Dark this morning. Cool this morning.
With dark clouds on the horizon this morning.
Still a wonderful morning to be on my bike!

So the past few days have been very gray and cloudy.
This morning was much like the rest. Gloomy. Windy. Cold.  Luckily…
there was a thin sliver & glimmer of hope on the horizon for my morning bike ride.

As I turned around to head home, the sky was getting brighter,
the clouds seemed to be breaking up a bit… but still no sign of an actual sunrise?!

But then, just as I had almost made it home… there it was.
Finally… a little bit of sunrise!

Tonight I opened up my soda kiln to finally see the treasures inside.
After a night of unbricking, unloading, grinding shelves, kiln washing shelves,
sweeping, mopping, packing, boxing, shlepping, and moving all of the work home…
it is now time to admire and start prepping everything for this weekend’s art fair!

Still getting ready for next weekend’s Art In The Barn… and tonight I was glazing!!!
I typically start by inlaying glaze into all of the stamps by filling them all
with glaze and then wiping off the top surface… allowing the glaze that is actually inside
the stamp to stay there. I find that it really helps accentuate the stamp pattern!

After the stamps have been inlaid & wiped, then they each get a liner glaze on the inside.
Some of them might even get a little accent color sprayed on the exterior… and then every
pot needs to be wadded before it can go into the soda kiln. Still have a long ways to go…

Another beautiful morning… another beautiful sunrise…
only made better because I was on my bike…

So I’m still working in the studio and  getting ready for Art in the Barn…
my last outdoor show of the summer – this time in Barrington!
Tonight I loaded my bisque kiln of freshly made pieces. Remember,
the bisque firing is the first firing that makes the work solid, yet porous.
The bisqued pieces are then glazed and fired on more time.

The beauty of the bisque firing is that you can pack the kiln pretty tightly.
Things can touch, things can stack… it’s a 3-D stacking puzzle to fill the kiln
effectively. And luckily… I’m pretty good at it if I do say so myself!!!

The first layer of my kiln was filled with mugs and soap dispensers…

A couple more layers, after stacking bricks & shelves, pots, more bricks & shelves…
then the kiln was finally topped-off with some tumblers, spoon rests and the large
textured slab vases that I made this past week. With two on their sides…

Luckily, everything fit… barely. My pieces are stacked right up to the top.
Just barely clearing the lid when it closes! So this kiln will fire for about 12 hours
tomorrow, then cool overnight and be unloaded Tuesday night. A couple days
to glaze & wad everything… then I load my soda kiln on Friday night and
fire all day Saturday!

So I’ve spent the summer teaching kids how to make slabs… among other things!
We’ve thrown slabs by hand stretching the clay across the tables. Turning those
slabs into plates, cylinders, platters, birdhouses, vases… and even a totem pole!
But then I thought… why not make some slab pieces in MY studio?!
So I did…

So I spent the afternoon in the studio today after spending the morning visiting
friends who were in the Bucktown Arts Festival. So after chatting, shopping, laughing…
I locked myself away in the studio to finally put handles on those darn mugs!!!
They’ve been “haunting” me for weeks now. You can only spray them
with water so many times… so today it was now or never…

So when I got there, I pulled enough handles for all of the cylinders.
I like to pull them in the traditional way, then bend them over on themselves
so they are curved like a handle as they set up. Once a bit less sticky, I then
attach the handles to the cylinders.

So after a long afternoon of “scratching & attaching”…
the cylinders are now officially mugs!!!

Okay… so I threw all of those “soon-to-be-mug” cylinders over a week ago.
They’re stamped & trimmed… but I haven’t had time to put the handles on!
So I’m spraying them with water everyday and wrapping them back up
in plastic to keep them moist… and considering the option of leaving them
“handleless”… we all need more tumblers?… cups?… cylinders?…. right?!!!

They’re starting to dry too fast – and I’m too busy playing… uh oh.

A couple days later… the newly thrown cylinders have dried a bit
so they are now a little stiffer, not quite sticky – and a good stage for stamping.
So I stamped all of the “soon-to-be-mugs” going down the line…
and then trimmed all of the bottoms again going down the line!

Handles will have to wait for another day…