Summer's coming! We finished off the building work in the garden this weekend, there's just a little top path dressing to do and the main alterations will be finished, well, I say finished but there's still the pizza oven to build. That though is a design job Jon's really looking forward too and he'll take his time to get it right, we've heard lots of stories of pizza oven's not getting hot or staying hot, so using a few tips from the kiln building books we have Jon is going to develop his own design, fingers crossed.

The pizza oven base isn't in either of these photo's but just to show the finished ruined cottage, folly, grotto, whatever people want to call it. It now has a sunk with running water and electricity supply too, I'm guessing we'll be using this a lot over summer so long as it's warm enough.

Here's two of our friends testing it out with a cuppa!~ and the top photo show's the fire place in action, it really kicks out the heat.




I've been quietly making, glazing, throwing and generally building up the stock, I'm loving the warmer weather, means I can use the outside space to dry work through as well, not too fast as the drying needs to be even to prevent warping but it does speed up the whole process. I'm watching the time scale pass slowly knowing that the first show of the year is going to be a biggie so well need lots of stock ready.




And these two are my constant companions, they have settled into the rhythm of a working pottery really well, every now and then Betty comes in for a nose and gets more clay on her coat then either of us would like but if that's the worst that can happen then hey, happy days!
  


Today I've set off the biscuit firing so I can glaze today and tomorrow ready for when it's cooled down, I'll add photo's from the glaze I opened last night later on but there were some beautiful little espresso mugs that came out and some great mugs along with a bunch of other stuff.