Freezing cold. Dark clouds. No chance of sun.
Summer is definitely over. Dang!

Now that the Chicago Marathon is over, I’m back in the studio and re-focused.
No more distractions. No more training. No more need to “go for run.”
So now I’m focused on my next soda kiln… throwing pots and replenishing the basics!
Now let’s not get crazy… I’m still going to bike. Let’s be real.

So I threw a “bag” of mugs… this time a new 25-pound bag made twenty-one mugs!
And surprisingly, they dried pretty quickly… and I actually stamped them today as well.

I followed that up with a batch of oil lamps. This time a little more slender… as requested!
These were still too wet to stamp… so I wrapped them up and will stamp them tomorrow.

On a recent bike ride, we stopped at the Chicago Botanic Garden for our “half-way” point to stretch, get some water, eat some lunch, maybe some PIE… and a nice walk through the Botanic Garden. My favorite was the water lilies. Such pretty colors. Great patterns. And so cool that they grow & float in the water!

And then they had some really cool, somewhat crazy, water lilies. They’re HUGE… the largest are about four feet in diameter. The colors are cool, and the spikes are crazy!

The coolest one was this “new” leaf. The colors were more vibrant… and look at those really incredible textures inside AND outside!!! Like something straight out of “Little Shop Of Horrors.” Feed me Seymour…

Another beautiful weekend. Another beautiful bike ride weekend.

Soon enough we were enjoying some winding roads through the woods. Rolling through the forest. I love how the sunlight dapples the road. Leaves gently trickling down. The crisp breeze in your face. I love Fall. Such beautiful days… even more beautiful when looking at it all from over my handlebars!

And as we’ve always said… “The best part about biking, is stopping.” We’ve never been too focused that we couldn’t stop for a good photo-op. A scenic rest. Or even a good piece of pie. For the record, we had photo-ops & scenic rests… and a piece of yummy cherry pie!

And even though we aren’t quite to peak Fall colors yet, there were a few beauties along the way! Great pops of color against the rest of the “still green” forest. Nice to know we might still have a few more weekends of Fall fun before all the leaves fall off… and Winter sets in!  Ugh…

So it was another fun day of biking… a fun day of “stopping”… and beautiful Fall colors.
But nothing better than sharing all of that wonderful biking fun with my good friend Nancy!!!

I’ve often said that my favorite flower is a Black-Eyed Susan. I love how they grow pretty much everywhere… except for my own garden?! Well this Fall, I have planted a few more with fingers crossed. I planted some “regular” ones, as well as some of these fuller & larger ones. Plus, I received a wonderful care package in the mail from my friend Maryann in Baltimore. Apparently she has a HUGE patch of hardy Black-Eyed Susans. So she dug out a few and sent me some bare roots in the mail for my birthday present. Everything’s in the ground… hoping for some good weather to get them started before Winter sets in. And then we’ll see next year what happens?! C’mon Susan… I’m rooting for you!

It’s always great to see my pottery out there being used.
So glad my friend Kelly is enjoying her wall pocket vase…
and keeping it full of beautiful Fall flowers!

While my cousin Kim was sending out a frustrated frost-warning on Facebook, her garden-fresh green beans look extra happy in one of my squiggled-slip plates!

Yesterday I rescued some “slightly-used” flowers from the “glitter gig.” I brought them into the studio to spruce up the place. I love the textures & colors of my new studio still-life.

Tonight I was the substitute teacher for the Beginning Soda Firing Class at Lillstreet. We discussed the basic firing process, how a kiln works, where the sweet spots are in the kiln… and basically tried to answer any & all of their questions. I know I gave them a lot of information. I hope I didn’t overwhelm them too much.

During our discussions, they expressed their concern & confusion of what all the soda flashing slips look like. So I suggested that we make some test tiles so they can see for themselves. And yet most of them also wanted to get some wheelthrowing time in too. So I made them a deal… if I make the test tiles, they needed to add the slip and keep track of the results. Deal done. Challenge accepted.

So here are my test tiles made out of soda clay…

And here are their class test tiles after Laury & Linda painted on some of the slips. We decided to make two test tiles for each color. One for a high soda area of the kiln, and the other for a low-soda area so they can see the difference. We also decided to leave half of the tiles plain clay just so they can see the contrast of colored slip against the raw clay color after firing.

I can’t wait to see how these test tiles turn out after firing in the new soda kiln! And I REALLY hope that this project helps these “new to soda firing” students understand a bit more about flashing slips!

Tuesday night I showed my class how to make larger bowls and platters.
I made three pieces for them… but I felt two of them needed a little somethin’-somethin’.
Tonight I pulled out some stamps and did a bit of decorating. So here goes…

Starting with the plain bowl that I threw Tuesday night. It was wrapped up under plastic and tonight it was on the “wetter-side” of leather heard. Perfect for stamping!

Once the bowl was all stamped, I moved on to stamp the platter too. So I found the stamp I wanted and began indenting one by one by one… all the way around!!!

Eventually both of these class demo pieces were stamped and done for the night. So I put them both back under plastic so they can dry a bit slower. I’m hoping that tomorrow I might be able to trim both of them.