Due to my own Christmas packing & wrapping klutziness,
I just broke one of my own mugs. It just “jumped” right off the shelf. I swear.

Good to see the insides of your pots once in awhile though.
Nice too see evenly thrown, thin walls. No one wants a heavy mug!!!
And as for the broken mug… my students would eagerly quote right back at me
“IT’S JUST CLAY.”

Another great clay creature on the student “Brag Shelf” at Lillstreet last night.
Someone is making adorable little monsters!

Tonight I tackled all of the porcelain reclaim I dried over the past two days. It was a lot of hammering, smashing & pulverizing to get it down to small pieces & powder. A good workout that will pay off with a lot of FREE clay! And look, it already filled up my large reclaim bin… plus a bit more in another bucket too!

After cranking through a lot of work getting ready for ART IN THE BARN, I found that I had a lot of clay scraps to reclaim.I’ve been breaking them up and submerging them in my reclaim bucket. So the scraps have slaked down & re-hydrated to a very wet, gooey clay. So I turned it out onto a large plaster bat. The plaster will draw the water out of the clay quicker… and in a couple days I can start wedging it up for a LOT of “free” clay.

And then since I had an empty reclaim bin… I decied to wash it out and switch to reclaiming some porcelain. I had a few scraps of my own to break up. But I also had several clay bags full of porcelain from my friend & potter Emily.

So I started breaking them all up all of the scraps… and then dumped them into my reclaim bin with water.

But then I found several of Emily’s bags had clay that wasn’t quite dry yet. Reclaiming clay works so much better when you start with dry scraps. The water seems to soak in more evenly and faster. So I spread out the rest of Emily’s porcelain scraps so they can dry overnight.

More breaking, crushing, smashing and submerging tomorrow!!!

So I’ve collected another batch of clay scraps & trimmings.
I’ve dried them and smashed them as small as possible. Time to add some water so that the dried clay can slake down. I’ll leave it sit for a week or so and then turn it out onto a plaster bat so it can stiffen back up into “new” and usable clay!

One of the best parts of going up to Minnesota for the St. Croix Pottery Tour is stopping by Continental Clay to load-up my car. Sure, it doesn’t start & stop quite as quickly any more, but it feels great knowing that I’m loaded down with a LOT of new clay potential!!!

Today in the studio I spent couple hours with a pile of gooey clay. My pile of reclaim clay has been drying out on a large plaster bat for a few days. The top layer and edges were getting pretty dry. So I started by shaving them off and wedging them back in with some wetter clay.

At my wedging table I pounded the mess of clay into blocks. Then I took those blocks and shaved off thin slices, layering them into new piles. Mixing the clay a bit more in the process.

But when I got to the “center” of my reclaim pile, it was still a LOT wetter & gooier than the rest. But of course I was impatient… and not ready to stop in the middle of the project. Instead, I cut the clay into thinner slices and stood them up with a fan on them. Hoping the breeze would speed up the process a bit… I’m not sure that it did?! But it felt like the right thing…

While I was slicing & layering, mixing & homogenizing the clay, I sliced into something hard. What?

Oh… so THAT’s where my yellow rib had disappeared to.
Inside my reclaim bucket with lots of clay scraps!!!
Good thing the “slicing into thin layers” trick found it before I tried to wedge it back in.

More pounding. More stacking. More layering. More pounding again. Block after block.

Soon enough, I had pounded up all of my reclaim clay.
Still a little gooey in some places, but layered & blocked up just the same.

I put all of the blocks into thick plastic bags where it will stay for a few weeks. Then I’ll start using the new reclaim clay… doing a “real” wedging as I go. Until then… it’s just free clay!!! And you know how I LOVE FREE CLAY!!!

And now

No room for more scraps & trimmings when the bucket’s full. Another pile of reclaimed clay piled up on my plaster bat tonight. Too much for my usual large bat, so I had to add on a little “extension” on the side! It’s a strange mix of clays… a couple varieties of stonewares, some with iron, some with ochre, some B-Clay and some porcelain scraps for good measure! All cone 10 clay bodies so we’re good.

WARNING : I will be “infecting” all of my students tomorrow night during the first night of our new pottery session. My Beginning Wheel students better be ready… I hope their immunizations are up-to-date?!

For those who can’t quite ready the small type…
WARNING!   CERAMIC FEVER.  VERY CONTAGIOUS!
Symptoms: Continual complaint as to household duties. Paints day and night instead.
Sleepless nights dreaming up ideas. Anxiety waiting for final firing.
Swell head when you receive your first ribbon.

NO KNOWN CURE

TREATMENT: medication is useless. disease is not fatal.
Victim should attend as many classes as possible.

Thanks for sharing Emily Murphy… and for spreading your own contagion “Blog-itis Maximus” to me several years ago. YOU are very contagious as well!!!

After making a LOT of reclaim, I finally starting making some things with all of my new FREE porcelain!!! Have I mentioned lately that I love FREE clay?!!!