Each summer, the members of the Craft Council Clay Studio hold a beach firing, where they fire an astounding array of pottery pieces in a huge pit at Middle Cove Beach. Some are wrapped in seaweed and all are left to the amazing vagaries of smoke and fire for several hours.

It’s a fabulous time and a great fund-raiser put off by a truly devoted team who manage to pull the massive project together with panache.

This year it happened to occur on the first day of summer, August 13. Yes, technically summer does start much earlier and under normal conditions, this would be approaching the end of the summer, but this year has been a normal year weather-wise. Somehow (and I’m not asking what was sacrificed or to which deity), they managed to finagle the best day of the summer thus far!

Here are some shots I snapped quickly:

And here’s what I bought:

I brought it home, set it in the living room, and turned my back for not even a minute and what happened?

How DO they get themselves into these messes?