I decided, over the summer, that when both kids were in school, I was going to do something I couldn’t do before, EVER, since becoming a parent (and having a husband who does shift work, therefore making our schedules wholly unpredictable).

I was going to take a pottery class! In the DAYTIME during the WEEK, so both kids would be at school.

(God help me if one of them is sick on a Wednesday. I might have to leave them in the van outside the studio and crack a window.)

(Kidding. I think.)

First, of course, I had to sew a special pottery-class apron. With clay-coloured fabric, naturally.

NERDY SEWING INTERLUDE:

I followed The Purl Soho tutorial for the Cross Back Apron. It took me a solid couple of hours (first time ever doing French seams … or even HEARING about French seams) but it was well worth the time investment.

It’s a solid, well-made apron with SUPER-DEEP POCKETS (for my phone and my wipe-y rag). I want to make more of these as gifts because it is SUCH a good (free) pattern.

***

I started exactly a week ago.

In my first class, I was handed this delightfully heavy chunk of clay. It’s all mine and I lurve it.

(It feels like the clay Sister Bear uses on the first day of school, if you like a good a Berenstain Bears reference. Remember those big barrels of grey clay in their classroom? This is what I think of, every time. It’s awesome.)

My first-ever project was a pinch pot! It’s called that because you start with a ball, stick your thumb in it, and use your fingers to form it into a pot/bowl shape.

It’s called that because you start with a ball, stick your thumb in it, and use your fingers to form it into a pot/bowl shape.

I took the “pinch” part seriously and decorated it with finger-holes and pinchies around the edge.

Then we learned how to take two pinch pots and stick them together to make a figure. I felt like making a cat, for some reason, so I went with it.

He’s an angry cat.

I love his expression. It’s kind of indignant like I just stuck my finger up his butt. (I did not.) He’s outraged and also shocked. Nice kitty.

***

This morning was my second class. I learned how to “clean” my first two pieces, which had been drying on a shelf for the last week.

When you wet a sponge or a paintbrush and run over the little cracks, you can see them sort of repair themselves. This makes everything smoother and ready for the next step: firing!

Today’s lesson was making a coiled pot.

I started off thinking I’d make a mug, but then it got away from me and now I think it’s a bowl. Likely for potato chips.

The two-and-a-half hour class is much too short.

I feel like I could sit there for hours and hours, squishing that silky wet clay and rolling little snakes and smoothing out bumps and rounding corners. It feels like something I should have been doing my whole life.

I want to buy my own pottery wheel and set up a freaking studio here at the house where I do nothing except sip tea and throw pots, with a long braid hanging down my back and an apron that’s always muddy.

That’s how much I love it.

And that is all for now.

xo