Wednesday, June 28, 2006

I got pots...

I unloaded the bisque kiln last night and I've got a lot of pots to be glazed![The four little glazed pots in the front are the ones Lauren and Conrad painted last week (majolica).]
So today I will be mixing up glazes. Don’t know about those 5 gallon buckets. Think I’ll go for some half-gallon buckets and some 2 gallon buckets first! I tried to select a FEW glazes to mix—create a limited palette—but the list keeps growing on me! I’d sure rather be looking at a day at the wheel instead of one spent mixing glazes. And then there is ‘applying’ glazes. Wow, what a lot of work! Who said this was fun?

Well, I did not finish mixing up the glazes. I am mixing up 9 glazes and plan to add another one tomorrow. I took it easy—pampering my back which is still in recovery mode—and I ran out of 2 ingredients I need so stopped to make a trip to Clay World(—and to take Kenny to see “Cars”, which was probably made just for him! Cute show.) I am using Lili Krakowski’s system for mixing up the glazes. Some people who looked at her method were repelled by the amount of ‘extra’ work it entailed. I liked it for the fail-safe aspect. But when I did it for the first time I thought it was too labor intensive also. However, this is my third experience with it and I am sold on it! It does take some prep-time but it is a life-saver in protecting from mistakes in measuring errors. I caught 2 errors earlier today that would have been major mistakes if I had been working by earlier, easier, methods. It also makes it possible, and safe, to stop mid-way through the process—like I did today—and return without missing a beat along the way! And the time it saves in measuring up several batches makes up for the prep-time lost earlier.


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