Wheel Cam!

 It's a throwing week - my favorite! Although I am kind of like a dog that way, every week is my favorite. Tonight I hosted - if you want to call it that - a live wheel cam event on YouTube, making mugs. It's not live anymore, but you can still watch the video:

If you'd like to get an invite when I'll be live at the wheel, become a paid subscriber on Patreon! (I feel like I should create a macro that just types "Blah, blah, blah, Patreon." Sorry to keep banging on about it! I've got this idea that it could be an income stream, call me crazy. 🤪)

Prevent Warping with this One Weird Trick!

One Weird Trick is a recurring feature at my Patreon page, usually for paid subscribers; this particular trick is so useful I wanted to make sure as many potters as possible saw it. The newspaper traps a pocket of air inside the pot, and also lends stiffness to the rim, allowing you to get it off the wheel without creating a distortion that the clay might later "remember," even if you re-round the rim. 

The video is here in its entirety, but if you liked it or found it helpful, subscribe at Patreon for free, or paid options start at $1.50/month. Thanks for being here! 

 

Fat Bears 2024

 Inspired by the annual Fat Bear contest at Katmai National Park, I made chubby bears with my handbuilding class on Monday. 

These will be soda fired, hopefully a nice dark chocolate brown. Look for them in early October! 

Are We There Yet?

 Not yet!
But almost. 

These are the first 16 of what will eventually be 25 available cat dishes for the sorta-annual Cat Dish Fundraiser! I've missed a couple of years, but we're back. For every 10 of these that I sell, I will sponsor a cat's adoption fee at Kennebec Valley Humane Society. I choose whichever cat has been there the longest.

I have 10-12 more in progress, which will hopefully be fired & ready in about 10 days. I think I'll do this as a drop! Once I get them all fired, I will announce a drop date/time. Like every shop update, it will be available first to paid subscribers to my Patreon page - but (sadly!😂) there aren't that many of them, so I expect plenty of dishes still available to the general public. 
Luckily my funk from yesterday did not last long - just long enough to remind me how much those moods suck. Thanks for all the kind messages. I love you guys. 

My Old Friend

For no particular reason, I am having a difficult week. It doesn't make any rational sense; the weather has been amazing; everybody, both 2- and 4- legged, is healthy; there haven't been any crises of any kind. My classes are always full, and my sales, if still not setting the world on fire, are better than last year at this time. Why is there a persistent voice in my head constantly muttering, Wow, you really suck at this. You should probably give up. 

Hello, darkness, my old friend. 

In spite of a row of moderate successes - & let's face it, just keeping the lights on, as a single-income studio potter is a kind of success - anything that falls short of my expectations is landing on me like anvil on Wile E. Coyote.  

 I sleep like crap. My jaw aches from grinding my teeth. It's been a while since I've fought off this particular demon, and I've sort of lost the knack of it. 

Anyway, sorry for the dreary post. There are a couple of new less-whiny posts up at Patreon. I don't have the heart right now to link or cross post, but I promise (both readers & myself) that this won't last forever.