Pass the Salt Please!

Well, we had our open house this past Saturday and considering that we only relied on word of mouth, social media and a free listing in Swerve, we were pretty successful. I can't say for certain how many people showed up, but we had left over tea bowls and I only fired 23 of them. We did manage to get several people to consider signing up for classes, and since that was the whole point of this exercise, I would have to say it was a success. There were a few of us throwing, trimming and glazing pots. I threw a large vase in 3 sections as well as a tea pot. I was also firing the raku kiln, so that kept me pretty busy.

I have also scheduled another trip down to Medicine Hat to fire the salt and soda kilns. A fellow potter/instructor from the studio and I are going to head down near the end of August. I have a feeling that firing atmospheric kilns is somewhat akin to child birth (from what I have heard as I do not have first hand experience in that particular area) in that you quickly forget the pain of the event and are more than willing to take on the challenge again. I do remember the “pain” of the marathon glazing session, and the tears of joy/anguish when unloading, but am more than willing to give it as many goes as possible. This time we are going to head down the afternoon before after I get off work and get up bright an early to get all the deco done in a more civilized manner, which would allow us to finish loading well before 11pm (i hope). When I was down there in April, Susan and I almost killed ourselves trying to get it all done, but we did take in a bit of the farmers market that the Medalta Museum puts on every Thursday. We bought a couple of curry meat pies for dinner. I am not sure if it was the hunger and exhaustion, of if they really did taste that good. Either way, they were yummy. So was the mini saskatoon pie that I scarfed down. I am looking forward to partaking of the pies again.