Late Summer Firing

The rain stopped and the skies cleared, just in time to take the door to the gas kiln down.

Overall we are happy with the results. Jeff is starting to produce tiles again. A wood fired version of these are in the 500 Tiles book. This one was made with our 505 Main clay, glaze is Jeff's ash glaze, applied with a sprayer.

One of my carved bowls. White slip over STARworks, East Fork clay. The exterior was dipped in tenmokku, interior is the sprayed, ash glaze.

As always, there were piggy banks and vessel sinks in this firing. Most were orders, but I also have a few "ready to ship" pigs that you can find in my Etsy shop.

Meditating with porcelain

It was time to clean up the wheel and break out the porcelain this week. Jeff had been after me to make some small cups and carve them, so I figured now was as good a time as any. While I was at it I threw and carved a variety of shallow bowls. Most of these will get celadon glaze. This next firing will be a test. I'll do one in only celadon and another in celadon with black underglaze. I really like carving through porcelain, the cream cheese texture feels so good under my carving tool and it's quite meditative.

Working a little differently also kept my mind occupied and it was a good escape from the worries of my mother's illness. She is still at the rehab center of a nursing home. She hasn't gained any strength and in reality is much weaker. I have to force myself to call everyday. It's so depressing to talk with her. She is having a very difficult time coming to terms with this. Everyday she tells me she is so tired and doesn't understand why. I just don't know how to respond to her without saying, "Mom, you have terminal cancer, what are you expecting?" But of course I can't say that to her.  I think because she is in "rehab" she has it in her head that she should be getting strong enough to come home. I guess that was the goal when they moved her, but I really don't think she is coming home. My sister is going to be with them today for appointments with the oncologist and palliative care. I am hoping after today we will have a better idea of what we are facing in the next few weeks. I am staying on top of laundry here at home, in case I have to quickly hop on a plane... on the bright side, at least we haven't been running out of socks!

Here's what I have been up to...

I have been working on bowls this week. I enjoy throwing bowls, but I really dislike trimming them. It seems that I always lose one or two in the process. Whenever I think, maybe I can trim a little more off right there, I should set the bowl aside and come back to it later. I do enjoy the carving process and I have been playing a little more with breaking up the design with some bands.

The first glaze firing for 2014 happened this week. It was a good firing with lots of orders that were sanded, boxed, and shipped. It's great that so many pots were already sold, but it was a little sad not to get to spend some time with some of them.

This one was unspoken for, it will go in the Etsy shop.

This litter of pigs came out of the kiln and were shipped off to their new forever homes. 

I am not sure if they look excited or nervous!

evolving

 This week I took my carved bowls in a new direction. I threw a whole mess of bowls and couple of platters, with wide, thick rims, and then slipped and carved them.

As I worked on these today, I was thinking about glazing. My first thought was shino interior with gloss green rim and exterior... which means a lot of careful waxing and perhaps stressful glazing maneuvers. After contemplating that a bit, I have considered glazing them completely with the gloss green.

Would that make them boring?
Opinions encouraged and welcomed.