I ain't rolling no pie crust – excuse my poor grammar

We’re back home from our mini ski vacation and I am back in the studio in a last minute attempt to crank out work for the Colorado Potters Guild show opening April 30th.  I’m starting with the more labor intensive, but popular hand-built items like mugs and boxes and will follow up with wheel thrown work next week – this should allow me enough time to bisque and glaze fire everything in time for the opening.  Last fall, visitors were very sad that I didn’t bring more covered boxes.  I guess that’s a good thing.

Hand-building square bottomed mugs

I haven’t made any hand-built mugs in awhile, and decided to ease into production by making  two mugs yesterday afternoon.  I’m using lino-cuts that I fashioned in the shape of my paper templates to make these mugs.  I have some ideas for more lino-cuts to expand the line a bit, but I’m not sure that I’ll have time this go around.  That activity might have to wait till after the show.  I do have 4 lino-cuts though and several soft textures to work with – what do you think – should I make 4-6 of each?

I worked on two at a time to get back into the swing of things

One of the tricky things (for me) in regards to hand-building mugs is to get nice almost seamless interiors and a smooth rim.  I used a bit of plastic from a dry cleaning bag and some water to smooth the rim like I do when I throw in an attempt to compress and round the edges of the mugs so that they will be unobtrusive to the user.  I also weight the mugs down with some wood boards to keep them from warping while they dry.

Mugs are finished

Voilá, handles are attached and the mugs are ready to begin the drying process.  I used the exact same texture for the handles, just with different orientations – I’m not sure which one I like better.  There are infinite possibilities just using the same  template and textures depending on orientation for a mug or anything else for that matter.

View from the condo where we stayed in Steamboat

After an incredibly mild and fairly warm winter, Colorado has fortunately been graced with snow and lots of it these past 7 days which should help ease the impending summer drought fears just a little bit.  While we were in Steamboat Springs for vacation last week, we experienced snowy gray days for all but our last day.  Imagine our surprise when we woke up our final day and actually saw the view outside the condo we were staying at – gorgeous!  Up until then, we hadn’t been able to see much past the cabin in the foreground.  If you click on the enlarged photo,you can even get a peak of a hot air balloon in the distance that was making its way across the valley.  We had a great time and the snow was terrific for skiing, but alas, there’s no place like home.

I’ve been on the computer way too long this morning after waking to snow again – but the sky is blue which means that it’s time for me to head to the garagio for the day.

Glad to be back,

~Cynthia