Cracked Pot

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.
One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.
At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.
For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water.
Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.
But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream.
'I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.'
The old woman smiled, 'Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?'
'That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.'
For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table.
Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.'

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding..
You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.
SO, to all of my cracked pot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path.

Potato Peeling Pots

These two sweeties are visiting just round the corner from my workshop and pop in a couple of times a day when they're here to see what I'm up to. They were confused as to how I fitted all the stuff that's in this space into the smaller space I used to have. When they came in for the first time yesterday I was turning some jugs. When they popped back in later on they wanted to know if I had finished "potato peeling" my pots. Brilliant!

I think things are finally starting to happen, I seem to be just getting into my stride again thank goodness. I'm working from a smaller list and trying to look at the big list less often. Small chunks at a time. Tiddly pom tiddly pom.

12lb of clay, pathetic size of pot, disappointingly indifferent from the 8lb one that I put it next too. I know a lot of the clay goes in the belly but really you'd think they'd look much more different from each other than they do.

The hoolet is back again.

USA April 2011

Well just in case you've missed this so far, myself and the notorious Mr Fitch are off to America for a bit of a busman's holiday in April. Today these swish postcards arrived from Dan Finnegan, very classy (I'll forgive you for not knowing where I live Dan!) They are very lovely cards, and a great envelope that they came in too. Thank you!
This is the poster for the "do" on Cape Cod with Hollis Engley. I am still trying to practise talking through what I'm doing as I work. I often talk to myself as I'm working but it's mainly about the weather and the fire and the dragons needing feeding. So if you walk past my workshop and can hear me wittering away - I'm practising - honest!

The last of the three weekends is with Ron Philbeck down in North Carolina. Hopefully we'll get to meet lots of you bloggers while we are out there, fingers crossed. It'll be good to meet these people who we've been reading about and chatting to on-line for so long now in the flesh as it were. See you there.

Whoooo, Weekend at Last

How is it that a week can feel so long and yet when you look back at it the list is just as long at the end as it was at the beginning and you don't appear to have masses to show for the time spent. I think my problem at the moment is that this year is already so very full of events and shows that I can't concentrate. I think I need to distill the list, make it look a bit less intimidating before I can get my head around it properly. The time is flying by too and that makes me flappety flap even more.
However one thing I did manage to do was get around to booking the tickets to America! How big and scary? Crikey it's ever so much more real now. Have a look at these three posts from Dan, Hollis and Ron to get more information about the trip.

My notice board has been moved from the wall in my old workshop and now has to be a board in the new place as all my walls are solid now, no more plasterboard to pin things to. I had a clear up of the pictures. I've kept the ones that I've not put back up but now there is space for new pictures. Some of the pictures I've collected over the years, others are cards that people have sent me because they thought I'd like the picture. That's something I love and I do tend to do the same if I see something that I know will be appreciated by one of my friends I'll pop it in the post to them. The digital age is wonderful but there's nothing like receiving a hand written card through the post is there.

My friend Elinor will be 29 in June. She is having throughout her 29th year, 29 tea parties with the last one being on her 29th birthday. They are being in all sorts of different places and with many different themes. The 10th one was this wednesday afternoon in my workshop. It was lovely. Obviously I don't have a neat dainty tea table so the board resting on top of buckets of bird food and slips had to do.

Slip trailed mats of course and my new cake stands got an outing. It was a lovely afternoon and really great to have something social and happy and fun happen in my space. I am really enjoying it! It's starting to feel like my workshop now. Still waiting for the good old joiners to come back and finish up but I am very happy in it.
Thursday was pottery's 8th birthday too which I had forgotten about during the tea party.

I got a letter this week to tell me I had been accepted for the market place section at Art in Action. Now can anyone explain why for years and years you apply for things and get not a sniff and then suddenly you get into all the four things that you have applied for all in one go. It's great! However they all happen within a very short space of time over the summer and involve an awful lot of driving up and down the country. It's at times like this that you think it might be better to live where I used to live. I only think that for a minute though and then I come back to my senses. I can take a helper / helpers to Art in Action which I think would be very useful else I'm going to be utterly exhausted and worn out. So if anyone lives in the area of the show which is at Waterperry in Oxfordshire and would like to help give me an email in the next day or so before I fill in the form and I can apply for a pass for you.
Today is the opening of the Spring Fling Taster Exhibition at Stranraer Museum. I wasn't able to make it down there today but the show features work from everyone who is participating in SF 2011.

Dragon Monday

Here they are, the dragons are out. Fired up and ready to go as you might say.

They are a bit, erm, well, probably rather a lot different from my "normal" pots. They are a little burst of madness from January especially for you.

There's five of them in total. Two each black and honey slip trailed ones and one sgraffito beastie.

Sorry a couple of the photos area bit blurry for some reason, it's been another wild windy day and I blame it one that. I unlocked the shed this morning and then came back into the house to collect my bag, picked up my workshop keys and thought (whilst holding the shed keys and the workshop keys in my hand) "I mustn't get these two mixed up".

So I cycled through the rain and the wind that was pushing me all over the road, got to work, fair shattered from fighting the wind and of course you can guess what I found in my pocket...

So off I cycled back to the house to get the right set of keys and try again. Derrrrrr.

New Book!!! Exciting!!!
New magazines, well not new but new to me certainly. I appear to have inherited 30 years of Crafts Magazine and Ceramic Review from Jason who is packing up and moving to the south of France and is having a big old clear out of stuff. Tis a rite good job I've got a bigger workshop all of a sudden.

Wild Windy Week

Well I have finally gotten some pots slipped. I have had a couple of dozen jars and jugs sat sitting under plastic for what feels like weeks. Today I got to slipping them. There are now not so many pots left. I remember thinking when I throwing them that they were much bigger than they would usually be from that amount of clay and that they seemed thinner than usual. I was thinking that that was a good thing.

It isn't a good thing. There is a bloody good reason that my pots are the thickness that they are. That is so that they don't flipping collapse when I soak them in slip. Durrrrrrr!

The last couple of days it has been really windy here, I think across the whole country pretty much. I don't know what it is with the wind but it gets me feeling all jittery. I certainly notice at Cubs too if it's a windy day they are all much wilder than they usually would be. I find it hard to settle to things when it's like this. The old metal door on the workshop rattles like crazy too which doesn't aid the concentration much - come on joiners get the job finished!

New Pots

New pots to my collection rather than new pots of mine. At least they were new to me at Christmas. The top two pictures are of the Japanese pots that Paul brought back for me from his trip there before Christmas last year. The two tea bowls are really lovely and he bought them from a man that had a stall selling pots on the railway station in Shimonoseki. They really do feel good to hold and in turn they hold red wine rather well too.

This little number is from India, my friend Elinor brought it back for me from her trip there. She tells me "It is from Lodai village in Kachchh, which is an area of Gujarat very close to the Pakistan border. We visited Kachchh as a large portion of the economy is craft-based (though worryingly big-industry in the form of power plants etc are moving in rapidly following the earthquake in the area in 2001). You have individual villages specialising in different crafts, so this village was obviously pottery, but we visited another village with 30+ weavers, another with lots of block printers and so on."

You can see more about the pots and the village that this was made in here.

Thank you Elinor and Paul for your lovely presents. x

Lastly and completely unrelated but the video makes me jump even though I know what's coming.

Tuesday's Turnips

OK well actually there are no turnips involved but it was the first word beginning with T that came into my head. Phil came around again this morning, trying to get some more work together for our exhibition in August. August is ages away you think but I know that it's pop up out of nowhere and suddenly be a matter of just days away. Here he is working away.

Ooops! Freshly sieved slip - all over the floor!