Is it November?

Although I’m doing fine with house stuff winter came early enough to catch me unaware with the pottery studio. Because my studio is not connected to the house, and the studio is heated with wood, and the day job prevents me from going to the studio daily; a cold snap is a big setback. The pots I made last weekend didn’t dry enough to protect their surface water from the low temps of this past week. So they froze and are thawing out today as I heat the studio. Then they collapse from the uneven water expansion and contraction. The clay from the collapsed pots will require remixing, as will the bagged clay which freezes around the edges with the core clay staying unfrozen.

Frozen, thawed clay is very, very miserable to wedge it is so cold and requires mixing gooey- wet, frozen clay with the core clay that has dried out though osmosis (or maybe it‘s reverse osmosis.) Then there is the ice in the studio water and frozen glazes that have to be remixed. At least that doesn’t have to be by hand.

As tiresome as this has been, it’s kind of comforting to think that my Medieval ancestors must have gone through much the same thing.