Back Again! I am this week's host for WAYWO (What Are You Working On) a community diary for crafters, hobbyist, Jacks and Jills of all trades, Artists and anyone who just wants to share whats happening! You may volunteer to guest host by signing up at this yahoo group: ( http://groups.yahoo.com/....), which is checked from time to time. Also by joining this group, you will receive one email a week when the diary is posted. If you wish to write a WAYWO and would like directions go here: (http://www.dailykos.com/....)
Well, a week has passed and the weather held. The babysitting Grandkids worked out good too. The baby is walking and the almost 4 year old is helping In fact he helped so much that he managed to cut down my bisqueware by two. He dropped them....oh well, they weren't too good anyway. Didn't have to waste time glazing them.
I haven't replaced the broken hinges yet, maybe this next weekend, but the kiln still works fine!
After I bisque fired my greenware....I had enough to glaze and fill up the kiln for the final firing. Last week"s diary explains the process if you want to check it out: http://www.dailykos.com/...
I wanted to decorate and glaze my cups and mugs. I plan to give them to a few friends who seem to like my stuff. My girlfriend belongs to the Chicago Daylily Society and so I made some day lily designs on her cups.
I usually like to use stoneware when I throw mugs, but I'm out right now and am using porcelain. I didn't have the time to go to the supplier of my favorite porcelain so I am using another brand and I am not sure I like it as much...it seems a little chalky and brittle after being bisque fired.
I also made a few short vases and glazed them with temmoku, my favorite glaze. It is a dark brown with under shades of red and buff...
Not as shiny as other glazes but it produces nice coloring that performs differently on different clays. The porcelain brings out the texture nicely.
These pots were glazed using midnight blue with palladium on one and saturation metallic on the other. I like they way these turned out as well. The palladium is brighter and not as dull as the metallic. The mug in the back is glazed with dusky merlot.
My husband likes the celadon green bowl with the lime green frog.
The sun is a little bright so I don't know if you can see it very well.
The small cup to the right is the cup my almost 4 year-old grandson painted. He was pretty excited about being able to paint and wanted to do the large vases I made and, unfortunately knocked them over and chipped them.( It happens to the best of us!) I have other large vases. They are for next time. My largest size is about 10 inches....I have not been able to pull much higher than that....8 inches seems to be my average.
I found him a speckled sandstone mug and plate that needed glazing. I let him choose the colors...not green this time, and he wanted sunflower yellow. I drew the dinosaur train designs....he likes "Buddy"...and let him glaze the yellow edges while I did the dinosaurs. When he left I covered the mugs and the plate with transparent so that they would not have a porous surface.
I wondered why he seemed to like Buddy so much, but realized his daddy calls him "Buddy"...so there is the link.
I also did these "ditch lily" mugs. These are the lilies from my mother's garden. She gave me some for my first home and I brought some for this new place and gave some to my sisters for their yards....but Daylily purists don't care for them....so I will probably keep these or give them to my sister who likes them too.
This next week, I'll be making crabapple jelly. I'm rendering the juice today in my "old-fashioned" juicer on the stove. The juice is nice and pink. I love crabapple jelly and the tree produced such copious apples the the branches bent down and were touching the ground! I have never seen the tree that bent and it is not a young tree!
So what are you working on this week?