THE POTTERS WHEEL

Last summer I got to go visit my good longtime  blog friends Souby and Red Dirt Girl down in Houston. Its rare to meet in person your blog friends.
Souby is a Master Potter. He gave myself and my sister-n-law Becky a pottery lesson.
He explained to us the particular properties of clay. He showed us the machine for mixing the clay. There is a worm gear inside a steel chamber that mixes and then pushes the clay out as a 3” diameter plug. From this plug you cut a piece, and work it in your hands which delights the clay and aligns the molecules in a certain way as to be in harmony with the Universe.

Then, you slap it onto the wheel. You slap it onto the wheel, and follow your dream. Its not that easy slapping in onto the wheel, because it has to be CENTERED on the wheel. Otherwise it gets the wobblies. And if it gets the wobblies, your little pot is going nowhere. It doesn’t matter how well you’ve aligned your clay with the Universe, if its not entered on the wheel, you are buggered.

I really sucked at getting mine centered on the wheel. I think I would have done better if I had paid more attention and followed instructions.
Lets just say it’s a lot trickier than it looks.
After that you get to form the clay up and down, and back up again, as it spins on the wheel. There are certain places to put you thumbs and fingers, and certain ways to palm the clay as it spins to raise it up, hollow it out, and keep it smooth.
I sure did have fun doing it, and learned a lot.Someone took a picture of me, my hands cupping the clay. I was hunkered over the wheel in total concentration, my face inches from the pot I was forming. All you could see was my purple shirt, hands, clay, and the top of my head.
The top of my head?
If it hadnt been for the purple shirt I would have wondered who the bald guy was.

Thanks to David @ Live and Learn for helping me find the comment on his site for the closing lines of this post.