The Wheel and Me

Many of you know I finally signed up for a pottery class. This isn't the plain old pottery class like I took in Dallas that was all hand building...this is the Big Girl class with the wheel!! I know we've all had visions of how great it would be to use the potter's wheel (and maybe a little romantic fantasy thrown in - all be cause of Ghost).

Well, let me tell ya...it's NOT as easy as it looks! It might be the most frustrating (and messy) craft I've ever tried. It's been 3 or 4 weeks now, and I still can't quite seem to make the actual shape we're supposed to be working on. I try hard though, and I guess that counts for something.

Here's a picture of the pieces I made this week.

Most people seem to notice the plate-like piece on the right. I like to call this piece "The bowl that wanted to be a plate". See, the theme of that particular night was Bowls. I made those first two pieces (the ones that actually look like bowls) and then decided to get fancy and use a much bigger piece of clay. It started out like a bigger version of one of the other bowls and then I got greedy and wanted it to be taller. Apparently, you're supposed to slow the wheel down when you try to pull the sides a little taller. If you don't, it flattens instead. So that's how I knew that this lump of clay needed to be a plate to fulfill it's destiny. And who am I to stand in the way of destiny? And...it couldn't possibly have been my lack of skill that turned it from a bowl to a plate!!