Gardening Starts!

 The last of my stored tomatoes from 2017. Went through them today and ditched the ones that had gone bad. Enough for one big pot of soup and for the pizza I am making tonight.

 The new babies under the grow lights. I planted these guys last Saturday. Some are coming up already.

 Those Geranium seeds came up within 48 hours of being planted. Light and bottom heat do the trick. There is an old heating pad underneath them.

The first baby Artichoke! I usually plant 4 or 5 plants and get 3-5 fruits per plant. A couple of meals. It is too cold here for them to over-winter so the annual types do for me. Our cool climate is perfect for them until the middle of September.

Pots from Cone 6 Electric Firing

     This glaze turned out really nice. June Perry Purple.

     Some misc. bowls I made for my granddaughters.

    Fun experiment with 3 glazes. Came out okay, a place to start.

     Some of the spoons.

    There are 30 spoons for my coffee roaster gig.

Orange Street covered with Dirty Snow. I like it.

Something Different

     I had an order from my coffee roaster guy for scoop/spoons. I'd never made them before but the process seemed straightforward. Cut out a newspaper pattern, tried it out, looked okay, made a cardboard template from an old cereal box and away we went! Made 36 of them. Found out that the pestle part of my stone mortar/pestle set worked perfectly to make the scoop part. The white stuff is cornstarch that I use so the pestle won't stick. It burns off in the firing. Right now these guys are all bisqued, glazed  and waiting in the kiln for me to fire them up.

     Three little pigs that I made for my 3 little granddaughters that live near us. Grandpa carved the wooden plugs from a piece of firewood. They each got a handful of 'twonies' in their banks.

   Tea time! Made this set for the same granddaughters last year for Christmas. Had a heck of a time getting the handles right on the little cups. They look way larger in the photo. They were just right for a 4 and 5 year old.

   It is fun to try something completely new. Most of my pottery making is serious work. Nice to go off and play around.

Winter Garden Pests

   For the fourth year in a row we are having some unwelcome visits from some very bad neighbors! When I went out on the deck to yell at the Ms she came right up with her ears back. I knew I was safe but it makes going in the yard in the dark a bit unnerving! My studio is a distance from the house and there are lots of large willows bent down with snow along it. I scan the area with my headlamp and hope she isn't around.

    Their favorite foods are caragana, saskatoons, sour cherries and raspberries. There are tons of their natural food, willow, but they like our plants better. They'd also eat the apple and pear bushes except they got wrapped with burlap which doesn't appeal to them.

   These guys are far more dangerous than bears. And they are huge!!

Back to Blogging!!

 My display at the only big sale Christmas 2017

Steam train ride in July at Bennet, B.C. This was an incredible trip on the White Pass And Yukon route railway. They had a Yukoner's day special. We rode from Carcross to Bennet and back. Everyone brought their own picnic lunch and they served coffee and cake at the Park HQ. It was a beautiful day and the scenery was fantastic!!

   I have finally resolved some problems that I had with Blogger so I'll be trying to update this blog and get back into writing again.

Current Events

 Some of the mushrooms we collected this Summer. Dried and pickled lots. Ate them many times! So good. Plus it is really fun to find them....like a treasure hunt.

 This is what happens when a Chun glaze is downwind of lots of copper glazes in a kiln that won't stop reducing. There was a huge green flame coming out of the chimney. From last year's horrible firings. Fixed the problem by cutting out bigger primary air holes in the new door. Refired this guy and wowie! The photo does not due justice to it.

 Another pot that got refired. Love it.

 The copper glaze that sells, sells and sells. It goes blue, green, purple, turquoise and every shade in between. Sometimes a pot will be sea green on one side and purple or turquoise on the other.

 My table before the big sale in Whitehorse. People buy LOTS of handmade objects in the North. Any of my customers that are reading this, THANK YOU! I went home without most of this stuff. Can't see my scarves in this photo. Rack was close to empty too.

If you ever wondered what we do with all those berries we pick......this is how some of them end up. High bush Cranberries and Mossberries. 12 gallons of very fine wine!

Mr. Grizz

 Saw this guy standing on the road on my way to school on Tuesday. With the snow going fast the bears come out. I stopped and watched him digging up roots and eating them.

Last Week

 Did a craft fair on the weekend. Wasn't bad as far as sales. Saw lots of people I hadn't seen in years. Fun social event, some networking and a day out.

 Playing around with low fire clay and glazes. Lots of colour!! The customers like it more than I do.

 More of my student Violet's tiles using traditional designs. These are for sale $25 each mounted in a hangable beautiful alderwood frame.

 Helped two kids make these volcano bases today. I'll fire them then they can turn them into their science fair projects.

 This is why I am not getting any 'work' done. Spending all day out there planting/transplanting. Have to get up a couple times to put wood in the fire during the night but no biggie. Worth all the lost sleep. I'll have a couple of thousand plants in here before long.

First flowers on the hanging basket tomatoes. Usually about 6 weeks from the first flowers to the first red fruit. With all the sun we get you can see the plants growing from one day to the next.

Urns

Here are two of the urns I am making.

Working Again

No photos this time. New laptop. I took a winter trip to the lower 48 to visit my new grandson and my daughter and granddaughter who came from Denmark. Not the 'normal' for me! Couldn't work in my shop and I finally have a reliable sub for pottery classes. Looks like a good way to spend a couple of otherwise boring months.
Making pots like a mad person.Will post some photos as soon as I figure everything out here. Getting ready for a wood firing as soon as the weather breaks a bit. Minus 20 C is NOT fun for firing!!
Greenhouse started too. Getting up at 3 am, then 6 am to fill the fire. Still though, -25 outside and +15 inside during the night. You can see the plants growing each day. Couple of feet of snow here and like the tropics inside!
More later......

Snow Kiln

Snow, snow and more snow. In fact it is still snowing as I write. The past few days I have been spending about an hour each day pulling snow off roofs. Then shoveling it away. Another few inches and it will be waist deep on me. This is about twice what we usually get in a Winter. This is supposed to be the rain-shadow of the Coast Range. Now my poor kiln is also covered in the stuff. Only good part is that the water content is pretty low. Plus the fact that it would be -46 C like it is a bit to the North of us and beyond this storm track.
I was asked about the measurements of this kiln. Inside the chamber is 64 inches by 28 wide and 24 ish high. 9 courses high on the inside. Because it is made of used (very used) hardbrick there is mortar between the courses and that adds to the height. It is 9 inches thick. The Bourry Box has hobs. On top I use kiln shelves, a layer of soft brick then several layers of fiber blanket. The plans for this kiln were in Laid Back Wood-firing by Steve Harrison. I would recommend both the book and the kiln to anyone wanting to build a simple yet easy to fire kiln.Steve is very accessible and helpful. I have seen pots he fired for 16 hours in one of these kilns that are ringers for 4 day anagama fired work. Tons of ash and great flashing. I fire both 'naked' and glazed work and it works well for both.
It was so cold after my last firing that I neglected the usual clean up, thought it could wait until the Spring. As my studio is closed up until March it won't be until at least May before we fire again.
In the planning process for building two new kilns. One will be a gas conversion of an ancient Duncan electric and the other a 14.5 cu. ft.Flat Top. One will be updraft and the other crossdraft fired with propane. Too many days with the fire hazard up in the high and extreme range for wood firing so this will give me some options. Also will be able to do more frequent testing.
Meanwhile it is back to tend the wood stove and watch the snow come down.

-40 Today, Time for Summer Memories

 A bit fuzzy, but the cranberries were huge this year. Best crop I have seen in over 40 years of picking them.

 More than 40 lbs. in this photo. Altogether we picked over 130 lbs. of different kinds of berries. All now frozen, canned or dried.these are Lingonberries, also know as low bush Cranberries, our favorite.

 On the Takhini River, east of Whitehorse and a little South, near Kusawa Lake. Camped, fished and picked berries. Quiet and beautiful.

 Some of my 'Stargazer" Oriental lilies. The blooms are huge, fragrant and just plain beautiful!

 We have gone soft in our old age. Pretty much had it with sleeping in a tent on the ground. Got our "Hawk" 4 Wheel Camper in June. Spent lots of time in it. Very minimal but all that we need.Much higher level of comfort than we're used to. We lived in it for over three weeks in the Fall on our trip to Alberta and B.C. Loved every minute! You do need to be organized in such a small place, but really, a furnace? Wonderful!!

Last but best. New change rooms and deck at Liard Hot Springs. Went down there a couple of times for multiple days. Never gets old!!!!

Christmas Sales

 Cleaning shelves, got to be the worst job in pottery. This time it was angle grinder all the way.

 Kiln was in super-reduce mode, not good! Lots of refires in the back due to not enough air in the front. Did two back to back firings in the most horrible weather.

 And this is why. When I 'fixed' the top I made the air holes smaller than they were before. They were much bigger because the metal was warped and had opened up really big.....maybe that was why I got to temp hours faster than ever before??? Duh, and the fix was a f.....up.Off to my welder friend to open them up. Wish I still had all the wood I wasted. Oh well, live and learn!

 Don't have very much of this stuff left. I had left some home for the following sales and it's all gone too. Had lots of orders plus the sales. Really happy about it all. This was the first, over 4,000 people came. Considering the entire Yukon population is 33,000 I'd say that was good attendance!

Scarves, pots and dog fur hats. Ready for a rest. My next project is either buying or building a small propane fired kiln. I have 150 soft brick. Getting the bricks is the hard part. Sure I could make something that would work. Anyhow, now is the time to think and plan, building would be in the Spring. Tonight is supposed to get to -25 and colder the next few days. Last day of school is the 20 th.Time for a holiday!!