Arduinna

What a relief to actually be stocked again! No shifting mugs to hide empty spaces, no hiding bowl stands behind the bench. A place for everything, everything in its place. And lots of pretty new pots filling the shelves.

The first of which sold just after nine o'clock. A couple of men and their adorable dog stopped next door to talk to Chere--well, to let her fawn on Winston the doggo--then came in to admire my pots. Said they might be back later, and were: five minutes later. Bought an octopie plate that's going home to Brisbane, Australia.

Sold several other pie plates, a bunch of tall mugs, a couple of bigger ticket items: large sea turtle serving bowl, large covered casserole, a brontosaur bank. Got into a discussion with a couple who couldn't believe how reasonable my prices were for hand-painted bakeware. Stuff like this would sell for $400 online; your prices are too low! Yeah, but hardly anybody can afford that $400 bakeware, and those who can are never gonna use it. Too spendy, too big a risk.

I keep explaining to people: I know how fast I throw. I know how fast I paint. And I feel that if my work is so expensive that people are afraid to use it, I'm doing something wrong.

I will note that they didn't actually buy anything, though they might yet special order a baker with their dog's picture on it. Not holding my breath.

Had a strange thing happen in the afternoon. I was checking my sales book against the Square report and found a discrepancy. There were two charges for a soup bowl, two minutes apart, 1:17 and 1:19 pm, on the same card. Huh?

I was sure I'd only sold two soup bowls all day, a raccoon, earlier in the report, and a fox bowl. The lady who'd bought the fox came in a few weeks ago, wanted a fox with its eyes closed, wasn't entirely happy with the one bowl I had left on the shelf. Today, I showed her a new one from the firing and she immediately wanted it. So I wrapped it, was about to bag it when she said she had her own bag. So I left it on my chair while we talked about some new patterns--she asked if I had six of the turkey dinner plates, I said I'd only one, but she could order a set of six. Then she asked if I made salad plates, I showed her the dessert plates, she said they'd do, but today she'd just take the fox bowl. So I finally put it in her bag and sent her on her way. And somehow, she got charged twice.

I'm still not entirely sure what happened, whether Square glitched and ran the charge twice, or whether we ran her card at the start, got distracted talking about plates, and ran it again. In any event, I requested a refund on the second transaction, which brought my total sales for the day just under $600.

We planned to unload the glaze kiln Wednesday night, so we could both attend our book arts meeting Thursday afternoon. Which meant I was down at the studio at 7 am to start the kiln cooling. Cracked the damper, opened up the burner ports, pulled the ceramic fiber strips off the door jambs (as best I could reach. Tea had very folding table and flat surface in the kiln room covered with stacks of bowls for his next firing). Took a pic from my phone camera through the top peep. That's the edge of a pie plate, glaze is mature and well-reduced. Promising... except I think this is one of the ones I glazed after I mixed up the new batch.

I literally phoned in the rest of the cooling, asking Tea to pull out the damper further, getting Jon to crack the door. Got there a 7 pm, just as he was preparing to leave, and got him to help me pull out the car.

Which was beautiful. Everything turned out fine, minimum of oxidation, only one soup bowl with a cracked rim and a baker with bubbled black stain. Whatever was wonky about the ball clay doesn't seem to have affected the glaze at all, so I'm fully stocked again, and can start preparing for Clay Fest.