there's no place like home

That ran through my head a couple of times at the farmer's market Saturday.  I've been absent from the market for several weeks because of the shows I was doing.  It was quite the project getting set up again and I feel very lucky we have a building so I don't have set up and tear down every time. Business was great, which I was amazing because of the complete disarray my stuff was in.  People were buying before I was even 10 percent set up.  One couple asked if I had honey jars, which I hadn't unpacked yet.  I managed to find one pretty quick and was going to look for the other one I knew I had, but they said they were happy with the first one.  Decisive.  I like that.
I do have my slow days at the market. Wish I could predict those so I could just stay home and work.  It was completely unexpected that I would have such a good day in the middle of that setting up mess.  Nice welcome back.
Here's some vases from the last firing.  Same shape, different glazes-

I have another of this glaze combo at the market. Something I noticed when I looked at the  Harvest Moon show pictures was the dominance of decorative pieces.  I very much appreciate functional pottery and hadn't realized I was leaning so much into the decorative area until seeing those pictures.

Ahhh......Weathered Bronze.  I have a customer who wanted to see more pieces made in this glaze so I'll put these aside for him.  This is a very strong glaze and is not appropriate for just anything.  I lined these vases in a clear glossy glaze for easier cleaning and to make sure of the seal.  I am still learning with this glaze.  Every glaze has it's special characteristics:  how it acts where it breaks over texture, what it looks like where it's thin or thick, and how it reacts when it overlaps with other glazes or coloring oxides.

Focus, focus.  It seems I focused on the Japanese Lanterns and not the vase.  The Japanese Lanterns are very worthy so that's O.K.   These lanterns are a couple of years old but since I store them in a dark place when fall is over they retain their color pretty well.
Nice turquoise glaze.  I'm always thinking of phasing it out, though. Looks very anemic if applied thin, tends to crawl it it's  the slightest bit thick.  Customers like it, which makes the phasing out thing difficult.

I neglected my etsy shop all summer.  Mostly, I was unhappy with my photos so I let a bunch of stuff expire.  I did experiment with a different photography set-up but wasn't especially pleased with that, either.  I'll probably never be completely satisfied with my pictures.  I'm thinking of eventually taking it in a different direction:  I'd been kicking around the idea of carrying only decorative items instead of functional in my shop even before seeing this little trend in my show pictures.  I do have a number of non-functional items listed already.  Anyway, whether functional or non-functional, I've started the slow process of getting it repopulated.