Ah! Summer!

It is summer time now, so I am not good about staying in routines.  I think this probably helps balance out the rest of the year when I am scheduled every second of every day.  At least this is what I say to myself to justify my lack of direction, lack of discipline, and general laziness these days.  Riiiiight.

I have been in the studio working some (even though I have not been good about updating my blog).  The soup mugs that I made as a special request have been glaze fired and much to my surprise, the "red" glaze ended up being a very nice shade of brown.  NOT what we were looking for at all.  So I'm going to send them through another glaze fire to see if the color will change.  If not, oh well.  That's how it goes sometimes.

I've thrown a possible replacement for the cannister lid that self destructed the other week.  We shall see if it will fit after it is bisque fired.  Getting the size right is tricky when one of the pieces has already dried and fired once.

I've also made a number of other mugs.  I had someone ask about what mugs I had for sale not long ago and I realized that I really didn't have much.  So three sets of 4 mugs later, I will have some to look at!  (Well more like 2 sets of 4 and one set of 3 since I managed to poke a hole in the bottom of one....can we say too thin on the bottom?)  I'm experimenting with a new mug shape and continue to work on pulling handles.  The shape of a pulled handle I think works better with the new mug shape.  My husband Jeff stopped by one day while I was working on some of them and commented that the 3 mugs I had lined up looked like 3 Mile Island.  Those of you who are old enough to know what this means can now visualize what these mugs look like.

In other news, I am happy to report that I continue to not drive my car into the kiln that is sitting in my garage.  This is a good thing but I worry every time I park the car.  I still really want to use my new wheel.  If I get the guts to do it, I might just bring some clay home and do a little throwing here at the house.  A concern over the lack of pounding board (in other words, no place to work up clay) is causing me to pause.  Well, that and the fact that there is so much other work to do here.  It works so much better for me to go someplace else.  I am so easily distracted here.  There's the yard, the garden, the dog, the cats, the horses all clamoring for my attention when I am here.  Ok, so the dog mostly just sleeps nearby, but there is always tons that needs doing here.  Yes, I need to leave so that I can focus on pottery.

That reminds me.  I need to go let the horses out. They've probably finished their breakfast by now!

Disaster!

Sometimes bad things happen even when you are careful.  The lid on the largest of the 3 cannisters that I made a while back self destructed while I was getting it ready to glaze last night.

I must not have attached the handle on the top of that lid very well.  I had just dipped the lid in hot wax to coat the bottom edge (to keep glaze off the part that would be in contact with the shelf in the kiln when it is fired) and was holding it over the wax to drip when it let go.  SPLASH!   Into the wax went the lid.  It didn't break when it fell which is a good thing, but wax went everywhere.

Sometimes things just don't go the way I plan.  My first reaction is still to trash the offending piece, but I am learning (with Allen's help) to salvage things.  It is difficult to think about throwing away a piece that already has so many hours of time invested in it.

So I now must go to plan B on that cannister set.  First of all, the "broken" lid will need to be re-bisqued to remove the wax from the places I didn't want it.  Then I'll probably have to fire the handle separate from the lid and try to re-attach it afterward. This also means that I need to do something different with the glaze than I originally planned.  I have some time to consider that since I won't be glazing this until after the next bisque fire.

*SIGH*

Perhaps tomorrow will be a better day.

Beautiful Weekend

This weekend was just about perfect.  Saturday was a good day to be in uptown Shelby.  With the Arts on the Square, the opening day of the Foothills Farmers Market, and the Merry Go Round Festival all happening, there were lots of people around.

I threw eight mugs in the morning and then let them sit for a while I strolled the court square.  Jeff and I visited with friends, admired some cool artwork, and ate some really good hot dogs.  Because the weather was so nice, by the time we got back to the studio, the mugs were dry enough to attach handles.  It isn't often that I can get 8 mugs done start to finish in the same day.