Today was one of those days where everything you touch goes wrong! Ok it wasn't that bad, my wheel needed the head moving forward a bit as the belt had gotten slack and wasn't turning properly. Not a very taxing job it has happened before and is a simple matter of undoing four bolts and moving the head before doing them up again! I must have rounded one of the bolts last time I did them up so what should have taken ten minutes has taken hours and I am still to get bolt number four loose! In the process one of my bulbs went on the lamp that lights up my wheel and I managed to break the bulb in my hand shattering hundreds of tiny pieces of glass over the area where I had spread hours of frustration in tools and other stuff including my hand basin, water bowls for wheels, two wheels and a partridge in a pear tree! I got away with two little cuts and it was at that point I gave up and came home and made a curry, ha! Yesterday was spent mixing up big batches of glazes as I had just about used the lot up and had to wait for a delivery of materials to turn up for a while. Mixing glazes is quite a tedious job generally but I use a few tried and tested ones time and again that I know will behave themselves, although oxides are never measured as i like the variation in tones. I have been testing a sesquisilicate glaze that I seem to have cracked judging by today's results, it's a clear glaze that I can apply nice and thick without it going cloudy. I have been firing it lower than my usual glazes in a series of tests but I mixed the plate with sgraffitoed flowers above in with my usual 1100c firing and it came out spot on. All the above pots came out of the kiln this morning with the new glazes and although the amber could do with being applied a little thicker they came out good. I have another glaze firing on tonight and that's the end of my weekend, back to my day job tomorrow and on to battle that pesky bolt again in the evening!