See the casseroles?  I made these last week. 

It was a very busy weekend last weekend, so I didn't have time to do much pottery making.  I managed to throw a few mugs and went back on Sunday afternoon to get handles on them.  Jeff and I had been gone most of the day on Saturday, so Lady dog was left alone.  To make it up to her, I took her with me on Sunday afternoon thinking that she might enjoy some time with me hanging out.  But no.  Lady hates the pottery studio for some reason.  

She stood by the door whimpering.

If I talked to her, she gave me this look.

I brought her into the work area, tied her leash to my wheel so she couldn't get in trouble, and she did this.  

Finally I gave up.  The mugs were too wet to attach handles (and were still on the soft side Tuesday afternoon when I went back to try again - very, very weird).  I unloaded the kiln, and there wasn't much else that I could do.  

I did get these mugs which turned out nice after being re-fired.  I really like how the specks in the clay showed up.

Like I said, since Lady was so miserable, I took her for a walk.  She LOVES to walk and was finally happy. 

Smart dog.  It was a very nice afternoon and it would have been a shame to miss out on it.

I Made It!

Continuing the "Will-the-Masks-Get-Done-In-Time-For-the-October-Windows" story...

My friends at the gallery all pitched in and glazed everything they could so we could fire a glaze fire.  (Thank you to Allen, Gail, and Lisa!) I got the message that all was ready for me to load and fire on Thursday afternoon as I was getting ready for the Art Walk.  Correction - I was at the studio but I was about to go watch the Shelby High School Homecoming Parade.  The parade is always in Uptown Shelby the Thursday afternoon before the Homecoming Football game.  I left work in time to get myself parked and to meet my grandchildren for the parade.  I got some love, we danced to the marching band, and we waved at my students who were riding in the parade.  All in all, a good time.  It was all over in plenty of time for me to get set up and organized for the Art Walk.  I even had time to eat a bite so I didn't pass out from hunger.

The crowd for the Art Walk was not as big as we'd had before.  I think the weather kept people home.  Or everyone was at the Cleveland County Fair.  I only had three visitors, but that was really OK. I had a chance to actually talk to everyone and I got some good work done.

First off, I loaded the kiln.  Then I threw a few things.  Texture was the focus of the evening - for mugs, three bowls, and one thing that was going to be a bowl but ended up more like a vase.  I'm really not sure what that is.  I liked the shape, so I quit messing with it.

At the end of the night, I started the kiln.  When I checked on it a little before 9 am the next morning, it was still REALLY hot.  Notice the glow under the lid and the temperature reading on the computer.  It took a little longer to fire this time, but I think that was probably because I packed it pretty tight. 

So all day on Friday, I kept checking to see if it was cooled down enough to open.  Normally I don't feel particular stress about getting stuff out, but I had to have those masks to the gallery on Saturday and there was still a little work to do to finish them after firing.  

Finally on Saturday morning, things were cool enough to unload.  Here's what I saw when I opened the lid.  

The top layer wasn't as tightly packed as the next couple were.  Obviously not everything pictured here is mine.  

This is a lot of mugs!  Again, not all mine.  I only had 22 mugs in this fire.  Only 22.  Who says that?  But yes, I had made 22 mugs over the past few weeks.  Almost everything blue in this shot is mine.  

Here are the rest of my mugs and the two masks.  They survived the firing!  Yay!  Both masks lived, so I got them finished up.  

First with wires in the back for hanging

Then a little hot glue to attach some leaves to one.

And the finished masks!

This might be interesting....

Here's the before (you saw this shot last week).

And the after for all the mugs that were mine.

Floating blue, variegated base blue, somekyndabaloo, and falls creek blue chino.

There were some other nice pieces (I thought) in this firing...

Utensil holders/vases

Pitchers 

I'm really liking the blue one on the left!  The textured ones are nice too.  They turned out as expected.  The blue one I wasn't sure about.

Lidded jars 

In all the waiting around for things to cool, I made a couple of platters.  

One with a lizard

One with a frog

And I finished the mugs and bowls from Thursday night. 

What? October Is THIS Week?

(NOTICE: I still use two spaces after the end of a sentence.  If you are offended by this, you should have stopped reading already.)

Remember those masks that I started a couple of weeks ago?  Well, here they are getting glazed.  The nose fell of the one on the left.  I decided that I liked it just fine nose-less.  Looks a little like Voldemort, yes?

I realized last Wednesday that the end of September was right here.  Then I remembered that the first of October usually follows the end of September.  Every year this happens.  At that point, the masks that I need to have finished and at the gallery by Oct 3 were not even bisque fired.  Allen is a wonderful man and didn't even give me the lack-of-planning-on-your-part-does-not-constitute-an-emergency-on-my-part lecture.  Instead, he helped me out by getting a bisque loaded and ready for me to fire on Thursday afternoon.  It was cool enough to unload by Friday evening, and I glazed everything that I had over the weekend.  He also encouraged me to leave glaze-encouraging notes for the other potters working in the studio.  When you've got a collection of people who all work at different days and times, you must communicate regularly by sticky note.

Here's some of the other things that I glazed.  Every mug you see here will be blue.  Sometimes I have to stop and marvel that I know what color these will be when they look so different now.  There's a funny story there.  I'll share that another time.  For the record: (left to right) floating blue, variegated base blue, floating blue topped with somekindabaloo (a mixture of left over things), and falls creek blue shino.  That's 22 mugs right there.

I also made things.  Three platters and parts for a vase.  Then I waited and waited and waited for things to dry enough to finish them.  It hasn't rained in so long that I forgot how much it slows the drying time for clay.  All this was made on Thursday and I finally got handles on everything and the vase put together on Sunday.  One of the platters still hasn't let go of the mold.  I'll check it again tomorrow to see if it is ready to come out.

Since nothing was dry enough to finish, I threw three jars on Friday. They were dry enough to finish on Sunday.  Under normal circumstances I would expect pieces to be leather hard by the next day.  

Uncooperative Clay

This happened yesterday.  I took it as a sign that I tried to make one too many pots.

That pot was on the wheel.  It jumped off and landed upside down on my leg.  I'm not making this up.  It is possible that it was seriously out of balance and I wondered what would happen if I made it spin really fast.  Now I know.

I also made a dozen mugs.  Hannah is out of mugs again at the coffee shop.  Amazing.  I didn't take pictures of the mugs - figured you guys were tired of looking at mugs.  

Slowly But Surely

For once, I had glazed pots to take home instead of pots to glaze when I managed to get back to the studio after my crazy couple of weeks.  

I also made a few things.  Two sets of mugs, a couple of lidded jars, and a couple of tall vase/utensil holder thingies. 

My work is featured in the window at Buffalo Creek Gallery this month.  Very cool looking display if I do say so myself.

More mugs...

That's two more sets if you are counting.

Over the past two weeks I've made 4 different sets of mugs each with a very different shape.  I thought it was interesting to see them all together.

Then I made a couple of pitchers.  These are both relatively small. This white textured one was about 2 pounds of clay.

This brown one was closer to 3 pounds I think.  Maybe it was two and a half. It's a little bigger than the white one.  I did something completely new with altering the shape here.  I think I like it.  You may see more of this in the future.

Then I got moving on making a mask.  This is the first effort.  I was NOT at all excited about this project and had put it off for a while, but sometimes you just have to suck it up and do things that you don't think will be all that fun.  But it wasn't bad, so I made another one.

I'm "cheating" and using a plaster mold that we have.  In the picture above you see the mold and the slab.  Don't ask me how we got that mold.  It has been in the studio ever since I started hanging out up there.  I suspect that it involved someone putting their face in plaster which is absolutely terrifying, so surely it didn't happen that way.  Maybe I should ask.

Now the slab in pressed into the mold textured side down.  Next I trimmed off the extra clay and let it sit in the wet closet over night.

After it dried to leather hard and I took it out of the mold, this is what I had.  If good things happen with these later on, I will update you.  If they are complete disasters, you may never see them again.  Does anyone else see Abe Lincoln?  Holy Cow!  I know Abe didn't show up one day and get Allen to shove his face in a box of plaster.  Yes.  I need to find out the story.

And They're Done!

I FINISHED THE BUSINESS CARD HOLDERS!!!!

That's about 47 of the 53 that ended up making it.

I don't really want to make any more of those for a while.

Then there was some glazing.

I'm not sure how it is possible that I've had stuff to glaze for the past 3 weekends in a row, but I have.  My production has slowed way down since I'm back at work, so I won't feel so overwhelmed by the amount of glazing for the next several months. 

I didn't make anything new last week, so I was kind of itching to sit down at the wheel.

I made a couple of pitchers.

And I made a couple of utensil holders.  As you can see, I've been working on texture again.

This week the American Legion World Series begins.  I'm proud to say that I'm a volunteer, so there will be a LOT of baseball happening.  It is also the last week before classes start back at CCC, so there's late registration and the frantic scramble to get ready for the first day.  My sweet niece turns ONE on Aug 17, so I'll be making a trip to Greensboro for the party next weekend.  In case life weren't full enough, this week is my last week of hard training for the triathlon that I'm doing on Aug 22.  I'm not real sure how I'm going to fit swim-bike-run into this schedule.  

What I'm saying is that there will not be any pottery happening in my life for a couple of weeks.  Who wants to make a bet that when I go back, I'll have pots to glaze?  

Get To Know Uptown Shelby

GoCarolinas.com has a picture gallery from Uptown Shelby on their website.  I have been told that the guy was in Shelby to see a new B&B and ended up spending a couple of hours walking around our super cool uptown area taking pictures.

Take a few minutes and check it out at this link.  Get to know uptown Shelby  (The link should open a new window.)

Items of note as you scroll through include several very nice shots of Allen Griffin's studio (photos 34 through 43).  This is where the magic happens.  The handsome dude in picture #40 is Allen.  Look also for a shot of my box-o-pottery-tools in picture #43.  There are also some very nice photos from Buffalo Creek Gallery in pictures 47 through 56.  The piggy bank in picture #51 is mine.

Speaking of pottery magic, I did more glazing this weekend and I loaded the kiln. 

Not pictured above are the bazillion business card holders that I glazed on Friday afternoon.  Here's what they look like in the kiln.  

There's one more shelf of them that you can't see.  Four shelves of nothing but card holders and a few others stuck in between other pieces.  I'm very happy to have gotten them all in, so in a few days I'll be able to figure out how many more I need to make to get the 50 that I have promised.  

One more shot of the loaded kiln.  

The last thing that I did today before I left was to make sure that the last bunch of mugs I made are ready for the next bisque fire.  One way to be sure that greenware is completely dry is to lick it.  If your tongue sticks, you know it is dry.  When Allen showed me that trick years ago, I thought it was the grossest thing ever.  Now, I find myself licking pots on a regular basis.  Its still gross, but I guess I've gotten used to it.

I ALWAYS think, "Stuck, stuck, stuck."  So far, the fire department has not had to come help me.  (Shameless movie reference there.)