G'Day,
Here are a few pictures to share, just because.
The chooky thing is the finished result of what I made several months ago. She is guarding my front door. Not a very good picture. It is in the same glaze that the mugs are glazed in, an iron red. Some of my blog friends asked to see something I had made. So... here tis'.
Next picture the mugs. Iron red stone ware glaze. They turned out o.k. I had to fiddle with them quite a bit because the glaze had too much water in it and as it belonged to the potter's society I wasn't game to try to fix it up by taking some of the water out, so I left it and had to keep dipping and drying the mugs out as I went. If the clay absorbs too much water while you are glazing it, the glaze goes on too thinly and starts running off again before it dries and gives a poor coating. So that is what was happening with these. Interesting though, one of the mugs went into a different firing to these and must have gone a few degrees higher and came out absolutely beautiful. Darker, glossier and with an almost oil spot effect to it. I had 6 of these, they all were o.k. i am using them at home now.
Scribbling, by me.
Scribblings again.
The next picture is inside the war memorial at Goulburn. (See my post a few stories back.) I was puffing by the time I got to the top of the stairs but the view up there was pretty good. I probably used up a few extra calories getting there and it is supposed to be good for you to put your heart rate up. :> It was cold too, doesn't your body use up extra calories to stay warm, and less to stay cool. Ah what a nice idea, there has to be some sort of bonus to having cold weather. Last week here in Canberra we had a cold snap. One of those days it was just 3 degrees at 2.00 in the afternoon when I went to work. I wore about 4 layers of clothes and didn't take my big jacket off all day. Brrrrrrr. That night it got down to minus 6 degrees.
The war memorial again.
This is a wonky pot. I don't really like it and should have trashed it and not bothered to fire it. The glaze on glaze decoration on it looks OK. though. Them's my finger prints. I like putting those little turned lines on the bottom of all my thrown pots. They have become my own little signature.
Today I went to the Thursday drop in morning again at the potter's society. I turned 2 serving bowls that I made there last week. turning is cutting the excess clay of the half dry pot ( known as leather hard), a bit like wood turning except with clay. I also put 2 bags of clay through the pug mill. One was too hard the other too soft. What a great toy the pug mill is. It remixes, blends and De-airs the clay so I don't have to spend hours upon hours recycling it and doing it all by hand. I didn't get to use one of them before I came to Canberra, a friend in Wagga used to have one and she said I could use hers but I never did. I used to do all my recycling by hand. Silly me!