I love Spring Break!  I recently did some internet shopping at Clay-King.com and Axner.com.  Both are good places to get ceramic and pottery supplies.

Clay King was having a pretty good sale on glazes.  I ordered a few of my favorites (Coyote: Red Gold and Leopard Shino) and a few new colors to test (Coyote: Espresso Bean and Saturated Iron and Amaco: Frosted Turquoise and Iron Lustre).  I also ordered 10 lbs. of Pam’s Blue dry powder (by Coyote).  Finally!  As soon as I mix up the Pam’s Blue I will be able to dip and pour instead of brushing glaze onto every… single… piece…  This should drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to glaze a load of bisque ware.  I guess at first there will be a lot of blue mugs and bowls but if everything goes smoothly I hope to order some more glazes in dry powder form and mix up some large quantities.

Speaking of mixing glazes…  I needed a few more items to get the job done.  Axner had some pretty good prices on most of the stuff I needed so I ordered a hydrometer, sieve, kiln posts, and some other dry chemicals.  I hope to mix some of my own glazes in the future so I’m starting a small collection of dry chemicals.

In other not-very-exciting news I installed a more permanent light above my wheel and made a small shelf behind the wheel where I can put freshly thrown pots to dry.

In the somewhat-exciting department I have a few mugs and bowls drying on the shelf.  I just threw a few more before track practice today which need handles but I’ll try to put up some pictures before the bisque fire.  I’m trying a different kind of clay so I’m anxious to see how it fires.