Who Makes All This Stuff??

It seems like every weekend lately I have had a ton of pots to glaze.  Here's a "before" shot. 

And an "in progress" shot.  Glazing would be so much simpler if I could use ONE color.  Alas, I cannot.

And this is what my jeans always look like after a morning of glazing.  

And I made a few things too.

These mugs will be for The Copper Rock.  I managed to get handles on all of them Saturday, but it was a struggle.  With the rain, they had not dried as much as they should have before I attached handles.

In class this week, Ron showed me a couple of ways to make oval (and square) bakers.  In each method, you start by throwing a round baking dish.  He demonstrated three different ways to change the shape.  In one, the potter cuts out a small leaf shaped piece of clay from the bottom and then presses in on the sides until the hole is closed up.  I tried this several times and it did not work for me.  I couldn't get the sides to move in enough to close the hole without completely destroying the walls of the pot.  Ugh.  

The second method involves cutting a slit several inches long at the bottom of the side just where it connects to the bottom, moving the "straight" sides in, reattaching the wall, and removing the extra bottom that is sticking out.  (I know how confusing that sounds.  I seriously need a photographer to take pictures of hard to explain things when I am working.)  That's what I did to make this piece.   

  

 In the third method, the potter uses a board or something similar to press in on the walls to change the shape of the pot.  I had some problems with the clay sticking to the board.  I found that one of the small square bats worked better than the piece of wood that I used first.  Sliding the bat off the pot rather than pulling it away was also more successful.   I managed to do this on a piece that I made this morning.  I'll share pictures of it later.  I'm going to take that piece with me to class this week and will put handles on it there if all goes well.