A cow laying on her back

All in a day’s work.

Link to Black Swan FarmsI got a call last Tuesday from a lady near Red Deer Alberta. She raises Australian Swans. They  are a beautiful large black bird. She sells the eggs and the Momma bird get upset when the egg has left the nest. What the lady needed was a replacement egg to calm the Momma. She wanted me to make six multicoloured eggs out of clay to try to fool the Momma and keep her happy. They have to be waterproof, as Momma likes to continually fill her beak with water and pour it over the eggs. I convinced the caller she could make her own eggs. If they were fired and then painted with acrylic paint they would …..perhaps…. fool the Momma. She is going to try, but I know she has as good as chance as any to fool the poor Mamma.

I went home for lunch to find an email from a teacher in New Zealand looking for some workshop help. We emailed back and forth and her students made some great pieces.  The theme was Charlotte’s Web. I read the book as a child, but I don’t remember the dragons, kittens, or large faces but there might have been a cow in the barn.

Continue reading All in a day’s work.

A large sign welcoming you to Coutts AB

Life in a small town.

 

We moved from Edmonton AB, a city of about 1,000,000 people, to Coutts, AB, a village of about 300 people.

Happy Face on the water tower

We have been here for almost a year and life here is not quite the same as life in Edmonton. For one, we are mostly retired and not getting up every morning and hurrying out the door to be The Clay Teacher. The reason we picked Coutts was the cost of living.  Now that we are settled, we are spending about $1,300 per month less to live in Coutts than in the city.  We made a few online changes, new server, got rid of a few websites we weren’t using and a few other things. That brought the total up to about $1,500 less per month than we were spending a year ago. The cost of living was the motivator to get out of the city, but could not have landed better. It is beautiful here. A wonderful little town with wide streets and grand old trees.  Continue reading Life in a small town.

A view of the Sweetgrass Hills.

I don’t have to.

For the first time in decades, I don’t have to do anything. I have worked for years as a potter and The Clay Teacher. I have had orders to fill, dead lines to meet, classes to teach and work that just had to be done. We moved to Coutts and we had the house to reno and the yard to landscape. Now it is all done. Well the house will never be “done”, but it is done for now. We got the studio up and running and I had orders to fill.They are done.

Group photo of the three kids , Jim and me.

 

Continue reading I don’t have to.