Getting to that time of year...

Every year I do the last minute dash to make as many Christmas gifts as possible!  This year I've decided to make a quilt for Hailey.  I purchased a Moda charm pack and I'm going to try out this quilt:

I cut out some of the fabrics, but I'm not loving the fabric I have for the white areas.  I'm not a big fan of dots. Does this mean a trip to the fabric shop?  Yes it does!  It's been so long since I've made a quilt I'm pretty excited about it!  

So what else could I do for the holiday push?  If you have any ideas or suggestions for kids and teens handmade gifts leave me a comment!  Please feed my holiday gift making psychosis!  It's the best kind really... and I wouldn't have it any other way!

Easily adding a link of posts to blogger...

When blogging you may do a weekly feature or some other sort of posts that you'd like people to find easily.  A nice way to show people the many things your blog has to offer is to add a link to these posts on the sidebar.  So without further ado...

First things first... make sure you tag your posts with the same tag to make them searchable.  This will be important to have the same tag in the posts related to the link on your sidebar.

Next you'll want to open your blog in two tabs.  The first to edit, the second to copy your searched url.

In the first window get your "edit layout" page ready.  You'll want to "add a gadget" to your sidebar, scroll down to "Link List" and add.  With that all open and ready to go, move on to the second tab.  

Now remember the tag you used for all your pertinent posts?  Go to your first post with that tag and click on it.  It will bring up all posts with that tag.  Copy that url into your "Link List" and give it a name :)  

Remember to save all your work!  You can drag the box around your "edit layout" page to position it where you'd like & sit back and ooo & ahh at all your hard work ;)

I'd like to give a little shout out to MollysMuses for always inspiring me to post little how to's... check out her blog & her Artist Interviews!

If anyone has any questions or problems please post a comment... I might have skipped something or confused you somehow.  If you don't understand it, there's a good chance someone else doesn't either.

THE ARCH SUPPORT IS OUT!

Finally!  Sorry for shouting there... but it's about time!  We get some nights or weekends to work on the kiln, so for the last 3 weeks our weekends have been dedicated to this kiln.  We're still not all there yet... but the really hard parts are done.  Next is plumping in the gas lines, then building the stack to vent the kiln.

I hope you enjoy watching our little video.  We took the support out hoping the whole ceiling would do what it's meant to & wouldn't cave in on us.  Success!

If you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment :)

 

The Arch... retry

OK, so we dry stacked the arch.  Dry stacking means you use no mortar.  You just hope that all the brick does what it should... all stay & look wonderful.  Guess what?  It didn't.

We are artists in the best form.  Sometimes we throw caution to the wind and do things we think will work without looking things up or doing calculations.  Well, we had bricks sliding out and we had gaps after we pulled the arch form.  We put the arch form back in & took down ALL the bricks we had cut & put in.  It came out much quicker than it went together.

Now what?  Now we have the proper calculations for the angle on the brick (thanks to Mike & his math skills).  We are also going to mortar it all in... just in case ;)  So what does that mean?  That means that we will have to cut 160 new bricks for the arch.  We got half done yesterday.  I didn't realize how out of shape I was.  My stomach muscles are getting a great workout.  

It also means that my oldest daughter is playing mom while we get this accomplished.  She has been so great through all of this.  I'm hoping by Wednesday we'll be all done and I can take her to our favorite coffee place for the live paint event.  I think by then we'll both need a break.  

For those of you wondering why we don't have family coming over to help... we live 14 hours away from all of our families.  We moved out here almost 4 years ago for my husbands job.  It's times like these that I know how important family is, and how much every moment that we spend with them is appreciated!

We opened a Cargoh shop!

We're so proud to be a part of the Cargoh family!  This site is wonderful!  I'm not just saying that.  I'd shop there if we didn't have a shop page.  I love the look and functionality of the webshops.  You can follow people on their twitter, like their facebook page, or comment on their shop page!  I really like the favoriting & wishlists.  The best part?  If you like something, give it a fistbump!  It's cool, trust me ;)

Go to our shop page and leave us some love <3

We're still working on filling up our shop.  I was going to try to revamp our logo & banner to make it more Cargoh-ish.  A little more artsy & cutting edge.  I got too anxious to see our shop open so we'll just stick with what we have for now.

And while you're there check out a few other shops... 

If you have a Cargoh shop leave a link so I can check ya out!

The Arch

So... this is the fun part.

First we needed to build an arch support.  It needs to be a wee bit smaller than the opening, so we can drop it out after the arch is built.  We stilted it up in the hopes that it doesn't collapse.

This photo is at about 9pm... now we're ready to top her off...

So we THOUGHT we had the right arch brick already cut, but it wasn't the right brick temp (it's times like this that i wish Mike was writing this post).  Arch brick is cut at a slight angle on each side.  That means we have to cut all of the brick.  

By hand.  Hence the delay...

But it is going together.

And we have the spy holes cut!

Soon we'll be seeing glowing ware though these babies!

Hopefully very soon...

Progess!

I just hope this work like it does in our heads...

We're almost done with the laborious work, next we build the arch for the roof of the kiln, then...

...the burners & the kiln stack.  Wish us luck!!!

A photo down the chimney, just for fun :)

Where did September go?!

What happened?  Oh, that's right!  We've been working on this kiln!

She might not look like much in this picture, but we've made progress since this pic.  A few more weeks and we'll have a pretty boss kiln to fire!  I'm getting so anxious!!!

& Ashley takes some pretty neat photos :)

I'll try to get more pics up tomorrow with some commentary from Mike about the set up we're working on.