Chaos, mud, and my church

I am working more now and trying to juggle the school position with working from home, with the added pressure of work being done to my home. (I am currently sharing my workspace with the builders, its full of packaging and builders tools.

My kiln has become a shelf for drills, spanners, hammers you name it and its not really working out, well as far as working in my workshop, so Im back in my "nook" that I made last winter to escape the cold and still get my hands in clay. (see here for that post)

On the upside our lives are changing, our living space will finally be large enough to accommodate our growing family. Currently surrounded by mud, but here is our new space. Im calling it "my Church"

I wish I could say that this will be my new workshop, but sadly no,
 it will be the main living area of my home though. 

Yuk!, this is really a horrible space now, it has become overrun with boxes and bubble wrap, which Im wading through day by day.
Hopefully I will sell loads and it will all be gone by Christmas.

Small areas of my workbench I have some soap stands drying.
I kind of have to see whether these will last with all the foot traffic through here!

Make shift shelves in the corner.
My main shelves are full of tools and other things so Ive had to dry my work out everywhere and anywhere.
Roll on spring!!

Work station, clay pots and soap dishes. Greenware

My clay working time is now limited to 2 afternoons a week (and anything I can fit in over the weekend)
 My extra day in school has meant that I have to be more efficient with my time now and will probably mean a decline in how much work I can produce for my shops, so I have set all my larger items as "made to order" which I get on with over the course of the week and try to make a few new little things while I have the clay out on the bench.

I have had orders for my bird feeders and whilst waiting for them to dry a bit and work on again I have made these porky little planters.

These ones have an oval opening at the top with an overall oval shape to them and
the ones below are rounded with a rounded opening.

I love making these, they are perfect hand sized and it is good to be free with the clay and stamp
it with hessian, and my other tools. The grit you see on the sides is called "grog" which is ground
fired ceramic grit which will fire into the clay giving it a course texture. I like it.

I made this one last year. It has multiple layers of glaze and
oxide and has had a few firings.

Soap dishes ready for bisque firing.

These ones came from the last long Glaze firing.