw, wet weather. Everything in the pack was wet, so it made the one mile climb up out of the gorge pretty gruesome. Luckily the parked car came into sight just before dark and I gleefully turned on the heat full blast to warm up from the cold rain. I only was able to keep my camera out the first day and luckily it didn't get wet, but I would have loved to take some pictures of the parting fog overlooking Table Rock. This rugged and remote area is so close, I'll definitely be going back to get more views, I just have to recover from my sore muscles.

This was some of the deepest textured bark I've ever seen!

Linville River below, overlooking Table Rock in the distance

Out for a Hike

I planted some kale, rape, and swiss chard seeds in late summer and despite the recent morning frosts we have had here, they are surviving strong. Today I winterized the garden with a plastic covering. I had great plans for it to look like a mini greenhouse, but it turns out my big plans ended up looking just like there's a big plastic clear tarp in my yard. I hope it lasts through the winter winds, but I have a sinking feeling I'll have to get out there and do some more tweeking. Anyhow, I'm excited to have winter greens to be munching on during the cold winter nights.

I'll be away for a few days, I'm headed out for a backpacking trip in the Linville Gorge Wilderness Area, right around here in western North Carolina. The Linville Gorge trail is a rugged and scenic trail that I have always craved to do. I'm hoping I haven't missed some of the rich colorful leaves. I'll be back next week to share what I discovered!

Looking Back

I've been looking through all of the pictures I took last week on my hikes during the amazing fall weather. I was reminiscing the feelings of the light and air all last weekend. I'm hoping to get out again soon this week if the weather is nice. I just want to be outside where it still is sunny and warm! It feels so satisfying exploring with my camera in hand. Some of the pictures of water and leaf reflections have so many complex layers in them they take a while to absorb.



All of these shots that I took were looking into Dennis Creek at the Dennis Cove Falls Recreation Area, near Hampton, Tennessee. I discovered some of these great hikes through one of my favorite photography blogs of the area, Appalachian Treks. This amazing photographer, Mark Peacock, has complete descriptions of these local beautiful areas and directions of how to get there.

Absent Minded Potter Blogger

Sorry I've been an absent blogger lately. All last weekend was the 4 day Southern Highland Craft fair in Asheville, and I'm just now back and am recuperating. It is so exhausting for me to change gears and work as a retail salesperson when I'd rather be working away in the studio. I do love meeting people who respond to my work, though, but I have to admit, my "on" face has felt good to be turned "off" today. This time Will Baker and I shared a booth at the show. It was nice to use his beautifully designed booth and join forces to display our work. It blended together nicely and it was good to get feedback from others about the outcome.

At the last show, the Spruce Pine Potters Market, I was lucky to meet my new pottery blogger friends, Judy Shreve and Patricia Griffin. It was so nice to meet both of you in person. It's been neat how by writing this blog I have made new pottery friends out there, but even nicer when you actually meet them face to face! Thank you both for your support and I hope you enjoy my pieces.

Now I have a lot of catching up to do in the studio as well as many other things. I'm not sure when I'll get back in the studio with clay, but I'm itching to soon. I'm actually done firing the soda kiln for the year, but I'll probably be sharing a kiln load in Will's next wood firing maybe in late November. Before that I have some applications to work on and I'm going to photograph and list a lot of my new pots for sale on Etsy. I still have a lot of pots left to say the least! I have a month before my next show at the Piedmont Crafts Fair, so until then, I'm going to be really promoting my Etsy online shop, as well as through the holidays. So I'll keep you posted when I update the shop with new pots! You just never know what I might put up there!

Cold has arrived to the mountains in the evenings and is here to stay, as far as the indoors. I had to light up the first fire in the woodstove today to take the chill off. Hope everyone "out there" is doing well!

Reflections

Thanks to everyone who came out to the potters market last weekend! Since then I was lucky to get out and enjoy two days of hiking around to see some of the fall color right in the area. I live in such a rich area of the Appalachian mountains with so much to see within an arms reach. Will and I discovered two different trails to some spectacular waterfalls over in eastern Tennessee and beautiful fall leaves. I didn't want to miss seeing the color, because the next 5 days I'll be at the Southern Highland Craft Fair in Asheville for another show. I just left the car packed up from the last show and am all ready to go again, feeling refreshed from the hiking and the photography. I took a total of 400 pictures in the past two days, so I thought I'd share some of my current favorites:

Perfect Harmony, and the Spruce Pine Potters Market

details of my latest work

You know those personal moments when you are cherishing something and you feel like you're on top of the world and just can't get enough? Cases where this happens to me are getting goose bumps listening and feeling the perfect harmony of music, soaking in the serenity of nature around me, throwing wet clay at the wheel, and observing a piece of handmade pottery. Come out to the Spruce Pine Potters Market this weekend to discover what you can see and feel. You can take in some of my latest work just unloaded from the soda kiln.

View the website: Spruce Pine Potters Market, Oct. 10-11, 10-5 pm
Read the latest news for the show at the Blog

Burned Out

My photo bulbs just burned out. I've been running around sanding and pricing pots for the big show this weekend and finally have just settled down to set up my photo booth display to take shots of my best pots, and then my new bulbs just burned out. Now there's only one of them working left, and I usually use three, but it could be just minutes before I lose the last one. I live out in the middle of nowhere and I just bought two of these in Asheville the other day. At the time, they were the last two at the photo store in Asheville, too. Daylight bulbs you use around the house aren't bright enough, hmmm....I'm at a stand point. I have to do this today! I guess I could try those work lamps you find at hardware stores...this would be cheaper in the long run. I am shooting digital, so it is easy to reset the white balance to adjust to any type of bulb I get.

Sorry to vent my frustrations...but this is on my to-do list and I was looking forward to crossing it off today. It has to be done before Friday. Surely there's something else to do, a potter is never bored.

Reed Handles

Since the unloading I've been weaving reed handles onto all the jars, baskets and teapots. I finished about 20 of them in the last few days. I have an order of 8 small reed jars going out and the rest are for the upcoming shows I have. Here's a link to one of my very early posts about how I make the reed handles.

Yesterday Will and I poked up to our usual spot on the Roan to catch an early glimpse of the fall color. Things are ahead up there and you can see the change in elevation by where the turning colors begin. As usual, it feels comforting knowing there are still quiet and serene places out there that aren't being swallowed up.

Will is firing off his wood kiln today and after I sand a few pots, I'm going to head up to help him out with the stoking.

More from the firing

Here is a closeup of the nubbly basket texture...this is just in time for fall. It reminds me of walking through a forest crunching fall leaves underneath your feet. This boils down to exactly what I love about clay, soda, wood ash, and texture.

Below are two oval dishes I made for the first time that I really like. The flashing marks turned out so rich, on the redder one on the left, especially. The one on the right I glazed a bit different, the inside reflects the outside with the olive green glaze only on the bottom part and bare clay on the top part of the inside and the outside. I like how the inside reflects the outside...this impressed texture shows up through the inside, and now this idea of having the glaze do the same thing is appealing to me for future ideas....These tumblers have nice soda and flashing markings on them:
All my teapots turned out really nice! This teapot below has some interesting markings on it, I love the light apricot coloring. The lid is propped up on wadding in the picture, and later I will weave a reed handle onto this teapot:
Here's my stamp, or chop, although I'm not sure why it's called a chop:

Soda Eddies

These two ewers are my favorite pots out of the firing. The variations in reds are so brilliant and they have interesting colors and markings all around! I had so much fun making these and I'm glad they turned out just as good in the firing.

These 8 tumblers are the ones that were on the bagwall, starting from left to right. The side that you can see is the actual fireface side that was hit by the flame and soda. You can tell that I put the soda in on the angle iron on this front side from the decreasing level of soda on the pots from left to right.

Detail of tumblers, with nice smoky gray soda markings



The bright red flash line on this ewer came from being positioned closely to the tumbler. As the soda meanders through the kiln during the firing, it weaves in and out of the pots, leaving nice flashing in the nooks and crannies. The best way of understanding this, and is more realized in a wood firing with the wood flame, is to think of a river. The water swirls around the rocks creating eddies behind them. The pots are like the rocks in the river, creating barriers where the flame and soda either lingers around on the pots or is blocked by another pot, causing it to find another way out. The flame in a wood kiln gently glides through the kiln, piggybacking soda, and glazing the lucky pots on its way out.

This cup formed a barrier to the pitcher behind it...the picture below shows just what it did! That red flashing mark on the bottom of the pitcher pictured below came from the cup being stacked in front of it, shielding heavy soda from building up on the surface, causing it instead to flash the bright colors.

Results Just In!

(click on pictures to enlarge)
pictured above: front stack before and after

pictured above: middle stack before and after

pictured above: back stack before and after

It was a good firing. The pots were drier in areas than my last firing but they seemed to flash a lot brighter and created a lot of interesting flash patterns and spots. This was due to the different soda mixture I made that I dumped into the firebox instead of my usual firebox soda ash spray. I didn't get that many pots that had huge buildups of soda, so I think if I do it that way again, I'll increase the amount. The firebox spray that I normally do was really creating some heavy soda deposits on the fireface. The soda amounts on the pots are always so different every firing, sometimes even if you do the same thing. There are so many factors that contribute to it being varied, from the soda ratio to water, the stacking, the timing of spraying, and the end soak time. This time one of the slips in the back against the right arch wall had some of the best flashing I'd seen on it in a long time. It's a quieter slip and does not always turn out spectacular, but this firing it was a winner! I either gain some I really like from the front fireface and lose some in the back, or vice versa. I'll post some more detail pictures later, but I'm still sorting through and absorbing for now. I'm not having that up and down mood swing about the firing like I usually do, which is weird, I'm content with them and okay with the ones that didn't work, which are definitely in there with some glaze pinholes and some drier pots. What's nice, though, is that I have a full week before the next show to put reed handles on, sand and price the pots, and photograph my best. It's nice to not have fired right up to the last minute which often happens...