Cay Denise

Florian Gadsby, a very good wheel-throwing instructor with a series of videos on YouTube, recommends throwing your first 100 pots as soon as you learn the fundamentals.  Whether they are successes or failures, you'll learn from each pot thrown.  The point is not to be precious or work to perfect a piece as you're learning, but to throw them for the experience and skill-building.   I can attest to the fact that pottery throwing is work.  It takes strength in muscles you don't normally use, and you have to learn not to make abrupt movements with your hands as you work with the clay.  I've done multiple 3-hour practice sessions so far.  As a result of each, I'e returned home tired and with various aches.  That said, the practice is  necessary (like learning to play a musical instrument). On the count to 100, I'm at 32.  Today, I did 11 of those that included a failed one.  These are of the day's work.   Last week's class (#2) was learn...

My first day of a new-to-me pottery class was less than stellar.  I made a lot of mis-steps that were frustrating.  One of those mis-steps included scraping the side of my hand when trying to do 'centering'.  So, I couldn't practice for a couple of days.  During that time, I reviewed YouTube videos and found a superb one on the subject by Florian Gadsby.  He is a great teacher/guide!  His channel has other wheel-throw pottery techniques too.  The video recording is very good because of the close-ups that help viewers to 'see' the process more clearly.   Today, I went to the studio for a first day of practice.  My goal was to be able to repetitively center pieces of clay on the wheel.  The two vessel starts below were successfully centered and are now drying (for about 8 hours) before the first firing.  Granted, they look a bit odd, but that's ok...I'm learning.  Beyond that, I did them all by myself.   One of my discoverie...

To make this sign, I took inspiration from a King of Diamonds card.  My project involved creating a layout in a negative image -- so the sign would be white on black rather than black on white.   Materials for the project included black foam core and poster board, white copy paper, red vinyl, and glue.  In addition, a wood handle wrapped in black duct tape was added to the back.   The finished sign took a few days to make.  Most of the work involved tracing the elements and cutting them out.  That said, I'm pleased....and mission accomplished!

Do you remember cootie-catchers?  They were a fad when I was young.  Known also as paper fortune tellers too, they fueled interesting games.  Their exact origin is unknown, according to Wikipedia.  Another name for them was 'salt cellar'.  The first reference to a salt cellar in Europe and the Americas was in 1836.  It was referred to in a November article that year from the The Lady's Book, a women's magazine published in Philadelphia.  Since there was no illustration in that article, it's unknown whether the salt celler and cootie catcher are the same. With Flag Day arriving on Saturday, June 14th, I had an idea.  That was to create a cootie catcher as a learning game about the flag.  It would have exterior flaps looking like the flag, related flag information topics as choices inside (Flag Day, design, colors and adoption), and below the interior flaps would be narratives about the specific topic.    Some might think this kind of...