New Glaze Firing Thursday Night -- and the Grand Opening this morning, Saturday!

 This past week has been a slow one.  Sometimes I just don't seem to have the energy to put in a good work-week, and this was one of the worst.  And it doesn't help that I had to paint an entire bisqued kilnload, either, because I have a gallery order in there, and it's due very soon.  It's funny; I really like building pieces most of the time, painting much less because painting is so nitpicky.  But this past week, I didn't feel like doing either.  I think I know why:  I really don't like custom work, and I have one custom piece in this kiln -- and I'm still supposed to be making several pieces for a custom request that I haven't even finished building yet.  Any time there's any sort of pressure on me to perform, my perfectionism, hence my procrastination, kicks in, I lock up, and can't complete anything.  It also usually accompanies or contributes to my depression, too -- so I really, really have to stop doing custom work!

I'll see how the kiln came out this, morning.  Unfortunately, I've had to learn over and over the hard truth that if I open the glaze kiln too soon, I absolutely will have some damaged pieces caused by temperature shock.  It's not as big a problem with the bisqued pieces, but still, I need to exercise more self-control!

Okay, I just emptied the kiln, and amazingly, no failures this time.  Yay for my waiting for the kiln to cool!!  It was 71F inside it this morning when I finally, finally got to open it.  I've been doing this for over 30 years, and yet   every     single   time   I have a terrible time waiting.  I'm like one of those little four-year-old kids in the lab experiments where they're left alone in a room with a marshmallow, after having been told they can get two if they can wait 5 minutes before eating it, and most can't wait!

The "realistic dog" on the left was an experiment.  I'm not happy with it (it's actually not as awful as it looks in the photo), but one needs to try new things from time to time.  I love the little guy on the right, though.  He was inspired by a doodle made by my granddaughter.

This bird couple and their cat was something where I played with a simple shape, this time the cone.  Both birds are mostly cones I threw and assembled into what you see.  The tiny cat was just something I pinched together one day.  These two birds actually have names:  The one on the left is Simon Slick, and the one on the right is Samantha Louann.  Sorry, the cat doesn't have a name -- yet.  (The names are in memory of two miniature Mediterranean donkeys we used to have long ago.  We called them Slick and Samantha for short.)

I absolutely love this bird!  Again, it was from a doodle done by my daughter.  It and the little green guy are going to have quite high prices on them because someone interested is going to have to pay more just to get me to give them up.  I often do that with some of my favorite pieces.  If you'll remember in my pricing post, the perceived value of a piece (how much I love it) definitely goes into my pricing of said piece.  And I have lost a few to good homes because of this.