Well, my first week at the studio went very well. I talked to a few guys yesterday and they're going to let me help them make and fire their wood kiln! It's a very large anagama with two chambers. They haven't fired it yet but I think they're going to soon. I'm always in on things like that! I love a good wood firing as much as the next potter....not that it really makes sense with my work but I would stick a few things in the 2nd chamber so they'd be a little more protected from so much ash. We'll see, I may just find a way to make it work with my work!

So since I can't go to the studio today, I've decided to make it a housecleaning/grocery shopping day! Already I've gone grocery shopping, baked a loaf of banana bread, watched Miss Potter (a great, GREAT movie) and folded and washed three loads of laundry. I think that's quite a lot to do before noon so I've impressed myself! Here is my yummy looking banana bread that I couldn't help but eat a piece of:

Tomorrow I will handle the slip problem that has mostly been solved by the niceness of John (one of my studio mates) who gave me a bit of his slip yesterday. Now I just have to figure out how much colorant to put in to get the color I would like. Really, for me, with colorant, less is more. I think my work would still look great if the colors were a bit on the muted side but too dark could really ruin them in my eyes. So tomorrow I will venture over to one of the ceramic supply places in town and get a bit of mason stain. I will start with a very small amount (like one tbsp) this batch and move on from there. The nice thing about that stuff is that while it does darken a bit, for the most part, the wet powder color is pretty close to the color of the finished piece which is a pretty rare thing in the world of ceramics! Now I know in a perfect world, I would make a few test tiles and test a few different mixes and decide what color I like best but that's not really available to me right now so I will have to do with the slower, less precise trial by error method.

Then my next trick will be figuring out where I packed the rest of my slip trailing bottles.....