The girl in the clay-coloured apron
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
5 Comments on “The girl in the clay-coloured apron”
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Heather's Handmade Life 
Beautifully said class mate!
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Thanks, Holly! See you Wednesday! 🙂
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oh, I started a pottery class last night and made a pinch pot too. I love it – i started pinning pottery pics like mad.
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YAY! Pottery blogger twins! Can’t wait to see your posts about it.
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