The End is Near

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During Saturday's class I was able to finish Cthulhu. Admittedly with a bit of a rush on the legs/feet; they're not quite as nice as I would have liked but this is the last week of pottery, so I was running out of time. There'll be a raku firing on Thursday, and both my horsehair piece and Cthulhu need to be in that one, so Cthulhu had to be finished on Saturday. I actually took the piece home to baby it through the drying stage, so I'll have to take it back tomorrow night so it can get bisque fired before Thursday. The last week is always pretty insane, trying to get stuff finished at the last minute. But anyhow, Cthulhu is all done as far as sculpting goes.



I realized last night that so far this summer I've made 4 pieces, each of which will be finished with different techniques. The teapot will be fired in the usual, high fire way, after being painted with underglazes and having a clear glaze applied (I'm hoping). Then the horsehair piece will be raku fired and have combustibles tossed onto it (mental note: buy feathers!) with no glaze applied. Cthulhu will be raku fired after having raku glazes applied, then it'll be placed in a barrel full of combustibles. Finally the flower sculpture won't have glaze painted on it, but since it'll be soda fired it will have a glaze formed from the soda. Neat!

As I mentioned above, this week is the last week of pottery class. Thursday we'll have a potluck in addition to the raku firing. I'm also hoping to do a few quick and easy pieces, like spoon rests and a bowl in a mold. Anything thicker would take too long to dry, as everything will have to be bisqued before Saturday's class, which will be Glaze Day. This year I won't have much to do on Glaze Day other than work on my teapot, due to trying out all these other techniques. I don't mind! The only bummer is that I (as usual) had this enormous list of pieces I wanted to make and of course I didn't actually have time for everything... I had really hoped to make my own custom shortbread molds and to experiment with making dolls, but that'll have to wait. At least I know what I'll be doing this fall! Since I finished my degree, I'm quite determined to take pottery both this fall and this spring. Because I can!! (Ok, granted I'm assuming a little here: I am taking Psychology 201G online this fall, but I'm betting it won't be that time-consuming.)

So anyhow, that's the plan for the week. I'm hoping to get some nice photos of the raku and horsehair processes, because fire. :) So hopefully there'll be some interesting updates this week.

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