Tuesday, January 10th

Fresh from the HaldeKiln!

It’s probably not directly because of this photo – in fact, I know it’s not because some of these people I’ve been emailing back and forth for a few days now – but yesterday seemed to be The Day Of Talking To People About The Neatly Wrapped Yarn Mugs. The six shown in this photo are all for a custom order.

In fact, any that you see for the next eleven months are all going to be for custom orders. I have a custom order list that now stretches through the second week of November for these mugs, and I’m seriously reluctant to take too many more orders past that. Not because I don’t want to keep making the mugs, trust me, I do — but I’m worried that by that point the detail on the mug will be so degraded that it won’t be worth it. I’m already having to score in some of the lines between the yarn, and I still have about 45 more to make. I’ve probably made more than 100 of them by this point.

That’s the thing about plaster molds; the same thing that you use to make the product (slip) slowly degrades the integrity of the detail at the same time. Someone, I forget now if it was G-ma or Juanita, told me that you can only pour a mold a couple of hundred times before you can’t use it any more. Oh, and thanks in advance for not offering me unsolicited advice on how to “fix” this by making or finding another mold; trust me, that thought is not new, and I am not asking for advice here, I am just talking about my life.

So. Yesterday. Opened the kiln, painted and glazed some bisque, answered a lot of email, and got sock club out. Then knocked off to go have a beer and knit. Tim is still sick. He went to work yesterday but came home at lunchtime, and is home today as well. I am refusing to believe that he might give it to me, although every time I sneeze or cough I flip out a little. I don’t have time to be sick for three weeks.

Today, in spite of the rain, I’m driving out to Shake Rag to do a soap inventory. No, Aunt Gay is driving — she’s going to come out with me and check out the Coffee Talk. So then, off for a little more coffee, and then shower and get ready for that; Coffee Talk starts at 10. Carpe HaldeSoap!