Good Day

Yesterday was a perfect island kind of day.
First I went to a meeting to work on administration stuff for the fabric art event I'm helping to organize. (Hold on to your hats! Information will be available soon!) My meeting was at the home of a local artisan, and I was given an impromptu tour of the grounds. What a privilege it was - standing there in the yard of this potter. It was a testament to a lifetime of hard work and artistic drive, and he's still going strong. (Its all about the work! Do the work! I have to keep telling myself)
Then I came home, was putting on my boots to head up to the Anagama kiln firing that was open for viewing, when our friends from Hornby appeared. We all went up to view the firing, and WoW! Was that ever great. Shirley Phillips gave us an informative tour of the process - the kiln was being fed wood (about 5 cords per firing!) every ten or twenty minutes, the pottery inside, which you could view with the aid of sunglasses, and only when the fire was dying down, was white hot! There was a big chimney up the hill which spewed flames when the fire was fed, but no ash - it all gets burned up inside the kiln. After the firing, which is a days long process, the kiln doors get bricked up and the flue damped down and then its some more days to wait for it to cool down enough to go in and get the pots. WoW! I am definitely going on the Denman Island Pottery Tour this year.
Our friends went on to do what they were doing and K and I stopped in to deliver a catalogue to some friends up on their acreage. They have built the nicest log house, just 16' x 20' and they have a really productive garden. The apple trees are all in bloom and some of the baby plants are going in the ground... we had a great visit, and then we got invited down to our other friends' 10' x 10' handmade log house for wood-stove cooked pizza. Grand, just grand. I can't imagine a better island day. I love this place.