Tuesday I picked up some supplies at Clayworld and then dropped in on Diana to pick her brain about an idea I have for an independent study project for this fall. She fixed a lovely lunch for us. She said she plans her menus around color combinations on the plate! Looked beautiful.
Wednesday, Jim unloaded the kiln in the morning before I was even out of bed! He had a few pinch pots in the kiln and was eager to see if they survived—I mistakenly put in some that were not quite dry. After I brought all the pieces into the house I set up in Kitchen to wax the bottoms. Generally, I do this on the fly—when I’m ready to glaze I realize that I have not waxed the bottoms and do it in a rush. I don’t allow time to really dry and I don’t take enough care with the application. As a result, the foot ring looks very sloppy on most of my pieces. So today I took care—to the extent that I can control my application. Still I want to remember to check the foot rings after I apply the glaze to make sure I have a nice line. I took a lot of time doing it but realize that I need to give more time/attention to these parts of the work if I want my finished pieces to be nice.
I also mixed up the last 3 glazes that I could not do last week because I was short on supplies I needed. They now need to be sieved and then they are ‘good to go’.
I want to set aside a big block of time for my glazing, too. I can’t be very creative if I am just allowing a couple hours to get a huge batch of work into the kiln! I’ve been trying to collect ideas for glaze decoration—I am tired of my just dipped or sprayed pieces. I want to do something more interesting. Looking through books I see things that I like and want to try. But when I am with a pot in hand, standing in front of a pot of glaze I never can remember any of those good ideas!
Today Kevin and Cat, two of my glaze buddies, came over for lunch and just to chat about glazes. We had no assignments this time. Kevin showed us her new glaze program, HyperGlaze. Cat had brought samples of her glaze tests to show and talk about with us. I had lots of questions about glaze vocabulary (they are being very patient with my never-satisfied quest!) It was nice meeting in the middle of the day when we were not so tired. And very nice that it was such a small intimate group. We pledged to repeat the pleasant experience soon.
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