The first installment of "When Pots Explode..." sappy soap opera music please...

Well, the above photo tells it all... actually I can't repeat here what I actually said when I opened the kiln... lets just say it rhymes with 'fit'... And actually I haven't even looked at the other pieces if anything else exploded.
This was just a bisque firing, and not glazing, and it did damage the bowl next to it, but not too bad. This was a covered bowl, and I love doing covered bowls and I am seriously wondering if the lid wouldn't allow air to escape. Technically you are supposed to fire the lids on the pieces, so they don't warp, and normally I have a hole in the lid, because I usually put a decorative handle on later, so its vented, but this one I did solid, it didn't really need a handle the way I designed it and had a good tight fit, but not too tight, at least I thought. And my other suspicion is that for what ever reason, I do have more trouble with the red clay blowing like this because of air bubbles, which sometimes cannot be detected, until now.... I wedge it just like the other stoneware clay before throwing, but maybe it needs more of it.
Oh well, maybe everything else is OK. But I think from now on, if no hole is in the lid for a handle, its fired separately, I'd rather have a lid that's might be a bit off, than this mess, now to dig out the vacuum cleaner, and maybe shed a tear... it was such a nice piece.

Its Just a Pile O Rox....

I think our soil is great for growing rocks, that's why Kentucky has so many rock walls, I remember a line in "The Quiet Man" when John Wayne says to Maureen O'Hara, "now I know why Ireland has so many rock walls..." same goes here. This will be transformed to a rock garden with water effects.... this is just the start of the collection of rocks; the first load. We tore out the evergreens that were in the front by the house a while ago, the icestorm did them in, and the weeds now are taking over. The water trough will be cut in half lenghtwise and then we have liners to place inside of the metal, and the sides can be used at the frame work of the rock sides, it will be made into a waterfall. On the bottom is one huge piece of limestone, the poor tractor, I think I actually heard it groan, it survived tho.
We always seem to have a "Fourth of July" project around here, our goal is either do a small project on the 4th, or been done with a project by the 4th.. Don't know if we'll make the deadline on this one. Then after we get the garden part done, we'll replace that tired looking sidewalk too.
The garden theme... Oriental/Japenese/Chinese... now to find a really neat looking dragon pond spitter. The area will be between the sidewalk and the house.

To the Dog N Pony Show

Off to UPS these will go for Kristina's Dog N Pony Show scheduled for June 27th.
http://www.magmade.com/dognpony/dog09home.html


I can't attend, bummer. But I am more than happy to send her something a bit different, since I find that's what I like to do sometimes. The above piece is one I did using porcelain clay on the wheel, porcelain is very very smooth, and easy on my hands, but I cannot make large pieces with it, and I enjoy making large pieces sometimes. It was fired to cone 6 and left unglazed, I then fired it to cone 019 then at that temp removed and I added dog hair for the affect. One affect I really liked with this, I had long strands of dog hair from my mixed up border collie and dragged them across the hot surface and it made some really neat looking effects I think. Once I realized how that worked, the piece cooled off too much to try more, but there's always a next time, and Spinner is needing more trimming... look out Spin!!!
This other piece, the covered jar was done with a different clay, and I used a white glaze, since this particular clay doesn't fire white, more of a buff color and I wanted to use decals on it and mother of pearl overglaze.





I once I got done with all that, it needed 'something', so I had some gold leaf. I added that to the rim to just dress it up. I haven't ever used gold leaf before, all I can say is; don't sneaze using it...