After Steve Lee, we were also treated to my pal Mike Stumbras on INSTAGRAM LIVE! Mikey took us on a wonderful “tour” of his ceramic journey through education, history, dead things and so much more! His work is amazing… so if you’re not following him on Instagram yet, you definitely should be!

HAPPY MUGSHOT MONDAY! As we’re all self-isolating & spending far too much time at home… tackling some long over-due projects… I thought to myself, “Sure, I could dust those shelves.” Instead, I just thought better and decided to post them as they are. Stacked. Over-flowing. And yes… DUSTY!

Don’t hate. I’ll try to take care of that when “I get some spare time.”
Oh wait…

With the end of the LILLSTREET THROWDOWN bearing down on us, I had to get started on a “little project” of my own a couple weeks ago! Getting ready for the final night when the Big Winner would be revealed!!!

So I just watched this week’s episode… The Quarter Finals of THE GREAT POTTERY THROW DOWN! Where we go from four potters to three. And then I realized that somehow I forget to post last week’s episode where we went from five to four! So here it is… with a fun outdoor pit firing, some sgraffito carving and another great wheelthrowing challenge!

Click here for the link to watch the episode on YouTube!

And then if you’re going to binge-watch two episodes back-to-back, here’s a few images from this week’s episode of THE GREAT POTTERY THROW DOWN. This episode is The Quarter Finals with their largest handbuilding project where some get “wet & messy”… as well as a little “wet & fussy” decorative spot challenge of underglaze transfers along the way! And then next week is The Final episode… WHOO-HOO!!!

After the “eventful” firing day Saturday…
and a full cooling day yesterday, it was time to come back and unload the soda kiln with my workshop participants. I stopped in on Sunday to help speed-along the cooling process, as well as early Monday morning pulling a few bricks off the top row.

When the class showed up, we started taking off the kiln door brick. It’s always fun to see the “treasures” inside kind of reveal themselves layer by layer!

Eventually the entire door was off… and they could all see their newly soda-fired pots!!!

We unloaded the kiln, took all of their pots into the classroom while we cleaned the kiln, scraped the shelves and re-kiln washed the shelves. Once all of the busy-work was done, we could enjoy our potluck… and admire our new pots!!!

Cassie’s pots…

Kate’s pots…

Martin’s pots…

Christi’s pots…

Dan’s pots…

Charles’ pots…

Jacob’s pots…

And a couple of my mugs… as a little kiln filler along the way!

All in all, a great firing. Even with the crazy firing “issues’ we had, the work still came out nice. Good amount of soda, lots of flashing, nothing too crazy!!!

I think all-in-all, everyone had a great time in the Soda Workshop. I know three days are not really enough time to “learn” everything about soda-firing… but it was at least a good primer for them. Kind of a quick glance to see if they “like” soda-firing or not… before the addiction truly begins!

For subbing Lisa’s class, I like to do “demo-on-demand “…
which means I’ll kinda do whatever they want. So today Jeannine requested some bowl finishing tricks, and Julia wanted me to “throw something too tall to put on her class shelf.” Which turns out to be about 12-inches. So I did four quick bowls, threw a tall vase with just four pulls, decorated the bowls… and then chatted & solved all of the problems of the pottery world. As always, a fun class to sub for!!!

Early morning Day Two!!! The sun is shining and I’m restocking shelves for another fun day at my HOLIDAY HOME SHOW. We’re open from 10:00-6:00 today with lots of pots looking to become someone’s favorite holiday gift!!!

A very successful Day One for the HOLIDAY HOME SHOW!! Very festive. Very fun.
Looking forward to another great day tomorrow from 10:00am-6:00pm… c’mon by… c’mon buy!!!

Well, here it is… my fired soda kiln last night waiting to be unloaded.
So much fun taking it apart shelf by shelf, brick-by-brick… finding tons of treasures
along the way! To see everything that was inside, you’ll need to come
to my HOLIDAY HOME SHOW this weekend!!!