Schtuff Happens.

I got another corporate order from the fellow that has ordered the same mugs for years. They are a lot of work. The bison, trees and grass have to be carved, the logo is another clay body added and stamped on. After bisquing the bison and cl logo are glazed black, then the bison, logo and all the carving is waxed before glazing. I don't mind doing them. He is a good customer, and pays on time and pays well. It is important, to me more than him I think, to deliver on time. A couple weeks ago I was in the studio when they were cooling in the glaze load when I heard an odd "clunk". I didn't know what it was and just thought it was something outside. I never thought much about, the music was on, work was good and it was just a clunk. What could happen?

 

What happened was a kiln post shifted and the shelf holding the mugs fell in the cooling. All the mugs slid sideways and into this lovely mug sculpture. However they are had to drink from. I lost 14 mugs on that shelf....bummer. My son thinks the melted mugs are cool, so now he has a mug sculpture for.... I am not sure. I have been loading kilns since high school and I have never seen a post shift and cause a shelf to fall before. 

I was lucky, it only took out one bowl on the shelf below and the rest of the load was fine. I remade the mugs and delivered the order yesterday. All is well. 

I had a customer complaint this week. I seldom have any negative feedback and this was a first of it's kind. I have been making pottery for decades and have thrown literally 10's of tons of clay into production pots and never I have I heard that some of the bowls leave an after taste in the food.  Not all of them, just some. When I told her it was impossible. Her stoneware bowls all came from the same glaze, same kiln load and were fired to 2200 F, she did not respond to the email. A few weeks ago she mentioned she wanted to order more pots, but now that some of her bowls leave an after taste, she hasn't mentioned it again. I think the only bad taste in her mouth was when she added up how much she spent on her large custom ordered dinner set with matching serving bowls and platters. I am not going to pursue any more orders from this client. 

The weather has been cold and snowy this week and it has delayed the transport of our modular to the new lot. We are not sure when it will be delivered.  We have people lined up to plug it into electric, water and gas and now perhaps nothing to plug in. Dang. Schtuff happens!

I have a studio full of thrown pots waiting to be trimmed and my coffee is done. Time to get to work as I am not quite ready for Make It.

Until next time. 

AKA

Mrs. Clay

A Bigger Hammer

We bought this empty lot that hasn't had anything on it for years and we foolishly thought with a  couple of hand tools we could tidy it up. We cut and trimmed all we could, but when we were done, in every sense of the word, the yard was still a long way from done. And what to do with that ever growling pile of branches.

We did notice that odd piece of equipment in that ever growing pile of branches. 

This is the bush half way through. All that work and we still had a very mess coarse hedge that I didn't know what to do with. 

That's where the bigger hammer comes in. That odd piece of equipment is just what we needed. It cleared those bushes out at the root, loaded it all into a trailer and it all went to the land fill. We have a couple of great guys working for us. It is a much easier way to trim the bushes. Caragana is now cara goner.  I will most likely trim with Round Up in the spring. 

 

I have been making some pots for Make It  and we have done a few Clay Teacher workshops, but I have to admit, but mind and heart has been on the move and the new house much more than pots and teaching.We go to meet the modular in 2 weeks, I had better get to work.

Until next time.

AKA Mrs.  Clay

Cart before the horse, or work before the permits.

Moving from the city of Edmonton with a metro population of over 1,000,000,000 to the village of Coutts with about 350 people, we might encounter a few differences. I was talking to the lady at my Edmonton bank the other day and told her we were moving and the population was 350. She thought for a moment then said "350,000 is a good sized city". She never considered only 350 people.

In August we went down to look a place we didn't buy and ran into our soon to be neighbour, but didn't know that at the time. We knew owners of the place we not home and we could only look at the outside, but we wanted to see the town as well. We chatted briefly with the neighbour, told him why we were there and he said he know a lady that had a key and he could let us in. This house had been rented and the renter had just moved out. The renter and owner had not had their walk threw, the owner didn't know we were there and had not given permission to go in and we just said no, there we too many liability issues. "You guys must be from the city, we don't worry about things like that here" said the neighbour.

Later we got the lot I talked about in the last blog and as soon as we got our development permit, we sent all the information off to Lethbridge last Friday for the  building permits. They said it would take at least a week for all the permits to land. We talked to our contractor told him what we were doing and would send those permits out as soon as we got them and they could get to work. Winter is coming we wanted to move ahead as soon as possible. I got a panicked phone call the following Monday afternoon, I had not answered the contractors email he had sent that morning. He had the place landscaped and wanted to know where the water was going to come in so they could trench.. That was moving ahead fairly quickly. We are from the city and we do things differently.  In small towns it must be the commutative law of building. It doesn't matter what order the building and permits come in as long as the end of the day you have construction and permits.

This is Monday morning waiting for permits.

We are going down early tomorrow to finish, or work on, trimming the trees and bushes. We will meet the contractor and lay in the  electric cable. All this work and more has been done without us there, it's hard to stay home and work when all the action is going on at the new house. By the end of the month we should have house and lot together, but then we have to come back to Edmonton for November and work.

I am looking forward to going, seeing the work that is done, cutting some more trees and trying out our latest new toy, the hedge trimmer. 

Until next time.

AKA Mrs. Clay

Finding my yard.

We finally got our lot.  The lawyer hasn't sent the title yet, these things take time.We haven't got the building permit yet, I know, these thing take time. With no building permit, there is no electrical, pluming or gas permits. No permits means we can't start anything to do with building so we can't set a date with the company to move our modular. Winter is on the way.... tick tick.... fWe went down for a half day to meet the concrete guy start cleaning up the yard a bit.  The lady who sold me the lot said it was nicely treed.  It was closer to impenetrable forest.  It has been years since anyone has done anything. There was a corner where the back of the house will go that was solid bush. There was a beautiful huge double spruce hiding in a mess of willows and carrageenan. Here is a before picture.

 After about 3 hours with our new little chainsaw and some bush removed out corner looked a bit better, but there is still a whole lotta bush to take out of there.  Jim took the picture of the pile.I sure didn't do all that on my own. We took turns cutting and dragging the branches out of the way. It was fun! It was doing something besides hurry up and wait. It is a nice big lot, you can see the more tame back end behind me.  The property ends at about the farthest tree.

And here it is after the first of many hair cuts.

I simply love that beautiful old tree.  The truck is about three feet in diameter. I have a few plans about what I want to do with that wonderful old  tree but I will talk about that later. The modular will sit in all that all tall grass, but the grass will go away. 

I had gotten some girly work gloves for the day, but they weren't made for what we were doing.  Here is the right hand after just a few hours. When we go back I will get some real work gloves.

We took this one just for fun.  The chainsaw is battery operated and has a 12 inch saw. Not too scary but a great little machine. It really did the job. 

Now we wait and wait for permits and other people to put our life on their schedule. I really don't like having to wait for others to do what I want them to do.  It is unfortunate that the the lot is six hours from here. We would do more to make the yard tidy, but it is hard running back and forth and we have things we have to get done here in Edmonton.  This summer we have put over 13,000 kilometers on the vehicle and we are far from done. 

I'm not sure how we are going to dispose of our pile of branches and it it just the first of many. Since the pile is six hours away, I will not solve that problem tonight. 

Until next time. 

AKA Mrs. Clay