Wrapping it up for this Term

The end of the term always comes too soon for me, and the Christmas and New Years break is always too long.  I dread being locked out of the studio for the whole of December and first half of January.  It is a truly bleak time of year.

Tomorrow is the bisque deadline, and I have been away from class for two weeks now, since I had the raku firing last weekend, and had my personal life interfering with my pottery the last two Wednesdays.  So my extruded clay was pretty stiff, and the slabs would have been too dry if I hadn't already snuck into the studio yesterday and added wet paper towels and re-wrapped them in plastic.  Fredi had encouraged us to make a set of stacking containers, and today I decided to give it a try.  I think the result is pretty good (better than I expected, actually).  I made two containers, the top one with a very nice fitting lid :

I really like how the stamping worked out, and I have a different stamp on each side, to make it easier to assemble the stack.  Pretty clever, right?  I wasn't sure what type of handle to add, the stamp on the front is a tree design, so I played with making a small tree to add on top, but that didn't work too well.  It was my friend Janet who suggested I just make a branch, since it fits the nature theme of trees and flowers.  I really like how the branch worked out.

I have a feeling this would go very nicely in a wood or soda firing.  But I don't have any scheduled any time soon.  So I'll need to decide whether to save this stack for a future firing.  But I won't be able to rush it through this term anyhow (the bisque deadline is tomorrow, and the glaze deadline the following weekend).

Anyhow, I also trimmed up two vases I had started previously.  It seemed to take forever (over an hour, anyhow), to trim up those two vases.  But I'm relatively happy with the results.

I wasn't really supposed to start anything new, and didn't have much time anyhow, but I ended up throwing two small items, which could become mugs or just vases.  I tried an idea I saw on Instagram the other day, to press in some of my brown trimmings into the white clay.  But I think I'd need to apply a bit of slip next time, so that they stick better.  And I guess I forgot to take photos.

I also threw a very beautiful half-sphere bowl, which I intend to trim smooth on the outside, so it will double as either a slump mould or hump mould.  I have lots of ideas already for how I want to use it.

I did remember to take photos of a couple other small items I was also working on, but I can't post them yet, as one of the items is also destined to be a Christmas gift.  So I think that's it for now.

I have two more sessions, Wednesday and Sunday, and more items to glaze than I'll probably get done in that time.  But I'll do my best to at least get all the mugs going, and the leaf plates.  Since those may be items which would be of interest to Hemlock Coffee (Agassiz) patrons.