Hold me back, please

I just pulled these pots from the kiln this morning and now all I want to do is glaze every pot in exactly this same way. But that would be boring in the end. There's a little work to be done on the brown glaze, applying it in a way that gets the richness I want but doesn't run all over the kiln shelves. I hate grinding glaze off kiln shelves. But overall, I am happy with these. Two firings in a row and I am happy. I am pretty sure I am due for a firing disaster soon.

Here's a closer look at the blue green glaze. It's the same one I use on porcelain and the same one that goes a yuck colour on another clay that I use. This is a new stoneware clay for me and much whiter and so far, pretty good working qualities. You might well ask why I've switched clays when I've deadlines looming. And that is a very good question, one others have in fact posed. Well, the short answer is I took a punt with one of my suppliers and had shipped their in house white stoneware. The other supplier is 8 hours away in Wichita and does not ship. I buy there because I love a great excuse to see my daughter. But neither of us has time right now. So necessity is the mother, right? And it worked out. And I can't tell you how relieved I am!

I've been making these small dragonfly dishes for years. I love dragonflies and I've always loved this stamp that I carved. It was one of my first ever and it's gone through many renditions. But this is the first time I've gotten the glaze the way I really wanted it. There are actually two from this kiln that came out virtually the same. OOPs, shush, I may be tempting fate here.

And this is Alice. She would like me to think that she's been keeping me safe from thunder storms today. She spent most of the afternoon out in the studio just about as close to my chair as possible. We've been having a lot of thunder and lightning and some pretty torrential rain and high winds. So in fact , I think sweet Alice is actually just hiding out with me. Meanwhile her big brother Bob knows that the safest place is in the closet.

Have a great tomorrow all, LeAnn