Monday at the end of January

Fire and pots.
Take 2! Saturday saw me head out on a mission to find another little chair to go with me green little chair so as any visitor to my new workshop could sit and partake of tea in front of the fire with me. Mission accomplished, now all I need is a visitor. Any offers?

Saturday also saw the sink being plumbed in! I need a draining sort of shelf to the right there, or maybe I might make a stand and get my pugmill in there. Hmmm decisions decisions.

Today a wee bit of decorating. Not a lot but I haven't done any for a couple of weeks I don't think so I made a start on the lidded jars from last week. This is just one, a meandering line of trees around the pot.
Just for Ang - see the floor is becoming properly pottery-fied.

Ahhhhh,

Contented.

Progress on all fronts

Here we go, things are moving along in the right direction thank goodness. There is finally some semblance of order in the workshop and in the rest of my mad life. Yesterday I dared go back into the bomb site that I had left the place in on friday and begin the task of trying to find everything a new home. It was one of those tasks where you have to find the one place to start that when that's done will allow you to move something so as to clear something else and the whole thing eventually falls into place like a jigsaw. I may have mislaid a couple of pieces of said jigsaw but the picture is becoming clearer.

I'm still waiting for the sink to be plumbed in and the joiner to come back to finish off so there are bits and pieces that can't be sorted till that happens but for the time being it's workable and I have thrown the first new workshop pots! Whippee!

Thank you all for your kind comments the other day, it wasn't having a great time as you may have guessed. It hadn't half been a heck of a couple of weeks! I think having to stand up and do a talk was the final straw. This week I feel like a whole new Hannah again, fingers crossed this is the new year starting properly. Here's to the rest of it!

Advanced Pottery

My friend Linda Bloomfield who pots down in London had just published her first book. It's a cracker. If you get the chance to have a look you really should. It's available on line here. I may be a wee bit biased as it has some of my images in there, and a couple of Christine Smith's and many many of Mr Fitch's pictures. I haven't taken any photos of the book, I meant to but I've left it back down at work at the moment where it has gotten it's first clay covered finger prints on it.
It covers a huge array of topics and themes and the illustrations are many and interesting and informative and well chosen. I haven't yet read it cover to cover, sorry Linda but no doubt in time it will turn into one of those well thumbed and grubby books that live in my workshop and get searched through whilst I'm in the midst of trying to do something and needing a bit of a hint or a tip.
Well done Linda, it's fab, I look forward to the next!

Flipping 'eck Friday

This morning - big clean empty space, all neat and waiting to be filled. Sink still needs plumbing in I know. Comfy chair and log fire though is a good start. Chair not so comfy as to easily be able to fall asleep on it without ending up on the floor very quickly - cunning plan I think.

This evening old workshop all empty and swept and mopped and the walls wiped clean as best as one can of the mucky red stuff. I try to be quite tidy and clean in there but I was stunned at how much dust was left when I emptied it and at how large it feels when it is empty.

Now the big empty space is full of my stuff and I'm wondering how on earth this lot over fitted into my old space. I know it's not at all organised, I just had to get it out of the old one and in in any shape or form as the new inhabitant moves in on Monday. I don't think I'll be making pots for a while though, too much chaos. I'm very excited, it's great to be moving on but where on earth to start to make any head way on that! Huge thanks to Hazel and Alan for painting away like crazy demons on Wednesday and to Alan for helping me get my kick wheel out of the old place - now do you believe me that the door has to come off it's hinges before the wheel will come in or out?
This evening was an event in the village here for artists and craftspeople from across our region. I had been asked to speak at it and after much umming and ahhing I'd agreed but have been worried sick about it for a number of weeks now. Thankfully today I had to concentrate only on shifting stuff else I'd have been in a big old mess all day. I was to speak about my kiln building project. In the original blurb about the event it said you could have 6 images and I thought I was pushing it with the 10 pictures I'd picked of the kiln in various stages and a couple at the end of electric fired pots and wood fired pots to show the difference. It had to be a powerpoint thing which I am not very familiar with and the projector didn't really show the pictures as they were, they were a bit dark so you couldn't always tell what the kiln ones were showing and then the difference between the electric and the wood fired things didn't show up too well either. I'd taken actual pots but was too chicken to get them out. So I had my 10 pics in a line of pictures only to feel rubbish after I saw the beautiful clever presentations of the other two speakers, Amanda Simmons with her incredible work, it really is something else and the way her mind works is fascinating and Ian Cant who uses right up to the minute technology to create sculptures from clever things that I hadn't the faintest understanding of but was very impressive. They both spoke eloquently and fairly logically and it was understandable. I thought after having got it over and done with and out of the way that tonight I would sleep like a log especially after the physical exertions of the day - but no here I am at half past midnight wide awake and beating myself up for having forgotten half of the things I had wanted to tell people. I had notes on cards to go with the images but I couldn't concentrate because I felt I was just garbling and urrrring and that made me panic even more. In the end if anyone made any sense out of it I'll be amazed. I made what is a very exciting project sound like something stupid and dull and the fact that it had taken me so long (even though my notes told me to talk about the having to fit it in between actually doing all the other things that need doing to make a living and having been not brick lifting fit for a good few months etc etc) just made me sound like I'd been lazy and not really trying.
I know I'm probably being over harsh on myself but I am kicking myself for not doing better but I'm frustrated and annoyed at myself. I don't know whether it was harder knowing that I knew a lot of the people in the room or not. I really need to practise talking more though if I've any chance of making Kindrogan and the "American tour" go any better than I felt this did.
Just to top it all I had some more neck pulling treatment tonight which is great and will feel better in the morning but that and the moving stuff stuff and more stuff of today leaves me shattered and sore and annoyed with myself. Ho hum. It's the weekend at least so hopefully I'll get a lie in in the morning unless that huge beautiful moon has me awake at 5am again shining so brightly and managing to beat even our thick curtains and kid me that it's morning and daylight and time to wake up.

Goodbye sweet friend

'ere be dragons

Dragon days are good days. I got 4 of the 5 jugs slipped today and one I've left to sgraffito maybe tomorrow. They are maybe less dragon like that they were in my head and more just weird beastie like. Not necessarily a bad thing I don't think.
My "to do" list has taken on a life of it's own and is currently marching down three columns of the first A4 page and is not far shy of taking itself over onto another page. It's grown independent fat too quickly.

Friday tomorrow, all day, it's been a long old week it feels. I'm ready for the weekend!

Fresh Slip - Finally

Yippee! Fresh wet slip. Only on the one jug as the dragons were still too soft but they'll be getting it tomorrow all being well. I've a couple more of these large jugs which are to be sgraffitoed, one for an order.
I had some acupuncture yesterday for the first time, that and traction! (not as scary as it sounded) on my neck. I've finally got some physio which is so far going well I think. It feels better even just having now had someone who knows explain what it is and explaining the xrays and confirming that it will get better. Back friday for another treatment.

Voting Time Again

I'm out of cards again folks. I would have liked to have had new images before I got around to new postcards again but I don't have and I don't have good enough finished pots either to do that just now anyway and I need top get the cards ordered. So the big question is which one. I've narrowed it down to these three but if you have any other strong preferences then just shout. All thoughts welcome.
A funny old week so far. I thought I was getting into the swing of the new year ok but actually I don't think I am now. It's got me all of a fluster already.

I had the exciting news before Christmas of having gotten a stand at Earth and Fire in Nottingham, then at the new year of getting one at Potfest in the Park in Penrith, I was feeling pleased about those, plenty to be working for I thought what with the trip to America and the demo at Kindrogan and a talk in the village here next week about a grant I received a couple of years ago and the scary exhibition in Dumfries collaborating with Phil. Then today when I was already thinking I was getting a bit lost with the big list, I got a very big surprise but rather nice one in a letter or acceptance for Art in Clay at Hatfield. So for those of you who keep asking when I'll be "down south", I will be there at the beginning of August. It's a big old trek for me but very nice to get a spot there.
Hence the Hannah that has turned into a flapping flustered faffing queen. I already had an anxiety dream last week. You might enjoy this, it went like this:

Doug and me in a bright orange old proper American car, you know with the long bonnets and probably a V8 engine (are you reading this Paul, see I am learning what one sounds like and it sounded like one in my dream) and we are on the run from something or someone that I never got to see the face of but knew was there. It was like an old American film, car chases and then hiding in motel rooms, a shoot out where a light bulb got broken but thankfully that was all, then we were accused of having drunk a bottle of vodka which we hadn't but knew we had to admit to and pay for or else they'd be after us too. Then we finally tricked the chaser into getting themselves locked up, we shoved the orange car over a cliff to hide it and sped off in the posh new car that the thing we were running from had left behind.

So really if you can make any sense out oft hat then you're better than me. Brains eh? Crazy things.
If you feel you can't get enough slipware information through the blog, you can now get it in tiny easy to digest chunks while twittering, find me @hannahmcandrew
Thanks for all the great comments last night too, much appreciated folks.

Monday Slippy Slidy Day

Dragon jugs have been headed and handled today. I was chatting to Amanda the other day about how fun it is to make mad stuff but really what do we do with them afterwards. There are not that huge a number of people who will actually want them and would honestly want to buy them. You have to do it though sometimes. Let the madness out?
The pots feel really light in themselves, I may well have done my typical January thing of coming back to throwing and getting so much out of the clay that it's then too thin to support itself through the slipping process. I seem to do that regularly at the start of the new years workings.
It's been another snowy weekend here though today it has been torrential rain all day which landed on top of the compressed snow that was covering the roads - mmmmm lovely traveling conditions. No cycling to work today for me.

The kind people at H is For Home asked me to write a blog post for them, they posted it last friday, you can read it here. Thank you to Justin and Adelle.
You might have read about it on Christine's site but there is an online gallery that has an entry from both of us in a competition that is is running. Vasefinder International 2011.

I was walking at Kirroughtree forest yesterday while Paul and his pals were cycling there. There may well have been an infiltration of tiny snowmen topping signposts around the place, some hat tiny leaf hats and some had what stones I could scavenge for eyes. I think there were a dozen but I did lose count after a while. Occasionally I think I was spotted, heaven knows what the other walkers thought.

Inspiration from your experiences

So who's brave enough to try to tell me that I don't actually have tiny dragons come and sit on my doorstep for a natter and a bowl of tea?

Muffins

There they are, all toasty and crunchy topped. Hope they're tasty. Paul has just devoured one so they may not last long. The first baking of 2011. Thanks Ann.
Today, drum roll please........... the joiners came! Whipppeeeeeee. The ceiling is almost there, I hope they continue at this pace, I could be moving in next week if they do. Action stations.
I've been throwing too, some new jugs for 2011, I think they may be the customary mad January moments maybe. We'll see.
A new blogger to report, a lovely chap who many of you will already know or know of at least. His wood fired pots that he's been making recently are really rather beautiful. Matthew Blakely is spending a few months working with new ideas and new pots so he's planning to document the process in his new blog. Pop and have a look.

First day back

First day back at work after the holidays. A gentle edging back into it for me, a bit of tiding up, a couple of parcels packed, a few lists started and this tiny jug sgraffitoed. Dragons are still on my mind for 2011 I'm afraid.
Included in my list of lists is a list of pots to make to send over to America to have with me at the workshops there in April. So me and Doug Fitch will be at Cape Cod courtesy of Hollis Engley the weekend of 9th and 10th, Liberty Town in Fredericksburg courtesy of Dan Finnegan the 16th and 17th and then North Carolina at Cleveland County Arts Council on the 23rd courtesy of Ron Philbeck no less.
So if any of you are thinking of coming, what pots of mine would you like to see there? Let me know and I'll see what I can do.

There's a lovely gallery in Castle Douglas which has just opened it's new website, The McGill Duncan Gallery. In the past you had to visit the gallery to be able to buy, now you can shop to your hearts content from the comfort of your armchair and drool over their beautiful collection of work. The two great ladies there, Jill and Zoe are offering free P&P (probably only UK I would guess) on their "add to cart" items ordered before 5pm GMT an January 6th. They have a couple of my little FLP star gazing jugs left and some of my constellation tea light holders too. They've also got a few of Paul Young's lovely pots still available from the Christmas exhibition.

Cut out and keep

OK so you have to have access to a printer to be able to play this little game, and a pair of scissors (a responsible adult should be present for some / maybe all of you).

These are all plans of my workshop and my equipment. Everything is drawn to the same scale.
Help me plan it while I wait for the flipping joiner please.

Feel free to scan / photograph and email me any sensible suggestions.
Thank you!