April 22

Today was kind of a slow day.  I feel like I didn’t have that much time in the studio.  I threw four teacups to go with my teapot.  I need to make two more tomorrow.  Then I spent the rest of the time I had glazing.  I did some blind contours, and so now I have the last four dinner plates all blind contoured, and the two serving bowls and the teapot.  I have to actually dip them in the clear glaze still, but that doesn’t take very long.  Although there’s not much of the clear glaze left, so I have to find the right containers to dip things from. 

            My six drinking cups are still in the bisque kiln, and I think they might be ready tomorrow but I’ll probably have to wait until Wednesday to work on them so that they have time to cool down.  The platter is in there, too.  I haven’t had any more success throwing more platters, but I’ll keep trying.  I only want to have one platter, but I guess I need to have a back up. 

            I think I can probably fit the rest of the body of work into one electric kiln firing.  There’s four plates, which each need to go on their own shelf, but I can probably squeeze the cups into the empty space on their shelves.  Then the platter will go on its own shelf.  Actually that won’t work.  There’s too much stuff and the bowls are too big to squeeze in anywhere.  Maybe I could use one of the bigger electric kilns that are in the room with the gas kiln.  I’ll have to figure out when they’re using them to bisque work.  It only takes twenty-four hours to fire something so I could probably squeeze myself into that schedule.  Otherwise I’d have to do two firings which would be wasteful and more time consuming.  I think other people have cone 10 work that they could put in there too if I can’t fill it with just my work. 

            Getting everything out of the kiln on Friday really made me feel good about my project.  I can’t wait to spend some time getting it all pulled together and choosing which pieces are going to go into the final show.

            Tomorrow I’m going to make a couple more teacups and I’m going to try to get all of my finished bisqued work glazed.