Finally did something!

I've been out of the pottery studio for a couple of months now because my pregnancy has me wanting to do nothing but sit and veg.

But today I actually did something useful.  I loaded the kiln.  Huzzzah!  I might actually be able to fire it on Sunday and have new things to glaze on Monday.  Woot!

And just to make it easy on myself, I loaded it full of big stuff.  So this load will probably yield about 10 total items rather than 50.  I'm hoping that will encourage me to get enough stuff glazed for a glaze firing later next week.

Just in case anyone is interested

I am still writing, I'm just writing about my pregnancy rather than pottery at the moment.  But I also realize that not everyone who reads a pottery blog wants to read about a pregnancy.  So I started a new blog so those who are interested can read it and those who aren't don't get stuck with irrelevant life updates.

So, here's the link to First Time Twins, my blog about being pregnant with, then hopefully raising a pair of twins.

Ummmmm, I'm confused

Would someone please explain this bowl to me?

Obviously it's quite lovely.  Thrown nicely, the glazes work very well together.  But here's what I don't get - why would someone want handles in the inside of their bowl?  Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of a handle?   It's $175 and it seems practically useless to me. 

Is this some special bowl where handles designed in that fashion have some logistical purpose that I'm not aware of?  I'm perfectly willing to accept my own ignorance if that's what this is.  I had no idea why you might want holes on the side of the bowl just under the rim until I saw a bowl like that with chopsticks sitting in place.  I'm hoping there's an answer similar to that one that I'm just currently unaware of.

And no, I don't go searching out quandaries like this.  And I really hope the artist isn't insulted that I don't get it because I really do see that it's very well made.  I just don't understand why it was made.  I'm hoping to be enlightened here.  I saw a link in my shop stats and my bowls just happened to be right next to this one on that collection page.

*UPDATE*  The going theory in the Artfire forums is that you stick chopsticks upright in the holes to keep them from rolling away.  I suppose that could be the purpose but the artist says nothing about holding utensils and calls them handles so I'm still a bit skeptical.

I won, yay!!

I put forth some information about the deal that was going on at Artfire and by doing so, I won an awesome prize.  I won a new tabletop photo studio!  Wooot!  Holla!

It arrived quite a while ago, but I had, um, issues. 

You see, I set it up, and took all sorts of pictures of it (yes, picture of the stuff that's supposed to help me take pictures) and immediately broke one of the special bulbs from the really awesome lights.  Before I ever turned it on.

Aren't I brilliant?

So I was a little upset and starting packing everything away.  And then when it came time to tear down the actual the tents, I could not for the life of me figure out how to get these pop up things unpopped!  I was turning them every which way and pushing and pulling.  I brought up the instructions from the website and that didn't help.

And that's when the pregnancy hormones kicked in.  Swear words spewed, tears flowed, tents got thrown across the room, it was pretty ugly.  Full on hormonal melt down.

When the husband finally came home, I threw the tents at him and made him do it.  Once everything was nice and packed, I hid them under the china cabinet until I could look at it all again.

I braved the equipment today and took some pictures that I'll be using to post some new products this week.

So now that I'm over it, just want to say Thanks Artfire!  I love my new studio!

This photo has not gone through any retouching yet.  I'm not even sure it's going to need any cuz thanks to the new lights, the whites are actually white and it seems pretty evenly lit to me!