UG, Kilns, and Roswell...

I'm a little tired right now because I stayed up a little later than normal last night packing a few pieces to be shipped to UG.  I recently had the great misfortune of under-firing my plates in the decal firing.  In my last experience, I lost quite a few plates when I had to re-fire and that's what happened in the this batch.  There was weird bubbling on the black glaze on the back, so instead of sending them 20 plates, I could only send them 8. :(  I am going to try to re-fire some of those again and see what happens.

Speaking of re-firing...

look who got her kilns hooked up!  I got an electrician out to look at the connection on Thursday, and he was out hooking up the kilns on Saturday!  It is such a luxury to have a kiln at my house where I don't have to rely on anyone else's schedule.  Since they are on my back porch, I'm going to add clear plastic over a few of the screens so that there won't be any water damage to mah babies.  I have ordered kiln shelves and posts that I hope to get in the mail by the end of this week (c'mon Clay King!).  The only unfortunate thing is that I didn't realize that the larger kiln's inside diameter was so small.  I will only be able to fit one plate per shelf.  A friend recommended that I should use plate setters, so I have a few of those ordered as well.  I will see how those work with the clouded beasts.  

In other news, I think having my kilns hooked up has reignited my motivation to make new work for the Roswell show.  I've felt so overwhelmed during the past few weeks (months maybe), that when the weekend rolls around I just want to sit and veg in front of a book or the TV.  I need to figure out a balance between working on my new work and UG, so that I don't feel burnt out.  I have a couple of great ideas that I really want to start creating.  I don't have lots of time left to make pieces, but I'm going to try!  Here is the post card for the show (June 8-August 10).