Throwing Dishes from the Roller Coaster

Okay - someone please find the roller coaster operator.  He's been away eating deep-fried Twinkies too long and it's time to give the riders a break.  Oy vey.

Life itself is one heck of an amusement ride (not always so amusing), but lets just focus on ART360 and yesterday's up/down-fest.  Our most recent lesson was bowls and sgraffito.  I finished the sgraffito carving on my split & rejoined bowls yesterday.  When you see the pictures, yes, the bowl is supposed to be noticeably grafted together.  I thoroughly enjoyed the carving and scraping.  Then, as usual, I was dreading moving on to the next lesson - throwing plates.  I was just getting the hang of bowls!  Why do we HAVE to move on?  Well, you know what I love about plates?  Plates don't have sides that go up!  My issues with wobbling off center as the sides get higher is not an issue with plates.  Yahoo!  I created one rather decent plate and am looking forward to Thursday's class.  However, we also will be making and using stencils for the first time.  Sigh.  Another new method to learn.  More angst of the unknown. I'm sure I'll be fine again when I figure out what I'm doing.  I only wish there weren't so many downs between the ups.

Photos from the classroom:

The dark side will be black.  The lighter side will turn dark blue when fired and the stoneware will show through where the leaves and stems are carved away.

There has to be some kind of metaphor here with bowls cut apart and grafted together to make something interesting and lovely.  It's not coming to me now.  Maybe when that slacker ride operator gets back I'll figure it out.