Friday, August 31, 2007

What the????


These little pieces of clay will eventually become necklaces. The two bead-like pendants will get a coat of some fancy-pants glaze and the little flat sun stamped piece I'll glaze with either an orange or a yellow.
I suppose the biggest news is the flood. Southwestern Wisconsin and Minnesota got hammered with it worst flooding in 100 years. In some cases, whole communities were underwater. It was absolutely terrible. Worst flooding in 100 years, national news coverage daily, and not one of my relatives called to find out how Susan and I were. I find that quite odd.
Anyway, I haven't had much time for pottery. In addition to the Flood I have been working overtime at work for the past seven weeks. But, the good news is that we're firing-up the barrel kiln again Tomorrow afternoon. Hope to have some nice pots on Sunday, photos will follow shortly afterwards.
Viterbo College started up last week. Can't wait to get back in the studio and crank out some new work. I have a bunch of drawings of some vase forms. I plan on slab-constructing them and then burninshing them when leather hard. I'll fire some in the barrel kiln and do some horsehair raku on the others. I also plan on making lots and lots of highfire utilitarian stoneware items.
Well, I suppose thats enough for now. Barrel firing photos soon.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

What Have I been Doing?

I haven't been throwing any pots but I did finish burnishing my last set of pots. I even taught my friend John how to burnish. He did a great job. Now we just have to bisque fire them and then we're ready for another barrel firing.

I've also put all my raku glaze recipes into a data base which I'll be putting to a PDF file. I have 225 raku glaze recipes.

In addition to my raku glazes I've also been entering my cone 10 glaze recipes that I've collected over the past ten years. So far I've entered 120 glazes. I can't imagine how many I actually have. Wouldn't suprise me if I have over 1,000.

Upcoming Stoneware Projects: salad bowls for Mom, soup bowls for Brother, Yarn Bowl for Emily, Dog Dishes for Jennifer and Jerri, Mugs for LynZee and Alex, Bloody Mary Tumblers for Curtis, and lots and lots of Shino ware.