beach blues

well back in bakersville, although i love this town, i have a bad case of the beach blues! i posted a pic of my family unit, thank god it was a big house as you can judge by the number of us in the photo. we had a great time and plan to go back in three years time to do it again. evan and i worked in the stuido today, i slipped pots and loaded the electric, evan made one of his signature scultpures. this one is called dynamite! It is inspired by the myth busters episode we watched while working where they created avalanches (with you guessed it, dynamite). busy times ahead for this salty dog, last full week of summer school, then loading linda's kiln late in the week, workshop in rock hill this weekend and all the little nuts and bolts i need to do to prep for philly buyers market which is in a little over a week. well no time to waste, gotta run. shane

day four peeps

so just wanted to tell everyone that the dreaded day four has come and gone. i say that becuase that is when the freshness of all the cousins getting together has worn off and they have to actually deal with each other. so evan and nate went out with us to get provisions, fighting the whole time, came back, then they split evan stayed at the houses pool and nate and I and some others went to the beach and enjoyed the rough surf(we had a tornado warning like 50 miles south!). then after dinner lisa, holly(lil'sis) her husband stevie, nate, evan and I went out for dessert, well lets just say it went very rough! then on the way home we looked across the sound or bay whatever and were struck by the sunset! wow as we rolled slowly up to our road i snapped off a picture literally no settings just thought do it quick what teh hell, you judge the picture for yourself, i think its fucking amazing for a quick shot. anyway more tommorow. oh yhea we have all decided that MTV needs to do a reality show on our vacations, never a dull moment!

pre dinner show

we had to share our beach spot with these little guys, he is hard tosee great camo! and seagull will snap them up if they are seen. i was glad to see these guys cause we are use to seeing these little sand crabs by the dozen (sounds tasty huh?) on ocracoke. here is a fine example of the little man running with a shark he just snatched out of the ocean, if you believe that i got some property down here i will sell ya! so here we have evan and his cousin nate playin onthe beach ok lisa wants to go cruise the town of duck, so off we go. maybe i can talk her into stopping by a bar. later

goodmorning

wake up people! time for to hit the ocean. its 7am and i am ready but the house is quiet. gotta get going. check in later

alohaehh

just a quickie folks, arrived at duck with the whole family twenty of us. great house, went to the beach tonight, its a short walk, swam and now its pbr time! will take pictures this week and post them, promise. later shane

hello folks

well, justa quick jump in here. went to the saw mill with evan last night expecting to cut and load a bundle of wood, or what would fit in my truck. saw the owner drive by and gave him a call. the good news is he is still delivering but the price has went up some, thats ok and is expected. i always told him he should charge more and maybe the current gas prices finally got to him. we all love milan! our wood man! so got three large bundles ofhis driest poplar heading my way! for you local woodies, he has about six more bundles laying around and plenty of odd old boards, kline? siding? you should go look at it in the field and talk to milan. well gotta go prep the drop area and cutthe odd pieces that have been layin around for several months. i still have a bundle in a half of hickory and black gum mix, i didnt care for it the last timei fired but need to get it cleaned up. got class today, looking forward to school we are doing serving pieces for our dinnerware sets! i am making the lady a couple of cassaroles. see ya in the hood folks shane

one step closer!

wow, so yesterday i built the arch form and crammed, slammed and beat the supproting arch under the main anagama arch. this is actually the way the front of an anagama should terminate. i didnt do this with the first version of the kiln and actually had a pretty loose front end after, oh i think four years of firing. i believe i fired the original kiln 9 times? i'd have to look into that. anyway, before we left for a shopping trip to asheville and a tourists baseball game i quickly cast the keystone and a litle bit of filler in and behind the supporting arch. this morning i went out and dropped the arch form to see how she looked. well in typical fashion since i am not paying myself it may not look beautiful but she is rock solid. I am happy with the structural integrity of the front now, plus the whole reason for this change was to shorten the firing, lessen the ash on the pots, and allow the kiln to be fired in a more neutral atmosphere, and finally to take away about two hundred or so pots needed to fire the beast. Our pot counts usually were around 550 for a firing with a fair number of large pieces to close to 700 for a table ware firing or mostly smallish pots. I found i didnt like firing two to three times a year. The current loading plan will take around 350- 500 pots something that me and a couple stokers can do every two to three months. well now i gotta gather some more wood, andmake pots. the kiln stillneeds some finishing touches such as the fiber and mud, and a new door built, plus the cleaning and washing of the thing since it will be salted. but those can wait, pots and wood are more important at this point. i just may be able to pull off a july firing, so those who want to get in should belly up to the bar now. off to the studio shane

going up!!!!!!!

yet another day out in the smelly cat litter box! yhea the local cats have been using the sand as their personal toilet. i guess a permanant wooden door to keep them out would be well worth the time. yesterdays kiln demolition and begining of the rebuild really zapped me out, so luckily i had two able bodies assistants with me. the man in blue basically threw dirt all day and dug large holes, while his counterpart joe cool just sat there behind his shades with a blank look onhis face. really didint know what he was thinking about so i kept to myself. on a serious note i need to build thesupport arch and then do some castable to patch some holes and i will be ready to fire, except another hundred pots and wood, wadding oh god! technically i added a front buttress wall at the termination of the kiln walls, and a firebox that will accept grates and stillallow for some pots down in the coals. i wanted to rebuld the chimney and open up the exit flue a bit but may just blow that off and see how she rolls. well gotta get cleaned up for the fourth of july. take it greasy.

coming down!!!!!

well here i go, started on the redesign of the anagama today, had to stop to eat and finish some pots that were drying out. i have removed the foundation rocks and the front of the foundation wall, unzipped the arch pretty far back. i found the dirt behind the brickwork very interesting and it smelled like fireworks! funny timing for that smell. i will dig out the very front stacking area and put grates there. i believe the hardest thing will be trying to tie in the new front buttress wall with supporting arch under the original arch, whew! hurts just thinking of it. i will also do the same to the back exit flue area, unzipp it and make the exit flue larger. i need to also take down the chimney, i want to taper it, make it shorter, and redo the damper slot. this will require some scaffolding as the current chimney is 15 feet tall. so far i have removed close to 300 straights and 80 arch brick, assume to get about 100-200 brick out of the chimeny, can you say gas salt kiln!? maybe we will see. ok off to get a burger then back at it. shane

potsarrazi spotted!

well well well, here we have caught in the action, our residnet blogomaniac! yes folks that is the ever present michael kline! i spotted him snappin images for his blog (come on it will be there tommorow for sure!) so the potsarazzi has been razzied!??? oh my my. i followed our specimen around and shot a few other pics, but this one of him playin dad was great! really in action here. we were all up at the penland fourth celebration/ ice cream social. god bless penland for there community support and good times. evan ran around like a maniac as did all our kids, our little town is so nice and the space infront of the pines works so well for family gatherings that we just let the kids be kids. Mark peters and i hung for some time and watched the madness and discussed the finer points of pots, people,life and the difference between busch and pabst! sorry mark pabst is the blue ribbon beer! just kiddin. we did get a kick out of the fireworks and i had been waiting to try the fireworks setting on my camera, worked good till it actually got dark and the shutter speed slowed, or maybe to many pabst and bush? got home in time to square some teabowls and add some surface to them. well really really late, kiln waiting on me in the morning, later s

goins on

well another week gone by in this potters life! managed to work on some pots as you can see. the teapots are the first ones to get my new surface treatments and in the group shot of various pots there is a pitcher that has been cheese cut or faceted with a cheese cutter. the other pics are of our river camping trip i only put up the pictures of jessie and nevi maybe i will add one of evan later, i suddenly feel odd putting him up on the internet? guess there is no harm but its weird. i was scheduled to start on the kiln today but our ex neighbors (across the creek) son has abandonded his pack of dogs and the shelter director had to collect the six crazy dogs. its a real shame when people do this,. i called the polica and lodged a formal complaint and am thinking of pressing charges for animal cruelty. in this county nothing is ever done about this so its probably a waste of time. now that the dogs are taken care of maybe we will just let it go. i also needed to take some pictures of gays redneck beaver damn, not that she is a redneck, but the damn is definitly country in its style. the biggest part of that is all the trash it collects, you really see how bad people still are about their trash!! well evan is itching to work in the studio, he as been making caterpillar houses and even a walle sculpture, which by the way we all went to see yesterday in asheville, if your not in the know of kids movies, WALL-E is thenew pixar movie. its about the robot that cleans up the mess left on the abandonded earth and when a newer bot comes down from the distant earth ship he falls in love,etc etc. wont give it all away, but its a great movie with a green message! i give it two thumbs up and evan said he gives it sixty hundred thousand thumbs up! WOW! thats alot of thumbs people. time to go work in clay. shane