And Now For Something Completely Different

It is always a little weird to come back to the studio after I've been gone for a while.  We were at the beach last week with the Barry family.  Much fun was had.  After a week of fun in the sun and sand, I got back to my summer time job this week.  I was sort of struggling with motivation and inspiration when I got a text that inspired the bowls that you see below.

Yes, I know.  That's weird.  Let me explain...

I have a request from a customer for a yarn bowl.  She wants one that is large enough for a couple of different balls of yarn for when she is working with multiple colors, so there need to be several different holes or slots for the yard to go through.  I hope I got the bowls large enough.  It's kind of hard to know when I don't knit.  I figured that I would start with this and then if they are too small for what she needs, I'll do larger ones next time.

I started with this.

Then I cut the holes.

And then I don't know what happened, but these designs appeared.

Weird, right? 

Some more "normal" pieces got started this week too.  I was still struggling with what to do with myself and a returning customer came in looking for a bacon cooker.  She had bought one earlier in the spring and now wanted another to give as a gift.  I didn't have any on hand, so I made a couple.  I should probably do a couple more to have some inventory. 

These chalices are going to be the end of me.  This is the second set like this I've made.  In the first set, all three of them came apart as they dried.  I was frustrated and smashed them in the reclaim bucket.  It may surprise you, but I don't do very well when stuff doesn't work out the way I want it to.

This time around, two of the three came apart when they dried.  I held my temper and am trying to make them work anyway.  Keep your fingers crossed that these survive.  I am reminded why I don't really like to make these.  What a pain in the butt!

I unloaded the kiln right before we left for vacation.  Most of those pieces just sat on the shelves in the studio waiting for me to figure out where they were going to go.  Before packing up, I got out my light box and took some pictures.  I still have much to learn about photographing my work.

I think I need to crop this one.

What do you think about multiple pieces in one shot?

Mug anyone?

I like the dark background so much better than the white one. I also like this vase.

This one isn't bad either.

Super close up of a smallish mug.

Another close up of a small piece.

I'm about to go on another trip next week, so it may be a while before I have another pottery update.  This is an unusual summer.  I have had fun in Kansas City and in Corolla this month, and I am looking forward to our next adventure.  It will also be nice to be home afterward.  I don't feel like I've been home yet this summer.

Numbers

About 450,480 AP Calculus exams were graded last week in Kansas City, Missouri.  Each exam has 6 different questions that must be scored by hand by people.  Are you counting?  That's a total of 2,702,880 questions.  I was right there with approximately 980 of my geeky, calculus loving friends.  We worked 8 hours a day for 7 straight days. Well, except for day #6 when we all stayed 1 hour later (so that's 9 hours) and day #7 when we all came in 30 minutes early (that's 8.5 hours) because we were behind.  It was hard, but I really didn't mind.  I'm hired to do a job.  That job is to work with this really huge team to get all those 2.7 million questions graded.  I'm not sure how many of those individual student exam questions I personally graded.  Most readers are trained to grade 3 different problems during the week.  I was lucky this year and was in a group that graded one of the "special" exams, so I was trained on 8 different questions.  I like that much better since it means that I was doing something different every day.

I came home on Friday, so I was back in the studio on Saturday.  I decided to make bowls.  In particular, I decided to work on making ONE bowl for friends.  It's hard to describe, but I've got to get a bowl that is just the right size to fit inside this metal rack.  The rack came with a bowl, but that one got broken and I'm trying to make them something new that will fit.  The rack thingy is pretty cool.

I stared out with 4 pounds and 5 pounds of clay.  I have 0 ideas about how to measure the size of the bowl that we need, so I thought that I'd make several and see what works in the end.  I wasn't sure if either of those would end up big enough, so I made a 6 pound bowl and a 7 pound bowl.  By that time, there was just a little bit of clay left in the bag that I opened (each bag has about 25 pounds), so I thought it would be cool to do a 3 pound bowl, a 2 pound bowl, and a 1 pound bowl.

Left to right starting in the back - 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1.

Next I loaded a bisque fire.  A bisque fire goes to approximately 1940 degrees.  Lisa was kind enough to start the kiln when she left for the day.  This afternoon when I went in about 4 pm to check on things, the computer on the kiln showed me that it took just over 10 hours to fire and had cooled to about 565 degrees.  The studio itself was a very toasty 95 degrees since we turned the air conditioning off.  It just doesn't make sense to me to run the air to cool a space that no one is going to be in for more than 24 hours. I like for my utility bill to be as small a number as it can be!  I plan to unload tomorrow.  I've also got 7 bowls to trim and will need to work on glazing so that I can fire a glaze fire as soon as possible.  

Oh, by the way, it's officially summer now.  In between trips (I have 2 more places to go this summer), I'm going to be a professional potter for the next 8 weeks.  Happy Dance!!