It's Raining Again!

Continuous rain for several days have made the grass green.
The silvery stuff at the top of the hill is hail and probably snow.

It is raining again, a thin, cold, misty rain that is swirled and stirred by eddies of a strong Southerly wind. A lazy wind, the sort that can't be bothered to step around you, but goes straight through. A cold and lazy wind, for to the South of us is the vast Continent of Antarctica. A land of ice.

Everything is grey outside and the greyness seeps inside too. We rise in darkness, and put our shoulder to our work under the thick cover of cloud.

The news says that Oamaru, a town to the North of us where my parents live, has been cut off by flooding (my parents are not in any danger, by-the-way, the main road was simply blocked by flooding North and South of the town). Inland some roads are impassible due to snow. The army deliver milk and bread to those who cannot leave their homes. Thanks to coal and electricity, we are warm enough, but everything feels damp.

The Ginger cat seems not to mind the rain. He goes out several times in the day, and in the night, and arrives back with coat matted and darkened by water. His coat is thick, like the wool of a sheep, and sometimes I wonder if he has been sitting out with the sheep in the paddock behind us, his coat is so wet! The black kitten, that is almost a cat, hates the rain, and does not like her feet getting wet. She blames us for her wet feet. Her coat is sleek and thin, she feels the cold, and does not want to go out at all! We have to encourage her to venture outside. She is happy to find the car shed, and stays there on our out of doors walks!

Clay is cold, and hands unwilling. Warm water helps, but a ray of sunshine would be even better!

Earlier in the month, I lifted the lid of my elderly electric kiln, and found that one of the four ceramic buttons that holds the fibre in place, had fallen out, bringing with it a lot of mess and debris. I carefully touched another of the buttons, and it came away in my hands. The kiln is more than 2 decades old, maybe nearly three, and the fibre in the lid has been badly cracked and deteriorating for the 6 years that I have owned it. So...., time to give it a treat!

I decided to take the lid up to the Cobcraft factory where my Cobcraft kiln was made, and to get it refurbished there. A slightly more costly process than for me to do it, but not very much more. I found taking the lid off, was nearly impossible, as the nuts and bolts that secured the lid hinges to the kiln, were badly corroded, and it were very difficult to hold onto with what tools I had. I had to smash off the head of the very last bolt with a cold chisel!

The following day, I drove up to Ashburton, and stayed with friends that have appeared as visiting angels in an earlier post of this blog. Bevin and Lorraine looked after the weary (and I was) traveler with great kindness, and insisted on taking me through to Rangiora (25 km North of Christchurch) the next day to deliver the lid to the factory, and making a day out of it.

We had a delightful time on our day out. The “factory” turned out to be a large shed on a farm, way out in the country. It was fun finding it, as we first had to rendezvous with someone at the Rangiora Shell Garage, and then follow him out to the farm. It was very cloak and dagger, and not without some humour, as I remembered something that I had forgotten as we neared the Garage, I hadn't arranged a way of identifying myself..., and I didn't really know what John, the man I was supposed to be meeting looked like, although I have spoken to John and his wife Joan many times over the years on the telephone, as I get most of my pottery materials from them! As it transpired, there was no difficulty. Evidently I look like a potter!

Main Street Rangiora.

Lorraine is very keen on what I think is called “Stamping”, and makes lovely cards and boxes out of paper and card. It so happens that there is a shop at Rangiora that is full of all the wonderful things that keen “Stampers” need! Card and paper. Paper with patterns and designs, buttons, beads, threads of all colours, glittery things.

A card in the stamping supplies shop at Rangiora.

It was lovely actually, and we had a happy visit there!

After sampling the culinary delights of Rangiora, we picked up the beautifully refurbished kiln lid from the “factory”, and headed off to Christchurch.

We visited the Arts Centre at Christchurch, which is in the old university buildings in the heart of the city.

The Christchurch Arts Center Buildings reflected in water.

An observatory in the old university buildings at the Arts Center.

It was interesting looking at pots in the various galleries that are in the arts centre, and thinking about how they were displayed.

Cantaclay Pottery Studio at the Arts Center.

Always something to learn when visiting galleries, I was interested at the use of glass shelving and the grouping by colour of pots at Cantaclay Pottery Studio.

We had a pleasant walk back to where the car was parked through the Christchurch City Gardens, Hagley Park.

I do like this rather sculptural looking hedge at the Christchurch Gardens.

Lovely large trees there, and other delights.

Looking high into a gum tree is like glimpsing another world.

Here is the gum tree again, this time most of it!

I enjoyed staying with Lorraine and Bevin. It was more like being with family.

Bevin made these lovely pots years ago and fired them in an Anagama kiln.

Bevin is a potter, and there were lots of his pots around the place, and out in the garden, and there were various kilns, wood fired and gas fired, for me to look at too!

I am getting a bit behind with work at the moment. I have been throwing more pots, and larger ones too, but progress has been slower than usual for me, and the bad weather of the last few days has held up what was to be a week of glazing.

My health wasn't great after the exhibition, and things were not helped last week by a bizarre incident, which I still don't quite understand. I was leaning over the freezer trying to find something for a meal one evening, when I was bitten on the neck by something. It was almost a similar intensity of pain as being stung by a wasp, but I couldn't see the perpetrator of the crime, or the puncture mark, but my neck swelled up with a large lump forming next to my wind pipe, and I was quite unwell that night and all the next day with lump continuing to grow and the redness spreading from jaw to collar bone with a great deal of tingling and itching, and my old head addled and aching. I am all right now of course..., but I am wondering what on earth did it. Could it have been a spider?? We did find a rather unusual looking one that we didn't recognise in the area not far from where I had been, but it was very dopey and died not long afterwards (maybe I poisoned it!!). In theory we only have to be concerned about white tailed spiders and Katipo spiders in New Zealand, and I didn't think that the one we found wasn't either of them, but, I've just been having another look at Wikipedia and, there is just a faint chance that it may have been a white tailed spider?? It did look something like the photo at the top of the wiki page about white tailed spiders, but was not very big, and would have to have been a male one, or something else.

The cats are co-existing quite well now. I have to declare that the battle to prevent the incursion by a black kitten/cat into our household has been lost. She really took a liking to Ginger, and likes our company too. All attempts to return her home have failed miserably (her real mum is out most of the time) and now we are four!

Ginger and ????, happy together on a lovely rug that my mother made.

Various names for the young lady have been thought up and used. If frequency of use was adjudged the best way of determining what her name is, is should be “Stop It!”, said loudly and repeatedly.., but the usual, “Puss, puss, puss” and “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty”, bellowed in high and excited tones, does bring her running. She is Very playful, especially after meals. Your suggestions for a name for one black, cheeky, female cat could be helpful, or at least entertaining for me in this cold and gray season!

Sorry I've been slow to post yet again!