I'm a potter now.....sort of, well maybe one day....

For Christmas Neil gave me, a much longed-for present. The best present ever in fact! It was a 6 week pottery course at the Banff Centre.  For the first time in oh, 7 years or so, I got to do something just for me for a whole 6 hours a week.  And I have absolutely loved it! The course ran on Mondays and Thursdays from 7pm -10pm so I'd rush dinner and put Silas to bed in time to dash out the door at 6.30 and get myself to Banff. Although I did some pottery at school I've never thrown on a wheel before so it's been really exiting to learn something completely new.

It helped of course that I had the best teacher. Cam Fisher is an amazing potter and all round nice person. His teaching style was so relaxed, he showed us some amazing techniques but I feel like he didn't dictate how anything should look or feel, he would always ask "what do you think?"  He really allowed me, even with my limited ability, to produce pieces that are truly a reflection of me and what I love about pottery, pieces that celebrate imperfection and are full of the character and wobbly beauty of hand made things. 

I have come away from my course with so much more knowledge than I ever thought I would and a crazy passion for making pots.  I love working with clay, its a magical process, sitting at a wheel with a lump of rainy smelling mud, it feels like the possibilities are endless. I am keeping myself up at night dreaming about throwing! 

When I saw my finished pots for the first time I felt as though I might actually pass out! I am so pleased with how they have turned out. It really is like magic. The first day I brought this batch of pots home I served the kids breakfast in my bowls and we each used one of my mugs. I can't describe the feeling of creating, with your own hands, functional, beautiful things and then seeing others use those things. It feels so good. 

So now I've got to save some pennies to buy myself a wheel, a kiln and a load of clay so that I can fill my shelves and cupboards with my own pottery. 

For now, here are many, many photos of my pots so far.....

A fun kids craft.....

I've been trying to find a few different and engaging kids crafts lately with an emphasis on using our hands and just being creative.  Yesterday the kids and I tried some embroidery. We used a scrap of burlap that I had in my sewing stash, it's got nice big holes in it and is very easy to work with. We also used a large and quite blunt tapestry needle to try and avoid any unnecessary pokes. I was surprised at just how focused the kids became, they really got into it! We decided to just go with the flow and not concentrate on the design but after the first few threads went through we figured their design looked kind of like a star or a snowflake :) We stuck with it and I actually think it looks pretty sweet! 

Isobel has tried her hand at finger knitting and liked it and seemed really keen to give the embroidery a go. I think it's a really cool way to develop her hand-eye coordination (as well as ignite a bit of creative passion) and was surprised at just how skillfully she was able to embroider. Neither of them poked themselves at all! They were both interested to watch the other in action and when we decided we were finished they were both very proud of their joint creation!

It's definitely something we'll try out again.

 In other news my camera on my phone is broken! SHOCK HORROR! i don't know how I will cope without it! I'm an instagram addict. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon but in the meantime at least it made me grab my real camera to take photos of the kids crafting and of these rather yummy muffins Bel and I produced yesterday.....

She helped me bake them and clean up the mess and then fell asleep just before they came out of the oven leaving me to sit in complete peace and quiet with a cup of tea scoffing cooling muffins by myself, oh dear ;)