On Wednesday I told you that I may have had a fix for berry bowls that crack through the bottom. Um, no. I'm not sure why I thought soaking a tee shirt scrap in glaze and laying it over a crack would work, I did it wrong and you need to put it over an unglazed crack. As glaze melts it expands to fill a space, and when it gets into a crack, it naturally expands the crack. Next batch I'll try covering it with paperclay- a liquid mixture of clay, toilet paper, and water- then re-bisqueing. On a bad day, I lose half of the pieces to cracks. On a good day, only 10%. But I think that perhaps I'm trimming the bottom of the bowls too thin before piercing the holes, because the cracks never show up on the sides. It's a learning process.
In other- brighter- news, today is my boy's "graduation" from his preschool. He's starting our wonderful neighborhood school next year- I'm pretty delighted with the woman who will be his teacher and that we seem to have "packed" his class with kids from his current school. Having his friends there will make the transition so much easier.
I'm at the farmers market Saturday from 7-1. I'll have a limited number of berry bowls plus my usual wares. I replenished my herb marker and egg vase supply, but because of my mini-vacation last weekend, I don't have a ton of new work. My boys are planning to canoe on Sunday, so I'm giving myself a solo work day to catch up on throwing.
Have a wonderful holiday weekend, everyone! I'll see you next week.
2 comments:
is there anyway I can "reserve" a berry bowl? We're coming to see you at FM this weekend and we're anniversary shopping ;) Let me know! If not I'll just try my luck!
For the cracks, you might try leaving your work in the damp room longer/increasing the moisture of the damp room. I found out that I ended up with cracks if I tried to force them to leather-hard too fast. Also, turning them over after a day or two and letting them come to leather hard upside-down might help even out the water in the clay. Good luck! I wish I still had access to a studio. : )
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