Break is over!

 I really got back into the full swing of production last Thursday  when I made all those soup mugs. Since then we have had a bisc kiln and a glaze kiln and I have made 65 round mugs, some pitchers, a ginormous tankard and a few pasta bowls and some plates.

Later this week we're going to take a few days off for an annual retreat we take this tie of year so I want to have all my work in progress finished for Thursday.

I worked on trimming and handles today. I got the plates, pitchers and ginormous tankard done. I trimmed all the mugs and got about 1/3 of the handles done.




The rest are under plastic and I'll get in the morning, then tomorrow afternoon I'll get the soup mugs glazed and loaded.

I'm hoping I'll have a chance to do some bowls, tumblers and goblets tomorrow that I can trim and assemble on Thursday before we leave.

On the selling end of the business things haven't slowed down too much. I was surprised to have a couple big sales and a few special orders come through this week. I thought we'd really see nothing at all, but people still seem to want what we have to offer..in fact we keep getting asked if we have more of certain things. I think we should have been better prepared for this. We will be next year. We learn!

So part of this production is for us on Etsy, some of it is for an event we have in NH at the end of January and part of it is stock to send to Tampa at the end of February. All in all I am looking at about 300 pieces by the end of Jan and another 300 for the end of Feb. I am so glad to have help. The new studio assistant is working out well. she has prepped clay and organized my chaos, now we'll see if she can keep up. It was pretty fun here on Monday, Rowan was loading pieces onto Etsy, Cristin was cleaning and wedging, Morgan was over grinding the rest of the kiln shelves and I was throwing. It kind of felt like a real business. Lots of stuff getting done all at the same time!

I liked that a lot. I'd love to be able to keep 4 people busy all year round.