Glad it's over

A difficult week, a great conversation, a full kiln and looking forward to a much needed break

On Friday, July 3rd, my husband had a procedure to remove a kidney stone. It wasn’t his first and it was not supposed to be a big deal. By all accounts, the procedure had been successful, the stone pulverised and the kidneys “washed” of any debris. He came home and we expected a speedy recovery.

Ten days, two visits to the ER and a new procedure later, he is finally recovering. Needless to say neither of us has slept much recently and everything else was demoted to unimportant while we tried to figure out why he was still in so much pain.

And so I do not have a new letter to send you, but when I saw that Monique Mulligan published our conversation a few days ago, I thought it would be perfect to share it here too.

Monique is one of the first people I “met” here on Substack and her being literally on the other side of the world hasn’t stopped us from exchanging snail-mail postcards, letters and handmade treasures, and it’s always a treat when I find one of her missives in the mailbox.

So I was happy (and terrified) when she invited me to answer some questions for her series Prose & Convos. There is even a recording of me reading an excerpt from something I wrote a while back for Emily Charlotte Powell’s Because Creativity.¹ I hope you enjoy reading our conversation — you’ll find the link below:

Prose & Convos #8

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On the 20th, I will be going to Portugal for a few days. Before then, I am glazing and firing the kiln one more time. Mostly, it will be workshop pieces, but I am also firing some small bowls, some pendants, and the two large bowls with the abstract designs. Because it will be a low temperature firing (to 1080 ºC) I will not be firing everything you see in the picture above; the mugs and tumblers will have to wait to be fired at 1150 ºC, which will likely not happen any time soon (likely late September)… There is also a large platter which was a commission I can’t believe I actually managed to finish on time given all that has been going on. It’s not exactly something I would make on my own but I am happy with the results and it was interesting having some constraints to work with. As it is a commission, I will need to ask if I can share it, but hopefully they will agree and I will be able to show it to you next time.

Also before I leave, I am running a shop-wide sale on Etsy — click here to save 25% on all pieces! Sale ends July 18th at midnight (CET).

some of the pieces available on my Etsy shop

Summer is not my favourite time of the year — and this one has so far been particularly challenging — but I am hoping for much calmer, restful and peaceful days ahead. I wish the same to you, wherever you are in the world.

As always, thank you so much for reading and I will see you next time.

Sara

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1. You can read the full text here or wait until I decide to turn it into a full post ;).