The Weekend

We did a lot of yard work this weekend. There has been a rather large pile of mulch in our driveway that has had me parking my truck out on the street for well over a month, which is now distributed over the yard. Steph spent a couple of hours pulling weeds (working off her Nintendo DS debt, with the virtual dog software that she is running on it.) Julie has been everywhere, scrubbing the stairs, leveling sand, placing flagstone, and directing my work as well. I mainly shovelled mulch, and wheeled it around in the garden cart.

Yesterday morning, I was able to return to the studio and finish my pieces. I trimmed the last of the little closed forms, as well as put another rocket together. It looks fairly clean, where most of the things that bug me about my pottery were worked out in the raw clay before it is fired. These include things like beveling the edges of the wings, keeping the wings strait instead of accidently warping them through handeling, making sure that the marks in the piece where the fins have been joined are smooth rather than being able to see the scoring marks, having all three engines be the same size, joining the engines so that they point symetrically, making sure that the fins form a level surface when the piece is finished and standing on its tail.

Three weeks until vacation. We need to fire the kiln at least twice before then, and then fire the raku kiln three or four times.