Working in my sleep...

Last summer Jeff and I made tons of coasters. Enough to last us until now. I spent a portion of Wednesday throwing a few boards of them. When I went to bed that night I was making coasters in my sleep. It made for a  long night! I don't know why that happens sometimes. I make hundreds of pigs and mugs but rarely dream about them. Part of the monotonous dreaming might be blamed on my decision to slip and carve one board of coasters with ginkgo leaves. A portion of the dreams was working that out. I did try a few different patterns to see which I liked the best... sort of sketch books made of clay. I decided I like the two ginkgo leaves, overlapping. The last four ended up with the Danielle flower pattern, blame it on a short attention span.
Leave it to me to take a simple, inexpensive item, and kick it up a notch! Sometimes it's so hard to leave things alone.

Tonight we are heading to Cedar Creek Gallery in Creedmor, NC. Jeff has a teapot in their National Teapot Show IX, and tonight is the opening reception. I am looking forward to getting out of the 'grove and enjoying a little culture. On that note, I will leave you with your piggy of the day...

coasting along to the finish line...

coasting along...

Jeff has been making stoneware coasters for years. We have been out of them for some time and decided that since they are good sellers we should take lots of them to the League of NH Craftsmen's show at the end of the month. I have never made them and this week Jeff showed me his technique. He doesn't use bats and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get them off the wheel without distorting them but after watching him do a couple, I got the hang of it. Not using bats saves a lot of room when you have to make a hundred of something!

The league show is just Jeff's work, but I can do a certain percentage of the work. He is adding his  texture to most of these coasters. That is the time consuming part of the process.

We will also keep some simple, with a swirl design in the center and many will be ready for our anniversary celebration on Saturday, July 20th.
...of course now I am thinking, wouldn't it be cool if I slipped some of these and carved some leaves and flowers into the surface?