Favours for favours

Finished up a bunch of dangly favours for the wedding. Going to glaze
them a fantastic ohata red as well as the mag yellow.

Trimming

On Monday I trimmed my three pots. I made two bowls and a cup. Interestingly enough I learned how to trim using the fast Brent wheel. For a long time I've only trimmed on a kickwheel, but Tom had convinced me to do otherwise. "if you want to waste all your time trimming, go right ahead."

I also learned a technique of determining the midpoint of where one should push to center a piece of leather-hard clay. Very neat. I'll have to post pictures soon.

I also learned how to use the back of a wood trimming tool to burnish the piece as the wheel is spinning so we can achieve a nicer finish on the clay before glazing. Very very nice.

Lastly I learned to reshape a deformed bowl by inserting a bisque fired bowl into the deformed bowl and tapping until the shape comes back about. Of course, I made the mistake of also indenting my bowl so that it was severely deformed, but oh well.. lessons learned.

Some more things I learned.
1. Ash causes glazes to run.
2. With teapots, the opening of the spout should be in line with the top of the teapot (duh).
3. Always push DOWN with your rib of clay when trimming, not IN bc you'll deform your piece (which happened to me)
4. When making a lid for a pot, make sure you insert the xacto at 45 degrees so that the lid can easily come out.
5. Fire the lid separate from the body so that you can glaze both sides of the lid.

Pictures to come.

I'm thinking of making a teapot and some vases and plates. We have enough mugs. Also a large casserole for the oven. I'm excited!!!

Beware of puddles!

Well while throwing yesterday, I made the dreaded mistake of leaving a puddle on the bottom of my pot, and guess what? My vase CRACKED!!!!!!! RATS!

It's ok because the clay can be reused, so I threw it back into my bag of rejects. Something else i learned yesterday was a more robust way of collaring. It appears that I'm pretty good at making bowl forms, but I'm terrible at making things with a tummy/belly. Tom, my instructor, who is a retired engineer, broke it all down! Now I have a new way of collaring, which uses three points of contact from each hand, so I don't end up pulling the neck off the piece by jerking up too fast. Also, I noticed that when collaring, you make sure you keep your collar on the pot in one spot for a long time, and you push in, then slowly push up. No wonder I got fluted edges all the time!

Here's a picture from my notebook, illustrating the collaring.

Throwing like a man

I went to ceramics on Monday after a long hiatus from throwing and it was wonderful to get my hands on clay again. Of course, the clay was so extremely gritty that I pretty much tore off the top layer of skin from my hands, and I am now suffering from chronic dry hands since Monday. But NEVERMIND. It was fun. Tom, my instructor, is a retired engineer, who also teaches kids. He's a great teacher. He also throws like my instructor in Malaysia.. keeping the arms and elbows close to the body. I'm surprised at how well it works. My Malaysian instructor, Bee-Him, was very well meaning, but i think she got frustrated with me because I could never get what she was trying to explain. Perhaps it was the linguistic differences. She had an amazing way of never getting dirty when she threw clay! Amazing! I remember the first time I went to class, and I was demonstrating how I used the wheel, the first thing she said was that I "threw like a man" since I had my legs propped up on bricks and elbows propped up on my knees for leverage.


In any case, I learned this time - what I've been doing incorrectly.. like locking my hands together when centering. The left hand is independent of the right hand. After I got that, throwing became fairly easy, and I centered four pugs of clay. I also remembered how to pull up and throw a tall cylinder. Now to bowls - I need to remember how to do bowls.

ceramics class!

Finally - I've found a place to take ceramics! Manhattan Beach community center! It's been since 2005 since I last glazed and threw pots, so I'm in for some instruction. The community center also has open studio on Wednesdays.