Days Fly By

Last week of February, and GOOD RIDDANCE. Thank goodness the month has pretty much just flown by. That's been handy.

I've pretty much spent the month doing the same few things - not following my diet, pottery, sewing on the yo-yo quilt, and watching TV. I like to think that the lack of variety is helping to speed the time along.



The quilt grows. I've watched my way through Mr. Selfridge, Cranford, The Last Enemy, a bit of Miss Marple, Penelope, Wayne's World, Bill and Ted, and The Hobbit. All things Monty Python is slated for this week, as trivia at City Park Grill will be along that theme on Sunday. (I lost tonight, so I got to pick the topic. How was I to know that Maria Von Trapp outlived all of her children? I don't watch the news!)


Anyway, I got bored with my standard calicoes and chintzy prints, so I rifled through my boxes for some brighter offerings. The next ring of flowers to go on there is going to be FABULOUS!! I think I will probably never tire of the lemon / tangerine / turquoise / lime / purple colors in conjunction with one another. They're such fun colors! So yeah - just you wait 'till I get the next dozen flowers seen on!


I practiced my bowl-throwing technique this week, while using up the last block of Wheatstone. My goals were to get a good-sized and pleasantly shaped bowl with a thick enough bottom for trimming, and a nice little rim; to lift all the bowls off the wheel while wet; and to trim foot rings onto all of them. I did okay with the pleasing shape, for the most part, but got progressively worse on the last three. Same for the lifting off - not too bad on the first three, pretty pitiful on the last three. Thankfully the centering and trimming went easily. I was surprised. I appear to be pretty good at eyeballing the piece centered on the wheel, so I don't have to tap-center or any other tricks much at all.

I'll be glad to get these bisqued and glazed - I had a big batch of large mugs and small tumblers from this clay that I glazed in a REALLY pretty green and brown pattern, and I think I'll be doing the same with these. Or at least some of them.


I spent a good portion of the evening last night watching videos on making mortar and pestle sets, then used up the remainder of that Wheatstone giving it a try. They're a bit fiddly. The mortars are easy enough, as they're just thick, chunky bowls, but they have to be perfectly smoothly rounded inside, which can be challenging. And throwing the pestles....OMG. My kids kept walking in while I was working on them and I was highly embarrassed. They were oblivious, but....yeah. *snort* If you think pulling handles is dirty, just try throwing a few pestles. It didn't help that they were super-slippy on the surface once I was done shaping them, so cutting them off was a mess and putting them on the ware board was a mess and then they required a bunch of smoothing and cleaning once they dried sufficiently. GAH!! I might try hitting it with the heat gun next time, just to get the surface dry enough to handle so I'm not leaving big gloppy finger-marks all over the dang things next time.

But for now...yay, I'll have a couple mortars and pestles. I'll be able to play around with making tooth powder soon.

Oh! That's the other thing I did today! I made myself some body-care stuff. Woo, exciting. Mixed up a batch of deodorant using coconut oil, shea butter, arrowroot, baking soda, kaolin clay, and my favorite essential oil blend from Frontier, called Tranquility. I used to use it all the time in my nice sea-salty baths when I was pregnant and wanted to take baths all the time. I think it reminds me of happiness and self-contentment. I think I was self-absorbed enough when I was pregnant with my boys that I was able to totally gloss over all the crap at that time. Anyway, it's a nice clean scent and I like it. So far so good.

Then I made a hand-repair oil out of coconut oil, shea butter, and lanolin, and potted that up in a couple of my little tiny pots that I made when I was first learning how to throw. It's appropriate, because I need the hand-repair because the clay dries out my skin like crazy. The oil works pretty great - it goes on greasy, but doesn't stay that way for long and the lanolin kind of seals it all in there. Maybe I'll bring some to clay club when the next session starts, and see how others like it.

- Stell