Happy New Year!

Detail of a stoneware bowl that I fired last week.

It is possible that summer was here, the flowers in the garden thought so, and the grass grew, and so did the trees, but we hardly saw the sun. In desperation, after several days of rain, I looked at a 10 day weather forecast for this area, only to find that the met service only predicted one sunny day a head of us. It is inevitable that a sense of time and season passing blurs and flexes when there is no obvious rising and falling of the sun, and every glance into the heavens is rewarded by a view of lactating udder shaped clouds;

however I seem to remember this all started in December - early December - at the time that it was reported in the media that rivers in our area were so low for that time of  year that farmers were going to have to take steps to conserve water. 

Some could say that the rain was just what we needed, and nature has been generous! Now farmers are anxious about how to cut silage and hay for winter feed.

I got soaked seconds after taking this photo!

It hasn't just rained a lot, but it has also been windy. We have had some dramatic, and vaguely apocalyptic, gales ripping through the country. Mostly these have been from the South, tumbling and spiraling in from above wastes of frigid water. Antarctica exhaling. One day last week we were promised rain and a maximum daytime temperature of 13 degrees Celsius and a dusting of snow to Southland high country. This is not far removed from normal winter temperatures.

Like Noah and Mrs Noah, our little home is a shelter for us, and our lives continue within its walls. We have the company of animals, ship's cat Nigella Stopit, the various mice, lizards, and small rats that she catches outside and releases inside...., and we have a new visitor, one that I am currently calling Winnie.

Winnie is addicted to sunflower seeds, and hangs out on and around our back door step waiting for her next fix. Nigella watches her through the cat flap.

We call the cat flap “cat TV”, as Nigella seems to waste a lot of time staring at the images she sees on its blurry screen.

Why “Winnie”? Think of A. A. Milne and Winnie the Pooh. Think, copious sunflower seeds. Short and simple avian digestive tract. Rapid bowl transit time. Our back door step. A slight change of spelling to Pooh, and there you have it!!

I do enjoy having Winnie around the place. There is something rather nice about seeing a hen scratching up the ground under a tree or a shrub. They are pretty when the sun peeps out, and have a simplicity that is cheering and good for the soul!

Nigella Stopit does not approve of Winnie, but probably enjoys herding her from time to time.

"Attacking" (decorating) a leather hard earthenware pot with a wooden tool!

I have been attempting to complete orders for people. Things built up last year when I was unable to work at pottery, and some people that ordered, have added to their original order.

Um..., that's right, it is a rabbit!

It always seems to take me quite a while to get used to a new clay when I work at the potter's wheel. Porcelain, stoneware, and earthenware clays have a unique personality and require quite an adjustment of touch, and it seems inevitable that some orders are for stoneware, others are for earthenware, and others are for porcelain. Recently I had a great deal of difficulty adjusting to earthenware and took about a week to complete something that should have taken less than a day to do. I persevered and got the job done in the end, but it was very frustrating having medium sized pots collapse as I tried to throw them and to see precious time go by with little to show for it. It was all down to basic technical things..., a little too much pressure here, maybe not enough wetting of the fingers there, but such basic things can be the difference between a pot that grows enthusiastically like a weed on the wheel, or one that twists and falls into a sad heap. Each collapse was another 3.5 kilograms of clay to be recycled, and I am fairly limited physically as to how much clay I can process in a day.

Earthenware pots drying on the kilns. Some have white slip over them.

I am achieving a lot more than I was, but still have to walk a fairly fine line between getting pots made, and overdoing it. I am also doing my best to build up some fitness, and do a daily walk. I and now manage 3 kilometres at a fairly brisk pace, which is a great improvement on how things were a few months back, and I am trying to increase the time and distance.

We have had some enjoyable visitors to our studio and gallery. Recently someone from the UK, who had discovered this blog whilst researching something else, got in touch, and arranged for his son and his son's partner who live in NZ, to visit us to chose a Christmas present. This was great fun for all, as the couple had first to solve a most ingenious coded message in order to locate where their Christmas present might be. There was a brief mix up with a small winery, but they found us eventually, and it was delightful for us to meet them, and wonderful that they found something here that they liked.

Peter, the seal making potter, was here off and on for a couple of months or so working in my studio, and also firing his little gas powered raku kiln under some shelter out the back. He has now headed South to a place near the sea. It was really great having him here, and we certainly will keep in touch.

Today I have to get my hands back into porcelain, I have a great many small bowls and mugs to make, so I have to at least make a start at them.

A small porcelain bowl with runny glaze.

11 inch (380mm) Stoneware bowl.

Also I need to be glazing some large stoneware bowls, and to do some under glaze tests on earthenware.


Under glaze...., I think exciting things are about to happen with that..... watch this space!

Happy New Year!