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Sunday 23 June 2013

WEDDING OF THE YEAR

Hello everyone

How disappointing the weather has been again this week.  We had fingers, paws and even eyes crossed for most of the week hoping that the sun would shine on Saturday for our eldest nephew's wedding.  Sadly, the sun didn't shine, but neither did the forecast rain fall - thank goodness for that.  The dark clouds threatened the arrival of rain throughout the day, but we think someone had put a very, very big umbrella over the church and reception venue.  The wedding was lovely and I have added a few photographs below.  The reception was held at beautiful Wimpole Hall in Royston and as often happens with weddings (and sadly often funerals) it was good to catch up with family members who we had not seen for a long time.


The bride and groom, Sarah and Simon.  Sarah's dress was a gorgeous creamy colour with a long train.  The front of her dress was covered in beads.  


The lovely car that Sarah and Simon travelled in from the church to the reception.


Wimpole Hall, Royston.  The estate was given to the National Trust in 1976 by the daughter (Mrs Bambridge) of Rudyard Kipling.


A photograph of the partere at Wimpole Hall - sadly, not a lot of colour, but lots of great planting schemes.


I couldn't resist taking a photograph of a beautifully shaped laurel tree - oh, how, I wish I could do that with the massive bush that is over-hanging one of the boundaries in our garden.

No card makes to show this week, but I do have a couple of pictures of one of the pottery pieces I completed recently:



I had been waiting a long time for this to be fired.  I wanted it done at 1140 degrees and because this is not often used, I had to wait until a kiln-full of pottery was ready for firing.  My reason for choosing this temperature was that I wanted to maintain as near as possible the colour of the brown and yellow slip I had used for the trickle decoration.  A firing at 1250 degrees would have changed the yellow to a wishy-washy cream and the brown to a much darker colour.  

Unfortunately, and very disappointingly, whilst being fired or placed in the kiln, silica sand had dropped onto my dish from the shelf above.  This had created several rough/scruffy patches and although I tried to remove them by lightly sanding them, I abandoned this as it was scratching the glaze.  However, I am pleased with this piece and will give it another go using similar techniques and make sure this time around that I leave a note requesting care be taken when placing it in the kiln.

Over to Handmade Monday now as it is time to catch up with everyone's 'doings' for the week - don't forget to have a look as there are always great blogs to catch up on.  I will be back next weekend, Milly will be here on Wednesday and in the meantime if you would like to be a guest blogger here, please do get in touch on christmaspiecrafts@virginmedia.com.

Have a great week and let's hope the sun shines sometime soon.

Jill

18 comments:

  1. what gorgeous wedding pics! i'm glad the rain held off despite the lack of sun.

    your pottery dish is fab! i love the definition of the two colours... well done for knowing all that about firing temps, it made all the difference! x

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  2. Well it was good that no rain fell on the happy couple - they were lucky given the weird 'summer' weather we are experiencing. I didn't know the temperature of the kiln affected the colours of the object, interesting! it looks a lovely dish anyway on my screen!

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  3. Wimpole Hall is a beautiful Place and not over far from me. I's good that the weather stayed dry for you all.
    Your dish is lovely, I think it would look really good with fir cones in as a centre piece.

    Wishing you a great week

    Jan x

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  4. What a lovely place for the wedding reception

    Disappointing for you with the firing - that seems to be the way with pottery, you never quite know what will happen.
    They look good in the pics though!

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  5. What an original dish! For some reason it makes me think of ice cream...it's got to be good right?!

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  6. The wedding pics look lovely - congratulations to the bride and groom - and at least the rain stayed off! The pottery looks really good x

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  7. You were lucky with the rain. It was our carnival day yesterday and we got very wet at one point - Wimpole is only half an hour away from us! What a lovely place to get married. Your bowl reminds me of an ice cream!! Yum.

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  8. Lovely wedding photos, and your pottery looks so nice. The shape sort of reminds me of an oyster shell, and the colours have worked really well.

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  9. I love the colours on your pottery, shame about the sand.

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  10. What a delightful place for the wedding. The pictures look lovely.

    Your bowl is so unusual. It certainly was worth waiting for the firing as the colours really do stand out xx

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  11. The wedding photos look wonderful, despite the weather, as does your pottery, despite the sand. The design works well in your chosen colours too!
    Wendy x

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  12. Lovely wedding photos. I like your bowl too - and how clever to understand what the temperature does to it

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  13. The wedding photos love lovely, as does the pottery. I love the trickle decoration on it.

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  14. Thanks for the sharing the gorgeous wedding pics. I am inspired by the shaped laurel.

    The pottery looks pretty good to me x.

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  15. Beautiful pottery Jill, I never knew that about the colours, it's so pretty and looks like ice cream, glad the rain held off for you xxx

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  16. I'm glad the rain stayed off for the wedding. What a shame your dish was spoiled, but then does it not just add 'character'? ! Its a lovely piece anyway!

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  17. The pottery is lovely! But I think the bride upstaged your work this week. She is radiant!

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