Echo

A quick post and birth announcement, much delayed. Echo Lark Callahan was brought into this world on September 20th with some coaxing, cajoling, and prodding. When that didn't work, we resorted finally to inducement and vacuum suction. At 10 lbs, 6 oz and 22.25", she was no lightweight and is looking about four months old now. Throwing is still not an option, for numerous reasons biological, logistical, and meteorological, but things are slowly being listed once again on etsy. Hooray! And, maybe, painting can start again after the holidays. Once Echo starts having a normal bedtime (other than the newborn standard of eleven o'clock), it should get easier. One would hope! Right now, I'm just looking forward to that time when a little normalcy kicks in, which shouldn't be too long. Echo is a very easy baby, sweet natured and mellow, and has settled right into the family without much fuss or upheaval. Life is happy. And so is Echo.

hiatus turns extended leave

Well, this year has gone fast and completely unproductive (as far as pottery goes)! I think I should have expected as much, seeing as I did almost nothing when I was carrying Wren as well. But I did have high hopes. Once I finally got over the first trimester doldrums, I thought I would be back at it and going strong. Little did I know that Mother Nature had a different idea in her mind. Because, precisely when I stopped being ill and flopping about was the time the 90+ temperatures kicked in and have been unrelenting ever since. No kidding, I don't think it's often been below 90 degrees since April, with many of them approaching 100 or above. Add pregnancy to that and it feels like it's about 125 in my studio. No thank you. The only times I've been outside this summer, I have been in a swimming pool. Total weather wimp? Yes, why thank you, I am this year.

The other surprise was how I carried Doughnut, Wren's choice of name for her little sister to be. I went straight out and low very fast, with the rest of me stubbornly staying the same. I had to include one of the lovely pictures my friend Sharon took as a testament to my burgeoning belly. While this may be interesting, visually, it completely destroyed my stomach muscles as soon as I started to show. I've been in the studio twice this summer, only to find it impossible to center with such a weirdly proportioned burden in front. I tried everything, even throwing on my knees, and could not make anything to save my life. Until delivery, I'm afraid my center is pretty skewed.

However, it's been completely worth it and I cannot wait to meet the little creature who has given us such an adventure this year. Which should be soon... I only have two weeks until my due date! And pottery will come back as soon as I get my life balanced again and can fit it into my mommy life with two little beings to care for. I'll try to post as soon as she makes herself known!

hiatus

Okay, some people may have thought that I have been an awful slacker since Christmas, and they would be right. Except, I have an excellent reason for my lack of interest in pottery production. Well, a couple of reasons. First of which, it has been ungodly cold in these parts lately, with weeks of freezing temperatures and even the occasional appearance of snow! We usually see one slushy event per year if we're lucky, but this year we've had a couple of impressive snowfalls, much to Wren's delight. No point in throwing a bunch of stuff if it's only going to freeze, though, and I haven't felt like schlepping things back and forth from warm house to studio.

Second reason for my winter hiatus was the New Year's day surprise we received:



Yep, we found out that day that we were once again expecting. This time, things seem to be working out a bit better (fingers crossed, elbows kissed, and wood knocked). I'm at twelve weeks right now and the last ultrasound this week showed a healthy looking kicking monkey. I am, needless to say, cautiously thrilled. But, I am also exhausted. It's really been all I can muster just to keep up with daily life, so pottery is taking a bit of a back seat for now. At least until I get some energy back.

Added injury and illness would be the devastating case of bronchitis I came down with this week, which completely floored me, and the horrifying news that one of my family members was life-threateningly ill and in the hospital. This week has been a little much.

Hopefully, I can pull it all back together and get cranking again before I get too huge (and I feel that may be sooner than I'd like to think) or the weather goes straight to hell hot again!

Busy busy busy and stop

I had a wild couple of weeks before Christmas trying to get everything painted and fired and baked and wrapped and sent and... Christmassesd. So, I'm cutting myself a bit of slack now and falling into a bit of burnout phase again. You know, sinking into the couch in front of the fire and knitting. Instead of braving the 30 degree highs and getting out into the studio. But, hand building may actually be accomplished this week. Maybe. We've got a new challenge for the mud team, a kiln god swap. Let's see if I can pull it together before the 18th...

Sooo, you may wonder, what kinds of things did you make for friends and family this year? That's the fun of Christmas, making new things and patterns up for my loved ones. For my precious child I made the half sized mug:


And the tiny starry tea set:



For my sister, the fetishghost inspired footed pedestal cup:


For my mom, the soup mug:


For my sis in law, the night garden mug:



Hopefully, everything will be enjoyed and used. Wren has already been loving her new Wren mug for the purpose of hot chocolate. I'm just hoping that it warms up enough that we can resume our walks around the neighborhood soon! Nothing like taking a long walk and coming home to fire in the fireplace and a nice mug of cocoa. I'm about as dull as dishwater right now, so will write again when I find my normal wittiness.

Happy Holidays!

Something that makes sense will be written soon, but now is the time for gingerbread and wrapping packages, hot chocolate and stories by the fire. It is warm and lovely in my house by the tree, and smells of cookies, and songs are sung about the snow we almost never see here. I still can't remember the words after the five gold rings. But the air is crackling with excitement.

new things all around me

This has been a busy busy busy couple of months. Full of great changes and adjustments. We're just rolling with it. For the most part. Sometimes, I try to stop rolling with it and then it rolls me over and I flop and flail around for a bit until I can get back with it and start rolling again. Does that make any sense?

Anywhoo. We'll start with Ian's new job. Ian had been with Pier 1 forever. Or, at least for 13 years. So, when the opportunity arose, he finally felt it was time to move on. He started with GE in the middle of September, which involved a lot of out of town training for about 6 weeks. Needless to say, I didn't have a lot of time to get pottery done. I was mostly trying to keep Wren as happy as she could be, considering she thought he had left us. I had shows right in the middle of this period as well, so I was killing myself trying to get things made in time while Wren was sleeping. Well, we all know how those turned out. Ahem. So I had enough made to let me relax for awhile. Be burnt out for a bit. Knit things in my spare time. But, I'm back to it now. Really! I've got something quite exciting in the works, which will be unveiled soon. It involves a new shape. hee hee!

Ian decided to sheet rock my studio this week, which was super exciting. I'll have walls! I'll have a ceiling!!! I'll be able to heat the place effectively! He went and got all of the supplies on Sunday, so Wren and I made sure we had a place to put the sheet rock. I helped unload all thirty sheets of it from the truck and realized I might not be the greatest of helpers. I'm a trooper at working, but if someone's going to drop a corner of the stuff on their hand or get injured, I'm the one. Poor Ian.

We had to move things around quite a bit so that he could get to the walls as well. Wren ordered me to make a horse as we were moving and cleaning. A horse? I'm no handbuilder or sculptor, but I managed to work one out. She gave him many wild rides on the banding wheel until he took one to many spills and his head fell off. Poor horse.

She did make herself useful with the shop vac, though. Well, she did make herself loud with the shop vac, at least. Poor Wren.

Finally, I managed to get my new website up and running. I thought that it was a thing of beauty. As long as you pull it up in internet explorer. Otherwise, it's a messy mess. Or so I've heard. Actually, my friend Pam was kind enough to catalogue and e-mail me examples of the messy mess. Ouch. Oh well, check it out: www.amyhuntpottery.com!

show is me.

Well, this was my first big show back, at the Matthews Art Fest, and I hope that it was just a cursed show and the economy isn't as crap as we all fear. Do not get me wrong, this is usually a great show to do. But all possible elements got together and conspired to make it absolutely ridiculously bad in many ways. Let' s get the bad out so we can get to the good.

First of all, the weather was unbelievably silly on Saturday. It's been 80 degrees most of the time lately, but Saturday we were suddenly transported to some harsher, colder, and wetter climate. It never got above 65 and kept a steady mist or drizzle going much of the day. Everything was damp, business cards curling inward, price stickers freeing themselves from earthly bonds, and sudden rivulets cascading down back and cleavage from the tops of the tents. We shivered in the dreary moistness and had fantasies of soup. Lucky me, there was a Thai place right where we were, so I got a steaming fiery plate of tofu, veggies, and cashew nuts courtesy of my loving husband. Sharon got the same thing upon seeing mine, minus the fiery. Then we almost came to impolite conversation when we started discussing the herb that was in our food. It was thai basil, Sharon, really it was. We actually had some customers, which made it hopeful. My display looked good, despite the craziness I went through to get it that way. Thursday was ridiculously busy, with running to pick up pots from Lark and Key, then going to lunch with Wren, then going to pick up printing supplies to do cards and bios, then going home and painting display boxes in the kitchen as she slept, then getting a card from my neighbor at 6:30 that she had lost my tablecloth for my third table, then running to the fabric store and trying to find a perfect match, then getting home and realizing that the white material was much too white, then tea staining the white material, then staying up until 1:00 am sewing another damnable tablecloth. [pant pant pant] I need to go back further, don't I? To the part about Ian being out of town all week and me having to pull all of my wax and glaze supplies into the house and setting up an impromptu glaze room in the kitchen to avoid getting killed in my studio at working night by myself since I had to get two firings done in one week. [pant pant pant] Ummm... and I'm done. Yes, the setup looked good. So good, in fact, that it won an award for best booth display! Yes, there was a lovely purple ribbon and a nice cushy check that went along with that honor! Yay for efforts getting rewarded!

Sunday was absolutely beautiful, sunny and warm with a lovely breeze. Though, not too much breeze that I feared the plates would come down. But where were the customers? [insert sound of crickets here] Not in my booth. Not in anyone else's, either. No, they were at the two other festivals that were occurring at the same blooming time. Matthews Art Fest, I love you so. Can you please switch to a different weekend? This one has gotten so full. I had two sales all day. Ouch. I did make three really great trades, though. One was a meditating lady for a fantastic om necklace. The other was a vase for a mug from Valerie Hawkins, who was taking lessons from the studio when I was apprenticing. Her things have grown into something gorgeous. Way to use a leaf impression, Valerie! At the end of the day, she traded me again, two cups for two cups, so I could give something to my best friend, sitting beside me coveting my mug all day. Hey, I am a unrepentant trader, not a ruthless one. My spoils:

And finally, I managed to finish this huge beastie before the show. It only took about three weeks to do. It is heavy as all get out, when compared to the rest of my stuff. But, I love it. And have put a swooningly high price tag on it. Because I can. And will probably not make another like it any time soon. I think...