I had my second pottery class this weekend. Last week I made a very simple fairy house which had dried during the week and it looks awesome.
I turned up at 1pm to find that I had missed my actual class which started at 11am but the lovely lady who runs the various pottery classes was more than happy for me to hang around and join the 2pm class instead. In the meantime, she showed me how to make a pinch pot which is a simple hollow pot that usually has a hole in it. It’s the first thing that most pottery students make and it’s amazing how many techniques I picked up in that one lesson.
We started work on the pottery wheel this week and it was enchanting as it looks on the movie Ghost. The funny thing was I had another more experienced potter with me and he didn’t want me to fail. It was new and I wanted to explore the boundaries and he kept gently nudging me back to the literal centre of the base plate. I ended up making an exquisite bud vase but none of it was my work - it was all his.
I can’t wait to get back to that wheel next week so that I can fail in order to learn. It’s the only way we really take on new information, isn’t it? We have to find the boundaries to learn how to draw inside the lines right?
When you look at life that way it makes your failures look like genius moves on your behalf doesn’t it? We fall down so that we learn how to pick ourselves up again. With each disaster we find ourselves in the midst of - there is always an opportunity to learn. I might have turned up at the wrong time but I ended up being part of two lessons instead, brilliant!
As you can see the time thing really is beginning to become a problem. I was truly convinced that the class started at 1pm (it started at 11am last week). I wonder if my brain took in the two ones in 11am and scrambled them?
I thought that I would be confused by time but I didn't expect to end up battling with it in this way. I thought I just wouldn’t know the time, but what it really is - is it’s more like I am convinced I am right and that my calendar and the clock in general are sadly incorrect. I find it fascinating that my bossy wee brain has decided that even when it know its declining to still be convinced that I AM RIGHT. I really do need to get over myself, don't I?
I promise to take a photo of whatever I manage to create at this week’s pottery class. It might not be perfect but it will be all my own work, mistakes included.
This week’s op shop sign reads "Music is what feelings sound like"