raku firing!

Saturday was exciting. Not only are all the reduction firings complete



and I found my stuff...



but we got to do a small raku firing!

This was the remainder of my class who showed up this last day



We had 3 firings to do. All my stuff was in the first firing. Here is the kiln all packed ready to fire initially (photo from through the top vent hole).



then we fired up the raku kiln



And went about wadding up newspaper while we waited the ~45 minutes we needed to for the firing to be done.







You can see my stuff glowing orange inside from the top vent



Finally we went ahead and shut off the kiln, opened it up, and put the super hot pieces into the garbage cans of wadded up paper. Since we only really had JUST enough people to do a raku firing... there are no pictures.





Judy's neato tea pot went in the kiln next



this is how it came out. Cool eh? I think it's pretty.



btw... this is how my raku stuff came out









Saturday was a good day for raku.

glazing glazing glazing

for the last 2 classes, I've just glazed the various things I've made.

3 items have been glazed for raku firing... scheduled for the next class. The rest have been put on the reduction cart.

playing catch-up

so, I've ended up having to miss like 2 classes due to the legislative district caucus (and training thereof). Totally worth it, but still, 2 days that I could have been throwing and whatnot. :(

Then I had to miss this weekend's class too cause I was down in Bend, OR running a 10K for part of a relay race called Pole Pedal Paddle.

I learned that May 10 was the deadline for beginning new wetclay projects, and this weekend was the deadline for having stuff on the bisque cart. I ended up working on a tight schedule to be able to get as many things made as possible to accomodate these deadlines.

I can't remember what I managed to do on which weekend, but my current projects are in these states:

* I threw the components for 2 clay goblets on the wheel. One squatter one I threw in 2 pieces and attached later. The larger goblet... I actually threw the chalice upside down on the wheel!! ... pinching closed a half-sphere and trapping air inside. I then threw a stem thing for it, and attached that while it was still on the bat. Later, when it was set up a little, I cut the chalice off of the bat and compressed the rim edges on the wheel. These are kinda exciting pieces.

* I attached 2 spouts for the little teapots (one that looks like a bubble, and one that looks like a beehive). I decided they were too small for handles tho. The lids seems to fit fine atleast. The bubble pot developed an S crack in the bottom while drying, which is a bummer. I'm hoping to be able to close the hole with glaze.

* I made some dealie bob for my friend adam to microwave pasta sauce with (while still in the jar) and prevent it from splashing all over his microwave. I warned him that it may not really microwave well, but he was welcome to try it. Lets call this a custom commissioned piece. This also developed an S crack, but I don't think it matters since it needs to let steam through it anyway.

* I trimmed my interesting patterned bowl, threw another ramen-sized bowl (which is still drying), and then another bowl that didn't want to cooperate, so I tried flattening the sides and making it square. I'm not sure I like how it's come out, but oh well.

* I also made a replacement mug for my friend lien. The mug I gave her for christmas broke while she was washing it. She said the handle just broke into pieces. sad.

This was really all I managed to make this class tho. so, I took my clay and tools home on May 10th and bought a couple of boards covered in canvas, and continued to hand-build stuff at home.

* I made a 3.5"x9" tray thing for my mom's bathroom. Another custom commissioned piece I suppose.

* I made a little 4" square tray thing that may work well as a candle holder.

* and, I made a hand-built teapot.







... after I took these photos, I added a handle, 4 feet, a 3-d leaf on the lid, and carved a fern design onto the sides. It's pretty now.

These I took into the lab and put on the bisque cart on friday last week before leaving town. While there I noticed one of the bowls wasn't bone dry yet, so I had to leave it on the shelf. I will go back in today and see if it's dry yet. The bisque deadline is actually Thursday this week, May 22.

I've not glazed anything yet. Haven't had time. I shouldn't be missing any more classes this semester though, thank god. The second to last class is going to be a raku firing, so I need to decide which of my pieces are going to get raku glazes.

The last class is just going to be a potluck and picking up our finished pieces. fun!

Jacqueline's new class!

I signed up for another community education class again! Yay!

Same class as before (saturdays 10-1pm, + open lab 1-4pm), only a different instructor. Zach apparently got horrible ratings as an instructor (I'm not surprised, he wasn't the warmest person), so now Michelle Summers is teaching this course, and I can tell she is a lot more interested in helping all the students. PLUS the enrollment of the class tripled from the last time I was taking it. The first class was April 5! This last weekend!

First day was a first day. We got our lockers, went over the ceramics lab rules, firing deadlines, and how the course will be run. She took people on a tour of the ceramics lab, and I snuck away to buy my Mac 10 clay receipts from the bookstore. You have to take the receipt to the ceramics lab to collect the clay.

I had to sit through Michelle's throwing demo (always nice to see the basics again), and FINALLY at like 11:30am I was able to get my clay from Michelle.

I made 4 balls, all slightly larger than I'm normally comfortable with, and sat down at a wheel. I tried playing with some of the techniques Michelle showed us, and some of it worked, some of it didn't. A really large, friendly woman, probably late 30's, sat at the wheel next to me. She hasn't thrown in 5 years so was a little nervous about how it would go. On the other side of me sat a very quiet girl in her 20's.

I, inspired by my gift from hana: a BEAUTIFUL sphere that was pit fired, decided to try to throw a sphere. Never thrown a sphere before actually. Really, my underlying goal is to make a teapot (or two, or three, or four) this class. I kinda figure a sphere could be a good shape for a teapot!

My first ball, altho perhaps a little awkward at first with the centering, worked out! Michelle came by to offer some tips to the large lady next to me who was having a worse time than me with her centering, and I listened in...
* Mac 10 takes a gentle touch. you don't have to use too much pressure to work it!
* you shouldn't allow yourself to feel any friction with the clay, if that happens you're working too dry
* make sure to compress and recompress the pot's base, and eliminate any standing water, or extra clay on the bat. These things can all mess you up.

I adjusted what I was doing to take her advice into account, and whoah! the clay started behaving better for me! I pulled a wide cylinder, maybe only 7 inches tall if that. Then I pushed out the sides and pulled in the rim to make it into a sphere. If it becomes a teapot it will be a VERY SMALL one. I bet the final piece will be about the size of the pot hana gave me, actually.

I then used the next ball, and didn't really want to do the same thing (I'm learning that altho the balls are a touch larger than I'm used to, they still aren't large enough to make a larger pot like I need). I really worked this ball cause I was being undecided about what I wanted to do with it... first pulling a cylinder, then making it into a sphere, than changing my mind and pulling the opening outward slightly so that I could put a second pot inside it, and then I decided this pot wasn't quite large enough for what I was thinking, so I turned it back into a sphere... AND THEN I got bored of the sphere shape, and wanted a taller piece, so I straighted the sides of the cylinder, but the top still arcs in like a half dome slightly.

Meanwhile, quiet 20's girl was pulling a sphere. huh. See, that wasn't a shape in the demo even. She was TOTally copying what I was doing. hmmm...

Oh yeah, AND large lady was actually farting quite a bit. That was really gross.

Anyway, at this point I borrowed Judy's calipers (Judy is taking this class again also! she's very sweet, so I was happy to see her again), and tried to throw a couple lids "off the hump" of my 3rd ball. Attempt 1 went badly. Attempt 2 and 3 were better, but I'm not sure any of them will yield usable lids. I need to get my own calipers I think... and a hole punch.

And, then it was like 1:40pm or so... and I had to get to the convention center to pick up my race day packet by 3pm, so I bagged ball #4, cleaned up my area, wrapped my pieces in plastic and put them on our class shelves, and headed out (putting all my stuff in my locker).

It felt good to be throwing again. I can't wait for the next class!
hee.

the teapot is done!

I am very excited to announce that my first teapot is a success! The lid didn't stick during the glaze firing, and water pours out the spout in a nice smooth stream, not an annoying dribble. Very happy with it. Now just to purchase a bamboo handle. I admit there was a moment there when I couldn't get the lid off when I first picked it up. My heart sank; but after a tiny amount of twisting and lifting, it came off. Hooray! I tested the pouring action right away too, in the lab sink. So happy it came out.

I also picked up two other finished pieces. One was the wonky cup thing that I had glazed with Maria's Blue. It came out very well. It's all shiny and smooth and wobbley in just the right way so your hand fits into the curves in a satisfying fashion. Not sure what I could drink out of it; probably something strong that one would slowly sip, since it doesn't hold very much.

I also picked up the slightly curved handle-less mug that I glazed the inside of a dark blue and left the outside naked. The clay really looks lovely all exposed like that.

As far as production. Well, it was our last class to throw stuff. I sat down at the wheel with some 6 balls of 1-2 pound clay, and threw. It didn't go well. I was using the brown clay, and I didn't realize until I got home that I haven't made anything at all out of the brown clay all quarter. Just a bunch of discarded mistakes. Wow. Remind me not to buy that clay again in the future. The red clay threw much, much better. It's softer and listens to you a little better. The brown was just so stubborn, and if you weren't exactly centered before opening, it was all over for that piece. The red was more forgiving, you could make it up along the way.

I glazed the tallish vase from a couple weeks ago, the one with a bottom trimmed to match the teapot. I glazed it with the same floating red as the teapot, so they will match. Not sure what to do with a matching teapot and vase, it's kind of odd.

Also, I trimmed a fairly large bowl I threw a few weeks ago, but I managed to put two little cracks running down about an inch from the rim from pinching it too hard when attaching the piece to the wheel to do the trimming. Oops. I guess that one will be a flower pot, with the cracked bits facing a wall. Oh well, I was too tired to really care.

Also, I was still pretty tired from being sick. My oozy symptoms are pretty much gone, so at least my nose wasn't dribbling all over the wheel, but I couldn't put much strength into the clay (and clearly the clay knew it could get away with acting out). I ended up going home after 2 hours of the 3 hour class.

Next week I'll trim the one measly little ugly shot glass I managed to throw (I threw it thick and tried the technique of cutting facets into it with the wire tool) and pick up the one piece I glazed last night. That's about it for this quarter!

not much going on

I was too sick to go to pottery last night, sadly. I really want to see my teapot!

So, to post something anyway, I just took a couple pictures of my square bowl that I glazed in Maria's Blue from last quarter. I've put some nice violets in it to complement the color.

2/14/08 - Valentine Pottery

Last week I didn't go to class, so this week I had a lot of catching up to do.

My first finished piece was ready today. Remember the pint glass? It's now obviously a large hot chocolate mug with no handle. I think it holds around 10 ounces of liquid, and angles out at just the right depth sot hat it settles into your hand while you're holding it. I had glazed it clear, but the color came out more of a brown. I asked Gary about it, since it was a red clay. You could see the red on the bottom of the foot where there was no glaze, but then the "clear" glaze turned it brown. Apparently the iron in the clay had reacted with the clear glaze to make it less clear and a little brown. Yes, the clay and the glaze react together in firing. Neat! I had also dipped one part in Maria's Blue, which turned out great on my square bowl last quarter, but on this piece mostly just turned the area a kind of yellow with a hint of blue in the very middle of the area, near the rim. I'll post a pic of it soon.

The little teapot was ready to be glazed! I kept holding it cupped in my hands and carrying it around. It just feels good to hold! I wasn't sure how to glaze it since the hot chocolate mug didn't work out as I'd hoped with the clear. I finally settled on using "floating red" to glaze it with. Gary had shown me about 50 test pieces he had made to do glazing experiments with, and a few of them were made with red clay. The floating red looks like it reacts well with red clay to make a color most like the clay itself. The floating red on blond clay doesn't look that red at all. Glazing the teapot was scary. I didn't want to plug the holes in the stem, so I blew into the stem to clear them. Then I made sure to remove all glaze from the rim and the bottom of the lid, in case they needed to be fired together, so they wouldn't fuse together. Fingers crossed.

Let's see. Otherwise, I trimmed a tall vase from a couple weeks ago, glazed another handle-less mug. (With dark blue, I think. The mug is like the pint glass but with curved sides instead of straight.) I threw a quite large bowl with nice shoulders. I think that's the term. It doesn't settle down into a bowl shape; the bottom is fairly steep and then it opens up more. I'm moving away from the sunken look of my earlier pieces. Then I threw and discarded three or four other pieces. Not a very productive night, but a fun one. I was the most sociable I've been in class, like ever, I think.

1/31/08 - teapot handle

Just a quick note to say I added the handle to my teapot, and it's ready for bisque firing! I opted to use two "lugs" (Gary's term, not sure how formal of a term it is) to use as anchors for a bamboo handle rather than making a clay handle. You can see the two lugs, one above the spout and the other on the back. I made the lugs by hand, rolling out a very small piece of clay into a slight dumbbell shape and slipping and scoring and attaching them.

Gary suggested going this way, he seemed to think the pot was asking for more height, rather than my first inclination of making a clay handle and attaching it on the back. I can see it now, what with the double foot and the angle of the spout, it does seem to want to go higher. Neat. I hope it survives the firing.

I also glazed one of my first pieces, I'm nicknaming it "The Pint Glass". I went for a shapead much like a pint glass as possible, but after the bisque firing it looks more like a tall flower pot. I glazed it mostly with clear but with an area of Maria's Blue. I'm curious both how the red clay I'm using will look after the final firing, and also how the different color glaze will show over the red.

third class 1/24

We continued to work on teapots this week. Today we worked on the spout. Gary showed us how to throw a spout on the wheel. You only need a tiny amount of clay, maybe 1/4 pound. You can also throw it off the hump.

You center, and then open, and you can open all the way to the wheel (but don't have to; it is easier to take it off the wheel when you're done if you leave a lot at the bottom). Then, to open, you have to open more at the bottom and then try to keep the top as narrow as possible. You kind of pull toward your opposite shoulder. To compress the clay a bit toward then end, you stick a thin rod of some kind in there (like the other end of the needle tool) and angle it so it's against the inside wall. Then take one finger and run it up the outside along where the stick is. You also probably need to do a fair amount of choking to narrow the top up even more. Finally, slice the very tip off with the needle tool. You want to keep the edge sharp so that it pours well. If the spout opens up at the end, like a tulip, you will get your hot water to come spraying out everywhere when you pour.

So when I finished making two spouts, I cut them and put them to dry a bit on a board. Then I trimmed my round form for the teapot. I left a lot of clay on the bottom, but I wasn't sure how far down I'd opened it, so I was conservative when trimming and ended up with an interesting double ripple effect for the foot. I also trimmed my two pint glasses. (They'll probably shrink down to smaller than pint sized, sadly.)

I also threw a couple other things, but they didn't come out. I got another weird collapsing thing that might be fun once it's glazed, we'll see.

Finally the spouts were dry enough to attach. You cut the bottom of the spout off at an angle that will fit the shape of your pot well. Then you hold it up to the pot and trace around where it will go with your needle tool (just enough so you know the shape, not to cut anything out). Then you perforate the area you traced so that there are several small holes that the water will flow through on its way out of the spout. Then just slip and score the spout and the traced area, and attach it! I had to cut the bottom off my spout twice cause the first time made a kind of awkward angle. The second cut was much steeper and fit much better. Actually, I should confess that Gary made the second cut for me cause I was standing there trying to fit the awkward spout on and it wasn't working, and I had a confused look on my face. Thanks Gary!

Next week, we'll attach a handle and it will be ready to fire! I'm so thrilled.

Hana - Winter quarter 2008

I'm taking pottery again this quarter. I'm pretty excited about it, even though I was kind of exhausted by the class near the end of last quarter. I think with the days getting longer again it'll be a bit easier to keep my energy up.

There have already been three classes. I missed the first class on Jan 10 because I had to get a root canal that day. That in itself is a long story, but not pottery related, so I'll skip it. Suffice to say, I wasn't up for a class that evening.

Jan 17th was my first class. Looks like a smaller group than last quarter, I noticed that several people from last quarter hadn't returned (included a couple people that I found vaguely annoying (this one woman always smelled like mosquito repellent), and one person who was pretty quiet that I seemed to quietly get along with), but otherwise everyone there had also been there last quarter. So it wasn't like going to a new place with new people, and therefore a little easier to do. It didn't seem like I missed much the previous week. Apparently this quarter we're going to work on teapots. yay! That has been a long term goal for me, so I was pretty excited.

We started on 1/17 by throwing a round form, then making a certain shape on top. Once you have a fairly thick rim on the piece, take a 90 degree tool and press it diagonally into the rim. So, imagine if the rim forms an arc or about 90 degrees, you take the corner of the tool and touch the arc at 45 degrees and press it in radially. At the same time, put one finger into the pot and press up from underneath. This creates a little edge inside the rim for the lid to rest on. It's called a "galley".

Using calipers, measure the rim diameter and the galley diameter. We then threw a variety of lids to fit the pot, where the main lid part was smaller than the rim diameter. If you throw a flat bottomed lid, that's all you have to do. But a better kind of lid has a part that goes down into the galley so that when you pour, the part sticking down there holds it in place, so your lid doesn't fall off when you pour the tea. Gary said the part that sticks down should be about a third of the diameter of the galley. You also have to be careful that the part that sticks down has a smaller diameter than the galley. It's a lot to think about.

Then, just to relax a bit, I threw a couple large mugs. They are roughly the size of a pint glass. I'm not intending to attach handles. I just wanted to do something simple after the work of teapots.

j's finished pieces

picked up my pieces today from class. Strangely, the bud vase and one of my teadust mugs had fused together in one spot during the firing, but I was able to snap them apart without much trouble. The teadust sure does run!

I couldn't find one piece... the little goblet that had broken while glazing. Zach found it in back with a note saying the tech didn't feel good about putting it in the kiln, if the top fell off while firing, it could totally ruin another piece or the kiln shelf... I guess I understand. I went ahead and threw it away. sad.

I spent about 30 minutes at the grinder making the places where the teadust actually had stuck to the shelf look less terrible... and then I packed up my stuff and came home!

Hana's finished pieces

Hana's last class: pit fire!!

The last class of the quarter. As you know, we've been leading up to this class for a while, when we decided to do a pit firing. Really great idea, actually, since otherwise the last class would just consist of picking up our finished pieces.

I stopped by the studio on my way to Gary's house. I was able to find all my finished glazed things, I think (and with Jackie's help), and will follow up in another post with pictures of those.

Then, to Gary's. I showed up about ten minutes late, with my two pieces, a camping chair, and a bottle of wine. Other people were also starting to show up, and they brought all sorts of food and lots of wood. We each stuck our pieces into a pit at the end of the yard (next to a chicken coop!) which was filled with sawdust. Then we filled it in with a layer of kindling.

We all stood around a bit awkwardly for a few minutes, then Gary asked who would like to start the fire. No one really did anything, so Gary went and got a flaming piece of wood out of the little oven thing that he had made a while back and stuck it into the pit. Suddenly I found myself at the edge of the pit, blowing on the flames and sticking bits of kindling around, and basically all in charge. It was funny. It was a large pit, so a couple other people joined me, but I'm proud to say that my third of the pit was up and roaring first. Hehe.

Here's a picture of all of us building the fire. Strangely enough, the three of us (I'm not pictured) are also the least talkative of the group, and I think having something constructive to do was a relief for us.

While we were building, everyone else got all the food set up, and there was sake and glugg warming up inside on the stove.

Once the fire was really going, (see the second picture) I started wandering around, snacking, and attempting to chat with the others.

I found Gary's pottery shed, which was filled with great pieces and also, is that... yes! Our group project was all lined up on the shelves in there. All the little sake cups, each one completely unique, and no one could tell which ones they had thrown. Gary told us all to take one, and use it to drink the sake. So we did.

For a while, I stood around and looked at the fire, sipping sake, then a little glugg, and finally a few little cups worth of the wine I'd brought. The sake cup I'd chosen was so small (maybe one ounce?), that I was sure I'd only had about a glass or two worth of wine by the end of the night. Tell that to my hangover today though, hoo-boy.

Occasionally throughout the night, Gary would call out, "Round Two!" or "Round Three!" and we'd all rush into the little pottery shed and pick out another little sake cup from our group collection. By the end of the night, we each had at least four little cups to take home.

After we had run out of wood, several hours later, the pit looked like the third picture. You could see all of our pieces hidden about in there, glowing white. I had to leave at this point, but after this, Gary and whoever was left were going to fill in the pit with sand and leave it for a couple days to cool. I guess if the pieces cool too fast, they can crack. I'll be going back Saturday morning to dig through the ashes to find my pieces.

j's 9th class (oh, the many things to glaze!)

right. Showed up to class pretty much on time. It was snowing gently on my way into class... coffee in hand. I hate to say this, but it really is kinda magical to be in a starbucks getting coffee while it's snowing outside. Everyone in there feels special when that happens.

I arrived first to class (after Zach ofcourse). Judy and 2 other students wandered in later.

I started rooting around in the bisque shelves. Kept finding things I forgot I made while looking for something I had the derndest time trying to find (a little sake pitcher was hiding inside a pot by another artist). FINALLY I had all my pieces.

The instructors of the ceramics lab had covered a couple of the canvas-topped tables with plastic so people could glaze out in the main room. Since no one was really in my class, and the radio (playing NPR's saturday morning favorites) was in the main room, I went ahead and filled a couple plastic bowls full of the various glazes I was interested in, and set myself up in the main room to glaze.

I sat and glazed and glazed and sat.

At some point other students came in to use the open lab hours (I was annoyed that they started showing up early actually, THEIR open lab didn't start till 1:30pm, but they started showing up around 11:30am... blah). And Zach teased me for using all the measuring cups from the glaze room at one time. I guess these other students needed them. I went ahead and washed up the ones I was done with (luckily I was done with a couple of the glazes at this time) while mock-grumping about how I was having fun by myself before other people showed up.

I think I ended up glazing 5 mugs, 3 trays, 6 little cups, 2 sake pitchers, 1 bottle-like thing, a bud vase, 2 small goblets (one of them broke while I was glazing it actually! I decided to try and glaze it back together tho, so we'll see how that goes), and a small assortment of other hand-built things.

Anyway, I finished up around 2:30... and was hungry and sleepy.

And, that's that. I have nothing left to work on. I guess next class I pickup my stuff! Here's hoping they come out!!!

Hana's ninth class

This was our last class in the classroom. Our last class will be at Gary's house, doing a large pit firing. So, today was the last day to glaze and prepare our pit fire pieces.

First, I wandered around looking for all my bisque-fired pieces. I will take a moment to describe a scene from "Ozma of Oz" by L. Frank Baum. As summarized by Wikipedia:

The expedition journeys to the underground kingdom of the Nomes, where the Nome King reveals that he's turned the royal family into ornaments around his palace. The Oz people can guess which ornaments they are (he doesn't reveal that they are royal purple ones), but if they fail, they will also become ornaments. [When they are ready to guess, they touch the ornament and say "Oz".] Ozma, the twenty-seven soldiers of the Royal Army of Oz, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and Tik-Tok all suffer this fate (Dorothy escapes it only by touching a purple ornament in one of her guesses).

Every time I'm confronted by a wall of bisque-fired pots, I think of this scene in the book. I scan the shelves, and hesitantly pick up one piece to check the signature on the bottom. I sometimes even think the word "Oz" to myself. It's silly.

Anyway, I found the four pieces I had bisque fired a long time ago, and then set out to find all the ones I'd finished in the eighth class. I only found 5. How many did I make? I feel like I didn't find them all, but I didn't remember what I had finished.

Then I went into the glazing room to do my first glazing of the quarter. I really don't like glazing. I don't feel very creative in that step, and it's so easy to mess a piece up. If you're unfamiliar with the studio's glazes, you don't know how thick to do it, how much it will run, etc. Oh well! I just dove in and dipped my pieces in various buckets. We'll see how they come out. I did two of my spherical pots in black, a couple in copper green, a couple in "maria's blue" (seems like a nice blue-green shiny one), a piece in the mottled brown with green flecks, and one in a dark blue. I did layering on two pieces. The wonky piece (the attempted round piece that squooshed on the wheel) has a base of I think blue and then maybe green around the rim and running down one side so that it pools in the wonkiness. I did another round piece in brown with black around the rim and running down the sides in three kind-of stripes.

Unfortunately, the first piece I tried to glaze, one of my first mugs, really came out poorly. The glaze was really lumpy and not very deep in the bucket, so it really stuck to the pot and looked awful. I decided to scrape a bunch of the glaze off (particularly the clumps, which could run badly) and then do a coating glaze in clear. Well, after that it never dried much, and then I made the bad mistake of setting it upside down to clean the bottom, and all the glaze came off the rim. Between that and the finger smudges and the likelihood of it not drying in time to try again, and it being the last class, I ended up just throwing the cup away in frustration.

Finally, I prepared my two pieces for the pit fire. They came out of the bisque looking really nice, though not nearly as shiny as some other people's. We were supposed to coat them sith stuff, and wrap them up in flammables, but I wasn't very energetic at this point. I put a bunch of powdery random things inside one (tea grounds, some spices) and then wrapped copper wire around the outside. The other I brushed a glue/water slip over it and sprinkled some herbs all over the outside. I then wrapped it with corn husk and a small branch of pine needles, and wrapped the whole thing in newspaper to keep it together. Now I just have to remember to take them to next week's pit fire at Gary's.

I got home feeling worn out and kind of frustrated. I love throwing on the wheel so much, but some of the other steps just feel like work.

j's fourth open lab

I didn't have soccer on Tuesday last week, so I went out to pottery from 6-8:30pm with an agenda I HAD to succeed with.

I trimmed 6 tiny cups, 2 small sake pitchers, 1 bottle-shaped thingie, 1 bud vase, 2 small goblets, and 1 mug, and assembled a goblet, and attached a handle to the mug in that amount of time successfully... just by the hairs of my chinny chin chin.

Man that was a busy open lab.

I will probably show up to the open lab tonight to move items from the class shelves to the bisque cart now that they are dry. The bisque firing deadline for this semester was 9pm tonight.

j's 8th class (hey look, my pottery!)

I showed up ON TIME this class. Whoah!

And, on the shelves there were a bunch of finished pottery, so I rooted through them and found my test tiles, and all the pieces I've glazed to date! Reduction firing is SO COOL. I love the way everything turned out.

Here are the 2 bowls and the wonky hand-built cup I made on day 1:






And here are the "five handled pieces" I made:










neato.

After this, I found that the handles on the mugs that I attached last week had cracked. Zach suggested I take mac10 clay dust and use that with vinegar water to patch it up. I did as he suggested and it appeared to work. Then I went ahead and trimmed the cup part of the little goblet I was working on in open lab this last week... and then slipped, scored, and attached that to the conical base.

Then I set to work making balls out of my reclaimed mac10 clay to throw with. Today was my last day to "begin new wet clay projects." I went ahead and started goofing off (no agenda really), and created some kind of bottle-shape which reminds me of the old genesis smoothie bottles they used to sell at Reed. After this I made a second squat conical base and another goblet cup (I was pretty impressed how my attached little goblet was looking, so I decided to try a second one), and then, with my last bit of clay I slowly attempted a tall skinny cylinder, which I then transformed into another cone. I was starting to have issues with the cone and Zach came over and helped me get it back under control... now it's like a little 6" tall bud vase. Kinda cute.

I was out of ready-clay, but not out of class time, so I went ahead and went into my bag of reclaimed mac10 clay that I thought was too dry to use, and kneaded it thoroughly with the really wet clay I took off of the wheel until it was all a consistent good-wetness. I made one last ball.

At the wheel, I used this to make a tall cylinder, and then used a wooden rib to help angle the walls outwards, but as straight as I could manage. The form is REALLY controlled, and I couldn't believe I had made it (granted it did take me a long time). I thought the form would make an exciting coffee mug.

After this I cleaned up my wheel.
I've got like a load of things to trim, attach, and finish up at the open lab on Tuesday evening now. But I can move all the bone-dry items on to the bisque cart on Monday (Nov 26) evening before the final bisque firing of the semester. After that it's GLAZE MANIA!

hana's 8th class

Only two classes left after this! Next class will be glazing, and the last class will be the pit fire at Gary's house. That means this was the last class to prepare stuff for the last bisque firing! Also, it was the class for preparing the pieces for the pit fire, which is actually pretty complicated it turns out. I had a lot of work to do.

First things first, I had to trim the pieces I wanted to pit fire before I could further prepare them. I set myself up at a wheel. I tried a new wheel this time since most of them were free, and lo, the one I used was completely silent! Halleluiah! Plus, the foot pedal was smooth, so I didn't have to use my hand on the manual speed control.

Trimming was pretty easy to do. I had created three round forms last time I was in class, and they were all really round, so it was easy to center them again and trim the bottoms. I picked the best two of the three forms and set them in the warm kiln to dry a bit more.

Then I set out to trim some of my other pieces. I had lots of pieces at this stage actually, I think 7 total. I started trimming my square bowl. I set it down on the wheel upside down and just stared at it for a while. How does one trim something that's not round? Plus the base was all squooshed from when I had to yank it off the wheel when I made it. After a couple tips from a neighbor, I tried to just ignore the whole square part and just focus on the wonky round part at the very bottom (now top). I had to treat my arm as a lathe, by trying to keep it still out in space and just trimming the outer most stuff off first. I had a good inch or so of junk to take off, since part of the wonkiness was caused by a large indent I had made with my thumb when yanking it off the wheel. I had to trim all the way in to the bottom of that indent.

About half way through, I took a break to start preparing my pit fire pieces. So, what I had to do was "burnish" the pieces. You brush terra sigillata onto the piece, let it sit for a moment to dry, then you rub it in. You can use a variety of tools to rub it in, but apparently the most popular in my class was a crumpled up plastic bag. So you rub it in all over, and then do it again. Each layer takes about 10 minutes to coat, dry, and rub, and we were recommended to do 6 layers or more. Some people did 10 or 15 layers. The more layers, the shinier your piece gets until finally some people's pieces looked like polished marble. It was amazing. My pieces developed a smooth luster, but didn't get shiny since I had to keep going back to the wheel and trimming another piece.

For the rest of the night, I alternated with trimming a piece and then doing another layer of terra sig. I eventually trimmed my square bowl down to a nice foot. Hurrah! I wasn't sure that was going to make it. When I finished I did notice that the bottom got pretty thin, I'm lucky I stopped when I did and didn't trim through the bottom.

I also trimmed my weird piece that collapsed when I was trying to make a round form. It got a couple of appreciative comments from people, so I'm glad I kept it. It really does look strange.

I also trimmed my one tall piece (I didn't do the two layers like we were shown, but even with the one layer it got taller than anything else I've thrown). That was pretty easy to trim since it had dried out a bit. If it was wetter I was worried the height would be a problem, maybe causing it to collapse on itself.

Finally, I trimmed a little piece I threw I think the first day and never went back to. I was going to make a little pot with lid, but I never made a lid, and it was too late now. So I trimmed off the lip I had made for the lid to turn it just into a little bowl/cup thing (something to put random little stuff in!).

The last half hour I spend frantically cleaning my wheel and getting as many more layers on my pit fire pieces as I could. I think I ended up with about 6 layers on each piece, which isn't too shabby.

Next time (not next week, due to Thanksgiving) we will glaze all remaining items, and also bring stuff to wrap our pit fire pieces in. Gary suggested experimenting by bringing anything in that burns. Seaweed (the salt is especially good), sticks of lavender, pine cones, grass, weeds, whatever. Also copper wire, if anyone has any. I guess that will leave nice lines of green on the piece. Exciting! I'm going to have to go collecting.

j's third open lab

Ok, I showed up around 7pm... still can't find any finished fired pieces. It's so strange that everything is missing. I hope nothing went wrong with the cone10 firing.

I went ahead and kneaded 2 balls and sat down to do more of the same at the wheel. I managed 3 more little cups (total of 6 now), and then made 2 small sake pitcher kind of vessels. It was the first time I've EVER made a collared vessel with a neck much smaller than the rest. The first one surprised me when it looked correct! It's pretty exciting that I was able to make them!

That was about all I had time for this open lab. Technically the 19th was the last day to "start" wet clay pieces.... so I guess that's it for all the pieces I get to work with. If I'm lucky tho, I might be able to work a little on the wheel on Saturday class.... Zach has said that he wouldn't stop us if we wanted to keep working on new stuff, and anything we don't completely finish this class we can take home and finish in another ceramics class.

j's second open lab

There is a notice on the chalk board in the ceramic's lab that the last day to begin wet-clay projects is this Friday, Nov 16. This shocked me into taking as much advantage of the open labs as I could. I'm not done making stuff yet!!

I went to Tuesday open lab from 6-8:30pm and worked on kneading balls of reclaimed Mac10 clay that I have been keeping. I made 3 balls and sat down at a wheel.

I went ahead and centered, but then worked off the hump to do basically hana's group project from her class. I was making little sake cups. It's kinda rough working that small, and way too easy to initially open the form too hard and immediately make the rim too small. It took some control, but I got 3 small cups out of my efforts. Ball #2 was refusing to center for me even to the point that I could work off the hump, so I scrapped that attempt (I'm blaming not-enough kneading).

The other things I attempted were the components to a clay goblet. A small one mind you, but I was able to successfully form a conic "stem" form, and nice little cup shape that I'll try attaching to one another. I'm seeing if I can make a little chalice or whatever.

I also attempted a small sake pitcher dealie bob, but things weren't working out so well in that attempt, so I abandoned it. That was about all the time I had before needing to clean up the wheel. 2.5 hours isn't long enough for a pottery class IMHO.

I'm probably going to also attend the next open lab to continue my attemps at these 2 projects.