But yesterday started with the usual plan… kicking off my day the best way possible! And there was plenty of sunrise beauty to share! Great color, great reflections… and even a sliver of the moon as I started off in the morning darkness.

After the overnight rains… and the forecast for more clouds & rain this morning, I had a great plan. I was going to get up early, stay inside… focus… clean… organize… prep for next weekend’s art fair… do a LOT of projects inside… to get a bunch of stuff done today!!! And then THIS happened…

Whoops… but look… can you blame me???

Another beautiful asiatic lily that just started blooming in my garden… with amazingly saturated red colors!

And why stop with a clean floor?…
My Summer Campers also volunteered to wash their ware boards both front & back before putting them away for the day.

Now if only we could get some of the adult pottery students to follow the kid’s lead… cleaning floors, cleaning wareboards… dare to dream, right???

Summer Camp is the best… especially when you have a great group of kids for the week! And quick enough they’ve all realized that I’m not kidding with Gary’s Summer Camp Rule #3… “Whatever mess you make, you WILL be cleaning up!” And they’ve been doing a great job with keeping the room clean at the end of the day… and smiling… and laughing… and helping each other… even though we’ve already had two spilled water buckets this week!

Everyone grab a sponge!!!

This week my Summer Campers have been throwing on the wheels… learning from scratch in three days!!! But today we switched to handbuilding. So we pulled out some terra cotta, some fun texture tools and they set-off to making their mugs. A lot of little hands doing a lot of scoring & slipping. Only a couple hours and they all created some great handmade mugs!!!

And yes… they pulled their own slabs!!!
No rolling pins. No slab roller. Just the good old fashioned way… and they crushed it.

Just a quick reminder… tomorrow night at Lillstreet Art Center is EMPTY BOWLS… our first one since the pandemic!!! A wonderful event to help a great “food pantry” cause. Basically, the potters at Lillstreet have been donating a bunch of handmade bowls… literally hundreds!!!… and they will all be available tomorrow night for a small donation to “Common Pantry.” A small donation and you get a great bowl… and to sweeten the deal?… the bowls will be filled with artisanal ice cream from JENI’S SPLENDID ICE CREAMS!!!

So here’s a quick peek at just a few of the bowls I’ve donated to the party… stamped, spiraled, glazed… even including everyone’s favorite “bubble glazed” bowl!!! Swing by for some bowls & ice cream!!!

My globe thistle plant is currently in full bloom… loving how the tiny purple petals create a perfect sphere that attract bees & butterflies!

So with soda-firing, you frequently have some “loss” of pots that get some schmutz from the ceiling, flaked kiln wash in some pots, and other “issues” from the volatile atmospheric firing process. But I’ve never seen THIS!!!… the underside of a kiln washed shelf was LITERALLY peeling off from the shelf??? And landing right on the edge of that blue piece. Luckily… that was the only “issue” I found as I was unloading… so I’ll still count this as a WIN!!!

Okay, so I’ve been a little busy with unloading my soda kiln, scraping shelves, kiln washing the shelves, teaching & Summer Camping!!! So here are a few “delayed” shots from Monday night’s unloading. I’m pretty pleased with all of the bright pops of color throughout! So glad that soda-firing does not have to be all gray & brown all the time!