Absence makes the heart, etc.

I better have a lot to show for taking 10 days between posts, right? But that seems to be my average of late. Sadly, I haven't been doing too much with the pottery this week. Scant though it might be, here's what I've been up to:

All these pots are still sitting on the dining room table.  The reasons are threefold: 1) it forces me to keep evaluating the glazes and allows me to develop second or third opinions.  2) it's always useful to have bowls hanging around in the dining room.  I've used them for cereal, ice cream, salsa, and trail mix.  So far, they all pass my rigorous quality control standards. 3) I'm kind of lazy and haven't made the time to pack them up.  This is probably the primary reason, but my desire to keep evaluating the glazes certainly plays a large part as well.

Krystal's a big fan of this glaze.  On this vase.  I think it's kind of pretty.

Here was trying something a little different - it's a black faux-ash glaze.  I think I'll keep playing around with the effects therein.

I keep coming back to these little vases.  Left: two blue glazes used together.  Right: really excited to work some more with the blending effect there.  Whoo!

This is my choice of the three of these that was fired.  Apparently it doesn't care much for pooling in the center, so I'll have to look out for that.  But mostly I think it's pretty cool.

More little vases.  I like these glazes, I think.



Bowls.  Trying to break out of my standard designs.  It's tricky.  Will have to make more of these.

New vase.  Carved this guy while catching up on Season 5 of Psych.  So much fun to have a studio at home!

A couple mini-mountains in progress.  Basically, I need some small mountains to test fire before I glaze all the big ones and ruin them.  Small issues with the brown slip + glaze combos in the test fire.  Hoping it was just an issue on the first round of bowls, as my mountain vases were painted with a different batch of slip then the first bowls to go through.  Here goes nothing.

Also, I've been waiting for pots to dry.  It's very exciting.

So that's most of what's been happening around here. I've thrown a few more things that didn't make the photo gallery - little pieces in various shapes and sizes to get some more specific glaze testing on - plates, for example, to test glaze behaviors on a flat and level surface. It's also been very cold, which means I really ought to be firing that kiln.  But I'm just not quite ready for another full firing yet.  Soonish, maybe.  But that'll require significantly more throwing than what I've been up to lately.
  

Currently, I've been snagging new music for the listening.  This week it's been the very hot full-length debut by the Civil Wars, a roots-folk duo comprised of singer-songwrite John Paul White and one-time CCM pop darling, Joy Williams.  It is fabulous, and currently only $7.99 on iTunes for the full album+bonus tracks.  They sound a little something like this (video also here):



So, that's enjoyable.  Also picked up the Arcade Fire's 2010 offering The Suburbs as an Amazon download steal for only five bucks. I stand firm in my belief that they are extremely overrated, but that really has more to do with the blatant fetishization of their music in critical circles than anything else. After one listen I'm willing to say that it's a great album. It's really very good, and interesting, and sort of epic in sweep (don't let the suburban focus fool you - this thing is pretty grandiose!). I just don't think it's as great as everybody else, apparently, which is why I was willing to pay five bucks for it, but not any more than that. I guess that's all I have to say about that.