Pissouri, Cyprus - 2nd pottery class, Monastery and trivia.

So, lets start with the trivia. My daughter, Christine, amazes me. She is creative, ambitious, a problem solver and event planner! She usually plays trivia, at a bar, in Oakville, with a team of friends, on Tuesdays. But everyone is socially distancing, so she worked out how to use technology to do the next best thing. This afternoon I helped her do a test run on Hangouts so she could hold an on-line trivia competition for invitees. After a few glitches (had to use my computer as it didn't work well on the tablet) I got about 50% of the questions right (pretty good for me as I suck at Trivia, George was excellent at it) and we worked out the kinks. She had a good "turnout" (people saying they would join in) and I hope it all went well.

This morning was my second pottery class. Yesterday Julie felt I was a fast worker and added creating some tiles to the pinch pot lesson. We probably didn't need to as today's assignments were more time consuming.

First, on the swallow pinch pot, I cut out 2 of the swallows. That's Julie checking my work.

and poked holes through the other 2 swallows.

We used some glazes right out of the container and mixed some others. They look very "pastel" but I am assured that they will be more vibrant when they come out of the kiln.

The pinecone indented pinch pot had 2 greens, blended, on the sides and red on the indents and the interior. In needed 3 coats and you dry each coat with a hairdryer in between.

Same process with the swallow one (paint then dry, 3 times). Dark blue, light blue and white on the outside, dark blue on the inside.

The tiles also needed the three coats of glaze.

After working on one of the tiles, Julie let me take them home with tools and glaze to finish as a two hour class had already turned into a three hour class.

I only have the car until Friday and the Makers Place is just next door to the Agios Neophytos Monastery, so I drove up the road, parked and walked up to it.

The Monk, Neophytos, lived in a cave and carved it out into his cell and a small chapel. Over time others joined him and expanded it.

There was no-one around and everything was closed up.

Inside the walls are painted with icons from the 1100s.

The more recent monastery is still in use.

I saw no one

but somewhere I could hear the murmur of voices and cutlery on plates,

after all, it was lunch time.

For those of you who can't view the video. Thunder and lightening and it proceeded to hail for about 20 minutes.

Out of sequence but he was too beautiful to leave him out.

 Back home, and after the trivia trial run I worked on my tiles:
Sgraffito (in Italian "to scratch") is a decorating pottery technique produced by applying layers of color or colors (underglazes or colored slips) to leather hard pottery and then scratching off parts of the layer(s) to create contrasting images, patterns and texture and reveal the clay color underneath. from lakesidepottery.com

First you use the sharp pointed tool to "sketch" the design without breaking the surface of the glaze. Then you use the wider tool to scrape off the glaze.

My intention was for them to look like the hand painted tiles, that I saw so many of, last year, in Madeira and Lisbon.

Making different patterns depending on how they are arranged.

Tomorrow I will touch up some of the mistakes with the glaze

and then take them back to the Makers Place on Friday so that they can be fired before I leave.