Wheel Throwing: Serving bowl attempt

 

My mom loves dishes and has every dish. She has her mom's Noritake and her own Fiesta. Given that, I asked her if she wanted anything now that I am learning wheel throwing, and she said: serving bowls. It's true, we use a mixing bowl to serve from at her house. It turns out (triple pun) to be a shockingly hard request.

The design: medium height to fill in the need between serving plates and mixing bowl or crock pot crock. Glaze that will coordinate with the Fiesta ware- so, glossy and uniform. I will include a picture of some of her tableware broken up for mosaic, but she also has two shades of green and a second shade of blue not pictured. So I think this is pretty flexible- blue, purple, black, or white would all work. (Actually it is occurring to me that clear glaze would be a nice contrast with the Fiesta). Because it is a gift I am not going to follow my sea urchin accretion instinct but will only stamp a shallow debossed design on the bottom. And that means the bottom has to be flat before the trimming stage, because that stage will be too hard for the stamps I have already made.

The attempt:

Clay shrinks when fired, we were told our clay shrinks about 13%, so I was aiming to throw a bowl bigger than 12" across.

We learned to wheel throw by centering the clay into a puck, which is conveniently the diameter of the inside of my cupped hand. The base of a serving bowl is bigger than that. I found online a way to start with the puck and stretch it but the technique I learned for flattening the bottom, dragging one fingertip slowly across it, couldn't level such a big expanse. Then also the sides I was making slumped all the way down to the surface, the MDF bat. I continued turning it just in case I could learn more by continuing, but of course there was no salvaging the piece. For my purposes, the bottom was too thin and the piano wire clay cutter sliced through it.

This really seems like a job for handbuilding... roll out a piece of clay, line a pot with saran wrap, drape the clay and press it into place. Leave it for some time until it dries enough to flip out of the pot and out of the saran wrap. The two things that stop me are: I don't have a pot with the perfect size and shape, and, I am learning wheel throwing. I am accepting the process. I am welcoming the challenge. 

This really looks so much closer to the intention than it was in person. But looking now at this photo it looks closer than I remember when I was making it. And look at that beautiful rim. 

Notes for me for next time: started with 3 pounds of clay, could try 3 1/2. Was hard to manhandle so probably not ready for 4. Maybe find a rib with a straight side for the bottom. Okay for walls to be thick to accommodate trimming texture for grip. 

Wheel Throwing Week 3

 Unfair that tonight I have to trim my two weeks ago bad pots

 instead of making today good pots.

I spent any available taking-good-photos-in-good-light time gouging and ungouging my pots so will have to make do without visuals: 

My first two weeks of wheel, my items are not the same center all the way up. So I placed them today, upside down with the rim centered, checked the center halfway up the pot by placing a tool in its way and noting if it scored in only one place. Those parts were centered: the rim, and halfway up. However, the bottom of the pot which I had to actually remove clay from to make a little foot for the piece to rest on, the bulls eye center of the piece was off to one side like a fried egg. 

I planned to be fastidious about only making things that I have a real need for. I just moved into my completely own apartment for the first time. When I stayed here the first night before I moved anything, I got some ready made salads at the grocery store thinking I would definitely have some kind of fork or spoon in my bag or in the car. I had one chopstick. I had to eat my salad by hand, with the one kitchen towel serving as placemat and napkin. Now that I have all my stuff, there is nothing I need like I needed a second chopstick that night. But there are things that were communal at my old house, that I now do not have. 

In particular, a big bowl for popcorn. From our old house I took our chipped communal garlic grating plate, so it would please me to make at least a second one for my brother now that we are not sharing, and maybe one to replace the chipped one. Unclear why I have zero mugs, I suppose they might have moved out with someone else. I have been happily drinking every beverage from the same pint glass. This is working perfectly except when I have to take medicine when the glass is in the dishwasher and had to put water into an empty coke can. This has happened twice in the six weeks I have been here. And if I have a guest they have to drink out of their own water bottle. So it would be nice to have two coordinating hand thrown mugs. I'm also imagining a to go cup. So far, I only found two bowls to pack, one cereal and one soup. The soup bowl can fit a packet of ramen (while it is still square) but the cereal bowl can't. So if I had a guest, I would have to cook my ramen brick one side at a time. Altogether a rather long list. 

1 Popcorn bowl (blue)

1 garlic grater (blue) 

2, 15 oz mugs (blue)

1 to go cup (purple)

2 ramen bowls (white) 

The plan is so clear. And yet I have thrown:

 1 garlic grater, 

1 flower pot, 

1 ramen bowl (kind of small), and

1 ?Can of soup cozy?

 I can't believe last week the clay was controlling my body. The instructor explained that I shape the clay, that I brace my arm into my leg and put my weight into it. It felt like I was doing these things, but the wobble in the clay was a cam pushing my arm into my leg, every rotation. She would observe, tell me again to brace my arm, I would try again, the clay pushing me as it developed more and more wobble. This week, I don't know why, I was resolved to stay in one place. I made myself into one unit, feet braced to the floor, straight back leaning to bear down on the clay collecting bucket with my forearms, pressing on the clay hard with my linked hands and elbows stabilized at my legs. Since our instructor isn't doing all this I expect I will be able to back off a lot of this as I get more skilled. But it just seemed obvious this week that the clay couldn't overrule me and as I was looking down at it spinning compliantly where I wanted, I couldn't believe how we were both behaving last week, my first time at the wheel. 

So glad to have found this studio, I will go there for a long time. Ideally the only things I fire will be things I need. I most need a popcorn bowl. The one I have been using is staying with my old housemate. I have been picky, looking to thrift a blue glass bowl. 

Christmas Meatballs

We boxed up the cookbook that has the traditional meatball recipe and haven't unpacked it. We looked online and put together four or five recipes with what we remembered of the traditional one. It has really hardly come out this good half the years, and of course the hybrid recipe exists nowhere, so here it is: 

Meatballs and sauce: 

2lbs 80/20 ground beef

48oz canned diced tomatoes

2 medium yellow onions

6oz tomato paste

1/2c milk made of half and half and water

1/2 c breadcrumbs

2oz parmesan 

1 egg

5 garlic cloves

1 tbsp rosemary

scant tablespoon basil and oregano

tsp red pepper flakes

Pasta:

Fusilli or spaghetti 

Chop onions somewhat finely. Hydrate breadcrumbs with milk (made of half and half and water). Combine onions, breadcrumb mixture, grated parmesan, and egg, then incorporate beef. Add seasonings. Form mixture into small handfuls (in between golf ball and tennis ball size) and place one layer in bottom of crockpot. Alternate layers of canned diced tomato with meatballs. Add tomato paste and garlic as you go. Set crockpot on "low" for 6 hours. Boil pasta to al dente. 

this is the bread crumbs to get. 

this is the noodles to get. We usually do spaghetti but this was better. 

These are the spices. Rosemary is kind of the star. 

Also, the tomatoes did not really cook down into a sauce, there was a ton of clearish liquid, but it did taste good. So one idea is to somehow know how to make a tomato sauce thick for next year. It is possible that we usually drain the tomatoes? 

Fresh Calendar

Well, you know how it is. I put all these images into Shutterfly, and they let you add a photo in every day of the year plus those empty boxes at the start and end of the month, plus add your own text. I spent an enjoyable few hours (I might check my computer history for how long this actually was) basically looking at my dog and was so enamoured that I would have liked to buy the calendar. It was not discounting very much. I think Christmas is the only time that Shutterfly is at capacity and doesn't have to give good deals. One calendar chock full of my dog was a little more than $40 altogether. This is comparable to the upper range price of the planners I would have already bought if their spiral hole spacing was correct, so very reasonable, but high enough that I would be willing to wait past January 1st to see if it would come down. 

While I was waiting I made a second calendar. This was making my Shutterfly cart show a price of $70+ but also a banner saying that I needed $16 more dollars to reach their free shipping threshold of $79. That is close to my whole planner budget for the year so there is no way I would spend it, even though they had a picture of my dog on his gotcha day. 

The planner budget is not really about money, but more of a limit on how much energy I am putting into procuring. I felt that leaving this open ended up until and past New Year's Eve was going to take too much mental energy. I started looking for when they went on sale the last couple years so I could set a reminder and stop thinking about it. Instead, I found that you can buy them on Groupon for the price of a regular drugstore calendar. (And I found that these really don't have a baseline price. Sometimes they are free with shipping. The lowest price besides free was $8.) This was not difficult but a little legwork with declining "offers" and entering info and going from site to site. So I paid $25 to groupon and $13 to shutterfly. This meant I spent almost the amount of the original price tag but for three calendars. 

They (Shutterfly specifically, but also online shops) make it so confusing. I had to ask myself what it was worth to me and stick to it. 

I also was inconsistent at using my wall calendar this year even when I really needed to, so I am hoping one that is so sweet will be helpful. My current job has been different locations and hours every day, and I am in a weekly filofax whereas I need monthly to keep everything in mind, so I had to draw a little chart of days and dates in my jotter so I'd have it. Actually I guess I still will but can transfer the info to a more permanent form when I get home each day. 

Who wouldn't look forward to California Statehood if they got to see 1 old chihuahua. 

 

Veg tan leather bag

Research 

Seaglass Green Wall Hanging

This little cotton rug from Dharma Trading  Company is brightening up our living room. Well, it’s little for a rug, not little to manipulate and boil. The initial shibori was a little more of a backdrop than a feature. 

I bundled it up with jute. I just used some rules of thumb for a pleasing design. 

Non symmetrical- automatically has more movement and interest. 

Pick up the same color in multiple parts of the piece- this might be the most used transferrable skill I learned from painting classes. This lets you do a LOT and still have a cohesive viewing experience. 

Gradient- I let the dye strike and boil for a little while on the topologically lowest parts of the bundled rug before using my laundry stick to push more of the piece in. I think this piece could use a little more of the lightest most exhausted dye bath but of course you can’t really tell through the steam. This gives depth and interest. 

Resist: keeping some parts of the fabric reserved is why it is visually interesting enough to be a hanging. I also enjoy the evidence of handwork.