We have just completed the 3rd of our Jan/Feb summer school series. Just 1 to go, starting on Friday.

We have had 3 great classes with a bunch of wonderfully talented and enthusiastic students – as they all-ways are every time. It’s such a privilege to be able to work like this, passing on what we have learnt over our lifetime, to enthusiastic potters, keen to learn the techniques that we have accumulated during our careers, and to sample a bit of what we do here. Between us, Janine, Leonard and I have notched up a total of about 150 years of ceramic practice and experience.

The last of the wild poppies are in their final fling of exuberant and cheerful rich red colour. These ones have come up, self sown, wild, in the cracks in the paving around the pottery.

Even though everything is more of less completed around the pottery, it still takes us a day to set the studio up for a workshop, prep all the clay, clean the batts and pot boards etc, then do some cooking to share for our joint lunches. Afterwards, there is a day to recycle the abandoned pots, crushed and soaked in the left over throwing slip, and wash everything down. The next day, I transferred all the re-cycled clay slip/slop/slurry from the 20 litre buckets into the plaster batts in the clay room to stiffen-up for re-pugging. 

I have 5 big plaster tubs/batts on a shelf in front of the huge north-facing window in the clay room, they get baking hot in the sun and are almost always very dry and receptive to stiffen up our recycled clay slip/slop/slurry. 

However, 30 litres of fairly thin slurry does set them back a bit in the drying stakes.

Today I dug out all the very soft plastic mass, in its slightly stiffened, but still very wet plastic state and piled it up in lumps on the pugging table to air dry. Once the plaster is saturated, it keeps the clay damp, so best to get it out and get it air drying. This has proved tot be the fastest way to deal with so much slurry. I also need the plaster tubs dry again for Friday’s next onslaught of failed experiments from the last 3-day summer school.

Everything will be in order by the time the next class starts tomorrow.

After the cleaning I baked another loaf of bread and cooked a potato dauphinoise for dinner finishing it off with a whole camembert sliced on top. The garden is revelling in all this warm weather and occasional storms. The self-sown tomatoes are small but prolific. I found the time in the evenings to make my first batch of tomato, garlic, capsicum and basil passata. 10 litres of sliced tomatoes boiled down in their own juice and then reduced by half to concentrate the flavour.

The bread turned out well – as usual. I’ve got it nailed now. Success every time. but I’m still trying variations, and different brands of flour. I’ve ended up with a 50/50 blend of wheat and organic stone ground rye flours.

There are so many vegetables coming from the garden in summer, we give a lot away, and do a lot of preserving. We also eat as much as we can. 

Nina and I worked together to make a sort of Greek inspired moussaka dish. I did the tomato/meat sauce and Nina did the béchamel topping. Working together made it so much quicker. Everything from the garden, egg plants, zucchinis, garlic and last years passata.

It was so nice on a cool rainy evening, we’ll be doing it again.

We are continuing to cube and roast pumpkin with olive oil, garlic and a sprinkle of salt. Everything is working, we are well, although quite tired from the intensity of the work load with the workshops, added to the summer harvest work, which can’t be put off or delayed. After next weekend’s workshop, I might try and make some cider from the apple and pear crop that is peaking at the moment.

Is there a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, in the new pottery? Hit by the end of the amazing double rainbow. I rushed down there to check it out. I went to the decorating cupboard where I keep all the pure gold leaf for use in kintsugi. But no pot of gold!

I could swear that I had a full fresh book of gold leaf in there, but NO! all gone.

I think that we got the wrong end of the rainbow. It sucked up all my gold and dropped it over the rainbow, somewhere else. Possibly in Kansas?

Bummer!