sunny stirling

Wow what a great day & no rain just great mild weather & sun sun sun..

and the crowd was out it was busy up there, we had a day of catchup with regulars and old friends, Roses bloke mike made some cards all hand drawn they went down a treat, I sold my penultimate shino bowl that's it I have to crank up my gas kiln now! Had a few dud platters in my last firing..not sharing! they will be refired.... however the door prize for friday night came out of the firing successfully.

it's quiz time

and the winner is....



you reckon its what?

the cheese was good

go on judith show us mary...

All in all another successful fundraiser for the club we had the return of some favourite games, heads and tales, 100 really tough questions ta rae, pick ya treasure, chockies, belinda managed to get the room to part with more dollars for a surprise mary unveiling and thankyou very much judith and all kick started with a happy hour warm-up. Oh and unusually I squished in on the winning table we got to pick 1st from a table of super prizes all donated by club members, this is the orchid plant I chose thanks yvonne.

Tomorrow is Stirling Market here's hoping for a good turn out and no rain, oh no it just started raining oh well hopefully it all drops tonight and we have a nice mild day tomorrow...I dropped my pots over to Campbelltown show today the opening is Tuesday night it's always a good show and a great opening very well run by Rotary and the City of Campbelltown and next saturday the 31st Raku firing starting about 10am and goes all day, see ya then guys..

sketchbook

here's some drawing from my journal at greg daly workshop last weekend

page 1 is collaring that tall form thumb and finger placement which he finshed collaring with a large screwdriver..page 2 is scoring with a knife and throwing from inside only..page 3 is colour inlay while on the wheel and continue throwing..

more from greg

just thought i'd add a few more pics from yesterday that I like, there's plenty of inspiration here and i'm sure something will flow through later.  I do like the knife tools he used to make very sharp marks in the wet clay some of which were stretched again after throwing continued from  the inside of the pot or vessel. I have some drawings which i'll add later from my journal which possibly explain more of what is going on here.

it takes 3 hands

           

Greg Daly workshop at murray bridge this weekend I went down for today, it was informative all round from plates to vases to tall forms and platters. Thankyou Rose for having us at your studio and for the great catering. 

Question.............'What's the difference between a pot & a vessel?.....................$2000!' 

Thanks Greg for reading from pooh to ceramic life philosophy of Cardew to Hamada and many more, I'll let the pics speak for themselves this set is the interactive portion.

that's a wrap

had a nice couple of sessions of throwing this weekend, hopefully now I have enough raku bottles  to keep me going for a bit, it was a bit of a challenge doing bottles after making plates & platters for a good few weeks. And the recycled clay will need pugging before I can make any more speckled pieces for the 'chugly firing' that's chun ugly, so named because you either love em or hate the wares, they definately have the look as peasant type wares. 

Also made some mortar & pestal pieces which I have been meaning to make for years, I'm trying out the really smooth TMK by clayworks of geelong it throws lovely....probably do my trusty shino & dark celedon glazes on the outer.

pure luxury

I was looking at these guys last night Shimpo DUA-07 Electric Kiln , they say a good all rounder which would be perfect for me consumes about 31Amps which is less than a cooker on the home supply. Good for Raku - 1300c firing.

Has anybody had any experience with them? what's the controller like to use?

We currently have manual kilns at the club and that's what I'm used to, it just means several trips down there during the firing lucky for me it's just down the road.

here's something i made earlier

At studio today I made this.... na can't keep that up! Getting into some slab rolled work I love the instant nature of making forms and stamping drawing directly into 'wet' clay, put together a couple of car plates and also square plates that will have copper slip decoration like this one I prepared earlier... really trying to fill my glaze kiln before campbelltown show and I have quite a few platters to go in.

 

99 bottles

99 bottles, yeh I wish, it's a start anyway. Getting ready to raku again, any takers should be end of month will confirm date soon. Also trimmed the remaining platters today really happy with this batch and three weeks to campbelltown entries due in saturday 24th May must get cracking to fill the kiln load for glaze firing.

square to round

Here's some pics of my square plate making attempts I think I may try the wood paddles to square off some more next time. Also some more platters for the blue crackle glaze some with and some without the mix of the recycled body it gave a nice delicate speckle response through the blue last time.