Thinking pots

I realised today as I was drinking my coffee and getting an anxious mental photo of what I needed to do in the studio this morning, that this firing being so close to my last show needed "more bang for the buck". In other words I really needed to think hard about what I wanted to make, sizes that fit well together in the kiln and what would sell for mother day. This is how I start every Tuesday morning....brain storming.

This morning I was able to get the girls to school and instead of walking in the front door and being bum-barded with all the mess in the house that pulls me away from work, I walked to the back door to just start working. ( This proved to be a good new plan I need to in force with myself because I can take an hour away from my work time and justify how much house work I need to do to keep my sanity.) Anyways, I realised I needed to make some bigger things because I had a lot of small fill-ins from the last show. When I think of all my big work I also take into consideration the spaces around these pots for little things. I loved my new salt and pepper sets from the last load of pots but many of the trays I made did not fit the shakers so I have trays that need bodies and bodies that need bigger trays.This will be a good filler. I've also been wanting to make small lidded milk pitchers so they are also on the list.

Today I threw some big two part vases. I haven't done these in a long time but showed my class how to did one a few sessions ago and I liked the way the pots came out so I thought I'd make some. Since they are so tall I'm also going to make some tall candle sticks to fill in the holes. The last new piece I want to try is a darted serving dish. If you've read this months Ceramic Monthly , Gay Smith is featured and she has these wonderful darted bowls in there that I think are new for her. She inspired me to try a new forms so we'll see how it goes.

In "Life" today, I had to go to the dentist..(something I hate more than anything) because I had some cracks in my back teeth that needed to be looked at. She managed to save one of them and put a new filling in but the other will need a $900 crown. Thank goodness we do have insurance that will cover a good bit of that. Boy the cost of teeth care has really shot up! I haven't had a filling in so long ( and the last was a bad experience) that I got some laughing gas to take the edge off. I swear she left me in the room alone with that mask on for 1/2 hour to make sure my whole face was pretty numb. Finally she did come back and worked on my teeth but I the sound of the drill still freaked me out. All I can think about is the act of my tooth being chips away. As I was sitting there thinking about all this I came to the conclusion that when you are a pretty visual person, situations like this just do us in because our imagination runs wild.