Soupy Saturday Bowls

Once a month Back Alley Music in Charlottetown hosts something they call Soupy Saturday. Generally what happens is some local bands or artists perform over a few hours while people enjoy locally made soup. Donations are accepted and usually go to a local food bank.

One of our members/instructors had an idea to see if we could team up with Back Alley Music and make some bowls that people could take home with them, for some minimum donation (say $20). I talked with the folks at last Saturday's Soupy Saturday and they loved the idea.

So our plan is to make some bowls! Size wise we are thinking they should be standard soup bowl size, so somewhere in the 500-700g range for starting clay. I think 30-40 bowls should be our goal, so depending on how many of us are interested, that won't be too many per person.

The Soupy Saturday that we'll be at will be March 19, so that gives us just under 2 months to get the bowls ready, and time to get an announcement in The Buzz.

Switcharoo

PEI Pottery Studio is really PEI Potters Studio, so our website/blog will be transferred over here as time permits, and the other one deleted.  If you're looking for recent updates, go to http://www.peipotterystudio.com/.

UPDATE: I've exported and imported the first blog posts and I'll be updating some of our settings.  I've re-sent invites to our previous authors, so come on, sign up and get posting. :)

AGM/Potluck/Google Searches

We had our potluck tonight at Joyce's place.  Excellent food was had by all and we had a good discussion about various matters at our AGM afterwards. More details will be forthcoming, but we brainstormed for more workshops/daytime classes, problems and solutions for helping to keep our studio running, and different ways we can work together as a co-op.  We're introducing a new method of tracking clay purchases that I hope will be easier for everyone (except Heather T. who'll be maintaining it). More information soon.

In the short term, we're hoping to have an outdoor raku workshop in May, and potentially a weekend 1-2 day weekend handbuilding workshop.  These events are open to members and the general public.  To give you an idea, our workshops are a bit more like this youtube video from samkellystudio with added potluck & fun rather than the (admittedly gorgeous) professional level of the raku produced by simplyearthpottery (youtube video).

For those that have been checking, we are now searchable (again) from Google (1st page of results!), if not from Bing.  We're hoping that this will help our current and future potters find out about classes, workshops and memberships.

Raku 2010 with Tim

Just a note to say I am grateful for the friendship of my fellow potters at the Studio. I love learning from everyone. It`s a great place to be!!!

Website domain name registered

I made my life harder than it had to be, so there was a bit of swearing at unfamiliar jargon and how to change DNS settings, but our blog is now linked to our domain name.  I've asked Google to add it to its list of sites to crawl through so it should start showing up in searches within the next month.

If you type in http://www.peipotterystudio.com/ or peipotterystudio.com or peipotterystudio.blogspot.com -- all three should take you to our main blog page.  More features will be added as people volunteer their time and interests.  Besides updating with diferrent events and such, there's been suggestions for book reviews, a kiln schedule, student updates, etc. 

In the meantime, have some pottery pictures:

 Coilbowl in "oldwhite" glaze.

Small vase in our inconsistent and highly variable "waterfall brown" glaze. 



David has already started with more glaze tests, so we should have a better idea within the next month or so which glazes we will be "retiring", which we'll make cautions/advice on, and which will be recommended for glaze combinations.  The advanced class on Tuesday evenings is also going to make some trial glazes, so we're looking to introduce some new (and more consistent) glazes this year. 

Annual General Meeting

Our co-op's annual general meeting (AGM) is next Friday, January 14th (rescheduled) Saturday January 22nd at 7pm at Joyce's place.  Potluck gathering at 6pm.