I like to make things, not clean them up. Where's the fun in that? The problem is that clay is messy. When clay dries, it creates a lot of dust. Dusty footprints were being tracked from the studio into the kitchen, (my kids like to poke around the studio barefoot). My bucket of scrap clay is overflowing and needs to be re-worked. Not to mention, the spiders have been having a hay day (or maybe a spinning group has formed). Point is, the dungeon needs scouring and tending to.
Progress is being made. I've given the floor a good mopping. I've swept away the cob webs. And, I've gotten down and dirty with the angle grinder. The kiln shelves had been terribly neglected, allowed to gather drops of glaze and residue from many firings. Glaze becomes glass at the temperatures to which I fire and it takes some serious grinding to get to the bottom of it. This is supposed to be avoided with a layer of kiln wash brushed onto each shelf, but mine wasn't applied properly, (the problem was either that the brush I used was leaching into the wash, or that I had the wrong proportions of kaolin to alumina.) This time I hope to have better success. 
I made a couple of the moorish design boxes last week and am excited to fire them, now that I'm getting the studio back into shape. Creating is so much more fun!
