Happy --- Sniff -- Birthday Laura!

Laura took this photo earlier in the week of the garden growing at full speed ahead!

 Well it's that time of year when the cabbage trees are flowering, the grass is growing fast, the foxgloves are all purple bells, the flax is in flower, and it is Laura's birthday!

Our cabbage trees are out in flower.

 My birthdays make me older, by months, or even decades as they come around, in fact I declared myself to be 101.5 last time!  Laura's birthdays make her younger, although she says doesn't always feel it!

We have had a busy time.  Last Saturday we were at a craft show in Dunedin, and did reasonably well at what was an enjoyable, friendly, and well advertised event.  One highlight for us both was the live music that played at times through the afternoon, always good to hear enthusiastic singing and Ukulele accompaniment.

 I took a few photos of Laura's craft work just before it was packed up to go into town, these were mostly Christmas tree decorations and were painted in artist's acrylic paint on plywood or customwood (which is a dense board made from compressed wood fibres).

Unfortunately we neglected to take a camera to the craft show, so can't show you the colourful stalls and nice things that were on show there, however, I have put a link on my site to a blog that one of the stallholders has recently started called Backyard Birds- art by Astrid Raats.  Astrid does lovely paintings and illustrations of the birds that visit her garden in Dunedin, and you might like to hop over and have a look at what she does.

I have been busy working away on the wheel for the first half of the week, and I have been making flowerpots, saucers for them to sit on, and planters that hang up on the wall.  It was nice to be back at the wheel after mostly glazing and firing the week before.

Unfortunately both Laura and I went down with colds on Wednesday night. Laura is not too bad now and has managed to go to work, but my nose is running so badly today that I cannot work on the wheel and  have just had to close our gallery door.  I did try working on the wheel yesterday as I had bowls to finish, but it was the sort of process that should be banned under the Geneva Convention, and I am much worse today!  Thank goodness kilns do a good job of sterilizing things!

A week ago today I opened our gallery door two or three minutes late to find an American man called Mark waiting there.  Mark had discovered my blog some time ago when he was interested in cone 6 glazes, and decided to try to find me when he visited our area.  Apparently our local librarian pointed him in the right direction.  It was a great pleasure for me to meet up with someone that reads the blog, it makes the whole thing seem more real!  Mark and I found so much to talk about that he stayed the afternoon, and might be back again to continue our chat next year.  I really hope so!

I have put a tab at the top of my blog entitled "High Fire Glazes", this is the first of several more tabs that I will add that will take you to permanent pages of information.  I hope to put glaze recipes up there of glazes I find of personal use, and intend to add a Gallery of our work --some for sale--- and collect together some of the information that I have gathered about kilns and firing.  The pages will be added to progressively over time, so it will be worth checking back there occasionally to see what is new.