Halloween

Happy Halloween. Seems that this year is just too warm for it to be this late in the season. Really messing with my brain! So much for resetting our circadian rhythms.

I was using some new software this week. Lightzone. Pretty interesting program. Doesnt quite replace Photoshop but it certain could be seen as a LOT easier learning curve.

Fall is falling

Yep, colors finally came and now seem to be on their way out. The past few days have been wicked rainy. Over an inch yesterday. We finally got some nice rich yellows and reds on the trees and then WHAM, rain and wind come and wash all the colors down the sink.

This week I have been working on trying to catch up on orders. Alas, it was too beautiful out today (and not nearly so WET!) so I had to spend some time taking pictures today.

New Slide Show

Alright, here's a link to a new slide show we've been working on. Images of the platters mostly.
More to come as soon as we get some time. First, we need to make pots, SELL some pots and then we can play some more!
http://www.coldspringsstudio.com/glazetech/GlazeTECHtest1.htm

New Platter pictures

I promised more pictures of platters as they start coming out of storage and finally see the light of day!! Well, this one was one I chose to take to Memorial Art Gallery. They are currently showing four of our platters on consignment. Hopefully between having the platters there and at Skyland we will finally start seeing more and more platters finding new homes! We also learned that we will be participating in a group ceramics show at the Johnson Museum at Cornell next year. Should be a real hoot to wade through all these platters to find the best ones for this show! DW is really hoping we can pull together some fun marketing for 2009. The goal being to have the platters at shows like the Philly Museum Show or the Smithsonian Show. We'll see how things go this spring when we are at CraftBoston.

Art Trail

This past weekend was the beginning of Art Trail. http://www.arttrail.com/index.html
For us, Art Trail is usually more about educating our local clientèle and also about hopefully helping people realize that we are here when it comes time to buy pots as gifts etc.

So... Friday came along and brought with it tons of drizzle. Along the day, people started filling the driveway. Over the course of the day we had six cars show up. That was odd. Last two months we hadnt had that many TOTAL. Hmmm.

Fast forward to Saturday... showtime! We weren't really feeling very excited. There were tons of things left to do, too many pots still to make for orders... and then WHAM, while we were trying to put some breakfast together for the family, the first car of the day shows up. The next time we got to look up for a break it was 2pm. Four hours had vanished. We had sold a fair number of pots and the day still had 3 hours to go!

Saturday ended with us having a total breaktime of less than half an hour for the entire day.
Sunday was a bit more normal. Heavy times, quiet times. In terms of sales, Sunday was about 1/3 what Saturday was.

So, now we're staring down the last two days of the week before the second weekend of Art Trail. We are low on quite a few of our forms. To remedy that we have a glaze load firing tonight. If all goes well, there will be a second glaze load going in as soon as this one cools. Means pots will be going onto the shelves warm on Sunday morning!!! Always fun.

Deprivation

It has been over two months now that the main road past our studio has been "closed" due to a detour that takes place over 9miles away. The reality is that the road is fine for 9 miles. Then there is a tiny detour. Instead the NYS-DOT has deemed it necessary to basically shut down all traffic on Route 96 past our studio/home. This has made for a very dry summer and early fall. No customers. This weekend marked the first customers we have seen in weeks!

The other deprivation of late, has been sleep. For longer than I care to admit, I have been sleeping poorly. This weekend it reached new peaks. Suffice to say, I need to find a solution.

To that end, today I have been pushing myself harder in the studio. Hoping that exhaustion will allow sleep to come more easily.

Moving platters into the limelight

We are getting ready for a big push. It is time to start marketing these big platters. After so many years, I can look at them and be surprised again. Pretty wild feeling really. Today I was unpacking five from the shed. I came across these pictures, taken by our dear friends Dave and Jan Brown back when I was in grad school in Utah.