Yarn Bowls and Baby Birds

This is the one and only yarn bowl that I have left in my Etsy shop.

I have about 20 bone-dry yarn bowls in the studio waiting to be finished, but it's going to be a while before I can fire the kiln.

The reason? The baby birds, of course!

Even with the doors open the studio gets very hot when I fire (plus the fumes!).

Fortunately, Google tells me that by the time they're 10 days old baby wrens are ready to fly. Here's the latest photo of the brood taken yesterday.

I'm thinking that I should have the yarn bowls, bisqued, glazed, fired, photographed, and listed by mid-June at the latest.

So, please stand by for yarn bowls and fledgelings...

Sharing Studio Space: We've Got Babies!

Here are the baby wrens! It's not the best photo, but it's the best I could do with the parents fussing outside.

For the past couple of days, one of the parents has been in the nest constantly. Every so often I would hear some peeps and then everything would go quiet again. I think that might have been when the babies were coming out of their eggs.

When I went into the studio today, one of the parents was coming in with a bug in its beak and once it saw me got very upset and started doing the *alert* chirping. Then, the other parent, which was in the nest, came out and both of them were outside the studio just carrying on, very upset, for a while. I decided to go about my business but without making any sudden moves. Eventually, they got used to my being there and started to come in: one or the other parent would fly in about every 5 to 7 minutes with a tasty morsel in its beak! There was still quite a bit of chirping and carrying on by the parent that was outside, but they did get used to me.

The babies' chirping is *almost* outside of my hearing range. It is a very high pitch and I can barely hear it... it sounds like it's coming from very far away. I'm sure that will change as they get bigger.

I hope that we can manage to live together for the next few weeks! My studio is very small and when I'm at my wedging table, my head is only a couple of feet away from the nest. A big-headed monster that close to home can surely make any parent nervous!

I realized today that I am not going to be able to fire the kiln until the babies are fledged... Fortunately, I don't have any shows coming up right now.

Sharing Studio Space (cont.)...

I was throwing the coasters for berry bowls today when the brooding wren decided it needed to get out of the house for a while. She left and fussed and fussed at me when she got well outside the studio. I had come armed with my camera so I was able to get a picture of the inside of the nest. It is cup-shaped with a little "roof" or overhang. The eggs are a cream color with reddish brown spots. I count four eggs now but I think there's another one in the back (I had originally counted five eggs).

I have a glaze that reminds of the way the eggs are colored. It's the oatmeal glaze from the Mastering Cone 6 Glazes book. Here it is:

Sharing Studio Space...

A couple of weeks ago I left my studio door open overnight. When I went back, a Carolina wren had started building a nest inside. I've learned that Carolina wrens, which mate for life, are notorious for building nests in unusual places. This bird built his nest in a bag of doilies (I use them to texture clay) that was hanging on the door. The female approved of the location and has been sitting on five eggs for a week now. I've kept the door propped open and try to make no sudden movements when I'm around the nest area. I've spooked the brooding bird twice already and it has fussed at me a few times, but so far we're getting along. I expect that there'll be babies next week... I hope they don't evict me!