Monday morning I bought the great little potter's stool that fits with my new electric wheel.
Shimpo stool has adjustable legs. I made the back one notch higher than the front to help my back.
So Monday, for the first time, I threw pots not on my trusty old kick wheel, but on the new electric.
I felt a paradigm shifting.
For a little while I was like a Ceramics I student. The clay was strangely hard to center. It seemed to need more water than before, somehow. But by the third bowl I was feeling better about things.
I did say the wheel would never be clean as new again...
I just like to keep the wheel fairly slow, it seems. I have been trained by using my old kick wheel.
Curious to see what changes, if any, ensue in the pottery.
Thrown pottery isn't all about the wheel, though. Today I put homemade colored slips and commercial underglazes on some bowls and cookie jars. Now they are nearly halfway there.
Damp clay pots drying before their first firing in the kiln. Colors are chalky now, but wait till you see them done!
It's all been a gift. Having the inclination, getting the education, the equipment and space, and having the energy and drive to follow through. There have been lots of frustrations along the way. I still open kilns and can't believe some of the cracking and ugliness. But then it's all about a whole effort, not random events; what an interesting life this is.