Ever tried to carve a face in soft butter?

...yeah, me neither, but I assume it would go a lot like trying to carve jack-o-lanterns in soft clay. With dad's October show quickly approaching it was time to start carving pumpkins...

Mother nature, however, was not that cooperative since about the time dad had 1/2 a dozen pumpkins turned the bottom dropped out and it poured down rain. Luckily, dad decided about 3 minutes before the rain to put a tent over the drying pots.

After a session in front of the fan, and a trip around the propane torch, the pots were a little closer to carving consistency...but 100% humidity is not the best environment for drying pots! Ha!

Had a little help from the mad scientist (my brother) and even mixed another batch of glaze today. Fingers crossed a few of these pumpkins survive!

Who needs a "shake weight?"

Have you ever tried to shake a gallon of glaze that has settled? Well...I have! And it is not fun! Actually it is a lot of hard work! And quite a work out! I have to admit it worked better than the late night infomercial shake weight (that I bought in a weak moment...stop laughing, you know you thought about it after watching that commercial too).

So after a lot of shaking and not a huge return on that investment, dad resorted to cutting open the jug and mixing with this magic "glaze thinner" that, frankly, I'm not sure why we didn't just start there? Ha!

One would think in a shop with milling machines, a commercial mixer, and every tool known and unknown to man that dad would own one of those "paint shakers" like they have at the home improvement stores to mix your paint? We really have to find one at some estate sale!

Ok enough about the shaking, sorry I got carried away...anyway, once the glaze was less solid and more dip able I was able to glaze the pots from last week, and even able to turn a few more! October will be here before you know it!

What was that periodic table thing again?

So...I haven't even thought about Chemistry since 9th grade science (which we will just say was a "few" years ago).

Anyway, I had a lesson in mixing glaze this week and apparently the periodic table and all of its contents are a lot more familiar to potters...

Of course dad writes his glaze recipes with symbols, not words, so after a brief refresher to the elements and their symbols it turned into a lot more like baking a giant cake...without the oven...

Actually a lot of fun, as long as you have someone to decipher the secret code! Ha! Not sure I'm ready to come up with my own recipes though...