100th Item Listed in My Etsy Shop!

After a marathon effort, glued to the computer, I just listed my 100th item in my Etsy store! Glynt Pottery is ready for all the Holiday shoppers... Yoo hooo, Holiday shoppers ***waving***!

In addition to several new teapots and sugar/creamer sets, I have also listed new mugs and various items that would make ideal stocking stuffers: egg separators for the cook/baker on your list; multipurpose holders for business cards, napkins, etc. I also have new platters and chip-and-dip sets. This mega-mug is ideal for the coffee fiend on your list: it holds a full two cups of coffee!

Teapots!

Check the Design Style Guide blog today for a great feature on teapots, including one of mine!

Teapots are great to make! I throw a form on the wheel and then set it aside to dry a bit. In the meantime, I throw a lid and a spout and I pull a handle. Once the clay is leather hard I attach the handle and the spout, making sure to poke drain holes for the tea to pour out of the teapot (I actually forgot to do that once and didn't realize it until I was glazing it and couldn't understand why the glaze wasn't pouring out the spout!). The next step is to let the teapots dry slowly.

After they are bone, the pieces are bisque fired. This gets rid of some impurities in the clay and hardens it enough for the next part in the process: the glazing. I have buckets of glaze that I mix myself. The first step in glazing is to mix the glaze and, if needed, sieve it again to make sure that I have a good suspension. If I'm going to use only one color glaze, I carefully hold the teapot with a pair of tongs and dip it in the glaze bucket. If I'm going to use two glazes, then I carefully glaze the inside with one color and once the glaze is dry enough to handle the pot again, I dip the pot in the next color. Finally, I carefully clean the bottom of the pot to make sure that there is no glaze remaining there (if there is, the pot will stick to the bottom of the kiln shelf).

Once glazed the teapots are loaded again for the final glaze firing!

Here are my latest teapots!

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Today's Kiln Opening

I've been working so hard getting ready for the holidays shopping season! It's always quite frenzied until I get the first glaze load done, then I start to relax. This is what I found when I opened up the kiln today. My trusty old Skutt is chugging along again with a second load. We'll see what tomorrow's opening brings!

I have been using these glazes for a while now, but I'm getting brand new results lately. Why? Well, I got the kiln tuned up (thanks Mike the Kiln Doctor!) and that made a great difference. I've also switched to white stoneware and I'm liking the change a lot! Finally, I've started to combine my glazes in ways I hadn't done in the past. For some reason I had not tried combining shiny and matte glazes... (what took me so long!).

Tonight I'm a lot more optimistic about the holiday shopping season... I'm doing my part! I'll have lots of new work at fair prices (in fact, I've just reduced my prices in my etsy shop). As you can see from peeking inside the kiln, I've been making ornaments and also some really nice teapots. I've also made more of the round trinket boxes because they've become very popular. I'm ready shoppers!

Mark your calendars for Saturday and Sunday, December 6 and 7 from 10am to 5pm for the 16th Annual Holiday Craft Show hosted by the City of Falls Church at the Falls Church Community Center, 223 Little Falls Street, Falls Church, Virginia. I'll be in booth #50.

Art-to-Art Palette Feature

Glynt Pottery is featured in the current electronic version of Art-to-Art Palette, a regional art and educational journal featuring news and stories about artists in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. In the "Potter Asks..." section, Art-to-Art Palette editor, Ralph Stuckman, asks various questions of several potters. The question that I answered for Ralph was "What are your thoughts about the maker and user?" To read my reply, scroll down when you get to the "Potter Asks Department" of the Art-to-Art Palette website.

Design Style Guide

A new on-line home decor website was launched in October 2008. Design Style Guide focuses on handmade products, services and events. The website is designed to help interior designers, decorators and home stagers to find quickly the perfect accent to help them sell to their clients. Items can be searched by room, style, color or material.

DSG currently carries furniture, holiday decor and gifts, home accessories, pillows and quilts, pottery and glass, and wall art.

Glynt Pottery is currently represented in Design Style Guide with two items: a vase and a lamp. I expect to post additional items to DSG in the future. Please visit Design Style Guide!

I VOTED...!!!!

WOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!

I cast my ballot for Barack Obama and Joe Biden today!

I thought this day would never come!

I went prepared. I had reading material, a cup of tea and a banana... But the lines weren't long (particularly if your last name is toward the end of the alphabet!).

Our precinct was well organized with both electronic and optical scan paper ballots and lots of poll workers. I chose to use a paper ballot and watched as it went into the optical scan machine and it was tabulated. Once my ballot went in and the poll worker said it had been counted I felt like jumping up and down! But everyone was very restrained so I waited until I got home to yell "Woooo Hoooo!" I was going to return my sample ballot but decided instead to keep it as a memento to show my grandchildren.

The only strange thing I saw was that the optical scanner rejected the ballot of the lady in front of me apparently because she had voted for too many people... Was she still undecided??? We'll never know!

This is the beginning of a new era of hope when we, as "the greatest nation in the world," take responsibility for helping make this planet a better place: taking positive steps to save the Earth, end poverty here and abroad, and make peace. I fervently hope we will all help to make it so!