E.O.Y.O.F.F

Well here we are almost at the end of another year and what a year it has been. I'm giving you here a whole string of photos of people as this year just seems to have been the year for making new friends and for reminding myself how lucky I am that the friends that I have are as good as they are.

Not everyone is featured in photos, try as I might I couldn't find pictures of you all but know that that does not mean that you are forgotten (namely Amanda and Christine-why have I no pictures of you two in my stash?) Alex and Doug, wonderful, funny good gang to be with. It's been a little odd getting to know Alex in a different capacity but it's been great, it's only occasionally I feel I fall back into student mode (I think).

A lot of the pictures are from America, how could they not be? What a time. You've heard most of the tales by now I'm sure and you are bored half to death of hearing me witter about my trips over the sea this year I am also sure. Heck they were both big experiences. There's no way again I could show all the people that made an impression over there, blogger would probably crash if I tried! The Falmouth High School picture with Doug feels like it was taken another lifetime ago, only 8 months, hard to believe.

There is though the whole Cape Cod gang.

Hollis and Dee, you wonderful people. Thank you!

Guy Wolfe, what a treat to get to come on that detour to visit you.

The Virginia Crew. What can I say? You were fab.

Dan, you are as I am sure you have been told on many many occasions - 'the man'!

Ahhh wee Ellie.

A very sad and very happy picture taken at Kevin Crowe's house. Doug, Dan, me, Ang, Ron. What a bunch!

And the Ang, Ron, Doug, Karma society.

The North Carolina Contingent. What a way to finish it all off. There's so many pictures I could have shown you of us all out there, most in in older blog posts or show me looking so ridiculous that I feel I can't force them upon the world.

Closer to home my wonderful friends and landlords that patiently let me build this heap of bricks in their back garden, Alan and Hazel on the left and my fellow crafts person and blacksmith friend Adam (see that lovely loop welded on the top of my firebox door, he did that, amongst other bits and bats that he knocks up).

Visitors to sit by my fire and drink tea were many, Dave and Sue were there and are always welcome. Maybe I should make an album of my friends drinking tea in my workshop, that would be a good subject.

Phil! What can I say?

Potters, ever present are potters, this bunch are in the Lake District at Potfest or rather on an evening of relaxing after a day at Potfest.

Deb and her mum. Deb lives in the Caribbean so I see her but rarely, it's a treat when I do though. In this category there's a number of friends who live not as far as that but who I see irregularly but that I know are always there for a chat on the phone, you know who you are Emma et al.

New friend! Biscuit. Currently batting the ornaments on the Christmas tree while looking innocently at me when I turn around to tell her off.

Trip Stateside number two. Dan again, and helper Jason, out to help a lady in need. What gents.

My Craft Scotland Phili Team, I can't find our group picture. Sorry.

Ron and Sarah, Paul and I had a fab time with you two in the Big Apple. That was a treat. We'll see you here next will we?
Lastly but by no means least, the constant throughout, puts up with my to-ing and fro-ing.Paul. We're going to have a couple of days away in a shed over the new year. I'm not a fan of the whole hoo hah that is made of the end of one calendar year and the start of the next so we thought we'd get away from it all and go and stay in a shed in Northumberland. You know because we live in such a hectic built up crazy place of course.

To all of you who have been with me through this year and supported me in the great and the good and the jolly and the sometimes not so jolly times whether you be locally, nationally, internationally and virtually, thank you and a very joyous and peaceful 2012 when it arrives. x

January Madness Comes Early

I have been feeling rather less than festive for the last week or two, struggling to get my head around the idea of it being Christmas already and the end of the year and somehow feeling like I have achieved nothing this year because it's gone so fast. (I know I know, when I get the chance to sit down and think it all through I'll realise that it is precisely because I have been doing so much that the year has gone so quickly.) Anyway I decided to push the boat out and make the workshop all festive and full of fun and joyousness and to deck the halls with boughs of holly, or string a bit of tinsel around a bit of metal, in case you are struggling to find the relevant photo, please see the slab roller image above.

So much for wanting to get all the pots that I had already thrown slipped and sat drying out over Christmas and then taking it easy this week. Well I did get everything that was already thrown decorated but then I went and threw a load more. That was after Mr Fitch gave me a good talking to. Sometimes I need it, my head runs away with itself a lot, many times in a good way but often not in a good way at all. So I have been making again and you know what, I hate to admit it but he can be right sometimes. Any road up I made some big wide dishes and some downright fat jugs so I'll need to pop in tomorrow and cover them up and so they can sit and await my return in the new year.

I've been starting to teach a lady who has made pots in the past but who wants a bit of tutoring I suppose and we have this fantastic agreement where she pays me in cheese as she works for Loch Arthur Community, an incredible place if you get the chance to visit and fantastic cheese makers, indeed they just won the Best Food Producer in the BBC Good Food Awards. For those of you that know Paul you will appreciate how well this form of payment goes down in our house!

dragon puzzle jugs! Usually it's January in the dark dismal month of yuck that I find the insanity takes over and the madness is allowed to have free reign over what I make. There is the madness that is allowed to be kept and fired and many times there is that which has to begin life again after the reincarnation that comes from the reclaim bucket. This winter it's happening early. One of these is a commission but even so, they are heading down the route of insanity and craziness. I am though a girl who does love a bit of insanity and craziness though so that makes it all ok.

Paul came over this afternoon as I was finishing these wee beasties, he sat drinking tea and laughing openly as he watched me. There I was thinking I was creating serious art and there he was laughing away spilling tea and eating ginger cake. Charming charming.

I made sure that thee dragons had their fair share of cake too. I think they liked it.

So I think this'll be the last post before Christmas, "thank heavens" I hear you cry. Maybe I'll slip another one in before the end of the year though so gird your loins for that one.

See this beggar's eyes? They're the spouts for the puzzle jug, you have to suck his eyes, or the end of his tail, depending, weird thought.

Do all, "Have yourself a merry little Christmas", may it be a "most wonderful time of the year" with marshmallows for toasting"(?) and "caroling out in the snow" and may there be "much mistletoeing" (I just realised this week that I have never been sought out with any mistletoe - come on Paul get your act together boy!) and I hope your "hearts will be glowing when loved ones are near". Take care, enjoy yourselves and your families and friends. x

How many dots are too many dots?

I have been still making and decorating and trying to dry pots and firing and trying to get orders dried and ready for Christmas and trying to not sit by the fire drinking tea for too long each day (which is very hard work). The plate above is about 16" diameter and has lots of dots, you can see them better in the close up picture further down. It's one of those things that I start and then wonder whether it was a good idea but by then of course it's too late and carry on I must.

This one has been made slightly oval, assuming it comes out in one piece it is a commission, fingers crossed.

We've had lots of weather recently. Just about everything you can think of. Last week I didn't ride in to work once, I'll ride through lots of weather as it's such a short distance but we had gales that even in the van knocked me across the road, we had sheet ice the whole way and we had snow snow thick blizzardy snow.

Of course the snow day I walked in and might have decorated some / most of the road. I got caught this time though, I think it's the first time I've ever been caught doing it by a stranger, oops, funny though. On my way home I noticed that someone (Hazel was that you?) had been joining in, I like that, collaborative road decorating.

I've a couple more big platters to slip this week, and some puzzle jugs to put together and some parcels to pack and get away, maybe some slips to sieve and then I think that'll be about me for the year after all that. Phew!

New York Insanity and Shelter Island Calm

After the week in Philadelphia with the Craft Scotland gang I left there on the monday morning with a small group of intrepid Scots on the Greyhound (well it was actually Peter Pan but booked through Greyhound because what else would we use?) and travelled up to New York City. "New York City imagine that", on the journey we "counted the cars on the New Jersey turnpike" and suddenly we were spewed off the bus into the insanity of this mad place. I left my travelling companions and hopped in a taxi - eeeee-zooom-dodge-brake hard-honk-honk-honk-Hannah swearing silently to herself and praying for the journey to not be too long in the back of the dodgem car to meet none other than Mr and Mrs Funky Philbeck (you can blame DF of course Ron).

We had arranged to meet up in the Big Apple that day and to spend a few days there together and the extra special bit was that Paul was flying over that day too to meet us. Here are Ron and Sarah posing on the street.

Familiar looking place don't you think? We didn't go up it, not enough time, too much to see.

Tis a bit like the Gherkin in London though, seems to be at the end of every street but other wise there is so much to see all the time and you know when you are just walking along "in a New York minute, everything can change".

I always feel for potter's partners, and haven't before realised just what Paul has to deal with until Sarah pointed out that I am "even worse than Ron". Don't you find that pots just jump out all over the place to say hello to you? This was one of two big buggers in a window that Ron and I stopped to have our photo taken with - blimey that does sound sad now that I stop and write it down. I can't think where it was but it wasn't while we were "Walking down Madison".

An awful lot of this part of the trip was about food. We ate rather a lot and rather regularly, it was all good though, if just too much of it.

Especially for my friend Janet on Cape Cod! We saw hundreds of the awful things, you'd have been very happy!

We spent a lot of time just "Walking in NY" and looking and being stunned and amazed and flapping a bit at the sheer amount of cars and people and stuff going on. We had a few quiet moments too thank goodness.

We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to take in the view and to have a wee wonder over the other side of the river.

Paul and me spent a day in the Metropolitan Museum, I have lots of pictures from there, they might get a post all of their very own. Humungous place, very like the V&A in feel and in eclectic mix of all sorts from all over the worls. I was particularly drawn to the case of redwares where Paul left me for a while as he went off to look at another gallery.

Taxis! Flipping heck they are another breed those drivers! I guess you would have to be to survive but crikey! I can live without ever having to do any of that again in my life!

All too soon that bit of the trip was over though and we were saying goodbye to Ron and Sarah again, too sad, I know I've spent time with them twice this year but as with Dan a few days before it wasn't enough. Here's the four of us in the apartment that we stayed in, just before Paul and I headed off to catch another bus for the last bit of our trip when before we knew it we were "Leaving New York". As my friend Phil said when I told him we were just living songs the whole time - thank goodness it wasn't "Christmas Eve in the drunk tank".

And so to a place that feels so far removed from the chaos that is NYC and to few days on Shelter Island, just about 100 miles along the coast. We were heading there to meet up with the lassie on the bike there who you may or may not be able to tell from the picture is Paul's sister. Maz lives on Shelter Island and I've only met her once before rather briefly but Paul has been and stayed with her in the past. We had a bit of calm time. We rode bikes around the island (hecky thump that was kind of hard). For some reason I knew that I had to ride on the opposite side of the road but in knowing that my brain seemed to think that left and right would be the opposite way around too. Eek!

In so many ways it reminded me of being on Cape Cod back in April. The days were bright and sunny but there was a definite chill in the air, especially at night. The landscape is not dissimilar, after all they aren't really that far apart. I waved to Hollis one day but I think he was busy drinking coffee in the coffee shop at the time and missed me.

Fab fences. It's a quiet place at this time of year but I don't think it would be my cup of tea in the summer months, too busy and too hot probably. It was great to spend a bit of time with Maz, her and Paul are so alike it was quite frightening at times. Again too short a time though and before we knew it we were at the airport and awaiting a plane back to Blighty.

Who'd have believed that little Miss likes to stay in her workshop and make pots by herself would be so well travelled this year. I certainly wouldn't. It was fab to see some my lovely lovely friends again and maybe the next time we meet will be over this side of the pond. Who knows...