Pottering around

For those of you who may not know me as well as you should  ;)
sometimes when I have the urge I sit down with a lump of clay and create stuff.

A lidded box from 2012

I am a very straight line creative and love creating geometric shapes and do a lot of slab work with the occasional thrown piece.

I am a bit out of practice on the wheel but am aiming to get it back.

So where is this leading you may ask.....

Boxing in place

First row of concrete

Completed base for new studio

What has happened is that I have been allowed (thanks B&R) to put up a shed so that I can have a space to potter around. It will hold the kiln and the wheel and gives me an area for working in. 

It is interesting how the creative urge takes hold from time to time and now that I am able to commit to a set amount of time to create, allow to dry quietly, construct, fire, glaze and complete some works then it will happen more often.

I already have two commissions to start this exercise, a set of herb markers and a bird bath. For the bird bath I am considering using a rhubarb leaf as the base design as per the pics below which are NOT my work but are creative ideas for me to follow....

So there you have the current plan for excitements in my life.

But after completing the concreting on Saturday morning, we all headed off to Ray's Rest, Kaiaua again for a bit of a rest.

Well taken but there were about 30 vehicles there....

Roger and I headed out on Sunday, when the tide was high enough, in their kayak to try a bit of fishing. Roger got upset with my paddling and should have whacked me upside the head with his paddle but was very polite about it!

Heading out

I would have brought back some fish if there had been any nice enough to get on the end of our lines, but apart from 5 or 6 touches, there was very little action out there.

Still a nice relaxing hour or so (will post the picture of the slightly burnt leg with its pattern) and when we turned to go home, the wind had risen a little and it was face full of waves on the way back as my weight in the front lowered the bow enough for some serious water splashing. 

Still despite getting very wet, a great time was had.

On Monday, the weather was pretty iffy so we packed up. During the wash-down of the kayak, using my new front-of-bus hose, I realised that the temperature of the water was rising. I was laughing fit to kill as I realised that we had hooked into the wrong side of the hot water cylinder and I was washing down with hot water!

One expects that the red pipe coming form the hot water system would be the hot water outlet but no.....

So that's a little exercise to swop that one around!

Roger was quite surprised when I told him to put his hand out and I sprayed him with hot water...we both were laughing for quite a while.

Note to self.... check everything and assume nothing!

So now I am in countdown mode, as of today I have 7 days of work to go!