Earthquake, and exhibition preparations.

Just a view of pots in our little gallery.

As I write this blog I feel my computer chair violently pushed from side to side. I think that it is Ginger the cat doing something savage to the chair back, he has been behaving oddly for the last hour or so. Really clingy, wanting to clamber onto my lap at any opportunity. The motion of the chair is too strong. I see the lights begin to sway, and I realize that we are having another earthquake. It goes on for about a minute.

My electric kiln is nearing the peak temperature of a crystalline glaze firing, and I am concerned about that. Inside are 3 biggish pots with a 4th one up above them on a half shelf. I wonder if it will be dislodged, and there is no way of knowing until the kiln is unloaded in nearly two days time.

The earthquake makes me uneasy. It was not serious for us, but it had a side to side motion that was powerful. I wonder about Christchurch, and if they have suffered a major one there. It takes a few minutes for the news to come through, and it sounds serious. A shallow magnitude 6.3 close to the city that has caused some buildings to fall in central Christchurch. The hospital has been damaged and has had to be evacuated, there is a report of a church collapsing, water mains bursting, power and phones going down. I think that the tower of the cathedral in Cathedral Square has fallen.

Christchurch is a 4 hour drive North of us, so we have got away lightly, but I feel so sorry for the people closer to the quake, and am sad for those who have been battling with aftershocks that resulted from the earthquake of 4th September, and who's nerves and lives are already frayed.

I was going to post an update about the work that I am doing for the 4th March exhibition that I will be having with Manu Berry in Dunedin, but I think I will finish this now as I am a bit upset thinking about what has just happened further up the country.

Below are some photos that I had intended to include with a happier post. Kind thoughts to you all, P.

Ginger having a sleep.

Pots waiting to be glazed.

Drying the next kiln load of pots on top of the kiln as it fires.

More pots to glaze.

These are old glaze catching saucers. The white coating is alumina, and it helps prevent the run off glaze from sticking to the saucer. I can reuse the saucers a few times if they are not too badly damaged by run off glaze.

Two tall pots with freshly applied glaze that are waiting to go in the kiln.
Note that they have glaze catching saucers to catch glaze that runs off in the firing.

This is how the tall pot that was on the right in the previous photo looked when it had been fired.

A teapot just out of the kiln. Note that it is still positioned on a little stand in its glaze catching saucer.

A vase fresh from the kiln, notice the run off glaze. I will have to carefully separate the pot from the stand that it is on, then grind off the run off glaze.

Nigella Stopit found a bucket to sit in that was under an old chair outside.