This week in my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class, my students killed it again… twice! Their first challenge was to take one of the “perfectly” trimmed bowls from the previous week and start carving away parts & pieces to turn it into a kind of basket bowl. They had to have a good design, clean cuts & keep enough structure intact to keep it all together.

The “real” challenge though?… they were tasked with carving away more than half of the original weight of the bowl! Tougher than it sounds… that’s a LOT of clay to take away and keep your bowl still in one piece! Huge congratulations to Claire & Will for making the weight… everyone else got SO close… and we only had one collapse! mwah, mwah, mwah…

After throwing-off-the-hump, my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN peeps turned their attention from matching mini bowls… to matching serving bowls! They had three pounds for each bowl, and plenty of time to make them as “perfectly matching” as they could. Plenty of time to throw two bowls… plenty of time to throw a replacement bowl or two… plenty of time to overthink things… plenty of time to push too far until they flop!

They all did a great job… but no winner was chosen! As the “real challenge” is to come back to class next week with two perfectly matching & perfectly TRIMMED serving bowls!!!

At the end of the night, and a jam-packed three hours of LILLSTREET THROWDOWN fun, we finally tabulated the rankings for the teams.

And as the Olympics theme song played in the background, my handmade Olympic medals were awarded to my talented & exhausted students. Kudos to them for playing along with my silly Pottery Olympics games!!! So much fun for all of us!!!

Gold Medal WINNERS – Will & Helen

Silver Medal WINNERS – Melanie & Clara

Bronze Medal WINNERS – Claire & Tracy

The final event of our Pottery Olympics was a “crazy constructions” challenge! They had two pounds of clay… and a brown bag full of crazy parts & pieces. They had to use everything to make the tallest free-standing structure. It was so much fun for me to watch the teams try different techniques as they grew & toppled over & over again. Eventually they came together… and one was easily towering over the rest… too bad it was tough to get the tallest structure in a good photo?!

And then it was back to the bowls… and they never saw it coming! The Pottery Olympics continued with one player trying to re-create & match the first “perfect” bowl… while BLINDFOLDED!!!! Their partner could advise, discuss, offer tools, measure, etc…. they just couldn’t touch the clay!!! My LILLSTREET THROWDOWN students were “blindly” crushing it!!!

Sure, they’ve now thrown bowls, they’ve matched each other’s bowls… but can they both work together at the same time?! For the next Pottery Olympic event, they were challenged to make a “partner platter” where one person threw, and the other person drove the speed pedal! Fun to take away the control, and give it to someone else responsible for speed & stopping.

The Pottery Olympics continued… after the “stronger” wheelthrower had made the “perfect bowl”… their team-mate was then challenge in the next round to step it up and MATCH that perfect bowl that their partner made! Another two pounds, and a little longer with 20 minutes to match the same size & shapes of their team-mates’ bowl! Hard enough to match your OWN bowls… let alone matching someone else’s bowl!!! All part of the fun of the LILLSTREET THROWDOWN!

Our Pottery Olympic events came fast & furious last night during my LILLSTREET THROWDOWN class. We switched back to the wheel where one team member per team was challenged to throw their “perfect” bowl with two pounds of clay… with the parameters of 8″ wide by 5″ tall. So of course each team tried to choose their stronger wheel-thrower to compete here. They had ten minutes to perfect their bowl… smooth curves, not flat bottoms, no beginner’s ledges, nice rim, etc.

Once the slabs were thrown, cut-off to rectangular shapes and measured… the next Olympic Event was to decorate, carve or texture the slabs! My THROWDOWN suggestion was to work together and have a concerted design plan for the slab! And yes, pandering to my love of a good theme can’t hurt any!

The next “event” of The Pottery Olympics was to see who could roll the longest continuous coil using two pounds of clay. The rule was that if your coil breaks, you cannot squish is back together! You could keep rolling with what was left…as we were looking for the longest coil in 10 minutes!

After rolling, the team-mates were then challenged to make the tallest free-standing “tower” cylinder using the coil. And yes, we even’d out the playing field by making the tower builders all use the same length of coil. Turns out the big discussion was if the one in the center was indeed a “cylinder” or not?… your vote???