Learning New Things!

Today was a great learning experience. I began my day finding that for the first time I waited too much time to trim a piece of my pottery and it got to hard to trim. It is still a successful piece, but it didn't get the opportunity to turn into the cup I was hoping for. This has only driven home the idea that I am looking forward to picking up my own wheel to have at home. I will be able to be closer to my work so I will have the opportune time to create my vision. I will also be able to work on more pottery as it will be readily available all the time. I have a 30 minute drive to my studio space now, and  it makes it difficult to swing by and check on the progress of drying clay. I will keep you up-to-date on when I get my new wheel. Hopefully this weekend, but we will see how it all works out. 

The other fun and exciting task I took on today is firing my first cone 10 gas kiln. Up until now I have only fired electric kilns up to cone 6. This is an awesome opportunity! Ceramic studio assistants Cindy and I loaded the kiln this afternoon around 3pm. There were a ton of pieces to load, and it took about an hour to get them all loaded and stacked safely on the shelves. Then we hit the gas and lit the fire. I spent the next 6 hours drawing a life-size skeleton, and got home about 10:30pm. So now it's time to get about 5 hours of sleep and back to the kiln in the morning to turn up the heat and bring it all the way up to cone 10 which is approximately 2350 degree fahrenheit.

So with that said... I am off to bed. More fun learning to do tomorrow.