“I've got spots; I've got stripes, too.” ~ Ani Difranco

Well, this past week was the week of the encalmos.... But it was also the week of a little snow :) Finally!!

I said I wanted to try to make an encalmo plate with as many stripes as I could... I was thinking 12... My eyes were a little bigger then my stomach in that case I think.  Anyway... here is attempt number 1:

We accidently bumped one color onto the piece where it was a stripe of another color... so it got trashed at this point.  Opps!

Attempt number 2 begins:

Here I have 5 stripes on and Marianne is making my 6th and final layer of color... which will be the center most piece.

Now we've got them all together, I am shaping and smoothing and stuff.  Anyway, it was going really well, it got huge and we ended up having to run to a bigger glory hole because even with ours wide open it was still too small.  But, at the end I was exhausted and when I was spinning to open it I accidentally let it fall back.  The edge of the lip folded all the way back and touched the bottom of the plate and got stuck.  We saved it, put it in the annealer but just to be thrown away the next day.  That was Tuesday I think.

Wednesday was cold shop and a dressage lesson.  I thought maybe I could get Pia to take a picture of me actually on a horse, not another picture of me in the mirror.  So, here I am with Vaaagner!

Thursday morning we did attempt THREE of the encalmo.  This time I was going for 7 stripes!

Above has 4 and below has 6!

Putting on number 7!

Big and smooth and stripy!

It is dark purple and an aquamarine blue alternating.

Here I have gathered once over this giant pot and I am trying to cut in a neck line before it gets too huge.  

After a bunch of blowing and hard work done by Vegard, Marinanne and myself it was finally time to punty!

Getting it good and hot so it will open to a plate!  Thanks to Vegard for doing most of the heavy lifting!

And now we have an open plate!!! It is big and heavy and I am so sweaty and tired but happy :)

And here I am on Friday with my masterpiece! I am super pleased with it... it is kind of heavy and I don't know how to get it home, but I figure I can wear it like a turtle shell on my back or something haha!  I am holding it against my body, it really is wider then I am!

I have thought about trying to make another one of these plates but go for 9 or 10 stripes but doing just 7 took around 2 hours of work... and that was three of us working hard.  So, maybe 12 would take AGES!

I had a funny conversation with Micke about the piece and it went something like this:

Micke: "Oh, this is a nice piece, how many stripes is it?"

Me: "sjut!" (pronounced huwt kind of, I don't know how it is spelled)

Micke: "I'm sorry what?"

Me: "sjut, seven!"

Micke: "Ohhhh! Seven is sju! SjuT is shit!"

Me: "ohhhhhh! yes, sju, seven not shit!!! haha"

Thursday Eva came to visit me (sadly she missed the making of the giant plate) and stayed on to Friday.  I blew some graals on Friday that she got to watch also a very interesting after school session with Marianne where I think Eva was terrified that she was going to have to call Swedish 911 because we almost lost the piece!  But it all worked out and I am so happy she came to visit.  She talked to everyone and got to see a lot of different things going on.  I will show those pictures after I have taken a picture of the graals :)

Now, I am off to bed... I have ONE WEEK left of school! I don't know what I am going to do... I have some more graals to blow up... but I don't really have time to fix them afterwards if I need to... It is a bit weird to figure out the timing of things.  Oh well, I will manage I am sure!