Long time, no see

Hello there.

This blog basically fell to the wayside, probably because trying to maintain more than two blogs was a bit much. There is the garden blog (woodchuckacres) to keep track of the yard and the fiber blog (bittenbyknittin) to keep track of my adventures in fiber arts, and now I want to keep track of my pottery journey. I thought of starting a brand new blog, but that takes a lot of work. So I'm going to usurp this blog and use it for clay.

I am very new to clay, definitely an amateur who sometimes gets caught up in experimenting instead of creating. And that's okay. One experiement that is going on right now is mixing mason stains with stoneware. My motivation for this is my lousy glazing skills. I figure this way I'll have a base color that I can embellish, then cover with a clear glaze. We'll see how that works out.

1%, 5%, 10% stain samples

Today I poured some plaster batts. I've been skulking around the thrift shops, in search of plastic bowls and such, to mold the plaster of paris goop. There is a round one that will be just a batt, and the other three will be slump molds of various shapes and sizes. I already have a large rectagular batt that I use as a building surface.

I've been following a few pottery groups on FB which have been inspirational. One potter showed pics of leaf-shaped pieces she had made. So, of course, I had to try this myself. Using a leaf from the coleus on the front porch, I made two things, one an an impression of the leaf, the other an outline of the same leaf.

I don't have a kiln... yet. Instead, I joined a "maker space" where someone else does the firing. This is both good and bad. The worst is the kilns keep breaking down. That is why I'm tempted to get a kiln of my own, but even the small ones are expensive. Plus I would need an electrician to upgrade the power.

Besides the above, I've been glazing some slip molds that someone else made. These are not yet fired, but I think I did a decent job. We'll see what they look like when they come out of the kiln.

My SO and I have been renting space at the maker space, but he has been cleaning out his basement and I have set up a workbench in my garage, so we plan to shift to working at our homes while retaining our membership at the maker space so we still have access to the kiln and glazes.

And that's where things stand right now. Future posts (assuming I stick with this) will move both forward and backward in time, so we can see where I have been and maybe where I am going as well.