herb bowls, another try

I've been wanting to give the herb bowl project another try. White sage has been in the back of my mind for various reasons, only one of which is the resinous quality in the leaves. It grew beautifully in the garden this year. The scent is glorious and grounding, and depending on the purpose of the bowls, might be just about perfect. The original plan was to use simply sage, water, and tragacanth.
Today I decided to add a little peace to the bowls by using some lavender distillate I made that's been hiding in the fridge for a while. That took the place of the water.
A rough recipe (at that point) was about 2/3 cup powdered white sage, 1/4 tsp tragacanth, and 1/4 cup lavender distillate.
The clay didn't want to hold together well at all. It clumped okay, but wouldn't hold a shape.Fine. Maybe a rounded Tbsp of yellow sandalwood to make it more uniform, and another slosh of the distillate. Still not quite there, I added an additional 1/4 tsp of tragacanth. I was avoiding the extra tragacanth, because it absorbs so much liquid that in the end result there are more cracks from the shrinkage. This is still half of the amount I used with the first attempt at herb bowls a couple of months ago.
It still didn't get exactly to the consistency I wanted, and wasn't roll-able. These are the end result. The tiny bowl has a stick through it so that a ribbon handle can be added later.
I'm going to keep at it. Eventually there will be a magazine article here when I've got it perfected, but in the meantime this the play.