It’s good to get back to routine. Just lately I’ve been trying to get a group of twelve jugbirds ready to take out to YVR. They were ordered before Christmas but I warned Crafthouse that I would bring them in in January. To help fill the kiln we picked up a platter and a plate from Eric at the Western Front on Saturday, en route to the opening at Equinox Gallery (next blog). Eric had been painting his pieces over the holiday and the platter is to be donated during the Western Front Gala in March.

Getting to the studio has been complicated by our decision to take advantage of ‘Livesmart BC: Efficiency  Incentive Programme’ to cut heat loss in our house. After an assessment confirmed that our insulation is really poor we hired A1 Cellulose Blower. The company came recommended by friends who also own an old house. So Mike, Reggie and Doug spent two days here recently. On the first day it was frosty but dry so they removed shingles, drilled a hole, blew in cellulose (which is shredded fire-retardent treated paper), filled the hole with plugs and replaced the shingles. Now you can hardly tell that they were here.

On the second, rainy, day they completed the job by blowing the cellulose into the attic space and under the eaves and installed batts of pink insulation behind the bedroom walls. In doing so Doug discovered a cache of 100-year-old bricks! Perhaps the chimney builder was too lazy to take them back downstairs, but I will be delighted to add them to my collection of bricks edging my flower beds. Two are stamped GARTCRAIG and a Google search tells me that they were made in Glasgow over 100 years ago. I gather they were shipped all around the Commonwealth including to Tasmania and here! Perhaps ours came on the same ship that brought Canada Pacific RR Iron in 1882. The other bricks are Clayburn, made out near Abbotsford. I should document my collection. Two special ones are brand-new bricks given to me at IXL Brickworks, Medicine Hat just before they closed due to that June’s flood in 2010. So sad.

Moving our stuff away from walls that were being insulated, buying plexiglass to ‘double-glaze’ my basement studio window and helping Al work on other heat-escaping gaps has meant that my potting has been delayed. But I have now turned on my bisque kiln with Eric’s plates and some fifteen jugbirds of mine cooking. It is nuts how long each jugbird takes to make but when I’ve finished painting them with slips and applied terra sigillata to the bases I am satisfied that each one has been lovingly thrown, assembled and given its character. I want them to be enjoyed and used and if I priced them according to how many hours go into their creation nobody would buy them!

The last three photos are ones that I was sent over the holidays. The large green ‘Mittelsteadt Mallard’ graced a Christmas table in Boston, a Burnaby Mountain home welcomes a Pileated Woodpecker and the salty bowl now lives in Princeton!