Weekend Update 10/13/19

Last weekend update was 9/23. I didn't do much bonsai/clay related on weekend of 09/28-09/29 as it was Bernie's weekend. That, and my car took a shit right on Bernie's Birthday. But it was mostly because of Bernie's Birthday. I didn't want to put too much on my plate. Wanted to keep my week free to do stuff with Bernie. I did stop by the studio; picked up about 12 pieces that were finished that weekend. 

 

Weekend of 10/05-10/06 

I didn't have any clay to drop off at the studio. We're still sorta celebrating Bernie's Birthday, and now Aaron's Birthday, so we went to Silverdale on Saturday. On the way out, we stopped by the studio, glazed a shit load of pieces and picked up 50 lbs of clay. I took a group shot (picture) of all the pieces and wrote down the type and amounts I had:

 

Pottery list:

1 cthulu

7 octopot

3 urchin

1 fish

2 starfish

2 talon

3 spider

*2 cosmic toilet

*2 mini round

*The cosmic toilet, mini round are small pieces, taking up less than 50% footprint of a 'normal' piece. 

Talked with Eric at Wilderbee's over both weekends; got his stamp of approval in regards to the glazes I ordered. He also mentioned the pieces to be glazed represented more or less a full kiln load. That's 19 pieces and 4 small pieces. Time for analysis: 

With the process of pre-making bowl blanks, I've been making about 6 pieces per week. Should take me about 3 weeks to do a full kiln load of bisque fired pottery. Take about a week to glaze the full load, then roughly another week to pick up finished pieces. 

So about a month for a kiln load, start to finish. More or less what I figured. 

As for the bonsai side of the house, the garden, things are definitely starting to wind down. Weather states it'll be around 33 tonight, 32 tomorrow for overnight lows. That means I have to bring in my tropicals. It's been raining a bit, so I've hardly been watering the trees. 

I ordered some seeds: trident maple, japanese maple, crabapple, Japanese black pine. The trident maples arrived. Still have to wait for the rest to arrive. I want to cold stratify them all at the same time. I figure I have the best chance of propagation that way. I go it in my head that I also want to try some shimpaku juniper cuttings, so I'm gonna try to get a donor tree.

Weekend 10/13/19

It's my birthday this month. Decided to go to Bonsai Northwest to pick up some trees. Maybe just the one tree; as I mentioned before I want to try some shimpaku juniper cuttings. I ended up buying an 'itoigawa'. Did some trimming work and I ended up with a few cuttings. I also bought a Chinese elm and a fairly well developed crabapple. The Chinese elm I figure I can repot it and get lots of root cuttings. The crabapple, we'll just wait to see what I do with it. 

 

All for now.