a poor throwing week

Hello friends-

I'm off work for a little bit for a small break with friends and then a family visit, it's sort of early morning and I don't have the WiFi at my friend's house so I thought I'd give a mini update. 

The title pretty much describes it, the past couple weeks I haven't done much good throwing; a little bit of practice, and a bunch in the reclaim bucket. I wondered if it's a combination of the clay not being in the best condition (still need to learn to wedge), plus the hot weather, plus me being out of practice and I think being less assertive/forceful when centering!

I have had some nice clay related chats recently though and I'm eager to get back to practicing when I get home and when there's a decent window of time available. 

Below is a handful of ok mugs I made, I've only made a handful so far, these were a much more solid blue than I'd hoped as the glaze seemed to have thickened a lot more than expected. I've given these away!

For two of them I hand dipped the pots into the glaze and left finger marks intentionally, but I don't think it works with such a strong and opaque application like this!

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Art wise, I got impatient with Etsy taking forever to delete my account (so I could remake it) and then remembered folksy exists, so I've started a folksy shop. I'll see how it goes, folksy is certainly not as big or well known as Etsy, but it could turn out to be a good thing, and their fees feel a lot more transparent and possibly also are cheaper overall 🤔 

I've also been sketching here and there, nothing remarkable at all, a lot of ugly mud pies. My sketchbook is definitely not an 'aesthetic' thing to show people in a video (like I've seen on other artists' YouTube channels, etc), it's messy and chaotic and a dumping ground for very hastily scribbled ideas, notes and to do list.

too many things

Life Stuff

Too many things to do right now; some of the main new things:

1. Try get in-person quotes for air con installation
2. Mulch some of the last new plants that I've moved outside
3. Preserve the many courgettes/marrows I've grown
4. Always laundry

It's a Monday, so O is at nursery for 3 hours while I'm not working (back to 5 days a week in September though). The bulk of my free time is taken by household chores and things I feel I should do before I try to prioritise my creative hobbies.

The Creative Pursuits

I have been able to get to the clay studio about once per week, but this week it's closed on the days I can go due to the UK summer holidays starting. At home, I haven't had much headspace or good chunks of time available to get onto the pottery wheel yet; it'll happen at some point.

Part of my journey towards making a sports direct size mug.

Drawing-wise, lately it's been a bit busy so I have just been doing sketches here and there. I did crack out the watercolours for about 10 minutes while O was out before she exploded back into the house and then tried to use all of the watercolours, mixing all kinds of colours into the paint pans - those will need a clean soon. I do want to get back into it though, I also unearthed a lovely fluorescent pink acrylic paint pot that would be fun to include in paintings.

With textiles I've been slogging away when I can at my dad's cardigan, it's maybe over halfway through now. Just a load of body knitting in stockinette, flat, to get through. And then the button band. And then freedom.

My Kosekofte (mentioned previously), a colourwork Norwegian style coatigan, is underway, but not high on my list of priorities right now.

The Shop Forays

I'm also wanting to restart my shop but I'm having a real whale of a time dealing with Etsy and the fact that they won't allow me to change my payment bank account details; I'm having to delete my account and sign up again; except the account is just scheduled for deletion at some point with no indication of when this will occur. And Etsy won't expedite it. So we're in limbo for a while...

Currently Reading

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time Series)

Finished The Stand (by Stephen King) recently, enjoyed it a lot, looking forward to getting back to The Dark Tower series - I'm up to Wolves of the Calla - but taking a little detour to continue on the Wheel of Time series. Otherwise, I'll forget the storyline if I leave too long a gap. I may also pick up a shorter book as well, once The Great Hunt is finished... I have a lot of unread books on my shelf that I should attend to before buying more 2nd hand books.

mid July developments

 Recent developments / 最近のニュース

Why am I writing like this? I don't know, I study Japanese and I felt like remembering some vocabulary 😌 If anyone out there has any corrections or suggestions (i.e. if I haven't translated something properly) please let me know!

🍯 Pottery / 陶芸

• C was very kind and gifted me a Kiln Crafts Daisy pottery wheel!
• The past couple weeks have been fairly infrequent sessions of getting to know the wheel and how best to work with it.
• I continue to go to the local clay studio and have some mugs to pick up soon, hopefully...
• And on Saturday I'm hanging out and crafting with some other local pottery friends 😌

Pot WIPs

🏠 Decluttering / 断捨離

• I have made some more efforts on the decluttering front by selling a few more things on eBay. Not a lot of cash from that, but a little bit, and some % of charity donation as well. I have more to add but it's all like niche stuff that isn't particularly valuable.
• I've been working through my yarn/fibre stash as well, my dad's cardigan now has two finished sleeves and I'm working on the body portion now. It's not using up tons of yarn but it's making a dent.
• I've started work on my maybe magnum opus, a Kosekofte (designed by Skeindeer), and it's nice to see the little balls of yarn (the main colour is in 50g balls, and contrast colours are stash yarn of varying amounts) get used up.
• I gave away some art supplies and portfolio folders to a local school.
• My next section may tackle the large amount of bits of old art in my office.

Spinning up my fibre stash; to be fair this wasn't stash, I actually just bought this when I bought some orange yarn to knit our friends' kid a tea cosy. But it's spun up now, anyway, and can be made into socks at some point!

👩🏼‍💼Business / 事業

• I don't know how much I've written about it here, but I have always wanted my own little shop (online, mostly). Now and again in life I have tried, having a fairly good go at it around 2019-2020, but I've not really stuck with it. Since finally moving home in 2025 I have wanted to try again but have hesitated due to not feeling ready, being indecisive about platforms, etc.
• I've decided I'll just start, ASAP. Probably back with Etsy to start with, even though really they're not very kind to their sellers in my opinion.
• First off I'll put up my old art and stickers I've made before. I know this doesn't sound terribly appealing in terms of branding, "buy my old stuff so I can buy more supplies!" But I hope someone can find something they like; I think my older artwork is actually more polished and finished than my current work 🫠 I'll be selling older work much cheaper as well.
• I'll link it when I do the thing!

📚 Current book / 読んでいる本

The Stand by Stephen King

early July things

 

I started making mugs! I get closer to my goal of making a giant sports direct dupe mug. My next steps are just continuing to throw mugs, practicing throwing with bigger pieces of clay and learning to make a variety of handle styles, so I can reach the Giant Mug goal. I also eventually want to practice doing more underglazing (basically painting underneath a translucent/transparent glaze, like this black design shown on the mug image above) and on-glaze decorating techniques (painting on top of a glaze, not done it before).

Here's a less successful but still interesting pot. It's not so successful because the wax resist somehow got on the upper area of the pot (the light line near the rim). Also there's some glaze mess on the inside of the pot, because I messed up the glaze application initially and then roughly cleaned it before re applying a different glaze; there was still some residue of the first glaze and instead of combining, somehow the two glazes didn't get along so there's a big unglazed spot on the inside... 

However! I actually find the new glaze itself very interesting colour and texture wise, I'm not usually into blues but this one has a lot of variation within it, so I'll probably try do some more pots with this glaze. I'll see how the next result comes out, I wonder if some of the variation is coming from my haphazard prior glaze dipping and subsequent messy cleaning.

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I have a few more pots that came out of the kiln, none are particularly noteworthy to be honest. I am getting better at throwing bigger, taller things, though. I have put 4 new mugs up for their first kiln firing, so I'm looking forward to see how they get on (fingers crossed the handles stay on).

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In craft news

• I'm continuing to use and destash my yarn!
• I sold/traded a couple jumper weights of handspun yarn that I'd made because I didn't have solid plans on what to make with them, and I have enough works in progress/queued specific projects to get on with.
• I'm working on my dad's cardigan and making good progress. It looks like I'll still have a whole other jumper quantity of yarn even after finishing it though! So I might make myself a cardigan or sell/trade the remainder.
• I did buy a jumper quantity of pale coloured Sandnes Garn peer gynt yarn for a Kosekofte which has been a knitting goal for quite some time. For the colourwork contrast colours I will be using a bunch of handspun and leftover yarn, so it still sort of feels like a win in terms of stash.
• I suppose if there's leftover then I can use the rest for some mittens or other small accessories, or sell the peer gynt yarn.

In game dev/art news

• Continuing to try learn to code and doing a bit of shader and in-engine (Unity) learning at work too. Hit a wall with one of my tutorials so I need to ask someone about that soon.
• Continuing slowly but surely with the dress up pixel artwork.
• Done some watercolour painting recently as well as some general sketchbook drawing which has been fun 😌

early june update 🎡

 

A bowl which I'll trim on Thursday

Some biscuit fired pots - to be glazed

Swiss Darning C's workhorse jumper

June Things

• I actually started learning to code
• It's slooooow but that's understandable. It's a different way of thinking
• I'm doing this so I can make basic prototypes for my ideas
• Namely the dress up game...
• I have been reorganising my office
• Finally going through all my high school and uni art and recycling or putting it away
• Used some sheep fleece from my spinning stash for mulching my courgettes as the fleece, while lovely, was so spiky as the sheep appears to have rolled in thorns. So the prepping and spinning experience was horrible!
• Continuing to attempt to stash down (reduce my knitting stash) to mixed results
• I had a 'commission'/request for a bright orange tea cosy for a friend, so I bought yarn for that - now I have leftover orange yarn! I think I will combine it with other leftovers to make O a scarf for autumn
• I almost finished a triangular shawl for myself but had to order a 20g mini skein to finish it up. I think I'll have leftover from that (when it arrives) so it'll go into O's scarf, too. It's all DK
• I may have also ordered a mystery box of 5 x 20g DK mini skeins which will also be part of O's scarf
• I have been working on my dad's cardigan again so it'll be nice to use up some of the yarn I have lounging around my office for that!
• I have made progress on some socks for C that I've been on for months... still more to go but it's getting there. There will be leftover yarn but I also have some scrappy sock WIP that I can put it into and any remainder can be for darning/repairs!

May Photos 📸🌼

 

Courgette plants

 

Garlic pizza bread

Roses from the garden

Dyeing orange yarn

Hand dyed handspun yarn

Bee on a poppy

Throwing pots

a year of make do 🧵

Ok I get inspired by Leena Norms lately...

May 2026 - May 2027

No new clothing items (this includes second hand purchases).

Except for some of the below examples:

• I can replace essentials (underwear and maybe socks).
• If 2-3 non essentials wear out fully then I can consider getting something, e.g. a second hand top or I will allow myself to peruse independent people like Sin Eater.
• If I'm working through my yarn stash and need to buy some yarn to complete a project then I will allow it...
• For example, I have all the contrast yarn queued up for a kofte knitting project but would need to buy the main colour yarn 🧶 
• If I need to buy a dress for the upcoming August wedding I'm attending, I will - this is if there's a specific dress code that my available clothes don't fit into.
• I'll think about buying secondhand or explore renting first of all!
• If I run out of sewing project fabric (highly unlikely) I can consider buying some fabric for a specific project.

And for the hell of it let's try this (with less strenuous rules)...

Low Buy on Books

• I have to read 2 books from my TBR [to be read] pile before I can buy 1 new book.
• On top of this, as I get through my TBR pile, I have to decide if I want to keep it or not, and sell or give away if not.
• I'm also going through my bookshelves in general at the moment and selling books here and there... mostly they're:
• Books I didn't enjoy
• Books I highly doubt I'll read again
• My goal is to lightly reduce the amount of books I own because I want to make room in my shelves for books like - Wheel of Time series, Brandon Sanderson, Dark Tower series