Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Not having the best day

One of the nice things about having your husband gone for the rest of the week is when I come home I often have a message of him saying he just called to say hello or something like that. Today, there were two such messages on the machine. I guess something about the drive this morning made him miss me.

One of the sad things about having the house to myself for a while is that when I bring home a ceramic project, I have no one to show it to.

The terra cotta plate came out of the kiln today. Colors do not always come out of the kiln like you expect them to, even if you have looked at a fired sample piece. So this plate had been dipped in an off-white or tan glaze, and I had thought of it more as off-white, but it came out of the kiln more tan than I had thought it would. Which was an improvement on the two turtles I had painted, but not so much on the water around the turtles. Still, I think it looks pretty good, and the turtles are more important to the piece than the water. Maybe someday I'll do something similar with the white glaze.

It took me about 8 hours to paint that plate. We painted the plates with stains after we glazed the plates. You have to be very careful when using the stains. It is sort of like watercolor painting. Once you've painted something, it stays there. You can't paint over your mistakes like with acrylics or oil paints.

Anyway, it seems like I've done a lot of work, but that's only the second project that I've finished. Everything else is waiting to dry or waiting to be fired or something.

Today was not such a good day in ceramics class. Getting to see the plate finished was great, but the rest of the time was kind of a waste. Well, not totally a waste. I noticed a problem with a friend's project before he poured plaster and ruined it. But I didn't get any work done except for cleaning off a shelf and getting the glaze off the bottom of my mosaic tile so it can be left out to dry.

I've been working on making my own clay from the mud in my backyard. The instructor said it now looks good enough to make something, but I'm not allowed to do class projects with it. So I meant to make an extra tile with it today. First, I kneaded the clay and got it ready to put on the slab roller. Then, for some strange reason, I set up the slab roller backwards. And it's not like I've never used the slab roller before. After I got the slab all rolled out and made the surface nice and smooth, one of the stamps I was using got stuck in the clay and made a big hole in the middle of the tile. That's just great. So I took the clay back to the wedging table and kneaded it again and but it back through the slab roller. Then I put the slab of clay on a drywall board to take it back to my table, and the board broke in half and the slab fell on the floor. There wasn't enough time to knead it and put it on the slab roller a third time. I'll just have to do that tomorrow.

In non-ceramic related news, you'll be glad to know that while a certain Easter candy contains carnauba wax, the carnauba wax adds an insignificant amount of fat.

Now we'll all sleep better tonight, won't we?

5 comments:

Mrs. Hairy Woman said...

When my Hubby is away for long periods of time (alot of out -of town work) he is in the construction business and has travelled all over Ontario..and Manitoba.. I miss him alot.. But when he is closer to home he will call to say hi and that he loves us..(Mr. Giggles and I).. Are you going to show some pics of your Turtles..?

laughing said...

Not sure if I'll be able to do that. We don't have a good camera right now. At his last job, my husband was allowed to use the company's camera. This company doesn't allow that sort of thing. And the camera he uses at this job is a hassle and has all kinds of cables and stuff connected to it. He damaged something the one time he tried to use the camera away from work.

I need pictures of some of my stuff anyway, but I don't who I can get to do it. My husband has always done that sort of thing for me.

Anonymous said...

I remember good old manditory pottery class. I did OK with it, but not my cup of tea. I did make a very nice coffee cup by the way.

I used to get the most frustrated with the colors after firing, as you mentioned, you could have a sample piece as a reference and still not get the color you wanted.

My major was illustation, pottery was an elective (sort of)

dmarks said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dmarks said...

Just wanted to say that maybe someone in class could help with photos. Now I'll be quiet.