Okay, this is all the show and tell for today, I must work. I must accomplish, I must produce today. I must get these things out of my brain.

Many pots, no time to talk

This is what I do all day pretty much.

Funny little pots aren't they?

Here a Pot, There a Pot, Everywhere a PotPot

Sometimes I'm just amazed when I step back and take a look at some of the pieces I've done. This took WORK. And I just set it on a table and didn't look at it for ages. I havent' done anything this labor intensive for a while. I think I may try it again, and this time make it NOT weigh many pounds.

Just so you don't think that the little houses are my only "thing"... attached are pictures of a bunch of pots that had been sitting over at a friend's house waiting to be fired - for six months!

She wasn't firing up her kiln much in the winter, (afraid of setting her garage on fire) and her pieces were pretty large and kept getting fired in front of my stuff, so now that my kiln is up and running, even though it's about the size of an ice chest, I can do several pieces a day.

It's SOOOOOOO Slow, that's for sure, but it does give me the ability to keep a journal of what glaze I used and how much, what works and what doesn't. This is a labor of love for me, definate labor, because I really don't like making the tedious notes, but then I don't want to glaze several pieces with the same color only to find out that I hate that color, or I didn't use enough of that color, or whatever.

The bummer part about working at the college studio is that I have to wait to see where my pieces can get squeezed in and that could take weeks, and if one person's pot explodes, BOOM!, there goes my piece.

Sometimes I'm amazed that I enjoy pottery as much as I do, because it's really not all that swell for the impatient. You throw a pot, you wait til it's dry enough to trim. After it's trimmed, you wait til it's completely dry before you can fire it. You fire it for 7 hours, then you have to wait a day for your kiln to cool down enough so that you don't crack the piece when you swing open the door and the cooler air hits it. One piece can take almost two weeks to produce, so you're always working in tandem with something else, so I throw, I fire, I glaze......which is another 7 hour firing and cooling process. THEN, if it's turned out well, I can think about selling it.

Anyway - I just thought I would share that little process with you. I've got probably at least twice as many pieces as were in the photos, just waiting for glaze and their last firing. Etsy here I come!

Love,

K

These curvy things remind me of girls. Jennifer thinks they look like Thailand. Having not been there I can't say, but I doubt it. Some do remind me of Chinese hats though. The tall ones in this picture are 12 and 14 inches tall. I'm going to see how far I can go with them. They start getting a little wobbly at 12 inches and they want to droop. I just keep playing with them until they dry sufficiently to stand up on their own. I like 'em!

I can start my own city!

Kate

Okay... Even NEWER Stuff

I am totally enamoured of the small buildings that I've been working on. I think they're people. Gabe says that they remind him of one of his MarioWorld games, and suggests that I make a whole city of them. Now, I may make a city of them, but please, I'd like to wipe out the image of MarioWorld from my brain.

BECAUSE - NO, I don't want them to resemble mushrooms. I don't even like the image of mushrooms, although, one of the first experiences I had with clay was making two hand size mushrooms and they turned out pretty good.

Rambling aside, I like the image of twisty, turny buildings reaching up toward the sky. That's it, that's my whole reason. I'm just going to play that out til I run out of ideas.

So here are the pictures from the last couple of days.

Kate

Striving to Get On Board With This

Again, with the not 'blogging' in ages. Seriously, I'm trying to get regular with this, but it's been difficult to make regular entries when I've let myself just sort of flail around like a fish out of water after leaving my job. My job, my job, I LOVED my job.

So now it's been months, I've gotten used to it, sort of, and seem to be settling into some kind of pattern of producing some actual work.

It's 'work' to actually have to produce something creative MYself ... I mean as opposed to just working for someone else and collecting a paycheck. I did love those days, mind you, but there is something sort of raw and earthy about knowing that if you don't get a move on, *(Word: If I don't get a MOOOOveON)* and push MYself, NOTHING WILL GET DONE, and I'll have no one to blame but MYself. I hate that. I really hate it when it all falls on me.... I've no one else to shoulder my lack of creativity, or time management, or continuity of effort. Blechh....... just me. So I may as well get to it.

Attached, or next to, or on the side, wherever they get plugged in, are my latest ceramic efforts, which should keep me entertained for a while. I'm off the sewing for the time being and only in love with clay at the moment. Tell me what you think. Seriously!