The Clay Teacher Blog: Plans for the Day and Family Pics

July 8, 2009

It has been a while since I blogged. In the summer there is little to do with the Clay Teacher, especially since this is the first summer as the Clay Teacher. I hope the summers to follow have some Clay Teacher activity. I have been potting. The casserole didn’t turn out that well. I was trying to follow the style of another potter for the client. I didn’t like that style and my knock off showed. I did bring one that I liked. They liked it too and bought it instead of the knock off. They said would order more in lots of 10. It was a school and as of yet, no order. I think the teachers, the end of June, might have had more on their minds than casseroles dishes. I have the corporate mug order made but not glazed. I am waiting on more info from them. The store in the east ordered again, that is bisqued and cooling the kiln along with some internet orders and Lilia ordered a bit more. The east order was a good size. More dinner sets. I have made a number of dinner sets this last month or so….about 40….I am working on a dinner set now

About 4 years ago we shipped an order to a store near Toronto. They didn’t order again. We always stamp out pottery with Out of the Fire Studio and Alberta Canada. We received an email a few months ago telling us they had bought one of our tea pots from that store and broke the lid. They wanted us to make a new lid and had found us on the internet because of the stamp. I said I would try and send them a couple that might work. They got back and said that they would be in the neighborhood, could they drop by. They do live in Kenora ON. We didn’t expect them to stop by. They did and placed a wedding registry with us. At first the registry didn’t take off. It was a good size, 13 piece dinner set with a number of completer pieces. We had sold a casserole dish and a couple of trays and thought oh well. They told us last week, what wasn’t sold in the registry, they would buy. Since then it has taken off and they will have to purchase very little, but it has to be done by the 20^th of this month so his brother can take it to the wedding. I have been busy making dinner sets, only because we stamped the tea pot with our name.

Jim has redone Out of the Fire web site http://www.outofthefirestudio.com/ and The Clay Teacher ( I didn’t add the link here, if you got this far, you don’t need it). He has been busy as well. They really look good. Out of the Fire has been online since 2000 or 1999 it was time for the old girl to have a face lift. I’m not sure that time will ever come for me. Need yes, surgery no.

We have some running around to do today. We will get our business license….finally… It has taken this long to get the development permit so we can apply. There is a small wholesale order to deliver to shop down town. Then we will get our badges etc for Folk Festhttp://www.efmf.ab.ca/ we are in the craft tent this year. With the badges we get full access to the festival, even Wednesday and Thursday night when the craft tent is not set up. We hope the sale goes well. 85,000 people will attend that weekend. We should be able to sell something to someone. We will promote the Clay Teacher and the pottery. We are looking forward to it. But I am freaking out a bit. I am doing the “WE DON’T HAVE ENOUCH POTS!!!!” thing that I always do. I get this wedding registry done this week and I can put my head down and make pots. When I do that, I have the ability to make a whack of pots. How many pots do we need for 85,000 people, how many will they buy, what they will buy, and will they buy anything at all? Same questions different sale……..the nice thing about pots is they don’t go stale. They can sit in a tote and wait until the next sale, unlike bread. Also today we have a new client stopping by to purchase what we have in stock and then place an order. It is White Avenue store. We haven’t had pots on White Ave since…..years……When driving on White I often call it Wait Ave, the traffic is bad.