No Bad Hair Days

No Bad Hair Days!

Well, I guess it's time to post some more. Yet another person asked me about Dave Stewart's pottery: I guess the search engines that be direct people to my blog. So, I have a small following now, several comments too.  I never really published sci-fi but I have been paid for writing nonfiction. As I ate breakfast after responding to the blog question, I decided that I am an essayist.

Whoda thunk it? Not an Op-Ed writer (I dislike politics). Just an essayist. So, here's a bit more essayish stuff on Dave Stewart, y'all: his glaze contained lead. He periodically got checked for lead poisoning, and his pots got checked for leaching (both always passed). The lead made the lovely red color come forth. Another thing about his glazing: he used a gas kiln to glaze-fire with. He said he never reduced, just fired oxidation (all ports open). But! I am of the opinion that his firings actually experienced reduction. My thought is that his old boxy kiln going full bore just didn't HAVE enough ports to allow enough oxygen through. Also, the magnetite specks always made nice big black spots. Magnetite in my clay body NEVER made such spots. Magnetite added to my glazes made petite black spots. And it was magnetite, all right... Dave used to let Gail drag a magnet on a string through the beach sand in La Jolla and collect all the magnetite personally. I did that with magnetite in Socorro (iron-rich rocks and sand at our home). But no lovely black dots. Thus, I figure that after trying everything over thirty years and not managing to get Dave's spots, it had to have been the firing which produced that look, a reduction firing.

Oh, wait--I just thought: it might have been the lead, too.

Okay. Just about enough for now. I titled this post No Bad Hair Days because I just  lost most of my hair (probably alopecia areata) & I am now wearing a wig. It's a fun, bleached-blonde thing, not how I used to be able to wear my hair at all, but more indicative of my inner personality than what I could get ever get out of my real hair. I am totally pro-wig now--these things ain't the ones that were around in the '70s (which made us all look like Harpo Marx).

Have a good one!