The First Days of Singledom

Joe says hello to all of you. He is allowed one call out each evening, so we had a little time to talk last night. Their digs are nice, and the food is good, but it is funny to have a conversation with someone who cannot tell you anything about what he did and thought about all day!

After I finished working yesterday, followed by glazing for an hour followed by entertaining a very bored Charley the Poodle, I went with friends to hear music at the River Valley Trading Company in nearby Blanchardville. None of us had ever been there before, and we got totally turned around in the dark on winding country roads during what should have been a short trip. When we finally arrived, though, we had fun fun fun listening to our friends and fellow artists Rick and Carol playing guitar and bass. It's good to get out!

--c

Duty Calls

Well, apparently Joe didn't act drooly or bigoted enough at jury selection. He is now on his way to central Wisconsin for up to four weeks without tv, internet, cell phone, or his darling wife and oversized poodle. Fortunately he has lots of experience living in a hotel room, so that shouldn't be such a change (although we don't have a bailiff here at the Dairyland listening in to our phone calls and watching us do our laundry and eat and exercise.)

Aside from missing him (and those of you who work closely every day in a studio or on a building project with your significant other can imagine how much together-time we have!) all the things I'll have to do myself are slowly hitting me. I can't lift the lid of the test kiln on or off alone, I can't get the sliding barn door closed, I can't bring myself lunch at work when I forget it at home, I can't push my own car out of the driveway when I get stuck in a snowbank...Thank goodness for friends! (Keep your cell phones on, y'all!)

C

quick update

Thanks for the great advice everyone. For whatever reason the jury selection was pushed back to Wednesday - Thursday. I'm sure though with all the yipping, drooling, and mumbling "hang um" I'll be doing under my breath that there is no way I'll get selected.
I'll let you know.
Joe

Wish me good luck

I have to go in tommorow for jury selection. The selection is supposed to last two days. Here's the kicker: They instruct to to show up to the last day of jury selection with your bags packed for a four week trial. If you are selected to be on the jury you are sequestered for four weeks, they house and feed you and you are not allowed to have contact with the public. When I first heard about this I thought it might be quite an interesting experience. However now that the time has arrived I've come to realize how little I can afford to take four weeks off. We are hoping to fire our kiln in March/April and have our gallery completed by May. We would certainly like to have a little more time to make pots this time as well. Time to make some more time consuming pieces, and also time to fill all three chambers.
So wish me luck that I'm not chosen for the jury.
I'll end with a couple of pictures of the kitchen floor I've been working on. We pulled up the linoleum and the hard wood floor is in pretty decent shape underneath. I did have to cut out a small section near the bathroom as it was rotten. Also there will have to be some patching from where a earlier remodel to place. All in all though a positive discovery. Lots of nail pulling though.....
Joe

Etsy!

Well we finally got around to putting some pots on Etsy. I guess all there is to do now is sit back and let the cash roll on in. Excellent... (that may not have translated so well over cyberspace, but that was a spot on imitation of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons). No, in reality I have some pots that didn't get sold at our sale and have not made there way into any galleries, and Christy has been making some pots to fill space in our test kiln as she has been running quite a few different glaze tests. We thought we would put them on Etsy in hopes that someone may take interest in them. Above you can see our very professional photo booth. If you look closely at a couple of the pictures you can see my reflection in the pot.... not sure how to avoid that one.
Stay tuned we'll be posting more pots over the next week.
Joe

House wiring

My Father was here for the week and we spent our time rewiring the house. At first we had just planned on re hooking up the power to the existing wiring. After a couple of days spent trying to figure out where all the wires came from and went, and putting power to them we decided to tear all the old wire out of the house. The old wiring was pretty old, and sometimes a little scary. Here are a couple of highlights:




We were sure this one was just some old wiring that somebody had not bothered to pull out before.... But nope it powered right on up when we put power to the masterbed room. No electrical box, not even any staples to hold the wires in place. This one was probably the scariest of the electrical work.



Unfortunately, this porcelain electrical box didn't have a matching porcelain cover. If it did I would defiantly be hitting ebay with it. I'm sure someone must be collecting these antiques.


Another porcelain electrical box with matching porcelain light socket.


This one was one of my favorites. The larger wire powers the master bedroom, the smaller fourteen gauge wire powers the addition that was added later. Two rooms lights and outlets. Pretty classic.

None of these wires had a ground wire in them either. We now have all new outlets with power to them and lights though out the house, with the exception of the gallery and spare bedroom. There is some remodeling that needs to be done to the gallery, I'll wire up the lights then. Progress continues.

Joe

Fun with White Slip

...let's just hope it doesn't flake off during the next firing!

The temperature is supposed to be above zero tomorrow, so I'll probably be posting photos of Joe in Speedos and myself in a bikini enjoying the balmy weather. Stay tuned!

--c

A Snowy Day for Molds

We are getting another serious snowstorm today. I am all for more snow, as I like both cross-country skiing and extra cushioning when I wipe out on the ice. You practically needed crampons to get across the yard this past week! I made some Cardew-style bisque molds today while Joe worked on the house and Charley slept. (On another note, Charley may have broken his own record for sleep this past weekend. We went out on Saturday night, and subsequently slept in on Sunday-- aside from rising a few times to check to see if anyone had put bacon or pork chops in his dish, (no dice there) Charley slept from approximately 5 pm on Saturday until 2 pm on Sunday. You would have thought he was the one who guzzled an excessive amount of wine at Cafe Four!)

This is my first foray into bisque molds--I have been using plaster and wood molds, but I thought I would be a Pioneer Potter on this snowy day. I learned (the long, hard, asymmetrical way, of course) that taking lots of time with molds pays off in the long run, so I'll work slowly on finishing them tomorrow.

--C

the Kitchen

The kitchen ceiling is finished. I didn't get a picture of it all yesterday after taping and mudding, but here is a picture of it after we screwed in all the drywall sheets. They are 12' long sheets and man are they heavy. Luckily our friends Aaron and Krista came over to help us lift them into place. Even with four of us it was still a workout holding them up and screwing them in place.



This mildly disorientating picture is what our ceiling looked like before. Acoustical tile over an old plaster ceiling (the metal lath is what the plaster was attached to).


I was hoping to attach the new dry wall over the old plaster ceiling, but as you can see in the photo, there is another wall spaced hole in the plaster. The plaster was sagging pretty bad there, so I had to tear it all down. Which ended up making it easier to wire up the new lights, so that was nice. Nasty job though. I would have to rank it right up there with angle grinding ash and salt build up off the arches of old kilns as one of the nastiest jobs out there.
Joe

CSI, Mineral Point

Our dear old car was the victim of a hit-and-run accident last night.

(pretty sweet chains, huh)

This latest paint-scraping, bumper denting blow continues a long line of minor run-ins this car has had with things, including, but not limited to: a flying shopping cart in a near-tornado, a tiny deer, and a driveway with deceptively narrow walls on both sides.

Unfortunately for the driver of the car that banged into us, the fact that it was 11 at night did not mean that he got away unnoticed. The Dairyland parking lot is the Midwest equivalent of an Italian courtyard--a little square surrounded by lots of very, very, watchful people. Our next-door neighbor, a farmer in town on business, conferred with us this morning on the make, model, color (that one was pretty easy, as you can see from the photo), and window-tintedness of the offending car, and reported said facts to Tom, the Dairyland owner and manager. Tom somehow knew that only two cars in town met the description. He did some reconnaisance, and within several hours reported that one of them had significant damage to the front end, coupled with lots of maroon paint.

Our neighbor and Tom are both very upset on our behalf, and both seem to think contacting the police and pressing a hit-and-run charge is fully appropriate and necessary but we would be okay with an apology. Or an enormous wad of cash to compensate us for the trauma of having a hole in the bumper.

Moral of the story: Don't Mess With The Dairyland, People!

Christy

Ice-Land

We're back from our Christmas trip to the Northwest. Guess who missed us quite a bit...


We woke up this morning to a thick, shiny coat of ice over everything. Everyone is shuffling around with their arms out in the air like kids pretending to be airplanes. The roads were cleared and salted enough for us to make it to the house, though. Joe continued to work on the ceiling of the kitchen, and I worked in the studio, mixing up more test glazes. I finally got around to putting a larger batch of our local red clay out to dry, too. As always, Winks was a big help.


I was planning to go back to the studio after dinner, but I'm not sure I'll be able to get out of the parking lot!

Christy