After last night’s THROWDOWN challenge, we had only four people who made the weight restriction! Beautiful designs & careful craftsmanship. We were all so impressed by these Top Four… but even more enamored by the great shadows they were casting upon the table! Well done Taylor, Katie, Ruth & Jack!

We had some AMAZING carved bowls… now “baskets?”… last night in my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class. The challenge was to carve away more than half of the weight with a decorative design of cut-outs & piercings… keeping the rim & footring intact. Great work by all & some some fine learning moments along the way. Some people succeeded… while others didn’t quite make the weight… and others “may have” had a few breaks & implosions along the way!

Like Jack’s bowl that started with a great geometric pattern of diamonds & triangles… but a couple broken cuts & weight restrictions forced him to go all willy-nilly breaking out more support-connectors all around. Much to all of our surprise… his bowl remained intact, standing by itself & oddly beautiful in its free-form craziness… and now the lightest bowl of the evening by far!!! HA!!!

After trimming & weighing their “now perfect-ER” bowls…
the real THROWDOWN challenge last night was revealed.
And they never saw it coming!!! HA!!!

Since I had the weight of their bowls already written down, their final challenge was to carve a decorative design of cut-outs & piercings while keeping the rim & footring intact. But the real kicker?… they had to carve away at least HALF of the trimmed bowl’s weight. A much harder challenge than many of them expected. So much fun to see how they each approached the challenge… both creatively & technically. They only had about 90-minutes… so there was not a lot of free-time for planning. And then to see how they needed to pivot when they weighed for the first time and realized they weren’t even close to half of the weight!!! Creativity, craftsmanship & time-restraints meet structural integrity!!! More to come…

Last night during my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class, I had my students do a little trimming challenge. Taking their “perfect” three pound bowl from last week’s class and trimming the “perfect” footring on the bottom… making it an even “perfect-ER” bowl! We were also looking for a more refined & even wall thickness from top to bottom… giving them a chance to take off some of the extra weight they may have left at the bottom while throwing.

Out of curiosity, we also weighed them all before & after to see how much clay they trimmed off… or at least they thought that was why we were weighing their bowls!!! HA!!! More to come…

Not quite so warm today, but a lot more dramatic… and I’m totally here for it!
Another stunning sunrise over Lake Michigan this morning. Kicking off another beautiful day!

Just another batch of hybrid mugs done & drying… waiting for a bisque kiln some time soon!

On the road again… and it felt GREAT!!!

Enough of our ice & snow has finally melted to get back out on dry roads & bike trails for a beautiful & safe sunrise bike ride. And it felt SO good to be back out on my bike enjoying the fresh air & sunrise serenity. Sure, I know we have a lot more Winter ahead of us… but I’ll sure take this brief warm-up we’re in right now!!!

Last night in my Intermediate Wheel class, we tackled throwing larger bowls. I made two… one more vertical & another more shallow. Tonight I did some quick stamping to give them a little more flair! And now I’m off to teach tonight’s class… giddy-up…

Imagine my surprise this morning when I opened my back door and there was a friendly face staring back at me!!! By the time I grabbed my phone, he had already ambled down three flights of stairs & was exiting to the alley. No food, no trash, no anything on my back porch… no reason except for him to stop by to say “Hello.” Ahhh… life in the City!

We’re supposed to get to “ten degrees above normal” today… and I’m already enjoying the clouded blue sky & the sun breaking though. Hopefully the brief warm-up will help melt that frozen fiasco in my back courtyard area. Pretty as those icicles are… I’m ready for them to go!