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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While I’ve been gone.

O.K. So perhaps I haven’t really been gone. Except to the land of    Complete. And. Utter. Boredom!

I’ve been bored and lonely as P went to England again – without me (again), and I was left behind with only the cats for company. And Willow.

Who’s been a nightmare.

A nightmare!

I’ve taken her for walks.

(She was a bit hard to catch with my super photography skills being hampered, as they were, by my also needing to hold onto the leash for dear life.)

Oh yes, she looks all innocent here with her, look at me I’ve found another tennis ball to add to my collection pose, but, let me tell you, in those peaceful and joyous recreational times I nearly took a dive in the ditch with the snapping turtles, (that have grown rather too big and ferocious if you ask me). Involuntarily chased all the ducks on the planet. Been almost very nearly killed by a very sweet, calm, and extremely beautiful killer husky type something or other dog. (O.k. maybe that was the other way around). Had several touch and go moments when Willow decided to also try to kill all the other dogs in the neighbourhood. Listened in anguished humiliation as she barked at everything that came within five hundred and fifty three feet of us. Watched as she very nearly choked herself to death until I wised up and bought her a harness collar, and finally, was completely mortified when she terrorized two sweet little girls playing with their huge and rather ugly doll by the lake. Hopefully they were trying to drown it so that they could plead sorrow and entrap their parents into buying them a new, not quite so Chucky-like, one. Or perhaps something more practical even, like a light saber, or the Holy Hand Grenade, to ward off freaky, go for the throat, Willow dogs in the park.

Told you.

Nightmare!

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‘Ello, ‘ello.

We’ve had visitors.

There are four of them, but these two like to torment Wally.

It’s a wonder he can see them through the dirty windows. (Guess what I’ll be doing today).

Pickles can’t help but get involved, especially when there might be trouble.

But that cat has Pickles’ number.

“Wotch you lookin’ at boiii?”

(Actually Pickles is a girl but I try to keep all the cats grouped into one sex, just to avoid confusion. To all you cat psychologists out there, there is no evidence that this is why Pickles eats for comfort, or has aggressive tendencies. She’s just fat because that’s how she likes it and she considers it her duty to protect her family. As we all should …).

Here he’s asking.

“Really Wol, You need a Pickles cat to protect you?

I have disdain for you all”.

“I cannot even look you in the face, and my brother, he licks his behind at you”.

(You might not be able to tell just by reading this, but he has a French accent. (It’s beyond me how they got here). However, he likes to swap up the accent a bit with a little East End London at times – as with the, “Wotch you lookin’ at boiii”, comment. It works better for the, in your face, attitude but he seems to prefer his native tongue for contempt. As in this excellent example).

Let’s just hope things don’t get this bad.

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