Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at my desk at work (trying my best to appear interested in what I was doing) when my cellphone buzzed. It was Ted from L&R calling about my bisque firing! I was encouraged that he didn't say something like... "the pieces that survived the firing are ready to pick up". Nope, everything fired very nicely... no exploded pottery, no cracks and no real surprises, other than the underglaze color on some of the pieces. I was a happy guy on the drive home from Nixa; which is saying something considering what traffic is like between there and Springfield at 4:30 in the afternoon.
Before heading off to band rehearsal, I managed to get a few of the pieces coated with wax resist, in preparation for glazing. Later last night I decided to go ahead and get some of the pieces glazed. I know that glaze settles when it sits, but when I opened up the bucket of clear glaze I had mixed up a few days ago, that stuff had settled like a brick. Funny. It took me a good 10 minutes to get it worked up and thoroughly mixed again. The results of my first solo glazing experience were iffy, I have to admit. A few of them came out of the bucket just fine, but then some of them have dribbles and streaks. They are covered, but just not as smoothly as I would have liked. I don't know enough about how this particular glaze fires to know if the little flaws will disappear, or not. I guess that's just another part of the learning process. These kinds of issues would be so much easier to address if I had my own kiln, but that's just something I will have to deal with for the time being. Here in the next day or two I will take these pots back down to L&R for the glaze firing. It's all like little baby steps in the process, but it is progress! It's a blast learning this stuff. I wish I had more time to devote to it every day. There are some mornings when I will go down to the basement to check on a piece that I have been working on, and I will look at the clock and know that I have to put it back under the plastic. Time to go to work. Dang. So many ideas and things I want to do, but they will just have to wait. Patience. And that's fine. They say everything will happen in it's own time. Yup... that's what they say.
I was going to take some pictures, but I figured I will just wait till they are done before I put them out here to see.
Um, hi. You should tell people about your new blog. And by people, I mean your daughter. :)
ReplyDeleteAwesome Dad!! So glad for you to be moving ahead on this! Spending the morning listening to The Cure and a little Depech Mode thrown in for good measure...wondering what's next in life. (Cure will do that to ya.) Glad you're finding your creative direction!