So my campers remembered “almost” everything from yesterday…
Apparently the discussion we had about pulling your long hair back into a pony tail was missed by one of my Campers. Yesterday she was fine, today not so much.

So we were throwing some nice pots when all of a sudden her hair got caught
in her centered ball of clay as she was bending down over it.

Stick. Adhere. Spin. Twist. Clump. Twist. Dreadlock… this could be bad…
luckily she was still smiling & laughing!

She asked if I could help her fix it… of course I said yes…
and of course I told her to hang on a second while I grabbed my camera…
and the, and only THEN, did I help her get out of the mess.

When we finally got her extricated from the wheel, I took her to the sink
to do a little cleaning, scrubbing & de-tangling of her hair.
Surely she will remember to pull her hair back tomorrow, right?!

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Another fun day at Summer Camp… luckily they remembered what I taught them yesterday, and today they made a LOT of pots!!! Tomorrow is detailing, decorating, handles, trimming and finishing this batch of stoneware pots. Thursday we switch to terra cotta and Friday we glaze everything!!!

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It’s another week of Summer Camp!!! This week I’m teaching Wheelthrowing again….
and the mud-covered shenanigans have started already!!!

So my campers this week learned TWO very important lessons… the hard way!

NUMBER ONE : Dried terra cotta is VERY fragile… and cannot be repaired.
Instead, any broken pieces needed to re-bulit from scratch very quickly!

NUMBER TWO : Put the lid on the underglaze jar before you shake it!!!

My Chess Camp kids have made it to their final day. All of their pieces have been made and all they needed to do today was paint them with colorful underglazes. So much fun to see their sets all set out in rows so they can paint in assembly-lime fashion. I gave them some directions… and a LOT of warnings about how fragile their dry clay pieces are at this stage. Amazing how some color can really bring their pieces to life!!!

Look at these… can you guess what characters they are???

Did you guess Luke Skywalker & Princess Leia???  —  ‘cuz you should have!

“GO” or no “GO”… Pokemon is still popular with the kids!!!

By the end of camp today, we had a little breakage, but successfully made it to the end. All of the pieces are on the carts drying, and waiting for one of the kid’s monitors to cover them with a thin coat of clear glaze. Soon enough, they’ll be fired and going home with the kids!!!

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Another good lesson for my campers… if they let their terra cotta dry too fast so that it’s no longer usable, we’re NOT going to toss it in the reclaim bucket. The easy-out. Instead, we’re drying it out and then they need to pulverize it so we can quickly turn it into terra cotta slip for them to use! Tough work… but it’s all part of the process.

Chess Camp is moving along smoothly. They’ve each been working hard building all of their chess pieces and painting their boards. Tomorrow is Friday… which also makes it their last day to finish everything up. Our plan is to paint all of the pieces with colored underglazes and hope that none of the pieces break along the way. If they do, there’s going to be some frantic re-building!!!

It’s been a long week and it’s only Thursday!!!
My Summer Campers have been working so hard making their chess sets. Each one has a theme and they’ve been building all of their pieces out of terra cotta clay. Some of them have been struggling, while others have been cruising right through. I just hope everyone has been scoring & slipping really well. Guess we’ll find out when their pieces start to dry, huh???

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Could they BE any cuter???