One More Piece of Good News!

The "replacement lid" that I made to take the place of the one that I broke the handle off of came out of the bisque fire and is exactly the right size to fit the cannister.  I'll probably never be able to pull that off again, so I figured I better share now.

Back Home Again

After spending the better part of the last 3 weeks traveling (first to grade Advanced Placement Calculus exams in Kansas City, MO and then to the beach in Florida for a week), I am home and returned to the studio today.  While I was gone last week, there was a glaze fire.  I had several pieces in this one, so I brought home a big ole box of pottery with me today.   The picture below is all the things that are mine.

The sort of light green piece on the far left of the picture is the piece that I was working on in my last blog post.  I am pretty pleased by how this looks now that it is finished.  In addition to the sets of mugs that I made when I was working on pulling handles (and I need to do that again soon to see if I still can...), there are some new pieces.  I made some candle holders (left side in front of the "belly out" piece).  I'd never done candle holders before.  It was fun! 

I have a special order that I started working on today.  The small tan and green dish in the front of this picture (and the other 3 that are shaped the same way) were the test run for some pieces that I am making for Cleveland Community College.  That's a long story and I'll spare you the details for now.  I made 6 of those this morning.  I'll put handles on those and probably throw 6 more tomorrow sometime.  Then I figure I'll do 6 more in another day or so to fill the order for 15 pieces (with 3 extras just in case something happens).  Today's throwing was sandwiched between the early morning lifting and running and the mid day swim, so I was tired by the time I got home.  We'll see how much longer I'm able to keep up this pace.  

Belly Out

It is good to have a friend who is a journalist.  She remembers to take pictures when I don't.  Thanks to Megan (once again) for sending me a cool picture to include here. 

So what am I doing in this photo?  First of all, I feel compelled to point out that I am wearing shorts.  They just don't show much under my apron.  As for the pottery, this is that last couple of pounds of clay from a bag that had been open for a while.  It was kind of hard and difficult to work with, so I thought I'd just see what I could make it do.  

In this picture, I am using a stick to "belly out."  

From www.thefreedictionary.com   Verb1.belly out - swell out or bulge out 

I started with a cylinder and left the walls kind of thick.  I choked the top in to keep the opening small.  This was to be sure that I could close in the top when I was done.  Then, since the opening at the top was too small for my hand, I used a throwing stick to push the clay out while the wheel turned.  This stretches the clay and after a few passes creates a wide, round "belly" in the pot.  In this particular case, I wasn't able to stretch the clay very far.  I'd hoped to make something almost globe shaped, but the walls started to rupture.  I "saved' the pot by using a metal rib to compress the clay and fix the sides where the problems were beginning.  

Then, I choked the top in a little bit more and pulled that extra clay up to make sort of a spout at the top.  I  flared it out a little bit to make it prettier, and decided that I'd done what I could with that lump of clay.  The result is heavier than I'd like since I wasn't able to stretch out the belly as far as I'd hoped.  I will try to remember to take a picture tomorrow to show what the end piece looks like.