I'm getting behind

I wish I was better at keeping this journal current. I've been working so many hours at my "paying" job that after I come home, I'm not interested in even looking at a computer. I've only been able to get to the pottery studio once a week on Friday afternoons. That is MY time to de-stress and relax from a busy week.

I'd love to put up a picture of the latest sgrafitto plate I made, but it was ruined in the bisque fire kiln when the person loading the kiln forgot to stilt it because they didn't know it was glazed on the underside. They assumed it was red clay and not red glaze. I've had several pieces ruined in the past several months, one of which is a French Butter Dish. That one made it through the glaze firing process and then the lid wasn't handled properly and was broken after it was removed from the kiln... Several other simpler smaller thrown bowls made it through, but had particles and chunks of stuff from the kiln firing landed in the bottom of 2 of them. This will require grinding away the "stuff" from the bottom of the bowls, adding more glaze and then re-firing.

However, I did finish one project that I'm very excited about. A large hand-built (not thrown on the wheel) bowl. It's bigger than anything I could have thrown and it was my first attempt. I started by rolling out sheets of clay on the slab roller, cutting them into abstract pieces and then laying them over the outside of large bowl. After it dried to leather hardness but was still soft enough manipulate, I I trimmed the edges to look ragged, flipped it inside another bowl of the same size and shape and then smoothed out the inside. I covered it in plastic again, leaving it for several more days and then moved it back to the outside of the form again ( I had two bowls the same size and shape which is why this worked). I continued to smooth out all the edges where the slab pieces were layered and adding my finger indentations to give it a handmade look. It came out so great that many people have asked if it was a thrown bowl.

So, this bowl came out beautifully in the kiln, which was really good since I had the most time invested in it.