Gotta Dot

It's 5 degrees outside and snowing. It's Monday morning which means I should have a new post about the wood Kiln...but I don't. It was just as cold yesterday and everybody called off the game. Instead of freezing my ass off, scraping bricks or building the back wall of our kiln, I spent most of the day doing one of the most important steps dealing with Free Ceramics: Dotting with underglaze. It could have been 5 years ago that I first helped with this step and it all took place inside my sister's living room with only 7 different colors, a stack of South Park dvds and a bunch of weed. Now the color pallet has grown to this long board that hangs on the wall with test tiles that can be taken off..so we can see the color combos and what they'll look like together. As life goes on.. we're up to 42 colors, the South Park has changed to Hulu and the weed has smoked itself away. It's a long process... because each dot, requires three separate coats of each color. A large bowl, or platter may have up to 15 different colors. And for some reason, the mugs can take as long as a large bowl. For the next two weeks I'll be at this table, almost every day doing this until the weekend after Thanksgiving. It's just how it is. Ya gotta do it... The good news is that I was officially done with wet work two days ago. There is one more bisque to fire, once the teapots are dry, and four more glaze kilns to have finished before our sale which is happening December 3, 4, and 5th.