Anyway, I've been working on bunches of stuff. Nothing particularly amazing - just little baby steps here and there.
I made myself some gold spiral earrings last week, and they turned out really cool. Trouble is, I don't like fine wire earrings, and I thought my holes could handle 20g wire. I was wrong. My ears have been protesting heavily all week.
I made a couple other pairs, but I'm not going to switch them out 'till these suckers heal. Ow. I bought some sliced ammonite pairs to make earrings out of, and one pair has arrived already....but I killed one half of it while trying to drill holes. I'm rather ticked off at myself. I need to research to see what the best drilling method is, so I don't shatter anymore gorgeous ancient fossils. Bah!!
We glazed a bunch of stuff last week at Clay Club, and unloaded it all this week. Most of my pieces came out successfully. A couple of the gift mugs for Julienne Tomatoes stuck to the slab, though, so those will have to be ground down before they'll be useful.
Here's the rest of it - I decided to glaze most of my stuff in series this year, as I don't have quite the drive to experiment so heavily anymore. I mean, I still need to a little, but I'm content to use something I know works, like this green and brown combo.
It's definitely one of my favorites, and it only works on clay that doesn't have any brown or red in it. So that's what decided this run for me.
I've been wanting to try making some pots with lids, so I took a shot at something easy-ish - throwing an enclosed "balloon" piece, then impressing a groove in it that creates the flange for the pot or lid.
These are just little ones, but I think they're cute. I'll probably use them for things like tooth powder and hand salve and deodorant and the like. They're not hard enough to trim yet, though. Hope I don't kill them.
I had to make a tool to push the groove into the clay, so I got out a paint stick and some sandpaper, plugged in the bandsaw, and got that done last night. Paint sticks are pretty handy things! You can use them to make small shuttles for weaving bands, too.
This evening I worked on throwing some bigger mugs. I keep making mugs, and thinking "these are great! They'll be so nice and big!!" And then I forget that they shrink like crazy and I end up with normal-sized mugs. Again. I think I remedied the problem this time, though. I threw three decidedly oversize vessels.
Let's see, what else. Made bread and mayo yesterday, worked on my quilt, figured out how to watch Monty Python on YouTube on my tv while controlling it from my phone so I can use playlists...I think that's about it.
I have kiln supplies coming on Monday, so I may be test firing a little kiln of my own next week. We'll see. I'm still pretty scared of the whole idea.
That's about it. Nothing really witty to say. I've been feeling sick, and missing Preston a lot and then being angry at myself for it. It sucks being lonely for a specific person, because friends and family can't really help with it, no matter how much they want to or how many of them are around. But....at least I'm keeping busy. Always something to do, right?
- Stell
Those cups are absolutely beautiful-- the glaze is lovely. Are they just turned in the photo so we can't see the handles, or are they simply tumblers? Gorgeous, either way.
ReplyDeleteYou're a more loyal blogger than I am, at least-- much more productive in general, it seems. Excited to hear about your kiln, since that's something Andrew has always pined for. I hope it's not too scary a device or too much of a hassle to set up.
The two cups are just tumblers - a little bigger than juice glass size. There are mugs, too, with the same glaze pattern, that also turned out beautifully.
DeleteThe kiln is actually a loaner - Dawn's mom gave her this tiny kiln (11.25" interior diameter) and she's had it in storage ever since. My friend Tom is setting up the 220 for me, then I need to figure out how to test fire it and gauge the kiln sitter and such. Stuff like that scares me. It'll be interesting seeing if I am actually capable of doing all this myself! If not, no worries - Jim has no problem firing my things, and has even stopped threatening to charge me extra for firing :) But yeah - we'll see.