So as I promised, I’ll tell you about pottery making! Pottery making is a blast! It is a complicated system though so you need to pay attention to your teacher. First you need some supplies:
-A Potter’s Wheel
-A Needle
-A Wire Thing To Cut With
-A Wooden Knife
-A Sponge
-A Bucket Of Water
-and Patience.
Now, this is a cup we are making! So first you get some clay. You take that clay and put it on a table or a flat surface. Need the clay. This is called wedging. Wedge the clay about 50 times. If it gets too wide, push it together and continue wedging. Then you stand at your wheel. (Clean it off if needed. To do this, you turn on the Potter’s Wheel and run the sponge across the radius of the wheel while pushing the pedal to make it spin.) Turn on the wheel but don’t press the pedal yet. Firmly put the clay in the center of the wheel. Now you have to do a difficult technique. Put your RIGHT elbow on your stomach. Make your arm stand straight out. put your wrist back, almost parallel to your stomach. Lean into the clay and put your other hand on the other side of the clay. Push the pedal and center the clay by pushing. MAKE SURE TO CONTINUOUSLY ADD WATER TO YOUR HANDS FOR SLICK. Slick is the clay on your hands mixed with water. Make a cone shape by slowly moving your hands up the clay. EVERYTHING IN POTTERY IS SLOW AND STEADY AND NOT FAST AND FURIOUS!!! This is a very important thing to know or else you could break your creation. (You can also break it by not putting enough water on the wheel/your hands.) After making the cone shape, hold the right hand position and push the clay down (SLOWLY!!!) and make a cone again. Push it down again and now you have to make a hole.
To make a hole, you take your right thumb and push it through the center of your clay blob. When you think the hole is deep enough, put some water in it. Then take your needle and put it parallel to your hand and take some of the slick off. Push the needle down in the base of your soon-to-be-cup. Rub it around without making a hole and take it out. You’ll see that it has taken some of the slick off. This is good and if it is about a quarter of an inch, then it shouldn’t be deeper. If it is more than a quarter of an inch, press your fingers down the soon-to-be-cup. It will get deeper. So now you just make it wider by pulling your fingers slowly apart inside the cup. NOW YOU HAVE YOUR CUP!
I will make a picture later… maybe not today though.
Ice skating was fun but I don’t feel like writing much. I am not very good at skating. I like it though and will keep doing it for fun!
