I present to you the…

Pathetic Lump.

Looks like a creature from the unknown.

Not to be defeated I went on to make a bigger, better, stronger,

Pathetic Lump

So that the first Pathetic Lump would have a friend and not feel so alone in its patheticness.

Little do they know that their friendship cannot last as it’s back to the flames with them.

As soon as I can be bothered to go through the whole process of making yet another mold.

Don’t fret for them my friends as once they stand at the crucible’s edge they will happily sacrifice themselves to the inferno knowing that other forms may come into being.

If the form master can get her act together and figure out how to do the darn thing.

Actually I think I’m close.

It’s just the sprig that needs sorting out is all.

Too much silver is trying to force its way into that little tube and starts to cool before it can fill the mold. I just get too nervous when I’m carving away the sand in case I hit the mold and mess it up.

Obviously I’m nowhere near it and can dig out another centimeter at least.

Onwards and Upwards.

We will never surrender.

In other news.

The painting, or at least one of them, is coming along.

I call it,

‘I can be a little harbour if I want to so leave me alone and get on with your own stuff why don’t you.’

I’m just going to figure out how to make the houses look not so silly and then I do believe I might even say that I have finished it.

I know right!

Also,

I bought me a cup.

Ain’t it cool

:)

Off to make the new generation of Pathetic Lumps now.

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Nuttin’ but worry.

There’s a huge conspiracy going on in my closet.

Whenever I want an old t-shirt to wear in the studio, I can only find good t-shirts, and whenever I need a good t-shirt for my rare ventures out of the house into the real world, I can only find old holey, messed up with paint, ones.

It doesn’t matter how I organize them in the drawers they move themselves around when I’m not looking.

I’m getting a bit tired of it now. I might have to change to two colours of shirt for easy picking.

That’ll teach them!

Sooooo, yeah. What’s new.

Still potting.

I actually have a pottery plan which could work if it wasn’t for the fact that tomorrow I’ll have gone right off it.

Commitment issues.

The problem I have with pottery making is almost as complicated as my life.

I love making the pots. Touching the clay and designing forms. When I first started I thought I would never want to leave the wheel. It’s so exciting, and clever.

I mean look at it.

I will now, before your very eyes, transform this small lump of dirt into a vessel of beauty.

It’s like magic.

Messy magic.

Except, of course, not everything comes out beautiful.

A lot of my first attempts at making a bowl, or vase, turned out to be ashtrays. Never one to give up, I refused to let the wheel defeat me. The fact that even though the wall of the bowl kept collapsing as I threw it and needed to be continually cut down, it just wasn’t going to stop me from making something useful from it.

I would make a functional pot, dammit, no matter that I, nor anyone I knew, smoked.

You always need to have somewhere to place your keys.

Hello!

But, as curveballs would have it, I discovered that really I’m a hand builder at heart.

It was one of those, Noooooo, I don’t want to be a pie. I want to be a lumberjack, moments.

(O.K. sorry, I just went with my thoughts then. Really you just have pretend to keep up or you’ll never survive the ride. I have one of those right sided, can’t keep on track because I’m all over the place, brains. Can’t help it.)

So now I’m a hand builder, who sometimes uses the wheel, but not much.

I think it’s my sculpture background.

The making of the pots is fine.

I can do that.

Well, somewhat to my satisfaction.

It’s glazing the darn things that’s the problem.

Which is why these sad little pots are still unglazed.

So, to get back to my original thought. (You thought I’d forgotten didn’t you?)

The pottery plan.

I decided the day before yesterday to make a hundred drinking vessels to use purely for glazing and surface design until I master my fear.

These will be thrown, because it will take me five hundred years to hand build each of them, which is a bit longer than the week it will take to throw them, and also, it’s a good opportunity to hone my throwing skills.

One can always hope.

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Here are the beginnings.

It’s a good plan, don’t you think? I did cut it down to fifty cylinders in my telling of it to P, just in case he thought I’d gone a little excessive about it all, but a hundred won’t be bad. I’ve already made ten or so. Then, once they’re all done, and if they make the cut, I’ll sell them for twenty five dollars a piece, or something, and send it off to charity.

Not a bad plan.

But, to cut a long story short (as if that will ever happen) …

… now, I want to paint

:(

My life, I’m telling you, nuttin’ but worry, and all over the placeness.

Is there any hope.

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I’m

Making some boxes.

And a funny old something else.

I wanted to loosen up a bit.

Every so often I have to come back into the house and have a lie down on the sofa.

It could be the weather…

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So.

I’m writing to you today from

day 563

(and ten point five hours)

of the funk.

Will it ever end!

Really?

At this point I’m pretty much all funked out.

I’m plodding on though. Through the torture of continual blue. My favourite colour, up-until-now!

Why can’t I just be green? Or lellow, as the kids used to call it.

Never did like lellow.

Back in junior school, when asked, all the girls said they liked pink, or red. Remember?

I liked blue.

Never really was a girly girl.

So. Yeah.

Blue.

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I’ve been potting.

I haven’t made pottery for ages so this makes a nice change.

I’ve been hand coiling these pots. It takes longer, but I really like the non uniformity of the finished piece.

They’re just a bit off.

Like me.

Maybe I’ll glaze them blue.

O.k.

Stop it!

On an uplifting note, a good friend just bought loads of jewelry from me, and so I am now able to send off my next stash of earnings to somewhere I haven’t decided yet.

Probably Care.

I don’t know. The funk has really messed with my confident giving.

I do like Helene though.

She seems really nice.

(Or is she?)

Well, she’s pretty anyway, and sometimes she writes to me. Even though she’s asking for more money, I know really that she would like to come round for a cup of tea and talk about girly things that aren’t pink.

Like, how to be a global thinker without catching the funk.

So good friends I will leave you with this little ditty to make you smile

Even though it has the word, blue, in it …

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Clay vs Jewelry and the Bayou Art Festival.

So I think I escaped.

The sketches I did got me too excited to pass by the jewelry bench, so I managed to avoid the clay room.

I did have to buy myself a little consolation prize though.

Just to get me through you understand.

Ryan Myers

It was a little tricky, and I did feel somewhat guilty about the clay, but the sketch book won.

Did I mention that I’d bought a new batch of stones?

One day I’ll show you them all, but I’m worried your computer will explode.

In’t they cool :)

Here  are some of the sketches.

Tiffany Stone

Crazy Lace Agate

Howlite

Crazy Lace Agate

Indonesian Coral Fossil

The Tiffany Stone again

Not all of them work for me, but they were enough to get me started.

In-between starting and finishing this piece I went to the Bayou City Art Festival here in Houston with a friend.

Like I needed to go to get any more ideas.

I have come home excited.

And I had to buy a few things.

Mostly I bought some stuff for my girls, but this is mine.

Bad photo as I was too impatient to show you.

Here’s her photo of it from her website.

Jennifer Cavan

You can click on the image to go to her website, but I warn you, you may never be the same again.

I’ve wanted one of her paintings for over ten years now.

Finally!

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There was a lot of good stuff, and some blah stuff, at the show. I took some photographs of the pieces that caught my eye, but kept forgetting.

Sorry.

Susan Clayton

Estella Fransbergen

Mark Orr

And these guys are so cool.

Sugar Post

That’s it I’m afraid. Sorry if I got you all excited.

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So, on this fine Sunday, I will leave you with why I need to get a new washer upper. P has (once again) chipped a vital tea mug.

Just can’t get the help nowadays.

Off to paint now.

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Noooooo!

The pottery bug has hit!

I wondered when it would happen.

It’s been lingering in the back of my consciousness for a while now, but even though I was really trying hard to resist it, it hit with a vengeance last night.

Help me now …

I’m really hoping that it will be too hard to pass by the jewelry bench to get into the clay room.

Good grief. It’s all just too much.

I was thinking perhaps I should separate my day into sections so that I can do it all, but I don’t work like that.

It’s full immersion for me, or nothing.

So there you have it.

The paintings are calling to be finished,

Cornelius is on hold.

You can see one of his entries – here.

And now the ceramics.

My only hope is that I drew up a couple of sketches for the new stones that arrived yesterday.

(Don’t ask why there are more stones arriving. I almost have my own quarry now, I’m surprised the shelf can bear them.)

So that might overshadow the clay.

I can only pray.

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I am sick

Again.

The people who live in this house with me have coughed, and spluttered, and sniffed their germs with abandon throughout this holiday. Now they are up and running and happy and have left me behind in their wake of illness.

I have now pulled every muscle in my abdomen through coughing and am feeling thoroughly sorry for myself.

And, to top it all, P won’t give up working so we can live our lives together without him having to leave the house every day. He says it’s something to do with having to pay the bills, but I’m not sure I believe him.

I think it’s possible that he just doesn’t want my germs, and there I was thinking we would share everything through this journey called marriage.

Well blow everyone. I will be sick, here, alone, with only Sid, my trusty computer, to keep me company, and work on my plan for world domination.

That will teach them.

I’m not too sick to go into the studio you understand. Just too sick to do housework, or anything like that.

Housework is not good for my health anyway, so I wouldn’t want to make myself worse.

So I will leave you with something I am working on.

A little something that Felicity Windthrop has been arranging in her floral studio for the upcoming banquet to celebrate Queen Significanta’s fortieth year on the throne.

The pot was made especially for the occasion by Charlie Smithfield. Charlie has been making what some might consider to be ‘rather outlandish’ pottery for close on fifty years now in his small studio just outside the city walls, and has recently been knighted for his consistent contribution to the advancement of the arts.

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