Make Craft Count

Craft Matters is a Crafts Council initiative to highlight the importance of crafts in people's lives. It believes that craft matters and it wants to show that it matters to thousands of people across the UK. The Heritage Crafts Association supports this initiative in the field of heritage crafts.In the next few months, the Crafts Council will be posting the names of all its signatories on its website so that it can demonstrate the real support for craft. It wants to launch the new webpage with over 1,000 signatures, so please ask your friends and colleagues to show that craft matters to them too.To sign up to the statement 'I'm signing up to Make Craft Count because Craft Matters to me', visit www.craftscouncil.org.uk/craftmatters.

Wet weekend

A very wet weekend and I just look at the forecast for tomorrow and guess what, it's going to rain! Excellent, just what we need right now. It does however call for some comfort eating, toasted muffins with blackcurrant jam, Ginger cake and hot chocolate eaten from a new Margaret Brampton plate which Christine gave me for my birthday, a soda fired plate from the Coromandel penninsula of New Zealand, a Ron Philbeck washing line plate, a Doug Fitch mug and a H Mc mug and surrounded by a Paul Young candlestick and some James Hake tealight holders on a Mr J oolala tile. I think that's everyone present name checked.

We went for a squelchy walk in the rain on sunday, one of our regular walks was impossible, the path should be just behind that big tree on the right of the fence line there. We haven't been nearly as badly affected as the Cumbrian region has but there is some quite incredible flooding in places. New Galloway where my cubs meet was a little island on friday and you couldn't get in or out of the village. The force of the elements can be frightening.

Some of the McGill Duncan gallery pots are finished now with the rest of them in the kiln for a bisque as we speak. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze them all and all the pots for the upcoming CatStrand show all in for a glaze firing tomorrow. I always over estimate what the kiln can take.

I've been sieving glaze today and found myself singing this little ditty as I was working:

I hate sieving glaze,

Oh I hate sieving glaze,

Eee aye endio,

I hate sieving glaze.

Amanda thinks I've lost the plot for that, she may well be right.

A bit of this a bit of that

A bit of a Spanish inspired bird-dragon thing.

A bit Gaudi-esque.

Oh and some little birds. We are still here, there is a lot of water around but we are on a bit of a hill so so far so good. I have never seen as much water around as there is at the moment though. Paul is back too. I just spent the morning with 80 hyper children and an enormous amount of lego and electric lego at that. This explains the crazy headache and exhaustion that has just had me in bed for a few hours. Keep warm and dry all.

Big Cat

As it says on the label it is indeed at big cat!

A few more Barcelona pictures for you, and look at that sunshine. Ho Hum it certainly isn't like that here today. Gale force winds and flooding galore across Dumfries and Galloway. It was horrid driving back from Dumfries tonight and poor Paul has been sent north this evening to Peterhead which is about a five hour drive in good conditions.

The Ceramics Museum is housed in this building in Barcelona, up glorious wide winding staircases with polished handrails, the sort it would be wonderful to glide down in an elegant ballgown to meet your handsome prince at the bottom and dance out of the doors and under the stars. Old romantic - me - nah!

Slip sliding away.

I finally got around to slipping the big candlesticks today. It's taken me a while to decide what to put on them, I should also have taken the time to work out how to hold them, pour them, shake them, put them safely down before I started. A trial run would have been useful.

Three plates with fat rims. That band just around the bird marks the start of the rim, it's hard to tell in the pictures.

Just black on white or vice versa, no colours on these. I like them.
Had a chat to Mr. Fitch this afternoon, we put the world to rights, discussed the finer points of on line scrabble and generally helped me to calm down and not explode today, maybe tomorrow (though hopefully not as I'm going to visit someone tomorrow and it wouldn't be good to flip while I'm there) I seem to have lost all patience since I turned 32. Is that it? Is it all down hill from now on? I usually have a slow burning fuse but heaven help you if I get to the end, at the moment I seem to be getting wound up at the drop of a hat.

So away over to Glentrool tomorrow to the city of midges during the summer months, hopefully they have all gone on holiday to warmer climates now. Going to try to give Andy a hand with his kiln building and hopefully learn some handy tricks while I am there.

Peek-a-boo

What have we here?

Oh, an owl!

On my finger! A felt hoolet, fancy that. Sweet wee thing don't you think? Beautifully made and the shop I found it in well I could have had her pack up the whole lot and send it back to me. It was in the rough guide book we had for Barcelona, and being the only crafty thing mention in the city centre I thought we'd seek it out. Down a tiny narrow back street we found "Almacen Marabi". A shop full of beautiful felt creatures, some animals, some people, felt books with felt finger puppets tucked inside sleeves in the book, mobiles, some sculptures were huge, one rhino was maybe four foot long. It was a treat and I think if you go to Barcelona you must seek her out, Mariela is her name I believe, Argentinian originally but now living there in Barcelona.

A very busy day today, Trevor Leat came this afternoon to work on his pot. He's a basket maker in his real life and every year makes the huge and beautiful wickerman for the wickerman festival which is held just down the road here which is where I think the original film was filmed. Speaking of which I heard that Edward Woodward of wickerman fame died today. I have a great joke about his name but it looses something in the typing, ask me when I next speak to you.

Also Amanda Simmons came by this morning, I had a couple of new pots for her to work on, it's always great seeing what Amanda will do. The problem is though that she is getting just too good at it really, I'm going to have to watch her!

I did something dim last night, packed the kiln and set it for a very slow bisque, ha! I hadn't planned on it being as slow as it was. I went in this morning to see it was at 89 degrees, of course I panicked thinking it was broken, it should have been finished and at about 600 cooling down by then. However when I checked the program it said 40 degrees an hour to 80 and the 1 degree an hour up to700. Now that would be slow!

Brighton Made09 Fair Offer. . .

Next weekend is a show in Brighton called Made09, I'm not doing it but my good friend Annabel Faraday should be but she has hurt her back and can't go. So she is offering, with the organisers agreement, her stand to another ceramicist. Here is what she says:

"The organisers would be happy to take another ceramicist in my place. I'm offering the stand at half the price I paid (ie £200 instead of £400), with the added bonus that they wouldn't have to go through the selection process. The fair is very well publicised and attended and will be held on Fri/Sat/Sun 20/21/22 Nov (Fri 11-7.30, Sat, 10 - 6, Sun 10 - 5), with a private view on the 19th from 6.00 - 8.30pm. The stand I am allocated is in a prime spot - I can't bear not to be doing it!!!! The (prestigious) venue is The Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome, Church Street, BN 1 1UE.
The website for this event is www.made09.co.uk"

So can you get there? Do you have the stock? Would you like to have this fantastic opportunity? If you want to take Annabel up on the offer you can contact her through the details on the "order a pot" page of her website. I hope someone can make the most of this.