Salt, Wood, Wood

That is the order of kiln firings that Robin is doing back to back this week. It seems to be crunch time. With his final critique coming up on December 1st, he wants to get as much of his work fired as he can. Throw in a Ceramics Department Holiday Sale and there isn't much time left to do anything BUT practically live at the studio. 

Despite the craziness, he has been trying hard to fit family into his chaotic schedule. Yesterday while I slept in, he and Isla (still in her pj's) headed over to the school at the crack of dawn to check on the salt kiln that he had been firing off. She came home rosy cheeked and excited to tell me all about her morning with daddy. 

I had a chance to check out the Christmas pottery sale last night, after the kids had gone to bed and Robin had hit an REM state just as soon as his head hit the pillow. Feeling confident that they would all remain sleeping, I snuck out of the house and headed over to the university to scope out some of the student wares. 

With only intentions to look and not buy, I snickered to myself when I left the sale with three pieces wrapped up in craft paper. You wouldn't think that we need any more pottery around our house, and I am stricter than Robin is about bringing more pots home to a house that already has hit it's pottery saturation point. But since I anticipated there would be some collecting of pots happen over the next few years while we are here, and I was ruthless about bringing only what was absolutely necessary in the first place - I figured a couple of pieces wouldn't hurt.   

Besides, they were practically giving the stuff away. Sadly the value of pots here is not what it should be. Not sure why that is, but apparently this annual sale has a reputation for getting something for nothing. I don't really buy the excuse that the students are just trying to get rid of the stuff, and will take whatever someone is willing to give them, just for a few bucks in their pockets. For the prices most of the pots were marked, some of them are hardly even covering their materials costs. By underselling the work, it only gives the general public an ill conceived notion of the real value of the work, which then they come to expect the low prices. 

In all, our bank account didn't really suffer. I purchased one pot, was gifted another and did a fair trade for the third pot (for one of my knitted toques).  Best get knitting.