It seems like I'm back on that kick again. It seems like every few months, I get preoccupied with detailing my work. It's changed as my skills have and it still gets mixed reviews, but I'm back to carving away at my clay. 

I'd like to work on some additional techniques to show depth and various levels of complexity. I'd also like to find more effective ways to align those affects with the pieces that best showcase them. 

This past weekend, I started some additional work on the pieces I threw the week before. 

I wasn't feeling all that hot and my mind was all over the place having been pulled in 5,000 directions working on everyone else's initiatives except my own. So when I'm like that, I find the best way to unravel my mind is carving and etching. 

It chewed up about 4 hours of my studio time, but when it was done I felt a lot better about some things and a lot clearer about everything else. 

Life has thrown me so many curve balls lately I've been struggling to regain a routine.  Once upon a time, I was in the studio on Sundays, plugged into my ear buds and focused on the meditation that clay afford me. I didn't put my head up until I was physically exhausted. It was cleansing, all that mud...and I was creatively sharper than I feel now. 

I think when you are living your life reactively (which I have been doing so heavily for the past year), it can be so hard to switch gears and get into the productive practice of creating. Other than the big turn I made in creating lidded pieces, I felt a bit stunted. 

It's time to start challenging myself again. Life should be moving back into a more steady existence in the next few months...at least, I really hope it is. I'm looking to ratchet up my skill level. I'm thinking tea pots, the aromatic diffusers my cousin suggested, some dish sets and finally some bigger better functional designs. 

So I've got 4 pieces with varying carved and chattered designs, drying on my shelf. We'll set them up for bisque fire and hopefully I'll be sharing the results with you soon. 

I haven't thrown much in the past few weeks. A hacking cough and a cold mixed with an incredible workload has kept me out of the studio much longer than I intended, but I did manage to swing by a few times to check in on some pieces I glazed. 

Key lesson learned. When you create a set of anything...always make sure your pieces are loaded in the same kiln, for the same glaze firing. I'm really happy with this set, but a bit disappointed in the shift in color. The tall jar was fired one week and the middle and small jar were glazed together this week. 

I glazed the jars with khakatile because it always breaks so beautifully over carving. I did the knobs on the lids in teal, for a complimentary contrast.