Yesterday was another of those very busy but really good days when Raiders invade my studio! I kept the number of visitors to six as that’s the comfortable number to sit around my big table and that’s about all the plates I had made and bisqued.

Eric, Renée, Monique, Kate M, Allyson and brand-new Raider Anne Ramsden were my guests for the day. Anne taught at SFU before moving to Montreal to teach sculpture at Université de Quebec à Montréal. Now retired, she lives on Gabriola Island so had come in to Vancouver for a few days visiting friends. I gather she has wanted to join the Raiders for a while and it was fun to have a new member.

There is some excitement about our upcoming show which will be held on Bowen Island in August. All past and present Raiders have been invited to submit a photo of one (or more Kate B?) plate or platter by mid-June, with plates to be delivered in July. So this was the last Raid from which I can assure artists that their work will be fired in time.

The artists settled down to their work with much deliberation and concentration. Renée spent much of the morning rolling out some slabs with my slab-roller. She took them home at the end of the day and will gradually use them in making some of her 3D structures. By lunch-time the painting was well under way and the sun was shining so we decided to have our potluck feast outside on our patio. We had a perfect selection of home-baked bread by Sally, potato salad made by Eric, roasted vegetables from Monique, Persian treats of dates, nuts, oranges and grapes from Anne and cheese and cold cuts from Kate.

Much later on we sampled Renée’s home-baked sweet loaf and muffins from Kate along with our cuppa.

I’m including some photos of the working scene in my studio and there’s one of the completed plates.

Now they await my attention. My own jug birds etc will join the plates for the clear glaze firing. But with a week ahead that includes much busy-ness I fear the Raiders will be waiting a while to see their finished ware. With that delay in mind I agreed that Kate M could take a nice large platter in to Vancouver for Elizabeth MacKintosh to paint. She was a Raider a while ago and wants to make something new.

My nephew Robert, his wife and baby daughter have been driving an RV around the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island for the last few weeks and wound up parking the camper at our kids’ home in Pitt Meadows this week. It was delightful to have far-flung cousins get to know each other. My new niece is now taking a salty mug back to the home of salt-glazed pottery, Germany.

Next week we are expecting my Texan niece and her husband and not-a-baby daughter to stay with us for a few days so I don’t expect to be making pots or getting plates glazed. Family comes first. But I have started on some stoneware pieces and spent part of my Raid day getting some more clay mixed up. There will be some pressure to get my allocated number of pots made and dry in the first week of June.