Clay, Clay, and more clay. This has been my week- yesterday I spent the day moistening and wedging some clay that was a bit too dry to work with- that I inherited from the lady I bought my kiln from. It's an awful lot of hard labour that wedging- especially turning several slippery on-the-outside-hard-on-the-inside bits into one smooth lump. My back is paying for it today- but I did manage to get two boxes worth of clay workable, so it's worth it.
The above picture is a carved tile that I made a mold of, and will hopefully form the basis of a series of slab mugs, it's a bit big actually, but I'm terrible at judging shrinkage- Clay shrinks as it's dried and fired, so mugs that seem the right size wet almost always turn tiny when done. That's something I'm hoping to avoid by using templates and molds- but I have to ignore my gut instinct that this is too big- though maybe it is too big- we'll have to see.
Also this week- a space was made in the shop for me- my own little sectioned off clay space- right next to the bench grinder, but away from the anvil (which I'm sure was responsible for the mysterious bruises on my thigh). And K made me some square plate molds for slab plates, Which I plan to try out today, but the sun has just come out- and there's tomatoes in the cupboard that need to dealt with so we'll see how far I get on the clay front today.
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