liambesaw

Staling homemade bread???!!?! Not in this house hah

I've only been laid off a week and I've already pounded through 350lbs of clay. I cleaned and organized my kiln area, got some finished stuff that's been sitting next to the kiln for months boxed up. Finally got a bunch of greenware into the kiln and hopefully fire on Monday. I have a bunch more stuff I want to do between now and then though. Luckily my clay supply place is doing pickup orders now so I can just place orders and pick them up if I need to! Our governor just locked the state down for another month, so hard times a coming! I actually worked a full day on Wednesday, they called me in, and supposed to do another full day on Tuesday. My unemployment claim was denied so I'm trying to figure that out as well.

Man you should see what our kindergartner has to do online, it's crazy! They're doing more studying at home now than they ever did in school and it's a full time job for my wife and I, but hey, something to keep us and the kids busy! Lots of play time in the cul-de-sac, lots of cleaning and organizing, just trying to stay sane here

Tom kha so yum.

Welp, got my papers today and I'm officially laid off! Starting tomorrow I will be a full time potter for the first time in my life. But will I be throwing pots? NO! My first day as a full time Potter will be spent cleaning, organizing, and basically doing all of the things I should have been doing instead of throwing pots for the last 6 months. I'll be setting up my studio to be a hybrid potters studio slash live streaming studio. The racks outside next to my kiln will be cleared off, items tagged and boxed into totes, inventory taken, pictures taken, and inventory added to my store. It's time to get serious because I may be out of work until halfway through May. It's time to make the best of the situation and treat this as an opportunity instead of a tribulation. Once I get everything situated on the organizational end, it will be flushing out and producing a product line. This is my life now.

Cutie bear we get one every spring as well, but he tortures my huskies as he passes through the greenbelt. He hasn't been curious enough to enter my studio yet though, thankfully, as I'm usually inside of it while he's passing a few feet away. No food in there, so nothing he's interested in

Awesome! Been making masters for molds recently. The news said that booze, coffee and cannabis are the local big recession proof markets that are booming right now so I've been trying to adjust and capitalize. Plus my pourover carafes which for some reason I haven't taken pictures of recently.

Simon is more comfort food than learning experience, I'll give you that. He's a comforting figure you can tune into for some soul time. He has about 100 videos on making tankards but his British charm and soothing voice are something that I tune into just for fun.

I really enjoy goldmark galleries features on artists, here's a link to their 14 short films on potters: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFvUht41DkhImM4CVUwsE7r4WVJqN6V8q Here's some of my favorite channels as well Hsinchuen lin: https://www.youtube.com/user/hsinchuen Simon leach (yes THAT leach): https://www.youtube.com/user/sleachpots Ingleton pottery: https://www.youtube.com/user/youdanxxx Matthew Kelly pottery: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC19npAMIfG47wgdrFX--4zw And of course the obligatory shameless self promotion of my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRyK3g9rImtTJfaI5iGAP4w I'm in no way the same league as the ones above me, they are all seasoned professional teachers and you'll learn a lot watching them.

You don't pay to subscribe to a YouTube channel, it just means it'll show up in your suggested videos when new ones come out from that channel.

We are doubling confirmed cases every 5 days here in Seattle! However, one nice bit of news is that out of 16,000 tests of symptomatic adults, only 1000 have come back positive. We have a ton of normal flu and also spring allergy related sinus/upper respiratory infections which all have the same symptoms. Anyway its not all doom and gloom. Our state still hasn't shut down non-essential business or quarantined us, which is really strange to me seeing as how we are the epicenter of the virus in North America. Our busses and trains are still running a normal schedule like nothing is happening and they're all empty. Ghost busses everywhere, it's really quite insane.

Here in Washington they predict schools to stay closed through fall, and that they'll likely switch to a competency model for grade placement next school year. I guess that means teach only the basics by distance learning or place back in the grade you left off in? No real details yet for us. But the state school super said that there is no way to extend school into the summer as the teachers have a strong union agreement with the state.

That's a surgical mask, which is a lot different than an n95 mask. I have to use both types at work, and neither work on me because I have a beard. Technically my beard is an OSHA violation, so sad.

Everything is hosed right now. We just got the news today that essentially the only stores allowed to be open are grocery and drug stores. I'm in the dental lab business and so far the 3 largest labs in the state have closed voluntarily and we are having so many dentist's call and cancel cases now too. So I predict we will be temporarily laid off for a few weeks coming up. Other than that. It's nice and sunny here and I have enough clay to last me a few months. I went to Seattle pottery supply on Saturday for more slip ingredients and apparently that was their last day, they're closed for the upcoming week at least.

My red body is very fluxy, it plucks on the shelves too

From speedball, the manufacturer

I like to tinker so I always try to reverse engineer anything I use. Doesn't always turn out well, but I feel like I understand what I'm doing a lot better once I've tinkered with it. In my head, everything can be fixed and companies do not invent things. That means anything can be fixed if it's not some kind of structural deficit. When I tell people that, so many people say yeah you can fix anything yourself but it's not worth the time. Well I guess that depends on your definition of worth? If knowledge is worthless then I agree! In that case ignorance is bliss. But if you find value in knowledge then any experience repairing or maintaining your equipment is priceless. So this is sort of in the same vein as last week... If I can see a path, I will take it!

I'm surprised they haven't changed it to "need anything under 100 lbs and fits in a checked bag while I'm in Denver?"

Oh I forgot my other honorable mention is Euclid's, I shop there for tools usually because they have a good cheap selection and 2 day shipping from Canada is about half of what places on the East coast of the US charge.

Seattle pottery supply is 14 miles away from me, although it routinely takes me 45-60 minutes to get there on the freeway due to our lovely traffic. They're also only open 9-5 on weekdays and reduced hours on Saturday, so I have to plan my weekend around going there. I try to avoid driving into Seattle as much as possible.