Ceramics week 9

Two empty kilns -and here are some of the things that came out of them this week - my "mouths of hell" and "strange sea creatures", more of which next week perhaps...
Some shapes made of slabs, with patterning inside and out, and even some pins in the clay -
Pins were everywhere - in these slabby pieces made of crank clay (the ones in the picture above are white clay, Draycott) -
I spent the entire day glazing. First, grouping things according to their stage (biscuit firing, earthenware, or stoneware) -
The stoneware glazes I'm mostly happy with - or rather, won't be doing any more with -
The biscuit-fired lot includes this week's new things, as well as some I'd forgotten about; they'll be glazed eventually, if only to find out what happens "if" -
And the rest - some pinchpots from week 1 and some slabs from week 2, and some rings from week 3 (or was that week 2) that suddenly appeared on the shelf - and hiding in the corner, the saggar fired items -
I tried to be systematic with the glazing because it was all getting rather confusing! Here's my "system" in action -
I wrote down which glazes I might use (clear, white, black) and found similar pots to try them on at earthenware and stoneware temperatures, to see what would happen. The empirical approach. Very instructive, no doubt -
This lot is going in the stoneware kiln -
I get impatient to see the results, but have to wait till next week - and then a whole bunch of stuff happens the next day and then it's the weekend and then Monday is for office work, and then Tuesday is back to class (core subjects), and suddenly it's ceramics day again - the week passes in a flash.

No progress on the essay in the past 36 hours, but I'm hopeful that it's all percolating in the subconscious and will come pouring out at the 11th hour (nothing like a bit of pressure, is there!). There was quite a lot of discussion along the lines "how are you coming along with your essay" in class today, unsurprisingly.