Boring progress notes.
Apr. 3rd, 2008 02:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseNo reviews yet. Soon, I promise. This weekend will involve less clay than usual. Especially if this cold that started last night gets a grip on me.
Accomplishments this last week:
Writing:
- rewrote the next scene in Serpent Prince, where we first meet Rosor (Snow) in person. (Rewrite definitely over 50% new material.) Up to but not including the actual sex. If I were using![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala's usual; writing progress notes, or even my own adapted variants, this would definitely be a time for paragraphs and paragraphs of stuff in the "There's always one more quirk in the character". She is WAY cooler than I thought. Also, I solved the whole question of how she could fool the stepmother about the heart.
- 2,100 words and a bit on Gods in Flight, the working title for the weird dream project. Probably half junk, but establishing the human character's voice, and the human setting. I hope not to keep going in this too far just yet, but I've always found getting a scene or a setting or a voice out helps "Set" it properly in the brain, and gives the subconscious more to chew on for the real slog later. I wish these characters would give me some names, though.
Pottery:
- The final total for plates finished and trimmed was 15 - not counting the two that cracked in drying. Unless more cracked in drying. But they were more than half dry last time I looked on them (Three were bone-dry), and no signs so far.
- Several other bowls and mugs and stuff were completed to the point of bisque ready, even if all that took was a quick buffing. Some were glazed (including the next batch of animal heads).
- some of my glazed work came out. while it's not as useful as having test tiles of new colours (Which have a formal documented list of what they are), I did glaze some of them in the new colours. Which led to 12 more bowls and mugs being glazed in some of the same, while I still remembered what's what. The coolest colour is the 1% copper carbonate, which is partly a pastel green -- and partly a lavender-pink. Sounds dreadful but looks great.
- The second-to last cell mugs were superdemon'd and put to bisque again. So they should now be firmly stuck together.
- I finished the third mug with the pattern I was supposed to be using for a set. And saw a small stress crack showing at the bottom. So I tried to patch it. Twice. Result? The crack now goes across the entire bottom.
It did occur to me I could perhaps make a second bottom and add it inside the mug, so it could actually hold liquid even with the crack visible in the thrown base (I could see light through it, so it would definitely not end up with an air pocket). Alas, it (And the other cracked one) are both too dry.
- finished decoration on: a bowl with waves and sea-horses (The one already 3/4 done). A bowl with running dogs (A very simple design, really, would have been right quick if I'd been doing it on leather instead of bone dry). The mug originally intended to be the third in the set, with a circular design on one side and a diamond on the other - I guess that's an official declaration of "I give up". That final design was done on a whim, and took a total of an hour and a half and a lot less care than most of the others. It turned out almost as nice (The diamond side is V. nice; the circle isn't, but that's due to the pattern, not the effort). I hate it when that happens.
- Finished the donkey.
- I already knew there was a vast difference between re-wetting leather hard that's starting to convert over to bone dry and actual bone dry. Now I know it viscerally; I decided to try it on a whim with the last of the cell-cups, and the whole structure and strength provided by throwing broke down. They got dumped in my clay water. The good news: I now have some porcelaineous* stoneware again, slightly wet now, but probably able to be reconsitituted enough to be real clay.
TO finish today (In this order):
MUST - mug handles for the last 3 mugs. Thank god, working clay that way will be much easier on the hands than the carving is.
MUST - The final cell cup. Ideally, I'd have liked three more. Non-ideally, even one more would balance the whole set better. Too bad. I have what I have, and the sequence doesn't work without this single one.
DARN CLOSE TO MUST - The raven bowl, which design is over half done.
SHOULD - A bunny head. Least necessary, except possibly for the salvation of my hands.
IT WOULD BE NICE TO - Haul up the last cup and the goblet from the basement and see if they need anything done to them besides getting shrugged off and shoved in a bisque. One of them is a cell cup IIRC, but it's also probably dry, and while I'll carve fairly-shallow cut Celtic hunting dogs on such a thing, I won't even try for deep-etched spirals.
AND transport all the above to the university.
I think my list downstairs has one more item on it, but I can't currently imagine what. Anything not finished tonight is NOT happening. Steve wanted the last bisque in YESTERDAY.
OH, also. Do some DDR and/or some other exercise. The DDR break last night was one of my best ideas.
To Do at the University this coming week:
- I currently have either 11 or 12 things on my shelf to glaze. Not counting the ones that, as of Tuesday, had not been bisqued yet. Which puts the total around 30. And the stuff at home to do. Which makes for about 10 more.
- I promised to haul out and wipe down a pile of the stuff in the glaze room. Plus general clean-up and take home of all finished pieces not meant for the final crit or the open house show.
- grind down at least one other bowl (It had a piece of someone else's work drop into the middle of the bowl. Bleah.) Reglaze.
THINGS I MEANT TO DO BUT WON'T HAVE TIME OR CLAY TO DO THEM WITH, OR WOULD DO IF I HAD TIME:
- Re-throw a new set of mugs. Part of why there's cracking going on is that some were thrown badly. Decorate the others.
- Try the false bottom idea.
- Properly finish the cell-cup sequence. Because of course it was this week that I figured out how to do the mitosis bowl that's been stumping me and therefore being ignored since last term.
- re-throw and recarve the catastrophic failure in the middle of the cell-cup sequence. Instead, I will have to keep it to fill that spot.(THis is the one that was broken:I could've sworn I had photos of it completely carved.)
- Decorate all the cups and bowls chosen for the dinner set with carving.
- Finish the missing animal heads: polar bear, mouse, lynx.
- Make the final three handles something cool and elaborate, not basic.
- this is not counting the ideas for which there was no time this term. I want to really push the clay and make a unicorn as it ought to be made. Which probably won't support its own weight in stoneware, but now I have a modest amount of porcelain.
*Just means white. One of my classmates offered me some of her remaining porcelain, though.
Accomplishments this last week:
Writing:
- rewrote the next scene in Serpent Prince, where we first meet Rosor (Snow) in person. (Rewrite definitely over 50% new material.) Up to but not including the actual sex. If I were using
matociquala's usual; writing progress notes, or even my own adapted variants, this would definitely be a time for paragraphs and paragraphs of stuff in the "There's always one more quirk in the character". She is WAY cooler than I thought. Also, I solved the whole question of how she could fool the stepmother about the heart.- 2,100 words and a bit on Gods in Flight, the working title for the weird dream project. Probably half junk, but establishing the human character's voice, and the human setting. I hope not to keep going in this too far just yet, but I've always found getting a scene or a setting or a voice out helps "Set" it properly in the brain, and gives the subconscious more to chew on for the real slog later. I wish these characters would give me some names, though.
Pottery:
- The final total for plates finished and trimmed was 15 - not counting the two that cracked in drying. Unless more cracked in drying. But they were more than half dry last time I looked on them (Three were bone-dry), and no signs so far.
- Several other bowls and mugs and stuff were completed to the point of bisque ready, even if all that took was a quick buffing. Some were glazed (including the next batch of animal heads).
- some of my glazed work came out. while it's not as useful as having test tiles of new colours (Which have a formal documented list of what they are), I did glaze some of them in the new colours. Which led to 12 more bowls and mugs being glazed in some of the same, while I still remembered what's what. The coolest colour is the 1% copper carbonate, which is partly a pastel green -- and partly a lavender-pink. Sounds dreadful but looks great.
- The second-to last cell mugs were superdemon'd and put to bisque again. So they should now be firmly stuck together.
- I finished the third mug with the pattern I was supposed to be using for a set. And saw a small stress crack showing at the bottom. So I tried to patch it. Twice. Result? The crack now goes across the entire bottom.
It did occur to me I could perhaps make a second bottom and add it inside the mug, so it could actually hold liquid even with the crack visible in the thrown base (I could see light through it, so it would definitely not end up with an air pocket). Alas, it (And the other cracked one) are both too dry.
- finished decoration on: a bowl with waves and sea-horses (The one already 3/4 done). A bowl with running dogs (A very simple design, really, would have been right quick if I'd been doing it on leather instead of bone dry). The mug originally intended to be the third in the set, with a circular design on one side and a diamond on the other - I guess that's an official declaration of "I give up". That final design was done on a whim, and took a total of an hour and a half and a lot less care than most of the others. It turned out almost as nice (The diamond side is V. nice; the circle isn't, but that's due to the pattern, not the effort). I hate it when that happens.
- Finished the donkey.
- I already knew there was a vast difference between re-wetting leather hard that's starting to convert over to bone dry and actual bone dry. Now I know it viscerally; I decided to try it on a whim with the last of the cell-cups, and the whole structure and strength provided by throwing broke down. They got dumped in my clay water. The good news: I now have some porcelaineous* stoneware again, slightly wet now, but probably able to be reconsitituted enough to be real clay.
TO finish today (In this order):
MUST - mug handles for the last 3 mugs. Thank god, working clay that way will be much easier on the hands than the carving is.
MUST - The final cell cup. Ideally, I'd have liked three more. Non-ideally, even one more would balance the whole set better. Too bad. I have what I have, and the sequence doesn't work without this single one.
DARN CLOSE TO MUST - The raven bowl, which design is over half done.
SHOULD - A bunny head. Least necessary, except possibly for the salvation of my hands.
IT WOULD BE NICE TO - Haul up the last cup and the goblet from the basement and see if they need anything done to them besides getting shrugged off and shoved in a bisque. One of them is a cell cup IIRC, but it's also probably dry, and while I'll carve fairly-shallow cut Celtic hunting dogs on such a thing, I won't even try for deep-etched spirals.
AND transport all the above to the university.
I think my list downstairs has one more item on it, but I can't currently imagine what. Anything not finished tonight is NOT happening. Steve wanted the last bisque in YESTERDAY.
OH, also. Do some DDR and/or some other exercise. The DDR break last night was one of my best ideas.
To Do at the University this coming week:
- I currently have either 11 or 12 things on my shelf to glaze. Not counting the ones that, as of Tuesday, had not been bisqued yet. Which puts the total around 30. And the stuff at home to do. Which makes for about 10 more.
- I promised to haul out and wipe down a pile of the stuff in the glaze room. Plus general clean-up and take home of all finished pieces not meant for the final crit or the open house show.
- grind down at least one other bowl (It had a piece of someone else's work drop into the middle of the bowl. Bleah.) Reglaze.
THINGS I MEANT TO DO BUT WON'T HAVE TIME OR CLAY TO DO THEM WITH, OR WOULD DO IF I HAD TIME:
- Re-throw a new set of mugs. Part of why there's cracking going on is that some were thrown badly. Decorate the others.
- Try the false bottom idea.
- Properly finish the cell-cup sequence. Because of course it was this week that I figured out how to do the mitosis bowl that's been stumping me and therefore being ignored since last term.
- re-throw and recarve the catastrophic failure in the middle of the cell-cup sequence. Instead, I will have to keep it to fill that spot.(THis is the one that was broken:I could've sworn I had photos of it completely carved.)
- Decorate all the cups and bowls chosen for the dinner set with carving.
- Finish the missing animal heads: polar bear, mouse, lynx.
- Make the final three handles something cool and elaborate, not basic.
- this is not counting the ideas for which there was no time this term. I want to really push the clay and make a unicorn as it ought to be made. Which probably won't support its own weight in stoneware, but now I have a modest amount of porcelain.
*Just means white. One of my classmates offered me some of her remaining porcelain, though.
