Coming to the End of a Cycle

I'm at the end of this cycle of making pots and it feels like it's just in time.  I felt a relief today as I knew I had just a couple boards of pots to finish up and then it was on to waxing and glazing.  I'll have one more bisque to fire before I can load the soda kiln.  Hopefully things will dry out over the next few days enough for me to do a slow bisque before the weekend.

Waxing out areas on pots is one of the more time consuming things I have to do.  It's pretty straightforward though.  I don't do this sort of thing on every pot but I do enjoy having some areas that are glazed against the slipped surfaces.  Combined with any texture this is even better I think.

It's pretty ugly in this state.  I add some green food coloring to my wax resist so I can see where I am putting it.  Working with wax is great until you get it somewhere it doesn't belong.  I'll have to bisque the cup below to burn off all the wax since I dropped a big blob right in the middle of the panel that is to be glazed. 

I took a few photos of the area beside the treadle wheel to give you an idea of what tools I mainly use.  I have most everything I need for throwing within arms reach. 

The ceramic bird was made by Peter Rose and it's sitting on a sagger from Bill Gordy's kiln.  I don't really use a lot of different tools and honestly I could get rid of more than half of this and still do just fine making pots.

Tomorrow I'll get on with glazing what pots I have left.