Three ‘raiders’ were here yesterday. This time Eric was joined by Renée Van Halm and Monique Fouquet. Alan was over in Victoria to be the External Examiner at a thesis defence at UVic so there were just four of us to have lunch together here.

While I worked on getting a couple of jugbirds painted with my usual slips Eric painted his oval plates with underglazes. I had prepared two with background slips, yellow and turquoise. His third plate, with white background, is to be a wedding gift.

Monique chose to work on a couple of the new squarish plates. Her drawings are almost monochrome. I think they’ll look spectacular when fired.

The trio had to leave at 2pm so Renee didn’t have time to finish her four pieces to her satisfaction. So they’ll have to wait for another firing, and I’d better get my act together to get lots more work done to avoid firing my next kiln half empty! But already there’s another ‘raid’ scheduled for mid-July. As long as I can find time to get slab plates made up for them I don’t mind the group coming here to work.

Renee has an idea for another plate shape. I’m waiting for drawings about that. And Eric wants a now-extinct Vancouver Mynah bird!

While Alan was delivering a box of eight more jugbirds to Eclectic Gallery in Oak Bay today I had a useful day here in my studio. I finished painting another bird and then carefully packed my jolly Rainbow Lorikeet jugbird ready for mailing to Australia. That felt like a special moment, and I hope Christine of Queensland will enjoy her new water jug in a couple of weeks.