Wasps are Natural Potters , See what I Found.

I was quite happily unloading the kiln last week.  My usual routine....turning each pot over...tapping for that lovely ringing sound, scanning the surface looking for cracks etc,then I found this.

This pot had been sitting on the shelf since about October last year, I never seemed to have the right amount of room to fit it in.

When I loaded it into the kiln I remember there being some dead spiders underneath on the shelf, but never though too much more about it, just flicked them off the shelf and carried on.

With a little research it appears that a lone female MASON WASP (native) decided that the underneath of this drying pot was a nice spot to build a nest and lay its eggs.

These wasps are loners, they don't have a hoard of worker bees looking after them.  They do it all on their own.

The female stuns/paralyzes spiders and puts them in these mud/clay cells and then lays an egg in each one.  She seals it off and then leaves.  When the egg turns into a larvae it gobbles down the food left for it (spiders) and then exits the cell.

The thing that amazed me was that the clay cells this little wasp made had withstood the bisque firing temperature of 1000degrees Celsius.  Anything that was in them had burnt out,  but the mud/clay walls remained intact, absolutely amazing!

I don't know the chemistry/biology of how the MASON WASP constructs the mud cells, but obviously with it being a red colour after firing it had a lot of iron in it, as does earthenware clay.  

Does it secrete this mud like substance?
Does it go hunting and collect the clay?
Does it stick to its legs like pollen on bees?                        Who knows?

I would have dearly loved to have left it on the underneath of the pot, but there was a high risk that when it goes into the next firing that reaches temperatures of 1270 degrees Celsius + it will melt and stick to the kiln shelf.

Reluctantly, I scrapped it off this afternoon, but left a couple of small bits in one of the corners just to see if it would melt and turn into a "wasp glaze".

I'm in absolute awe of this cleaver little wasp, just incredible!  

Aint Nature Just Great

Getting Down and Dirty with Recycling Clay

A great way to start the new year was to finally finish off recycling all the unfired clay that had been "squashed, collapsed, dropped, warped and rejected" from my bonsai pot making.

I'd accumulated 5 buckets full and wasn't even going to attempt wedging it all up by hand.

After getting permission from the President of the pottery club, I came home with their clay pug mill, nothing flash, but it does the job.

For those of you unfamiliar with how it works, basically you put the sloppy, lumpy clay in the top and squish it down with the leaver.

There's a round mixer type blade "thingy" in the bottom that mixes and combines the clay all together. Love this squishy clay bit, great for the skin!!

 Once the rectangle box is loaded up with clay, the lever is pressed down onto it and the clay is slowly pushed through the mixer.  The slower you press the lever down, the more the clay is mixed.

Hey presto..... out the other end comes the mixed up clay!

 I cut the clay off into small lengths.

Usually I put it through about 2 or 3 times, it really depends what the consistancy is like.  If it's too firm, I shosh a little water over the clay before it is put through again and it soon softens up.

Its also a good way to combine extra grog to a large amount of clay.  Also sometimes its handy when combining different clay types.

 

After a couple of hours doing this, all the buckets were empty and I had quite a pile of clay ready to be used.

My daughter (the photographer) was totally bored with the whole process and wandered off before I'd finished everything.  Not something that excites young teenagers!

From here, it was bagged up, labelled and put in an old fridge in the shed until I'm ready to make it into a few bonsai pots.

I had to pull the pug mill apart to clean it up and scrape all the clay out of the inside.  Usually you can stuff a damp cloth in the top and at the end to keep the clay soft for the next time you use it.  I've heard on the grapevine that its "desperately needed" at the clubrooms again, so its all clean ready to be returned... great not to have to get the hubby to fix it before I could use it this time too.

Coloured Aged Looking Bonsai Pots

I've been on a mission over the last 6 months to try and replicate a pot that had been made a year or two ago.

Unfortunately I don't seem to be in the habit of writing down my concoctions of washes and glazes.  It came back to bite me in the butt with this one.

You think at the time of making, that you'll remember......but it just slips away over the months, never to be remembered  again.

This is the pot, the large oval on the bottom.

Several people have tried to pry it away from me. Unsuccessfully I might add. 

The pic doesn't do it justice, it has that aged antique hard life look about it. 

I've made a few much smaller pots that have been close in appearance to it, but it wasn't until the last glaze firing that I think I've finally cracked the right recipe.

Its now written down!



 The other 4 on top of this oval are the results of the last firing - close enough I think.

Slowly but surely the shelves are getting stocked up again, they were looking a little bare after the spring repotting.

There still aren't too many ovals amongst them as they're quite time consuming to complete successfully.

You'll probably notice that I have a bit of a thing for pots with textures. So I had a bit of a play with coating clay and stretching it.

 This reminds me of the fissured bark on some bonsai trunks as it ages and stretches the outer layers of bark over the years.  This red colour will turn dark brown when fired with the recesses keeping the white colour of the clay.

This pot had a little white/buff slip mixed in while making the "crackle", it'll be interesting to see how this one turns out.

Some little accent planters with a stretched texture.  Its a shame you don't see much of it when they are turned up the right way, still enjoyable to make though.

 Finally, a few pots waiting to get their first bisque firing.   The kiln isn't big enough to hold too many of the larger pots, so it has to be a mixture of sizes to get it as full as possible.  Some pots can wait for a couple of months to get fired, it all depends on having the right space for them.





My Golden Cedar Bonsai Needs a Bit of a Thin Out

I decided to have a bit of a break from gardening and making pots a few weeks ago.(Nov 2014)

My Golden Cedar needed some of the foliage thinned out a bit.  Well actually, more than a bit.  The moss seems to have taken hold on most of the branches and branchlets.  Very little light was getting into some areas as the foliage was that thick.

It would only be a matter of time before some would get smothered and start to die off.  Truth be told, it should have been done last year.

As usual I'd already started before deciding to grab the camera.



 Its a little hard to see the silhouette of this cedar.  She is really quite wide at the moment. After struggling with the near drought conditions last year I just let it grow without nipping off or thinning any growth at all.

She is looking really healthy now, but all of the foliage is getting quite congested and untidy.  I started by thinning out the foliage quite a bit.  Very time consuming and slow work, as I was rubbing the moss off at the same time. 

 I probably  took a little too much off, but I'm in no doubt that by the end of summer (if we ever get one) it will have filled out again with just as much foliage.

 The foliage then really needed to be wired into the correct position.  However little wiring is done with this cedar as usually shaping is done mostly by pruning.

 This is the tree after I'd finished with it.  The trunk and branch structure is a little more clearer and there's plenty of room for the sun to get into most of the foliage.  The pot is way to big for it, but its the healthiest its ever been since it was potted into it 5 years ago.  Best to have a healthy tree in the wrong pot, than a sick tree in a "correct" pot!

Half a bucket later.....



Its usually a much brighter golden colour at this time of year, but because of a lack of sunshine over the spring it really hasn't coloured up as much.

She is one of my favourite trees. I salvaged her from a rubbish heap at the nursery I worked at as an apprentice many(many many) years ago.  I was just 17 at the time.  We've been though thick and thin together, sometimes I thought it was on its way out, but then it would spring back into life. 

30+ years later.....and we are still together! 

The Glaze was a bit Runny On These Bonsai Pots

Now, don't go getting the idea I have failures all the time!  Mostly things do go to plan.

It's just I'm one of few that will admit to them publicly, hoping that by sharing my mistakes/failures that someone else will learn from them.

Some potters give you the impression that everything they make is perfect, all the time, it's so not true.

My latest excitement came when I opened up the glaze firing yesterday and had another ooops moment. 

There was only a few inches of glaze left in the bucket.  It was a little thick, but I thought it would be ok.  I've put it on a little thinly in the past and ended up with a disappointing glaze colour.

This time it went on too thickly.  When the glaze melted in the high firing kiln, it decided to run off the side of the saucer and pool around the bottom.  It didn't look to bad at first glance until I went to lift it off.

There was plenty of silica sand as well as kiln wash on the shelf and it managed to stick to both layers....it wouldn't budge.  So with a bit of a yank, it lifted off.  Unfortunately the pooled areas stayed on the shelf, not the saucer.

The glaze colour was quite beautiful though, there was pinky coloured crystals on the thick area inside the saucer.  

 This saucer is ruined.  On the next shelf down the same thing had happened to a small bonsai pot.  It too pooled on the bottom of the pot.  To selvage this pot will take a lot of grinding, hardly worth it I suspect.

 

 The glaze, silica sand and the kiln wash all came off with this one.

 My daughter and her friend made a couple of wee pots and I also glazed them with the same colour.  Although I did put these on a bit of broken kiln shelf just in case. They stuck as well. 

Of interest is the fact that they all ran on the white clay.  The one heavily grogged clay pot didn't have any runs at all on it.  Which makes me wonder if the white clay body had a flux that reacted with the ingredients in the glaze to make it run a little more than usual.  Could be a combination of both I suppose. 

I must make a note of that for the next batch of glaze that needs to be made.  Along with all the "extras" I've put in that weren't in the original recipe.  I'm sure there's a note somewhere, just got to find it.



A Weekend Out Potting in the Garage

Being a long Labour weekend, I thought it was  a great idea to get out in the garage and make a few pots. The shelves were looking a little empty after a visit from the Dunedin Bonsai Society a few weeks ago.

I'd made a couple of larger crescent pots during the month and they're slowly drying.  Perhaps I should say, shrinking slowly, I  suspect they may now not be big enough for what they're intended for. 

 While I like the shape of this one, I'm not particularly happy with the feet.  Its incredibly hard to turn the crescent over and attach any type of foot without putting too much stress on the leather hard clay.  If the feet are too far back/or forward it wont sit properly.  The very small ones look ok with feet though 

   

 I personally prefer them without "feet".  Some will say that you have to have feet to raise them up off the ground so the water can drain out the holes - yes quite rightly.  But 3 or 4 discretely placed stones underneath will do the same job.  You can adjust the size of the stones to match the angle you want the pot on....really easy.

Sometimes I do make little feet and add them on with araldite glue after firing.

Clumsy looking feet can spoil the hole look of a crescent pot in my opinion.

Here's a couple more examples of pots without feet....look so much better 

When they are still reasonably soft you can flatten out the bottom and they will sit nicely without falling over.

I'm wanting to make some larger crescents and am about to go fossicking around the second hand shops next week to try and find a larger round shape that I can use to help support the clay when they're being made.   Hmmm... be interesting to see what I can find.

I found an old bonsai pot mold yesterday that had been stored at the back of one of the sheds for ages.  Yes, I thought I'd give it a go as I hadn't used it in a few years.  Now I know why it was put there.

Some people are happy to use them, yes you can make lots of pots, all exactly the same size, but there's no enjoyment at all in it - not for me anyway.  By the time I'd rolled out the slab of clay, spent over an hour just getting it pressed into the mold properly, making sure everything is the same even thickness, no bumpy bits, shaving bits off etc, I was well and truly over it. 

I'd used too much grog in the clay, so the pot was never going to have a smooth surface.  So I got my trusty old "scoring comb" (an old head lice comb cut in half) and proceeded to rough it up.  It's certainly not your traditional smooth looking pot now, but as I'll be using it myself it doesn't really matter. 

Give me the potters wheel any day!  You can be creative, make different shapes and sizes and basically do whatever you like. 

I've had some people say that I should be making vases, mugs, jugs etc, not just "planters" as they call them.  My reply is usually the same - "but I don't want to make anything else but bonsai pots", what's the use of making something that doesn't interest or appeal to you?

I suspect there are quite a few people out there that are doing things because others expect it of them and its what everyone else does.  I have a lot of respect for those who are doing something a little away from the norm and different.....its not easy. 

 Once again I've had to bring some pots inside to help the drying along.  I'm getting used to the rolling of the eyes and "not again!" comments from the family.

Spring has Sprung

No doubt about it, in the bonsai world spring has arrived.

My larch now have little green buds the size of a match head.  My hawthorn have little green shoots bursting out -now too late for repotting (same problem last year).

A quiet realisation that I hadn't even started my repotting this year hit me.

The first plan of attack was to repot my deciduous trees first, only the ones that needed it.....which is most of them.

I had some "peaty' potting mix left, so decided to do the alders, oaks, dawn redwoods, swamp cypress etc. From experience most trees that loves moisture tends to thrive in a peaty mix.

I was a bit shocked to see the root growth on this dawn redwood.  The roots had grown out the bottom of the pot and anchored themselves firmly into the bark chips.  Hunting for moisture no doubt.

I have a love/hate relationship with this tree.  It loves to grow upward, and I hate wiring it down again.  It struggled a bit last year with the dryness.  That side root has to come off too, its not feeding anything up top.

Its reasonably large, so there's usually a bit of grunting and groaning going on during the lifting and repotting.

The roots had circled the bottom of the pot many times over, this was all cut off, it filled the paint bucket. Hmm....should have made more effort to do it last year.

This alder struggled with the dryness last year as well, its quite huge, so I decided to pot it into a much larger oval pot.  This is a beautiful tree, its leaves have slowly reduced down in size over the years.  Hopefully with this repot it wont suddenly decide that it wants its bigger leaves back.

Once again I hadn't taken a "finished" photo.  But it did look a bit more in proportion with this larger pot.

After walking past some yellowing pines all afternoon, I decided it was their time for a bit of a shakeup.

This is what greeted me when I prized the pot off.  Absolutely wonderful!!  All that michorizza (not sure how you spell it), its got to be a good thing.

I mixed quite a bit of this in with the potting mixture.

The white tips of the roots are the growing tips.  It was a shame that some of them had to get trimmed off, but it needed done.  The pines were starting to have that hungry yellowish look about the foliage.  There weren't any new buds appearing, so hopefully this repot will kick start some much needed vigour into them.

All happily done and back to their shelf, hopefully that yellow tinge will disappear shortly.

 I must mention the main tool I use when I start repotting.

Mixing the pumice etc in with the store bought potting mix is a bit of a chore when its done in a bucket.  You have to keep stopping what you're doing and make up new mix's all the time.

Hubby thought I'd gone a bit strange when I spotted an old hand concrete mixer on trademe a few years back.  They were selling it as a garden ornament...... not likely, I had a use for it!

It's brilliant, I can make up 3 pain buckets of bonsai mix in it, and get my daily exercise as well. No mucking about with motors/electricity/noise etc.

 Another added feature is the automatic iron addition setting.  What's that you may ask?
Well, its fairly rusty inside and as you turn it, little bits of rust splinter off the sides into the mix.

There's still a few days repotting left to go....mostly the larger ones, but the beauty of bonsai means that it can perhaps wait until next year.

My Bonsai Pots For Sale, Proudly Made In New Zealand