Sweet small tree

Another kind of tree

I was delighted that this shape fired alright, except one ding in unloading...which shall remain undisclosed.

Raspberry Orchid tumblers

bowls with holes are for?

A ball of yarn...for those evenings you put your feet up and do needlework. No more chasing the ball of yarn all over the place.

Raspberry (NOT) delight!

Our raspberry glaze at the BMCA clay studio is gorgeous deep red, with some blue tinges here and there.  It works well as long as you honor it's limits.
Too drippy to be on with another glaze near the bottom of a pot...guaranteed to run onto the kiln shelf.  Gorgeous all by itself


And now I know she just (being persnickity, must be female, raspberry) won't paint onto anything either.  I tested it about 6 times, painting little orchids onto the clay, then firing at cone 6 (all our glazes are geared for that temp).  They came out grey and fluid looking. And I learned the drippiness of the glaze means it blends like a watercolor, completely without control, when other glazes like white or yellow are added.  These were on a verticle surface and I knew too much of raspberry would run downhill.  I just didn't know that all the red in it would run away too!

But I actually like the free flowing nature of these blossoms...watch out impressionists!

Which kitty will she choose?

OK, shipping isn't 100% safe.  A well-bubble-wrapped tumbler broke on its way to its new home.  So I made a couple of replacement options.

One is squared off at the top, and the other is triangular, like the rest of the set.

Choose me mom!

Knitting Bowls

In the foreground are 2 knitting bowls awaiting the glaze firing.

A finished bowl to hold a ball of yarn, and let you run the yarn through the curl cut in the bowl...either for knitting or crocheting.  Other colors of bowls are also going to be for sale soon at the Tailgate Market in Black Mountain.  It opens on May 3 this year, same location behind the First Baptist Church at 200 Montreat Ave.

Eggshell over Little Loafers

A friend liked the glaze which she had on a very large bowl, so I've tried to do the same on these smaller bowls for her.

Little Loafers is a nice whitish cone six clay...from Highwater Clays in Asheville.

Eggshell is one of the studio glazes at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts clay studio.  And the turquoise on the rim is another glaze called Mexico, which is in very short supply these days.  Shortage of Mexico glaze is directly proportional to the cost of one of the chemicals which make up this color, namely tin.

The Big Vase is Finished

The glaze looks so different when it has been fired, where it was just this chalky looking stuff before hand.  Tomorrow I'll show you how those bowls look after the 2200 degree Fahrenheit firing is finished.

Waiting

Got the orchids painted on these tumblers, and the yarn bowls are sitting on the shelf waiting to be glazed.  But yesterday wasn't a good day for me...rain and coolish outside means the joints are hurting.  So I bundled myself into a heated room (with air filtering constantly so it was drier) and read and looked things up on the computer.  Today the sun is out, so I'll be at the open studio this afternoon.

The simple big vase

At drying stage, called Greenware.  Does anyone know why?

A carafe and tiny vases

I only had one loss, in an unloading accident, someone was in a hurry.  The carafe was a test of white slip over the stoneward clay, which worked in some ways, and didn't in others.  It gave great luster to the glazes, but obscured the stamp completely.  Perhaps too many layers.

More friends

Bette and Cathy (pottery friends) are listening to someone talk to them, while I'm just taking pictures, and kind of listening, at least until my coughing got bothersome.  I left early because I sounded like a fog-horn.  This was around March 15.  Just a bit over 2 weeks ago.  My cough is finally fading into just a couple a day.  I can't believe how much energy I have now that I'm not dealing with difficulty breathing.  Ahhh.

Some pretty work that's just been glazed (the rose carvings are Mathilda Tanner's)

Dragonfly is also Mathilda's work.