Rae Reich

Still down and out with my hand  I hope the hand doctor gives me good news next week.  Big excitement today was going grocery shopping,  my husband scours the store for meals that are easy to make.  He use to complain when I bought them but now that he is the cook  those meals are pretty good.     Denice

mark, please mail me a bucket of your energy.   i have run out  and need some.  

Bench is covered with kiln sections and parts and elements.
I emptied all the control boxes of swtches and wires and  anything inside and wire wheeled them down to bare and am repainting them a new high heat primer and then a high heat copper color-New band jackets (tghe right ones hopefully?) came today as well. Going whole hog on the rebuild.
Of course I'm putting is new heat shields around kiln area outside . I spent a few days moving the whole area around kiln into a new more space saving shelves and storage area .Gives me a larger area for kiln and work flow.Just bought a few sheets of 1/2 inch 3x5 cement board for new heat shields as well.I derusted the kiln stand and high heat painted it as well.

Unfortunately the couple has been divorced since the Summer! Sad!
 
best,
Pres

Yes, I donated to the church next door for their auction, berry bowl with base dish, two sponge holders, batter bowl and two spoon rests.  
 
best,
Pres

Yep!
Two family members have birthdays, one xmas eve, t'other xmas - they get ceramics, again!
...and my entry to the family gift exchange is ceramics, again!
Donations to local charity fundraiser, local developmentally disabled workcenter, ceramics this year.
Bike shop that supports our bike team got some mugs.

I got commissioned to make a couple of things for friends for their family, but most of my fam has what they want from me already. 
 
I got to make a couple of fun commissions for others though. One lady got three stacking sets in different colours, one for each of her daughters. My favourite though, was a sugar jar that one of the sweetest boys I might have ever met was getting for his boyfriend for their first Christmas in their new apartment. 
 
I have some bowls that haven’t been selling as well as I wanted them to that I will take down to the Drop In Centre. They have a transitional housing program, and are always in need of cookware and dishes to supply a kitchen with.

It was sad but I have accepted that life doesn't always come out the way you think it will.  You have to accept the bumps and turns in life and find joy in other moments,  I have the memories of past Christmas and that is enough.   I hope everyone enjoys their holiday and appreciates every second of it.      Denice

Ho boy, did I ever!
First off, my family is still in what I call "special request" mode.  They know I make pottery so I will get a few "special requests" per year, I save up these special requests for Christmas.  My uncle requested back in the summer a stash jar, so I made a big one for him:

And my step mom wanted a vase, so I made her one:

My mom asked for a water dish for her watercoloring, which for some reason I forgot to take a picture of.  My dad got a pipe he had been bugging me to make. 

Throughout the year I often will throw some mugs or cups and then (especially in the summer) not get handles pulled and onto them before it's too late, so I save them up and make candles out of them.  So these are lavender citrus soy candles, 8 ounces each for a 48 hour burn time supposedly, I've never actually kept track of how long one has been burning, but yeah they work great and are a super quick, cheap and easy project to use up some of those random vessels.  A word of caution though, if you make these and sell them as part of your business you'll need to buy either a special candlemakers liability policy or a BOP policy that covers candlemaking, and be sure to research what youre doing so you don't end up making fireballs instead of candles.

I’m not doing anything in the studio this week.  I’ll go back in after Boxing Day. Imma hang out here and be opinionated  

I’m in a similar mode as @neilestrick. My studio is officially closed for the holidays, but I want to tweak one of my glazes before starting up with production again in the new year. Wouldn’t it be nice if the right answer is in the first line blend? Too optimistic?

Test tiles. My shop is closed for the next 2 weeks, so I'm going to focus on getting some things done that I haven't had time to do, like running glaze tests. I make my tiles by throwing a 3 pound ring at the edge of a 13 inch bat, then decorating it with underglazes and cutting it up into about 25 tiles.
 

Haha, I wish! Most of the stuff I order in is duty free already, it's the surcharge the private companies charge that is the killer. I had some stuff shipped from Bailey's, most of it came to the drop shipment place I use in Lynden WA except once they had to ship a splashpan separately and they shipped it to my home. The surcharge was more than the splashpan (around $40). Shipments under 20- CA have no duty or taxes added. 

@Callie Beller Diesel, do you have Chit Chats in Calgary? I've got a family member who used them to ship books from Vancouver to places in the US. He would drop off the boxes in Burnaby (Vancouver suburb) then Chit Chats took them down across the line and shipped them via USPS. It cost him around $2- per box plus whatever the US shipping was. I don't know if they are still in business or not, this was going back a few months.
From their website:

 
@liambesaw, we do have UPS but it's silly expensive, as is Purolator or Fed Ex and Canada Post. The cross border fees that UPS, Purolator or Fed Ex charge are crazy, they bill whatever the duty is then tack on a huge surcharge. If there isn't any duty they still add a ridiculous surcharge. I NEVER get anything shipped from the US to here in Canada unless its via USPS.
 

Exactly, I could probably ship all of the things since it's probably cheaper for me to send a box to anywhere in Canada than it is for him to ship a box anywhere in Canada.  Surprised y'all ain't got UPS out there yet 

Thanks for sharing this Karen! 
I was thinking that it would be easy to adapt syringes to make other sizes too.

To make the "bead popper",  
1.   screw the "plunger" completely out of the chap stick cylinder  
2.   Turn the plunger over and force it back into the tube while turning the knob at the bottom. If you line it up with the screw at the center, this  will allow you to draw the "plunger" back down into the tube.
3.   Screw the little plunger back far enough so you see the top of that center screw.   Then  take a sharp xacto knife and cut off the extra part of the tube so the plunger is even with the top part of the screw and the tube.
4.   When using, start by spraying  a little Pam inside the tube with the plunger retracted in the tube, cut the small  beads  from a slab of clay and push the bead out by screwing the plunger to the top of the tube.   
Note:  I smooth the top edge of the bead when it's pushed just beyond the top edge of the tube. The bottom edge is finished when on the straw  (pictured in my original post.)   
When making the larger beads, retract the plunger and stuff clay in the tube making sure you keep the screw centered as you fill the tub with clay.  
 Hope this helps.

I let the customer know the standard stuff but he is one of those coffee brewing nerds so he's heard it all before... Prefill with hot tap water, no flame, fine grind, etc etc.
He dropped some off with the people who roast the coffee for his company to get functional feedback from them as well, hope to get some good helpful feedback from world champion coffee brewers, this could be a profitable side business for sure.  The customers company is a luxury coffee subscription type of thing, and these carafes will be part of the onboarding of new subscribers, or something to that effect.  

Been making many of these coffee pourovers on commission.  I'm just now starting to get good at them after making 50.  I threw the parts for 10 more on Monday and am still waiting for them to get to leather hard.  Everything slows down this time of year.  If I turn a space heater on to speed things up, they dry too quickly so it's a game of patience.  I can only make 10 at a time because 1) that's as many as fits in my kiln and 2) that's as many as fits on my drying racks.
The customer is launching a website in January so I'm stocking up and making enough for the launch.  They are in Canada and that has been an issue with shipping (unless the new trade agreement is passed soon), but I may end up drop shipping them directly to US buyers, so I might need to up my fee if that's the case.
Here are some recent ones as well as a few glaze tests on them:

Nothing going on in my shop just got the stitches out of my wrist and hand and it will be four more weeks before I can do much.  What a bummer.    Denice

Finished in time to put the small fibre optic trees into.

Made a "bead popper" from an empty Chap Stick tube.  Automatically centers the hole in the bead.  

Aye that!
...thinking short and stout ear/handle that faces up and a bit in, cylinder four inches or so tall, small enough around to fit in 300g cups, will experiment with drainhole sizes and patterns

@Hulk make sure they’re deep enough. I tried some last year that were more bowl shaped and looked cute, but were too shallow.
 
Don’t do this:

Hulk borrow tea steeper id