Hi!

We're almost to February. I haven't had time for the January challenge, but was inspired by a Reddit post to offer this for February. Hear me out! Many new potters post, "How do I make this?" And that's fine, but to me, one of the joys of pottery is figuring things out. So, here's my challenge to you, with time to plan in advance, 'cause it may be a hard one. Find a tutorial video on YouTube or wherever. Then figure out a different way to make the item. Post the link to the tutorial and "making" images from your altered method. Think outside the box! For instance, Tiffinie Helmer (Hobble Creek Pottery) posted a video of hand-building a canteen. I don't have a lot of space to handbuild (and frankly, I'm not so good at it!), so I thought, "How can I make that on the wheel?" I threw two wide, shallow bowls with straight sides and joined them. Then I added pieces for the strap to go through, and a neck for a stopper. BOOM! A wheel thrown canteen. Images for inspiration. This was thrown with Laguna Frost cone 6 porcelain, relief carved, decorated with Colors For Earth Color Concentrates, and glazed with Kitten's Clear or Hanson's 20x5 (don't remember which!). It's got an adjustable strap and I used a rubber band glued to the stopper so it's actually functional. The only thing I'm not thrilled with is the "chain" attaching the stopper to the canteen. I'm excited to see what y'all come up with. There's a hundred ways to make a form. Let's expand our horizons and have some fun!

Before heading to Antarctica, I managed to finish one last project today.☕️☕️☕️ It started as an idea last Saturday and came together surprisingly fast. On Sunday, a friend and I hand-built ten cups and added our gym’s logo. On Monday, I threw a few more cups, trying to match the same size — again with our gym logo. After that, the usual rhythm followed: drying, bisque firing on Thursday, unloading on Friday, sanding and glazing, loading the kiln again on Saturday — and today I finally unloaded them so I could bring them to the gym to be used for coffee.🔥 Even though I worked with the same reference and the same stencil, every cup turned out a little different. Because of that, I decided to glaze them in 15 different shades of blue. Not every blue came out truly blue — the differences are pretty striking.💙🔷🔵🩵🌀 I’ll show this in more detail in my kiln loading/unloading video. I’m not sure yet when it’ll be edited and uploaded — maybe Tuesday, before I leave. What’s your first impression?

I’ve been hanging onto a pie plate that I wanted to be very special. I’m not a great artist, but my niece Kara is. She is on bed rest about to deliver a baby this week. So I took her lunch and kept her company yesterday. She sat at the table long enough to letter the saying that I admired in Suza’s recent video. I used underglaze on the decoration and glazed the sides with Ancient Copper. I can’t wait to meet baby Murphy.

Spent the afternoon attaching handles and doing a little carved designs into some mugs I threw a few days ago. Woot woot. Feels good to get them done but most importantly, it feels good to do something creative and getting back into clay. Happy Saturday!!!