Sadly, I am still missing one of my creations. I just couldn’t find it anywhere at the studio so will have to talk to the owner and see if she knows where it is. The majority of my pots are now home, however.

These two little bowls were the absolute end of my clay and I was just doing my best to finish it up.

One of these is a spoon rest and the other is a two-part soap dish. I think this one will work better than my oval ones, which are too flat to stop the soap from sliding off. Learned a good lesson there!

These two are pinch pots with lids. The edges look a little messy as I had to apply wax to the surfaces that touch. They are fired with the lids on to retain the shape. The one with the solid knob on top is what I call my dragon’s egg.

Two shots of the mug. This is the one that had the pasta letters pressed into the side. Most of the letters are just visible though the glaze rather filled them in. The L of “Nicola” is most obvious as there seems to be no glaze in it at all!

And finally, the kitchen caddy. It has a teeny holder at one end for my Lee Valley cleaning brushes (they are like mascara brushes for cleaning straws etc). The flat area will hold a wire soap pad and a nail brush, and the tall section will hold a brush or sponge. I haven’t tested it yet. The construction of the tall part was inspired by a library book photo. It’s just a rectangle curved into an S shape and joined.

I am enjoying using what I made. Every day when I use my toothpaste I admire my little pot, and yesterday I had three balls of yarn in the yarn bowl with the strands feeding through the spiral.

🙂

Looking at this bowl from above, it’s pretty, but the magic is underneath.

The construction was fun. I cut out a circle and placed it inside a bowl mould. Then I made coils – the sort of thing I used to make as a child out of Plasticine (do you remember that stuff?) Wormy coils in spirals placed against the initial circle, then little blobs to fill in the gaps, and three rows of more worms all around the edges. A bit like making a granny square blanket, putting the squares together, then crocheting a border.

After all that was done, the inside was smoothed out so that there were no holes. The Floating Blue glaze again brilliantly highlights the texture.

Love it!

The only other item that I was able to pick up today (the rest are still sitting in the kiln room awaiting their turn) was this spoon rest for my kitchen.

I just brought this home. It’s the first piece I dipped in glaze and I overdid it somewhat. I have discovered from this glazing process that fine texture and small details can be lost when the glaze (which is really very dilute clay) is added. The leaf stamps I used on this plate can be seen on the wide end, but not on the narrow end.

I have many more items to show you, but that will be in a few days’ time, as I just dipped them in Floating Blue this morning. Bonnie at the studio assured me they would be fired this week. Obviously it depends on the kiln space and quantity of other people’s stuff that needs firing.

Teaching knitting/crochet again at the library this afternoon, this time with more helpers. Should be fun!

We had a choice of three glazes – one looked terracotta in the bowl, but turns out blue with brown highlights on the edges/texture; one was pale green and looks pretty much the same when fired; and the third was a reddish brown but not as deep as the blue, and produced a rich brown.

So here are some random pots and bowls, plus two soap dishes. And an owl plaque.

I stopped by the pottery studio a couple of days ago and picked up the glazed pieces that ds2 and I had made. There are two items missing so I’m hoping they didn’t get broken in the second firing. And I still have a lot more to glaze.

But I’m pretty happy with how my yarn bowl turned out. It was the very first thing I made in the class…

The glazing process makes a dull chunk of clay into something beautiful, however wonky! Here are three more of my pieces…

Very exciting!