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lenora_roseWe're into serious crunch time. The last "wet clay day" (Ie, day when i can do wheelwork or make figures) is Friday. Before then i have to:
- Throw and trim a goodly number of plates. I need a matched set of 4. This requires me to make several of different shapes to best pick the appropriate style, then make about 10 more of that style and the same size. I've made 3, total, not matching. The good news part here is that I have mugs and bowls of set shapes, so my plate types are already narrowed down. I might not have to make 20 in a week. Also good because there are only so many of the bats to put them on (bats = discs you place on top of the wheel, so that when you're done a piece you can pick up the bat, not the piece, and place it elsewhere. With cups and bowls and bottles this is rarely necessary; they can be picked up by hand. With plates it's *essential*. or else you have to wait hours for it to be dry enough to move safely.)
- Make 6 more animal heads. These go pretty fast if I have a reference (with a few angles of view) near or am confident enough in the relevant shape to work from memory.
Open house is April 13th. Before *then* I also have to:
- do the carved decoration on 3 1/2 of the mugs and all 4 bowls. And all 4 plates. This is relatively easy decoration, compared to my spirals on the mitosis bowls, but, speaking of which...
- finish the last 3 of the mitosis bowls. One spiralled, two with mostly straight lines. If I had the right clay (I've switched from a white to a dark brown), I'd be seriously tempted to try and re-throw the shape of the catastrophic failure (One of the ones carved the best, and which best survived the bisque was knocked over in removing it from the kiln, and cracked. It also had glaze problems, but those weren't insurmountable, unlike two massive cracks and a missing chunk.)
- super-demon (Ie, glue, but one that survives the kiln firing) together the mitosis bowls currently in a bisque.
- apply handles to 3 remaining mugs that don't quite fit the matched set.
- Possibly decorate those 3. Possibly not.
- bisque all the plates and animal heads.
- glaze my animal heads in time enough to know what my last mixed batch of glazes actually look like, so I can use them to:
- glaze all the rest of the above *plus* the multitude of other cups, bowls, mugs, and bottles sitting on my shelves (Which is in number close to 20, not counting the ones I did yesterday to clear enough space to have somewhere to put the first 3 plates.)
- grind off the mess from the bowl and mug where the glaze ran. Reglaze the inside so they are food safe.
- fire all the above in the gas kilns.
- See if I can get involved in a heavier way in one of the firings so I have more idea what the heck to do with one. (The only firings for which they have sign-up sheets are the wood kiln, which I haven't used. My stuff has just gone in general kilns.) That's probably a time commitment of 8 hours or more, albeit intermittent.
(Okay: I have hopes of setting up a marathon craft session with people somewhere in there, so I can see them and carve pots together. And I will go to game and archery. My sanity depends on it. But I already signed off next week's choir practice, and I think I'll sign off the one the week after.)
_________________________________
Oysterband is in Winnipeg April 15th. I've had two tickets for over a year (Really.) The timing couldn't be better. Just when I need something like that.
_________________________________
Just purchased:
Jim C. HInes - Goblin War. (Third in a fantabulous series)
Sarah Slean - The Duchess (new cd by a Canadian pop musician I rather love.)
Colin also bought me a remaindered copy of Bujold's Beguilement. He'd have paid for Goblin War too, except that he said, "I'll buy one book for you and one for me..." and therefore I pounced on him and wrestled Goblin War away from him. MINE.
Granted, once we both read it, it would have ended up on my shelf either way, if only to keep the other Goblin books company.
In the middle of reading The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, though (LIes of Locke Lamora ended as satisfyingly as it had begun, and now I *do* have the interest in the sequel I was previously unsure of.) Interesting. I can't entirely see why he bothered with some of the points of view (The Mugatu, frex - and Alpha-Cat's made my eyes cross without giving me that much more insight into how and why he thinks), but overall, he's doing a lot of things right. Much and much cool geekness (Character sheets for each of the points of view introduced, with some seriously whacked out stats), some great cultural touches. The villains are kinda cartoony, -- Alpha-cat's Jafaikanness is really his only defining characteristic, ditto for Digaestus' faux-Victorian, unlike the protagonist, Hamza, or his friend Yehat, whose cultural backgrounds are integral, not defining. But maybe that's the point - the fake cultural backgrounds reduce people, while the real, born-into-it ones make them more real.
Plus, Edmonton! Beautifully described. And in spite of it being uttered by one of the most horrible of the bad guys, I did love the reference to the Edmonton Fringe as a quarter million people converging on Old Strathcona to NOT see plays. (I've been given the impression that while they're still ahead of us in total crowd count, we get more indoor audiences, and more sell-out shows.)
- Throw and trim a goodly number of plates. I need a matched set of 4. This requires me to make several of different shapes to best pick the appropriate style, then make about 10 more of that style and the same size. I've made 3, total, not matching. The good news part here is that I have mugs and bowls of set shapes, so my plate types are already narrowed down. I might not have to make 20 in a week. Also good because there are only so many of the bats to put them on (bats = discs you place on top of the wheel, so that when you're done a piece you can pick up the bat, not the piece, and place it elsewhere. With cups and bowls and bottles this is rarely necessary; they can be picked up by hand. With plates it's *essential*. or else you have to wait hours for it to be dry enough to move safely.)
- Make 6 more animal heads. These go pretty fast if I have a reference (with a few angles of view) near or am confident enough in the relevant shape to work from memory.
Open house is April 13th. Before *then* I also have to:
- do the carved decoration on 3 1/2 of the mugs and all 4 bowls. And all 4 plates. This is relatively easy decoration, compared to my spirals on the mitosis bowls, but, speaking of which...
- finish the last 3 of the mitosis bowls. One spiralled, two with mostly straight lines. If I had the right clay (I've switched from a white to a dark brown), I'd be seriously tempted to try and re-throw the shape of the catastrophic failure (One of the ones carved the best, and which best survived the bisque was knocked over in removing it from the kiln, and cracked. It also had glaze problems, but those weren't insurmountable, unlike two massive cracks and a missing chunk.)
- super-demon (Ie, glue, but one that survives the kiln firing) together the mitosis bowls currently in a bisque.
- apply handles to 3 remaining mugs that don't quite fit the matched set.
- Possibly decorate those 3. Possibly not.
- bisque all the plates and animal heads.
- glaze my animal heads in time enough to know what my last mixed batch of glazes actually look like, so I can use them to:
- glaze all the rest of the above *plus* the multitude of other cups, bowls, mugs, and bottles sitting on my shelves (Which is in number close to 20, not counting the ones I did yesterday to clear enough space to have somewhere to put the first 3 plates.)
- grind off the mess from the bowl and mug where the glaze ran. Reglaze the inside so they are food safe.
- fire all the above in the gas kilns.
- See if I can get involved in a heavier way in one of the firings so I have more idea what the heck to do with one. (The only firings for which they have sign-up sheets are the wood kiln, which I haven't used. My stuff has just gone in general kilns.) That's probably a time commitment of 8 hours or more, albeit intermittent.
(Okay: I have hopes of setting up a marathon craft session with people somewhere in there, so I can see them and carve pots together. And I will go to game and archery. My sanity depends on it. But I already signed off next week's choir practice, and I think I'll sign off the one the week after.)
_________________________________
Oysterband is in Winnipeg April 15th. I've had two tickets for over a year (Really.) The timing couldn't be better. Just when I need something like that.
_________________________________
Just purchased:
Jim C. HInes - Goblin War. (Third in a fantabulous series)
Sarah Slean - The Duchess (new cd by a Canadian pop musician I rather love.)
Colin also bought me a remaindered copy of Bujold's Beguilement. He'd have paid for Goblin War too, except that he said, "I'll buy one book for you and one for me..." and therefore I pounced on him and wrestled Goblin War away from him. MINE.
Granted, once we both read it, it would have ended up on my shelf either way, if only to keep the other Goblin books company.
In the middle of reading The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, though (LIes of Locke Lamora ended as satisfyingly as it had begun, and now I *do* have the interest in the sequel I was previously unsure of.) Interesting. I can't entirely see why he bothered with some of the points of view (The Mugatu, frex - and Alpha-Cat's made my eyes cross without giving me that much more insight into how and why he thinks), but overall, he's doing a lot of things right. Much and much cool geekness (Character sheets for each of the points of view introduced, with some seriously whacked out stats), some great cultural touches. The villains are kinda cartoony, -- Alpha-cat's Jafaikanness is really his only defining characteristic, ditto for Digaestus' faux-Victorian, unlike the protagonist, Hamza, or his friend Yehat, whose cultural backgrounds are integral, not defining. But maybe that's the point - the fake cultural backgrounds reduce people, while the real, born-into-it ones make them more real.
Plus, Edmonton! Beautifully described. And in spite of it being uttered by one of the most horrible of the bad guys, I did love the reference to the Edmonton Fringe as a quarter million people converging on Old Strathcona to NOT see plays. (I've been given the impression that while they're still ahead of us in total crowd count, we get more indoor audiences, and more sell-out shows.)
