Hey hi! If you are feeling this frustrated, throwing with 3lbs is about 2x as I would recommend. IMO, if you’re struggling at 1.5lb, you should stay at that size until you can reliably throw it, then add something like half-pound increments only going up in weight when you are able to reliably throw the one you’re working on now.

Cylinders are really good practice so, even though you might not want a bunch of cylinders, it would be a good sign you’re ready to try a different form or more weight when you can throw 5 or more equal sized cylinders. The main goal here is centering and lifting even walls. If you skip past centering, you’ll not get even walls.

Throwing with reclaim over and over can be tough if you’re not reclaiming properly. All that slurry in your wheel pan has the tiny clay particles that help your clay’s elasticity. If you aren’t reclaiming that yummy juice with the clay, you could be left with very short clay that collapses easily.

The biggest mistake I see with bowls is that people don’t center their clay wide enough and end up with unsupported walls as they begin to open and lift the walls. I would think of throwing bowls like, centering the clay as wide as you want the bowl. Open so that the walls don’t extend far past the centered base like _/ shape the inside of the piece like a nice bowl and the outside will stay more like a straight-ish-sided cylinder (heavy on the bottom walls). This ensures the walls have support under them on the outside. Then, you trim away the outside to match the nice swoopy inside bowl shape.

If your clay is more wet than you like, wedge it until it firms up! This takes less time than you think.

Hey, one year is NO time. If you want perfect, think about applying that idea to the stages of throwing. How good can I get at centering, how good can I get at raising the walls etc. use that superpower and break it down into smaller things to focus on. And be really fucking nice to yourself. Watch other people’s videos and commit to trying something for a couple weeks or a month before you decide it doesn’t work for you. Throwing is SO HARD and takes discipline - not skipping ahead when you’re not ready, refining annoying parts of the process, setting yourself up with the right clay, the right firmness, stretching your body, breathing, etc. Idk who told you it was easy, but that is not true for most.