Summer rain

Happy Birthday!

Finally! I brought some pieces home glazed and ready. My mom chose which one she wanted for her birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom! 

More to come soon. 

Ok. I have totally slacked. Life has been a whirlwind of crazy and busy with a few bouts of lazy (which I think are a little earned). But no excuse!

My class at the pottery studio is now over, sadly, and I am now attending the open studio regularly. I am still slowly learning and I want to eventually recap what I learned during the class.

It is so great to be able to meet new people while you all are on a mission to enrich your lives. Each person that was in my class and that I meet in the open studio are all so different from me and the thing that bonds us together is our love for the craft. And everyone was always so encouraging! I found that I was taking forever to throw one piece because I was either watching other people at work or talking. Well that and I really am super slow. Perfectionism and ADD do not really mesh well....

Pictures soon of some of my glazed pieces. I am so excited to see all of them and how they turned out!

(Pictured above: statue in the Colosseum) 

Tools of the trade

I love tools. I really do. That is the collector side of me speaking. My obsession with tools could get dangerous to our budget. 

Tunnel vision

Father's day on the lake. Don't mind if I do. 

First go at it

One of my first pieces. I started out with more clay than that. :)

Week 1 of pottery class: Wedging and cylinders.

The first class, we learned how to wedge. I thought this consisted of cutting the clay in little wedges. That makes sense right? You can tell I did a lot of research before starting the class.
Wedging is sort of like kneading dough, really dense and hard dough. I hadn't quite gotten the rhythm down yet and made it harder than it should have been ( I have now learned). We had to wedge for about 2 hours straight and I was seriously sweating. On my way home I tried to scratch my head and was surprised that my fingers just wouldn't do it! Trying to type and use my hands at work the next day was near to impossible. My hands would enter into a full out shake.

The three top pictures are my first attempts at pulling a cylinder. These have only been fired, not glazed. The fact that they didn't blow up in the kiln is a good start.

The picture just below are pieces done by those that use the studio, not mine.