Back To Pottery

There were some shocking changes announced at pottery this morning, the main one being that at the beginning of each class session we will be given ten tickets, each one required for the firing of a specific size of a glazed piece. The piece has to be a certain size, which is about a six by six square, maybe? per ticket. This leaves someone like me, who makes mostly bigger pieces, shit out of luck because as many squares as the item covers, that's how many tickets you must use. I can see why they've instituted this plan though. People make many, many items to be fired, some large, some small and if you make a lot of pieces that are large or larger, you are taking up a great deal of kiln space and I can see how that's not fair. The prices for the classes at the community center are more than reasonable so yeah, it makes sense. There is only so much space in a kiln, and only so much time the kiln operators can give to the work. 
Still. 
Sigh. 
That pathetic little fishy is what I worked on today. I had mostly finished it last session but I decided to just concentrate on it. It needs to be fired now but...I DON'T WANT TO WASTE ANY MORE TICKETS THAN I NEED TO! What I had planned for Little Fish was to make more like him/her to hang on a wall and I also thought about making bubbles to go with the wall fishes. So, in order to get my full ticket value, I may now make the bubbles because they will fit into a square with the fish. 
This is all rather confusing and poor Gail, our teacher, had to go through the whole process and explain it and answer questions and tell us why this was happening, and so forth. 
But besides that, it was nice to be back and I think that although there are ten of us in the class, there was only one person I did not know. It was so good to see Lizzie and hear about her latest life events. Gentleman Caller™ stopped in to see us. He and Lizzie are going along, getting along, doing well, I think. I love it when he comes in. We all look up from what we're doing and say hello with great enthusiasm. We may all have a little crush on G.C.™ I'll just tell you right now that he is adorable. I told Lizzie today that if she ever gets mad at him she should just tell him not to say anything for awhile and simply look at him. I'm not sure she'll take that advice to heart. She's not really that sort of woman. 

Yes, everyone liked my shirt. 

Jessie worked on the wheel today and she made a beautiful vase and a few small plates. They are lovely. Her muscle memory is still very much intact. 

She and I went to lunch afterwards. We talked about a lot of things. We still have a lot of catching up to do. I wanted to hear what going back to work has been like and how the boys are doing in school and if they like their teachers and all of that stuff. 
We also talked about the shit circus going on in America right now and the diaper-clad, demented shit circus master who, for whatever reason, is still the...
Okay. I just can't say it. I cannot deal with this any more. I'm not ignoring the news, I'm just not going to doom scroll anymore. At least for now. 

Is he dead yet?

Once again, it seems like it's trying to rain. Thunder, a drop in temperature (thank-you, thank-you, thank-you) and darkening skies but no rain. It almost reminds me of the days at the end of my pregnancies when I wanted so desperately to go into labor and I'd walk and I'd jog and I'd drink teas specific to that purpose, and as these things go, it happened when it was time to happen. 

All right. Here are the two pieces that I worked on last session which finally got fired.

Pruners for scale. I'll be lucky if I have enough tickets to fire those two when they're glazed. And it will take me this entire session to get that accomplished so...
Perhaps everyone will not be getting a platter for Christmas. 

Oh well. And la-di-dah. 

It's all just clay and glaze, an idea and an attempt to create something from the idea. And let us remember- not all ideas are really worth worrying about. 

Meanwhile, I better go make some supper. 

Love...Ms. Moon