Creek Road Pottery LLC Newsletter – June 7th, 2026-
Hello from rural Pennsylvania, where the solar controller is sitting on the shelf, the blueberry bushes are freed from their vines, and the wood kiln is standing out in the yard waiting patiently for me to get back to it. June arrived fast and the studio has been quieter than I’d like while the factory takes up the working days, but the projects are moving forward slowly and the plan is holding together somewhat. This newsletter covers the last few weeks at Creek Road Pottery, from a stranger in the driveway with a missing wheel to the first piece of a solar system that is going to matter a great deal by winter.
The thread running through all of it is the same one it always is. Doing a little more so you depend on others a little less, preparing quietly before the bad times arrive, and keeping the work in front of you so it doesn’t go out of mind. Some weeks that looks like throwing pots. Some weeks it looks like buying oil filters and reading about solar controllers. It all counts. Here is the full report.
The Spring Cleaning List
The pottery needs a deep clean and I have finally admitted that in writing, which is at least a start. In a perfect world I would pull everything out of the space, set it all outside, deep clean from top to bottom, and allow only what is necessary back in. There is clay to reprocess, shelving to clear and wipe down, and a floor that needs a proper mopping once everything is moved off it. I also have my father’s Wheel Horse tractor running now, which means I can haul the remaining kiln bricks up to the kiln site and clear out the area in front of the pottery shed that has been collecting things it was never meant to collect.
The cry pile is also getting dealt with this season. Some makers bury their shards but that creates problems for the next landowner and for any animal unlucky enough to find them underfoot. My plan is to break everything up, box it, tape it, and put it in the dumpster where it belongs. The sun porch is also on the list, cleaned out, shelved properly for the camping gear, and turned into a space for starting garden plants and sitting out the late fall watching the scenery we have here. I may not get to all of it until fall. But the list is written down now, which means it’s a plan and not just a worry.
The Day the Wheel Fell Off
I met two goals on a recent day off and then a stranger drove into my yard missing a back tire. The goals were buying the solar controller and getting the yard trimmed up, blueberry bushes included, which had been taken over by vines and needed a good clearing out. I got sunburned doing the trimming and took a cold drink break and was heading back out to clean up the branches when I heard the crash. A truck came up the driveway on three tires. The driver asked to use my phone since there is no cell service way out here, and it turned out whoever put his tires on hadn’t torqued down the lug nuts. They all came loose on a six-hour drive from Ohio and the wheel just fell right off on the way to a gas pad job.
We jacked the truck up together in the hot sun and found a few old lug nuts rattling around in his truck bed that were enough to get the tire back on the good spots of the rim. We got a few laughs out of it considering how it could have gone. He drove six hours with loose lug nuts and made it to my driveway, which is about as lucky as it gets. It was one of those afternoons that reminds you people are mostly decent when things go sideways, and that living somewhere quiet and remote means sometimes you are the only help available. I was glad to be there and glad the old lug nuts were in his truck and not in the ditch.
Out There Waiting
The wood kiln is standing out in the yard and I can see it from the driveway when I get home from the factory in the morning. I put it where I did on purpose. If it were out of sight it would go out of mind, and that would be a real loss. I am halfway through a stretch of long night shifts and looking forward to time off when I can get back to throwing pots and cleaning the studio. I need to pick up a few bags of sand to mix with fire clay for the slurry between the bricks in the arch, and after the arch comes the chimney. I have felt guilty talking more about kiln building than doing it, but the last few months of getting finances sorted quietly made space for everything coming next.
The rocket kilns are still on the list and taking shape in my mind. I have old bricks from the deconstructed kiln floor that will become the burn tunnels for kilns sitting on cinder blocks. The rocket kiln works like a rocket stove, a J-shaped structure where wood goes in the front and the kiln sits on top of the other end. For the entry point I plan to use high-temp ceramic bisqued bowls I threw myself with the bottoms cut out, sealed up with fire clay and sand for a good draw. Since I fire all updrafts here the rocket kilns will be updrafts too. I will build one first, learn what it does, and build the others from there. The whole build will be documented here for paid subscribers. For now the kiln stands out there in the yard. It will be there when I get back.
You Don’t Need Their Permission
Good work doesn’t need an audience to be good. A pot that holds water holds water whether anyone praises it or not. A well-thrown bowl with a good foot and an honest glaze is what it is whether it sells at the first show or sits on the shelf for two years. The quality lives in the object. The opinion lives in the person looking at it. Those are two separate things and keeping them separate matters more than most potters talk about. The trouble starts when you make work in order to be told it’s good rather than because you believe it is. That’s when the measuring stick moves outside yourself and gets handed to someone who wasn’t in the studio, wasn’t there for the early morning sessions, and gets a few seconds to form an opinion about something you spent hours on.
That’s a bad trade. Simon Leach didn’t spend fifty years at the wheel because every firing got a standing ovation. Most of the pots made over a lifetime nobody ever sees. The work gets made because making it is the point. That’s the standard worth chasing, not the approval of a crowd but the honest judgment of your own hands and your own eye, built slowly over years of showing up. Make the work. Assess it honestly. Learn what it’s teaching you. Set it on the shelf and move on to the next one. If someone recognizes it for what it is, good. If they don’t, the pot is still what it is. You were the one in the studio. You already know if it’s good.
Your First Pots
Everybody’s first pots are terrible, and that is the most encouraging thing I can tell you. The first time you sit at a wheel the clay has no idea who you are and no interest in cooperating. You push and it goes somewhere you didn’t intend. You try to center it and it wobbles. You pull the walls up and they go thin in one spot and thick in another and then the whole thing folds over and you’re left with a lump that looks roughly like what you started with, only wetter and more discouraging. That is not failure. That is the beginning of an education. The first pots teach you things no book and no video can teach ahead of time. They teach you how clay actually feels under pressure in your specific hands with your specific amount of force on that specific day, and they teach you that sitting with frustration long enough usually gets you somewhere the frustration alone never could.
Keep your first pots if you can. Put them somewhere you can see them. In five years they will be the most honest record you have of where you started, and looking at them will show you something that praise and sales never quite will. They will show you exactly how far your hands have come. Don’t try to make a good pot the first time. Try to make a pot. Any pot. Something that holds its shape long enough to come off the wheel in one piece. Make fifty of them before you decide whether pottery is for you, because the first ten are just introductions. The clay was here before you sat down and it will be here after. It has time. You don’t. So it will be important to keep coming back to try. Life if far to short not to. Below is my first pouring vessel from Bill Tersteeg’s Ceramics II at Keystone Jr. College, Spring 1996.
The Solar Controller Arrived
The first piece of the solar system is on the shelf and the project is officially underway. I saved up overtime money to buy the Victron Energy SmartSolar MPPT TR Solar Charge Controller with Bluetooth, 150 volt, 60 amp, 12/24/36/48 volt. The box was heavy when it arrived and opening it felt like the kind of moment a long savings stretch deserves. This controller will connect four solar panels to four batteries on the pottery shed roof. I have no prior experience with solar and plan to learn the controller while I save for the next components, one piece at a time, which is the only way I know how to do anything.
The batteries are next. I am looking at the WattCycle 12V 280Ah LiFePO4 batteries with Bluetooth, which are among the best available for solar storage and priced accordingly. They will need to go either in an insulated container with a heating pad for below-zero weather or down in the basement, and I am still working out which makes more sense. The goal is to have the panels here by August, the system running by October, and at least a partial energy offset in place before winter arrives and the grid costs go where they seem to be heading. Creating and storing my own energy here at the pottery feels like the right move and the numbers back it up. The controller is on the shelf. The rest is coming.
Thank you for following along and supporting Creek Road Pottery. Every comment, visit, and bit of encouragement makes the long hours worth it. Be sure to keep making work that matters for the people who care.
Until next time,
Alford Wayman
Artist/ Owner
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