The first piece I threw has now been destroyed, after spotting two cracks on the inside this afternoon. I now have two almost-finished pieces destroyed for reclaiming, but since I have made so many more pieces this semester I still have almost half a dozen in the pipeline. I still have lots more opportunity to practice and try new stuff. And for what’s worth, it was a practice piece and I’ve already done a lot of experiments on it so it’s ok. Anyway, this is the second time I destroyed a piece that’s already bone dry, and this time I was not going to just dump it in a bucket of water, so I actually tried spraying water on it and scratching it to let it absorb more water more quickly, and I suddenly realized these scratch marks actually look kind of good: I have no idea if anything scratched like this is still structurally sound or safe to fire, but I guess if I leave enough thickness for me to scratch it will be safe; this will be in the queue of things I’m going to try. I have also accidentally deformed the first plate I successfully threw. It looks like it’s still in one piece though, so I’ll still fire it, if not just to practice glazing. But it looks like the next practice piece is going to be another plate.