Friday, September 11, 2009

Juice cups!

Can you feel the excitement?















Juice cups! Seriously, I am thrilled to be making anything. I joined the Hewitt Pottery team at the furthest possible point from making pots. When I arrived it was straight to loading the kiln, then firing it, unloading it, cleaning pots, the sale, mixing clay (good photos coming soon from that week), then cutting wood. Phew! Now it's my favorite time, time to make pots. Juice cups!
Here is a photo of my first few pots. I guess I made about 80 to 90 over the past 3 days, I aimed for 30 a day. I trashed many from the first day and kept about a fourth total from the week. By the end of today I felt much better about shaping them. Turns out I was holding the rib wrong in like eight different ways. Not flat enough against the profile (originally holding it 90 degrees to the pot, 30 to 45 degrees is better), moving my the rib up and down instead of holding it steady, I was using the wrong edge of the rib (I know, two choices and I chose wrong, come on), etc, etc . But thankfully Mark saw all these errors over the past few days and set me straight. I've just got to keep making them so that they can get even more fine tuned. I'm not even going to discuss their feet, I am aware they need work. Feet will be addressed next week. More juice cups!