Chugging Along...I think I can...I think I can...

This last week has been rather discouraging for me. First I made 5 belly shaped ocarinas (belly-rinas) and they took forever to make right (the voicing part.) Then a good night when 5 more went quite smoothly. Then back to a few circular pendants, and most of them also took forever, and a few hit the recycle bucket.

Then I tried two more sweet potatos, both of which ended up in the bucket after hours of trying to get a decent tone out of them. I have no idea at all why I can get a sweet tone from my English pendants, but not the sweet potato. I know I have had trouble with the larger pendant ones, so maybe it's the same problem. Diagnosing it, on the other hand, is not so simple.

Then there were the two sculptural pieces I was making for a friend. The one was the shape of a woman. I loved the sculpture. But when I tried to tune it, I couldn't get the last not AT ALL. So I tried shortening the chamber, keeping the sculpture the same. This time no low notes, AT ALL. So I shortened it yet again, and now have a soprano with the body of an alto. And you can barely fit your fingers on it.

So I also made a whale pendant. This one should have been easy, but no matter what I did - always airy.

The next morning I tried the woman one, and had lost both the high and low note on it. On half of my belly-rinas I had the shrill squealing high note that I can't seem to figure out where it comes from.

So I tinkered with the ramp on the woman and got it to play again. Tinkered with the belly-rinas, and I'm hoping they will stay okay through the kiln firing.

I wanted to to a smoke firing tomorrow, but we'll be out all day. So unless I can get one going in the afternoon, I'll have to wait until Friday.

I look forward to after the medieval faire when I can spend more time on each ocarina and maybe get this thing down to a "t". I have this idea that the sweet potato is more special than a pendant as more people buy them, and they more resemble flutes and instruments than do the pendant ones.

My friend from Yahoo Groups, Massieko, who received the ocarina I made for the exchange, has offered to make another exchange - one of his sweet potatos for a belly-rina. I'm all up for that as maybe I'll see something I don't see with my ocarinas.

Hotel Candle Holder

So I took a break from my ocarinas to try my hand at making a candle holder/tea light for my sister-in-law, for the hotel she works at. The owner of the hotel has three large candle holders she got from a potter who is now deceased, and she's interested in getting smallers versions to sell to her customers.

The design on the previous votive was a simple depiction of the hotel, with a few windows carved into the wall, and a water coloring effect of the hotel and trees.

So here is my leather-hard version so far:

It's not perfectly even, but I think once it's colored it will look a lot nicer. Hopefully she likes it and I can earn a little extra this way.

I then went back to my belly ocarinas, and the first five tooke me 4 hours to cut and tune. The next five, a day later, only 2 hours for the same. Then today I went back to more pendants, and made five and threw out 2.

I'm getting very frustrated that I'm still trashing as many as I am. I want each one to work out perfectly, and they're not. When will I learn well enough to make then each sing beautifully???

Getting There

Well, this week started out on a very sour note (no pun intended.) Our wonderful tomcat of almost 11 years suddenly passed away, and we are heartbroken. Add to that the fact that my three littlest ones have had fevers, I haven't gotten much done in the way of ocarina-making.

I HAVE, however, made progress with the few that I've done. I'm finding that it takes me less time to form the mouthpiece and soundhole just so so that I get a sweet, strong tone from the first note to the last. I'm also finding that for a few I have to lower the ramp just a tad to make those last notes clear.

I made Amber's monkey ocarina, which I think is cute, and the dolphin I'm making for my aunt, which sounds REALLY good. I am too tired to continue with more tonight, and this week is VBS so that's another reason I'm lagging behind.

I tried to buy a kitchen scale this week but Wal-mart was out of the digital ones, so I got a $5 one that says on the box "weighs up to 2 lbs." Well, since I'll be working in very small portions to begin with, I thought that would be fine. Until I got it home opened it, and found that it ACTUALLY only goes to one pound. Well, frankly I'd like it to weigh more, so I'm going to return it and see about getting a digital one.

If I can simply sell enough ocarinas at the faire to cover what I've spent in materials, I will be happy. But since we have a bill from our cat that we hadn't planned on, I'd really now like to make a little more. I am nervous, though, that no one will buy any...

After the fair, I look forward to just playing around with some ideas I have in my head...especially with the colored porcelain and stoneware.

Two Steps Back, One Step Forward

Okay, so the two halves seemed like a great, easy idea. Except it wasn't, at least not at first.

The problem was that I'm used to being "inside" the ocarina when I form the mouthpiece and sound hole. I can see all the stuff that needs fixed before I put it toget

her.

But when the ocarina is already made, I have to guess where to put the sound hole (can't tell where the drop into the cavity is...), and in this case, the drop was too rounded and didn't meet the mouthpiece exit, so all the air was going...nowhere.

After 7 destroyed ocarinas and many, many tears and shouting later, I finally thought about putting some extra clay in the spot that I squish to make the mouthpiece...and it WORKED!

I made 10 ocarinas tonight, and maybe one or two won't make the final cut. But at least 3 of them simply SANG...like honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet! From the first blow to the last...

Now to hope that someday they all do as well :)

Here's a pic of the older ones I did, painted for the bisque, as I'm hoping to try something "new" with the stamps...

One Step Back - Again

Well, I'm not sure if it was the size, or the way I cut them, but the larger ocs just plain gave me trouble. I tried imprinting the stamp BEFORE I cut them in half, but then I couldn't cut through the stamp mark, so I tried slicing it a different way, which made it harder to carve out and form the airway...

And then I realized I had completely forgotten something I knew a long time ago from a website that is no longer up and running. Basically you cut out a circle of rolled clay and drape it over half a sphere form, then let it harden a bit. (Two circles, actually, for the two halves of the ocarina)

Then I'll change it up a bit by pressing the space for the necklace cord and also pressing down the space that will become the airway. This way I will not have to carve any clay out, and hopefully they will be basically all the same, so tuning should be so much easier.

But I could kick myself for not thinking of it sooner...so I only did six of my larger ocs last night and today (and took WAY too long to tune...mostly the sound hole just kept giving me trouble.) I recycled the other four I had formed.

So now I have two ocs, one small and one larger, setting up a tad before I do the indentations and hopefully see if I can then tune them up. The stamps took the best in this method as there was a firm backdrop behind the clay, so that's a good sign, as well.

Pendant Ocs

Well, I decided to try for one weekend at the medeival faire that is less than half and hour from my house. It's a new faire, so there are not that many vendors. Of course, there may not be that many people attending, but I also won't have that much inventory!I settled on doing just one weekend, so I don't have to worry about not selling for 3 weekends in a row, and if I DO sell out, I'm not stuck for 2 weekends without anything to sell! So I'm going to try for the Celtic weekend, and I'm making some circular pendants for the occasion.

I'm trying something new by making a lot of the same sized ocs so I can quickly make the same rough shape several times over, and they'll be roughly the same size. Then I carved them all out at the same time, and then tuned them all. This went much quicker, and I was able to do 10 yesterday and the night before, though I threw one out due to a mistake I made.

But here's a pic of the ocs waiting to be cut - they are bigger than the ones I did cut:

And here are the smaller ones cut open:

Here are some leather stamps I got, which I like, but it's very hard to get them on the smaller ocs, so I'm having to improvise some...

Here are the some finished pendants:

I'm bringing some business cards I made up for the belly-rinas for my doula to try to hand out at the DONA convention, and we'll see how that goes. I'm really hoping for a good response from that.

I've also been tossing ideas around in my head regarding the designs on the ocs and the smoke firings. I think if I underglaze and then matt glaze the design, it will stand out just enough but not too much after being smoked. I hope it will look as good as I visualize....

I might also be making canle votives for a local hotel. I am hoping that by Christmas Jim can make me a home-made potter's wheel for little cost, and that would make that job easier. But it's another source of income if the owner likes what I come up with.

I'm really getting very excited that all this is happening. I hope I'm not putting my head too high into the clouds, but find I can't help myself. The closer I get to my dreams, however, the more terrifying it becomes. Failure is right there beside me, waiting, as well. The "what-ifs" crop up, too. But overwhelmingly the dreams and hopes rise up and take over and I find myself playing the ocarinas for the sheer joy of it...

I am also wondering if there are some books in the library that explain music composition theory...that is, I want to play some simple music on the ocs like the blues, or jazzy music, or celtic sounding tunes, or whatever, without having to have a song. And not necessarily making my own up, but just playing riffs that are familiar enough sounding that they sound good. That way I can demo the ocarina at fairs or festivals and play a variety of music without having specific songs to play.