Also last night in my pottery class, Kelly was decorating some large platters with thick slip. We were all loving the spontaneous-looking textures & patterns she was getting as the slip squished & rippled in all the right places!!!

Last night in my Intermediate Wheelthrowing class, one of my students unwrapped her pots from last week to do a some trimming… and we found THIS under the plastic!!!

Like a Las Vegas Hotel imploding… this cylinder totally crumpled down at the bottom, and the bottom even separated itself from the walls. The other two cylinders wrapped together with this one were totally fine. My only guess is that it was left with some water in the bottom, and then when it was covered with plastic it created a mini “rainforest” in there and the clay slaked-down just like the clay in my reclaim bucket. Never a dull day in pottery!

Still a ton of clouds in Chicago, but for a fleeting moment…
the sun made an appearance this morning! Brief though it was.

Still playing with some new mug shapes for the New Year. Looked up and saw this sweet little one sitting on a shelf in my studio. Must have slipped by from one of my last holiday kilns?! I think I’ll have to re-visit this shape… I’m kinda diggin’ it!!!

Plus another handful of beach glass found along the lake this morning. It started as my “quarantine collection” when the pandemic first started and we were all “searching” for new things to do. And if this thing carries on much longer… my collection will soon be overflowing!!!

Woke up this morning in a winter wonderland. A beautiful covering of snow everywhere… a beautiful excuse to go for a long winter walk along the lake. Sure, I’d rather be biking… but we haven’t had dry streets or an actual sunrise for SO long now!!! Just gray, gray, gray… and now some snow as a wonderful accent!

And now that my reclaim bucket is empty… it’s time to start filling it up again! A little while back one of my students was cleaning off her shelves and brought me her bag of porcelain scraps asking if I wanted them to reclaim. Of course the answer is ALWAYS yes!!! Even better, her last class was a print-on-clay class, so all of her reclaim had already been rolled out into thin slabs. So I just broke them up, spread them out and I’ll let them dry out overnight.

Then I’ll crush them down to small little pieces with a rolling pin and into the reclaim bin they go. Thanks Katie for kickin’ off my next batch of FREE CLAY!!!

Another New Year tradition in my studio is pulling out the latest batch of reclaim clay. I figure it’s been slaking down all through the holidays and is now good & ready! Goopey, sloppy & messy… and my favorite FREE CLAY for the NEW YEAR!!!

And yes, if you look closely, there are a couple different kinds of clay mixed up in there. I don’t really care too much what goes in my reclaim bin… as long as it’s CLAY!!!… and a high-fire clay body. I figure it will all mix up to be some kinda good clay… and best of all FREE!!!

I’ve been on a quest… searching for the new Brookie-O OREO‘s here in Chicago. No success yet. Luckily my niece Taylor had a package and was willing to share… from a safe distance of course.

Were they worth the wait?… Yummy, but not amazing.
Would I eat more? Yes.
Would I finish a whole package? Most likely.

Would I rather have that wonderful-gooey-pile-of-goodness as seen on the center of the package?

MOST DEFINITELY!!!