Pottery (and other updates)

I've always wanted to take a pottery class and this year I finally got the opportunity to do so. I took a 12 week session Sept-Dec. and then recently finished a 6 week session. I'd love to sign up for the spring session too, but with baby on the way (and not to mention the cost!) it's not going to happen. Yesterday I went and picked up most of my pieces from the last session that had come out of the kiln. I was very pleased with how they turned out. I have some pictures of the dreadful pieces I first made in the fall. Hopefully you will see an improvement!

Here are the most recent creations...

Mugs. I tried an overlapping glaze technique on the green mugs. The blue mug has one glaze on the inside and one on the outside.

I crushed up sea glass and put it in the bottom before the final firing. I love the effect, however you can see that my bottoms were not flat. The sea glass should have pooled in the middle, not the sides. Oh well, I still think it looks pretty neat.

These are some of my "larger" bowls. I guess I should have put something next to them for perspective.

More sea glass. The one of the right has a flat bottom.

I love how the melted sea glass looks.

I used this midnight blue glaze on many pots.

More sea glass

Oops, forgot to flip picture. I threw this as a circle and then shaped it into a heart.

And now for the ugly pieces...

Okay, so THIS is my first bowl ever. Pretty atrocious. Contrary to Edward's beliefs, throwing a pot on a wheel is NOT easy.

This is another early bowl. I love how the glaze turned out but you'll see in the picture below that the shape of it is pretty dreadful.

A poorly thrown bowl but a cool metallic glaze.

My first mug

Yikes! So uneven!

Lopsided


And here are some pictures of a valance I made for the nursery. I got a great deal on this fabric and will be making smaller valances for the french doors as well.

Today I had a dr. appt for my 33 week checkup and everything checked out just great. My weight was right on target (2 pound gain since the last visit), blood pressure good (110/60--meaningless numbers to me, but the doctor said that good), and my belly measured at 33cm which apparently is supposed to coincide with how many weeks along you are (33!). A bit of exciting news is that we get an extra ultrasound in two weeks because our baby appeared to be larger than normal at the 20 week ultrasound. Of course I hope the baby is not abnormally large, but Sarah had this same issue with Maddie, who ended up weighing under 7 pounds. They really can't get an accurate measurement of weight because they are measuring the bones, not the fat on the baby. Anyway, what's great is that our doctor's office does 3D/4D imaging (what we just paid a bundle of money for a few weeks ago), so we'll get another chance to see Baby Shuman in detail. Hopefully we'll get some good pictures to scan in.

Well I guess that's it for now. Thanks for reading!