pottery 3

Last Thursday's spinning wheel resulted in two vessels. pots. containers of clay.

The first one is a study of wonkiness.
It could possibly function as a miniature pourer of cream or milk IF it survives the drying and firing. The bottom ended up so thin that it moves when you touch it.  And the spout - as usual - happened accidentally when the circular clay developed a wonky side.  If you try to follow a wonky side as the wheel turns it becomes even more wonky.  So you stop when it is just wonky enough.  Study in wonkiness (yes computer, add to dictionary).

I sat beside a (much) more experienced pottery student, who was great at concrete directions.  "drop the hole in the middle first".  Right.  (Thus the enthusiastically dropped hole which almost went right through.)

Or "the wheel is turning the wrong way ... it needs to go counter clockwise".  Right.  Minor detail.  (Apparently they are trying to teach software to catch sarcasm in tweets and posts.  They've got some apps up to 85% recognition!)
"And your hands should be at 3 or 4 o'clock".  Now that is helpful advice.

The next pot was a study in angles.
After centering ...
 (Notice how casually I refer to this now ... as though it has become effortless and intuitive?  Nope.  Pure spin.  I smack it onto the centre, take less water than I think I need to pat it into the middle as it spins slowly, and then apply pressure with my hands as the spinning speed increases ... up, down, back up, get more water, smack the clay, watch my hands on the spinning wheel, watch the knuckles wobble just slightly off course at each rotation ... centered?  Close.  
Let's experiment with the speed of the spin with clay that is only mostly centered.  
AH.  right. 
Rejects my directions completely.  Now we have early rebellion of clay.)

So...after centering, I dropped a hole into the middle of the clay.  Then started to try to raise the sides. But a strange thing happened.
The outside got higher, and the inside got a taller ridge as well,
but a trench started developing along the centre of the top.
The leading theory of this development was related to the angle of my fingers
as they applied pressure to the sides.

So, using the handy dandy string clay cutting tool,
cut off the trench.

Now I'm left with less clay,
but well behaved clay.
No trenching.

Rather, it develops an hourglass shape.
And the clay is thinning at the centre.
Not recognizing this as a fatal flaw, I keep trying to force clay upward, to thin the top rim.
Nope.  Whole vessel tears off at centre.

Now I have a very short kind of cute bowl. It doesn't feel like wabi sabi.
It feels like frustration.  And pushing far too hard when I should have just stopped.

Studies in angles and wonkiness.

And it is always about the centre