Tiny jars

When I was at the fair the other day one of the potters had these great teeny, tiny jars. I loved the way you could cup them in the palm of your hand. There was a feeling of intimacy about them. So, being the crook I am I stole the idea and began making my own teen, tiny jars today. Of course mine will be very different in every respect really except the size. Below I am holding one of the covers on my finger.

So I did discover a bit of good news the other night regarding the fair. I had posted that it cost 2,000 dollars to enter the fair. That is true only if you want a 12x15 foot booth. A 10x10 is only 1,050 and a 10x12 is 1,200. So I was quite relieved as this makes is drastically more affordable. I think I will probably try for a 10x12 because the extra two feet in the back will probably be very handy for storage given the length of the fair (remember it is nine days long). But I will design my booth to occupy only a 10x10 area because most fairs I will do will only be that size of course.

I'm pretty happy with the coffee cups I threw today. I've been pushing my clay too far and a lot of my cups are really big and light for a pound of clay. So I really made an effort to hold back today and I think it was successful. They all have a nice fat rim and I threw them all sort of low with a belly. I find that most of my favorite mugs lately have a bulbous quality to them. We'll see when they are trimmed how it all works out. In the back is on of my little test cups from the clay I made. It's hard to tell really how well it throws with two tiny test cups but it seemed fine. I'm interested in being able to test my glazes on them. Ben Stark gave me a link to Alex Matisse who had some good info on making your own clay using the slurry method. Adam says he thinks he can build me something like the blunger thing used for mixing the clay which seems like it might be a better idea than a drill, probably a lot more powerful. Well, I'll spare you any more of my ramblings. Oh, one more thing, I'm doing my third mug test firing tonight so hopefully some good results tomorrow. Send me good karma!