The internet is confusing

I spend a lot of time on the internet. On pottery forums I saw people talking about something called Mason stains, things that they seemed to be using to colour clay. I swear, in every thread someone would pop up and say “my community studio doesn’t let us use Mason stains, what else can I use?”.

uh-oh

A huge crack all around the bottom of my wedging spiral, the clay just split open like rising sourdough, that’s what happened the first time I reclaimed porcelain.

Not exactly what I wanted to see, and it reminded me of my instructor talking about a friend who never reclaimed their porcelain. Had I just destroyed 4kg of clay?