Monday, April 25, 2011

First Time Potter: The Finished Products

Tah-Dah! Here is the bottle from my previous post as well as a few of my other favorites:

1) Here is the finished bottle. At the last minute of glazing I thought it would be fun to poor some blue into it. I'm glad I did. I like the subtle blue tint at the mouth of the bottle. I also really like the interaction of the shiny bottom glaze and the mat white top.

2) This was one of the first successful bowls I made. It's actually pretty even and centered! I did a double glaze on this one, doing a dark glaze with a white glaze over it. It's hard to see the resulting iridescent sheen in this picture, but it's there (a little).


3) I have a lot of chopsticks (as you can see) so I thought it would be fun to make something to keep them in. I did not take seriously enough the instructors warning that pottery shrinks in the firing process. So my chopstick vase is a little small. I like it none the less. I also wanted to make a spoon rest for my kitchen, so naturally I thought the two should match. I think overall, the glaze has more depth on the spoon rest than the chopstick vase, but they still make a nice pair for my kitchen counter.
Overall, I came home with about 15 pieces of pottery. Some are great, some are ok, and a couple are just terrible. The class was challenging and fun, I can't wait to take another one and hopefully bring home a few more stellar pieces.

Friday, April 22, 2011

First Time Potter: The Bottle Saga

When I took the pottery class this spring, I mostly just wanted to have fun. But true to my nature, I found myself looking for a challenge. Though the class had little structure, the teacher did demonstrations every now and then. One such demonstration was how to make a bottle. You make a cylinder, which is a great thing to practice, and then you bring in the top. That was the easy two steps according to the teacher, anyway. I thought it looked like fun, so I set out to make my own bottle. My attempts produced a number of bowls and vases, but I could not get my cylinder tight enough and tall enough to bring in the bottle neck. Finally, after a good couple weeks of work, I made my first bottle.

Here it is in all the phases of pottery making!

First you throw it (make it on the wheel)....

Then you bisque fire it (fire at a low temperature)...

Then you glaze it...And lastly, you fire it again! But you'll have to wait for the next post to see the final product.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Best Laid Plans

Since last April, I had planned to run the George Washington Parkway Classic. Since September, I had been building up my base runs. Since January, I had been timing my runs and training my pace... But not all plans work out.

In mid-March I started working full time again. This meant no more running in the afternoons. The adjustment to the full work week and running in the mornings was more than I had anticipated. After a long and tiring first week, I started to reevaluate my 10 mile race plan. From there it all unraveled. A long story short, today was the race and I was not in it. Instead I took this week off running and spent time with family after my fiance's grandmother passed away.

This morning I took a peaceful 4 mile run through farmland. It was much nicer than a crowded race course, after all.