IT'S A REALLY BIG DAY!

If you live on or near a lake in the northern latitudes, 'ice out' day is a big deal! Second only to when the clouds switch from winter clouds to summer clouds. And today was the big day!
This shot was taken about 9 am looking Northeast from the studio-about a third of the lake is open at this point. The light area is open water being blown by a stiff 30 mile an hour wind. The wind chews up the ice. Without it, we could sit another week or two for the melt. By 2 pm it was over 80 percent open and the rest is almost gone as I write this. Now the weather can get more serious about warming...and plants get on with their growing...these are the first tulip shoots by the studio door.

People in Texas don't understand why this a big deal...but now you know!

The Final Result!

Paperweight by Alysa







Tom Stopped by Foci Glass today (Thursday) to see what might be happening. Michael had been sick for a week so the paperweights needed grinding and Michael showed Tom how this works. Anyway...here are the final results. Photographng glass never shows all the intricacies, but here we go.















Michele



















Katy does the blues

















Betsy used every color Michael had.














Ann did the swirl, and















Tom, as usual, was highly restrained and subtle.

All in all we were pretty happy. An friend of Michael's, Nathan, was there working on trying to combine Raku pottery with molten glass. Could be interesting, but the different shrinkage rates between the glass and clay were causing crackling and crazing.

There is a recipe going around about "No Knead" Bread. A very simple recipe that just takes minutes to prepare. It apparently originally ran in the New Yourk Times, and around here ran in the Minneapolis Tribune on Feb. 15.

In the recipe the bread is baked at 450 degF. One of our good customers called after trying the bread and said there were craze lines (very fine lines running randomly through the glaze) in the bowl. She wondered both, what happened and was the bowl safe to continue to use.

First answer, yes, the bowl is safe to use. Either from a food safety angle as well as structural.

Why did it craze? This gets a bit more technical. Here is a note I sent to Rick Nelson the Star-Trib's author:

Hi Rick,
We're potters out here in Hutchinson, and had a customer call about using one of our bowls for the bread recipe you published on the 15th. I noted in the recipe that the baking dish needs to be heated to 450 degF. and that ceramic bowls were one of the listed utensils. There is some risk in using ceramic bowls for this as it can cause the glaze to craze after it cools.

To give you the long part of this, normal highfire ceramics can go easily in the oven (not on the stovetop). The reason for this is that most of a clay pot is silica (glass) which expands and contracts on heating and cooling. The glaze on the surface of a pot is also silica, but of a different percent and formula than the clay.

When we fire pots, the goal is to have the shrinkage of the melted glaze to be the same as the shrinkage of the clay after cooling. You can then heat and cool this clay/glaze system any number of times without risk.

The problem is that one of the silica crystals that is formed during firing is cristobalite. This crystal undergoes a very rapid expansion/contraction of about 2.5% at 226 degC (about 425 degF). This expansion can cause the overlying glaze to craze/crackle since glazes typically don't have the cristobalite form of silica and don't do their major expansion until over 1000 degF.

It won't ruin the pot for future use as crazed/crackled glazes are not unusual, but a user will see a change. The solution is to keep the temperature under 425 degF. when using ceramic pots.

Hope this helps.

If you'd like any additional information we're at 320-587-2599.

I have since had conversation with Paula Wolfert and she said she had run the recipe at 425 degF and it baked up just fine. I'm going to try it at 400 which would be even safer to the pot.

More to come.

POTTERS TRY TO BURN THEIR HANDS

The Cool

Clay Coyotes

Take a Shot At

HOT GLASS!

Where We Take a Field Trip To

FOCI GLASS in Minneapolis

www.fociglass.com

Merry Christmas! Betsy went really creative and gave the whole gang a trip to FOCI GLASS to try our hand at hot glass for Christmas. We all love all the handcrafted glass we carry in the Gallery, and had read about it, seen demos and watched videos, but this was a chance to actually try it. WOW! was it hard!

Foci Glass is a studio established by Michael Boyd to do his own glasswork. Now he also teaches other glass blowers, rents studio space, gives tours and, what we did, offers a hands-on experience to make a simple paperweight (I say 'simple' with tongue in cheek). Like making pots, this is a lot harder than it looks.

Tom and Ann doing their first gathers.

The glass is in a crucible in the chamber and held at about 2000 degF. Finding the surface of the glass was harder than it seems...you just kind of feel for it, twist, raise the rod (punty) and roll it up, all at once.



Then you take the gather to a metal table (marvar) and try to roll the molten glass into an oblong, supposedly round form. Again a seemingly simple operation....NOT!

As simple a motion as rolling the punty takes practice. The urge is to grab it and turn...which doesn't get you enough of a roll. Here Michele gets instruction from David Royce, Foci's Studio manager and a 7 year glass blower doing some fantastic things himself.

www.davidroyceglass.com

After you get the gather in somewhat the proper shape, you touch the hot glass to ground colored glass, reheat it, pick up more. This is where the colored patterns are built in. There can be multiple layers of colors and clear and many ways of adding color, shape and bubbles.

Here's Michele using a shears to grab the hot bullet of glass to twist it to move the color around. You can also use sticks to drag designs into the color.

Then you gather more clear over the surface and use a hot wet pad to start to shape the molten glass. Now it's more like throwing pots...just a lot harder. With pots, when you stop applying pressure, the clay stops moving. With glass, it keeps on slumping so it always has to be in motion. As you shape the glass you start to build a groove in the end where the punty is. This will become the cut off point. To do this a large tweezer like tool is used. (I'm sure there's a fancy name for it, but I missed that.)

Here, Michael is showing Ann how to do the shaping. And then it's Alysa's turn. Cool sunglasses, Alysa!

The final step, at the bench a drop of water was put in the groove which caused a shear line. At the table, Michael is helping betsy tap the punty which causes the shear line to break, freeing the piece of glass.

Michael then proceeded to give us a demonstration showing how thin you can blow glass (thinner than paper) and how thin you can pull it out (to a mere thread).

Next he made a large vase using the Swedish graal technique. You start blowing one vase, then start a second one, and fold the second over the first so there is a different pattern inside and out. Unfortunately we got so enthralled we forgot to take pictures. http://www.olafstevens.com/htm/graaluitleg_text.htm Bad potter.

After 4 hours of fascination with glass we had a wonderful late lunch at San Pedro's in Hudson, WI., http://www.sanpedrocafe.com/ and then headed over to bother the folks at our second favorite gallery Season's on the St. Croix. http://www.seasonsonstcroix.com/ ..

Now....don't you wish YOU worked at Clay Coyote Gallery?

Minnesotans Really Are Tougher than Texans

Since Wednesday afternoon (today is Sat.) here's kind of what we looked like...

Total amount is really unknown no matter what the news says...from O" where the wind blasted it, to a couple of feet, probably 12-15" between the 2 hits. Finally today we awoke to that brilliant after-the-storm sunshine.

We've been plowing (4 times) since this started so this morning just took a bit of cleanup. Our neighbor Jerry Notch came over and blew out the loading dock (what would we do without Jerry and Carol). The poor old Jeep ('78 CJ7) is getting a well-deserved rest today.

Of course this all started last Saturday just as we started our annual "Widows, Orphans, Old Men and some Kids" Clearance Sale in the Gallery. Needless to say it's been a bit quieter than normal...but not too bad. Those hardy Minnesotans, ya know.

The advantage of snow at this time of year is the moisture helps the farmers but the snow melts pretty quickly. Around here (45 degN) about February 17th, the sun gets high enough that we have a net gain in heat everyday. Snow melts from the bottom up....the light goes through, hits the dark earth below and warms the lower layers.

So now you know.