24 hours before we open to the public and the contents of a big glaze firing are on every surface, bases to be smoothed and all yet to be priced.

The count down to the Spring Fling Open Studios weekend is just about up.

The disruption caused by the Heat Pump installation is subsiding and for now the work space returning to normality ( but the domino effect has still some way to go - more on that later !).

At the back of the kiln, where once there was a small table and an old school radiator, there now stands a 90 litre warm water Buffer Tank with shiny new copper pipes. ( It stores the heat produced outside by the Pump - allowing the fan coils mounted inside to draw on the heat when the room temperature drops ).

The down side was that the new Buffer Tank was taking up valuable space alongside the sink and draining board so a replacement work surface was essential. I was quite pleased with the solution - fitting it in between the pipe work. Cutting through the old heating pipes and getting the immensely heavy cast iron radiator out was an entirely different sort of job - difficult and messy but worth it for extra space.

That all happened a fortnight ago. As usual I’m behind schedule writing this. Spring Fling is now upon us. Indoors the showroom has been stripped down, windows and shelves cleaned by Allie and Christine, and then rearranged with new work. My job was to solder copper hanging rings onto the backs of the long dishes and wall hangings and glue ‘D’ rings onto the big picture tiles.

The topiary is trimmed, the grass cut, the showroom exterior walls given a lick of white paint; and the foundry emptied - cleared of accumulated junk - leaves and debris brushed out. Trying to turn it from this....




...into this.