Sunday, October 30, 2005

Trimming Blind

I woke up Thursday morning with a scratched eye.

About a year and a half ago, I hurt my left eye when I was on a trip to Idaho Falls. I just woke up in the morning with a sharp pain. I spent half a day in class, then got to drive down to Salt Lake City to catch my plane back home. I was miserable from the pain, and the eye was watery and barely functional. When I returned home, I saw my eye doctor, and she perscribed drops and ointments to get me through the days until my eye healed.

This time, the eye is scratched in the same place. The old scratch is a week spot, and waking up several mornings in a row with dry eyes will slough off enough cells covering the scratch to reopen it.

Having a scratched eye takes a lot out of me. The whole left side of my head is sore, the muscles, tear ducts, sinus passages, and the eye itself. I try to sleep as much as I can. Its hard to read, watch TV, or drive. I'll be hit by waves of pain, then I get terribly sleepy, and can't keep both eyes open.

Things were marginally better by Saturday afternoon, so I returned to the studio to trim.

The dip warmer/cooler is in two pieces. The bottom part was an easy trim. The upper bowl, having been thrown with stiff clay, had to be trimmed on the outside to fit in the lower bowl, then inside to thin out the walls. This is a piece that needs more preplanning when I am throwing. The finished work is about six inches across, and I plan to glaze it in Floating Blue.

I ended up trimming by feel, mostly. My depth perception is shot, right now, so I kept popping the pieces off of the wheel head to judge the thickness with my fingers, then recentering the piece.

I trimmed the raku vase upright at first, giving the walls the proper taper. I flipped it over once I got the weight down, and finished the foot. I ended up carving into the shoulders of the vase, about three inches of vertical lines, closely spaced. When I set the raku piece up to dry, it looked like there was a wobble in the top and bottom boundaries of where the lines started. I'll need to check it out when my eyes get better to see if it is really there, or if I can fix it.

The covered raku jar was left uncovered, and is bone dry. I'm trying to rewet the piece in order to trim it.

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