Boring Week

It's been awhile since I posted anything.

Where to begin?

Fall is fast approaching. The last two days have been gloomy and rainy. Today was not. Today was relatively sunny and warm, but those cloudy, cool, rainy days made me think that Halloween and Thanksgiving are just around the corner. 

This past Monday I went to the doctor. I have a mild case of tendonitis in my left elbow, so I received a referral to a physical therapist who I will see next Monday.  The doctor also prescribed me some mild painkillers--a prescription-strength version of an OTC med--which I filled and added to the bag of medicines that I don't take.  (Lots of good stuff in there, let me tell you.) I hate taking medication for anything really, so I generally don't unless I absolutely have no choice about it.  I'm hoping PT provides some relief so I don't actually have to resort to pain meds or worse.

What else?

Dave and I have tried out a couple of new restaurants since I last posted. We had lunch in a very good but very expensive (too expensive to survive in its location, I'm afraid) vegan sushi place last weekend.  We shared an order of vegan yakisoba and several vegan sushi rolls, all very tasty. We've also had dinner a couple of times in a Chinese restaurant whose claim to fame is a close association with a Chinese action movie star--Jackie Chan maybe? I forget. The food there is a strange mix of Americanized Chinese food and actual Chinese food, I think. Anyway, it's relatively good.

We spent last weekend at the studio, where we were planning on firing our first cone 6 kiln--until we found out that the kiln's electric controller wouldn't allow us to go past 2000 degrees which is way below the 2200-ish degrees we need to hit in a cone 6 firing. (Doesn't sound like a huge difference, but actually there are nine cones between the two temperatures.) The kiln is actually rated to go beyond cone 6 to cone 10, but the controller was intended to be used for glass firings which are far lower than ceramic temperatures in most cases.

Anyway, we're hoping the problem has an easy fix: After some discussion with the people who manufacture and sell the controller, Dave found out that there is some kind of secret menu to the controller that he's going to try to access this coming weekend. 

The firing is primarily pieces we've glazed with a handful of test glazes, commercial glazes that we've never tried before. After leaving the last studio, I vowed never to buy another glaze or any product from there, so we've got a lot of testing to do to find products from other companies that will work for us.  I will hopefully have some pictures of the work when it comes out on Sunday or Monday.