Nancy Today: Writing Again!

Good morning update

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Nancy Today: dance to the music

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Toothless update

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Nov. 1, 2013 Overtired

 

We are on the way to the temple in Toronto this morning. We are going to endure these gale force winds. I do hope there is not a disaster to have to go around on the 401, some truck blown over or trees on the road. I pray we won't be hit with any flying debris.

 

Willem is driving today. I've been very tired. I will see if I can recall why. We left Mary's on Saturday morning and I drove to Kingston for district conference. We drove home and I loaded the kiln and went to bed at 11pm and got up through the night a few times to deal with the bisque firing.

 

I stayed up at 5. We drove back to district conference on Sunday and home in the afternoon.

 

On Monday I emptied and glazed and fired the kiln again overnight. No, that's the night I fired it overnight and turned it off in the morning. On Tuesday I unloaded the kiln and threw 18 plates, or trimmed them. On Thursday was my busy day at Mera teaching cedar basketry.

 

I think it was 1 am when I closed my eyes. I didn't let myself get up till 9 this morning. That was a good thing. There were gale force winds which blew the table over the porch railing. It didn't' break it though.

 

I went to check on everything down at the pond. I think my green table is missing. The alder boughs that were lying on the lumber had blown over into the side of the pond. The clothwalk was fine. I'm glad to see that.

 

I love weaving. I enjoy our weaving meeting on Thursday mornings at 10. Kelly is threading the heddles and slaying the reed for the tea towels we are going to make. Lise is aware that we'd all like to be doing things, so she is going to teach us how to use the rigid heddle loom. I know nothing about how to use one. This will be a good experience for me.

 

I think we should organize ourselves and become a guild, the Mera Weavers Guild.

 

I borrowed a spinning wheel so I can work on the fiber I have washed. I'd like to spin it very thick and make a nice wool rug out of it. I wonder if I could make a double weave rug. I wonder if I could make a double weave on the warp that is already on my grandmother's loom. That would be very interesting. I imagine it would have to be all tabby. I'm not sure how it works though.

 

I have some broken or very loose warp threads on there now, though. I am going to try using a shuttle for my weaving, but I'm not sure I like the idea of winding the shuttles. I think it will take a lot of time to do that, actually.

 

I brought a few of them along with me in the car so I can wind them while Willem drives.

Oct. 12, 2013 6:47 am 3rd glaze run

I have been dealing with my kiln all night. We got home around 10. I'd had the kiln on low and open for the moisture to escape and for everything to dry thoroughly. I set the alarm for 1 am when I got up and turned the kiln to medium. At 4 I turned the kiln to high. At 6:40 the cone hadn't bent and the kiln was still orangy white, but not white enough like it gets, o so I think. We are heading to Tornonto to the temple today, so I had to turn it off before the cone bent. The kiln setter had fallen last night when I had had a kerfuffle with the kiln. I had remembered I hadn't put in a cone. The lid had been propped open, but it was pretty hot in there anyway. I had to poen the kiln a it to put in a cone 6 cone, but found I had a bowl in front of the hole. So I reached in with tongs and moved it over, having to remove one cremated bowl first. I wasn't sure where to put it incase it exploded from the change in temperature. Not on the ground beside the kiln, I had to go there. The ffreezer? It might explode and hit willem. Si I opted for the wet grass outside as better than the cold cement pathway. It was already cremated, so it was okay, I guess Anyway, it didn't even break. So that moving things around and putting the cone in there was a hot and tricky job. I was not impressed that id forgotten to do that. The heat had been so hot that id inadvertanly dropped the lid five inches, which made the kiln setter cone fall out of the kiln etter pegs and the flap bang down turning off the kiln. So I had to fire it witout a kiln setter cone as well.

 

I used my welders glasses to see inside the kiln. I think I should put it up higher, perhaps on cement blocks. Perhaps I should build a platform in that corner for it then put it back in place. Ill have to keep my eyes open for cement blocks. Perhaps my mason friend knows where I can find surplus.

 

I had two experiments going on. In one of my books, it said you could glaze greenware without bisquing it, eliminating the cost of the additional run. I wanted to see if it would work and what would happen, so I dipped two bowls in glaze, wiped off the bottoms and loaded them into the top of the kiln.

 

I also glazed the cremated pottery and put that in. There were several bowls from the Turq/green kiln run that had holes in the glaze inside. So I put fresh glaze on the holes and put them in the kiln. So here were cremated pottery freshly wet with glaze, unfired greenware with wet glaze and bowls with the first glaze, the green in two shades according to the constitution of the claybody and more bowls with the turq glaze on thickly.

 

So each of the children should have a set of bowls that will match and likely will be different from the rest. I will have to mail Virginia her set to Germany, or give them to her when they come to Canada in March. Her birthday is in two weeks and there's nothing in the mail for her yet.

 

How do I feel about doing pottery? What are my goals?

 

I love it. I love that things are turning out properly. I love that I'm learning by my own experience. I have made many mistakes, a cremated kiln at the dump proved that! Plus having taken my poor quality work to the final glaze run, I have those heavy small thick handle less mugs to prove it!

 

My goal I think is to let the creative juices flow, to learn to make complete sets of pottery, plates, mugs, bowls, saucers, and many other items, pitchers, large mixing bowls, apple bakers, honey pots with lids, teapots, small bowls like my little salt and pepper bowls…

 

I enumerated to Willem the price of all these things I bought so that I can have a pottery studio. He was amazed at how much it had cost. I think it was probably around $2000 all together. I'm so grateful that we are out of debt, the house is paid off and all is well. I'm so grateful to have this amazing life.

 

I love learning. I think if I already knew how to do it all there would be nothing to learn. I'm also so glad not to have to clean up after myself in my sunroom studio. It is lovely to just get up and walk away from it when I'm done. At Mera they were obsessive about cleaning the studio, even unbolting the stainless steel bowls and removing them from the wheels and washing the out in the sink whenever we were done working! I love my wheel where all the bits of clay can accumulate and dry out before being dumped back into the pot of water to reconstitute them!

 

I love that it's all right there, so handy. I love being able to just play in my studio for awhile and accomplish what I want to accomplish. I got a cupboard at the dup on Thursday. It's such a lovely place to be, in there. I think I'll put the cupboard behind the wheel against the wall. I can store in there the things that I don't need to use very often. I don't want to have to move the wheel too often to get into it. I will then have more room to place bowls I have tjust thrown. I wonder what the little batts are made of. I would like some smaller ones so I don't have to use so much room while the bowls on them are drying.

So needless to say, I am a bit concerned about the kiln and how well the run went. I'm glad I was able to fire it again, even if it didn't go all the way to cone 6.

 

I liked firing it at night. I can do that, turning it on at noon to warm fire and then turning it up at 7pm, or at least closing the lid for a few hours to fire on low, and firing through the night, getting up with the alarm clock to make the necessary heat adjustments, then turning off the kiln by 7am when the rates go back up high again.