These tools have been very productive today!
Gotta love a full day of wheelthrowing… at least until you start to run out of shelf space to store the pots under plastic?!

It’s a new day.
It’s a new clay!

Finished up my latest batch of reclaim clay with a bit of wedging & bagging today. Sure, it still needs more wedging when I go to actually use it… but for now it’s back to being real clay… real FREE CLAY!!!

So I’ve been stamping another batch of mugs! A little “something” different as they wre made with a new kind of clay. A tilemaker friend of mine bought some new clay and didn’t like how it “felt” when he started using it. And then when he fired his tiles, they all cracked during the firing. So he believes there might be something wrong with the clay?! He passed it on to me to give it a try… and here I did. I will agree it felt a little goopey & sticky… a little more finicky… but ultimately I made some cylinders for mugs. It was a little tougher to get them to stand up & hold their shape. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it… as he’s planning on passing his “bad” clay onto me!!! Bring it on… CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!!

Mug 1 – before & after…

Mug 2 – before & after…

Mug 3 – before & after…

Mug 4 – before & after…

Mug 5 – before & after…

Mug 6 – before & after…

Mug 7 – before & after…

Mug 8 – before & after…

Mug 9 – before & after…

So for now

So apparently I touched my face… err, my mask… a bit more than normal in class this morning?! I think it might have been when I had to pop it off for a second when I showed them how to blow into a bottle to “inflate” and enlarge it a bit.

And did anybody notice how I said “mask” and “normal” in the same sentence and it didn’t seem weird?

Okay, THAT’s weird!!!

So I spent part of the night “processing” my clay… taking bags of kinda-wet reclaim, kinda-dry stoneware, and some random scraps of clay left over in a few bags sitting around my studio. It’s always nice to work them all together to make a “new” clay that is all evenly blended… and to get rid of a bunch of random clay bags lying around my studio!

Instead of wedging them all together, I like to alternate thinly sliced layers of each clay. Then I take the stack and cut it in half vertically… stacking one half on top of the other half. A little slam on the table, and then I repeat the slicing, stacking & slamming. Time after time. Eventually the clay layers thin out enough that the clay appears to be blended.

You can see that every time you slice and stack, the layers are getting thinner & thinner…

Sure, it still needs a little bit of wedging… but this is so much easier than wedging all of the clays together from the start!

While we’re all secluded and anxiously awaiting to “reclaim” our normal lives… I thought it was time to turn out another large batch of reclaim clay! A big pile of wonderfully gooey stoneware reclaimed clay ready to set-up on my plaster bat until it solidifies enough to start wedging up again!!! Gotta love FREE CLAY!!!

It felt great to back in the studio today… even if it was just to make a few new stamps, water the plants, take down some Christmas decorations and to turn out a LOT of reclaim clay that’s been piling up & slaking down for quite awhile. Can’t wait to make something outta this big gooey mess!!!

If Rene Magritte were a potter…
he would have seen the humor as well. Strange pieces found in the clay reclaim buckets
by the Lillstreet Claymakers!

And a bit of Magritte inspiration…

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Just pulling out another batch of reclaimed clay. This time it’s a huge batch of slaked-down porcelain that I turned out onto my large plaster bat. All scraps from another potter friend who doesn’t like to reclaim clay. But I sure do!!! It’s going to take a few days before it sets-up enough that I can start wedging it. A lot of work & waiting… but then again, you know how much I LOVE FREE CLAY!!!

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