Hunting and gathering

This weekend I got a bunch of stuff together for wrapping my pieces prior to firing. I think I shall call it "dressing" them.

1. I put a lot, a lot, a lot of salt (NaCl) in tap water, dissolved it, and added 100% cotton string. This will be wrapped around the pieces, helping to secure the extras or just making cool lines. 

I did the NaCl thing twice and then put baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3) in the plastic tub and added some string to that as well. And I went digging around my house's craft closet and found copper wire. All of these things are supposed to have wonderful effects on the pieces during firing. 

Banana peels. Every time anyone eats a banana in my house I watch them like a hawk and then snatch the peel away and take it to my stash. I am going to use these for the potassium, which apparently turns green when it volatilizes.

And I gathered a whole bunch of straw (last year's daylily stalks, really) and twigs for kindling, and put them in my shed so the thunderstorms wouldn't get them, but the thunderstorms have so far failed to appear at all, so I don't know.

Finally, I was out in my yard and looking around for interesting natural things that could look nice, and I though of my millions of wild rosebushes, so I went and collected the rose hips (below) and am going to bind them to the pieces with my salt-soaked string. 

I endured massive thorns to get the rose hips but I think it was worth it.

I'm also going to try epsom salt. Sometime in the next week I'll be making newspaper packets of table salt, epsom salt, and baking soda, and placing them around the pieces so they make flashing effects as they volatilize. I hope to dress all my pieces over break and dig the pit the weekend after and fire all through the month of May.