The agony of defeat.......

There are those times in life you want to crawl back into the groundhog hole of life ........ 

The dilemma of ceramics and commitments and taking orders and, and, and........ 

I was invited to participate in a teapot show, a national show.  

I love making teapots and these were teapots outside the box.  I got to play...... I love to play.  The gallery pitched a few ideas and I thought it might be a good idea and fun.  In hindsight and I am just brilliant in hindsight!  I probably would not have done this.   

The tea set below I sketched out last last year but never had time to make it. 

It made me laugh, it wasn't functional, it was a play on words; it was not what the gallery was looking for...... I made it anyway because it needed to be made.

"Spiked Drinking Leads to Fuzzy Thinking" 

The gallery had requested teapots with woven necks.  This is what I came up with.....

24 hours of weaving later, (that doesn't include making and glazing)  it was done at 3 a.m. in the morning.  I stood back bleary eyed and hated it.  I'm tired, it will be better in the morning.  The next morning it had not magically gotten better overnight. Where are those elves when you really really need them?   I walked around it for a week.  I put it on the counter in the kitchen.  I saw it everyday, I saw it at breakfast.  I saw it at dinner.  I saw it in the dark of morning running out the door.  It loomed and I lived with it.   The composition was off. The deadline came and went.  It's now in a dark corner, packed in black plastic, in a covered box buried under other boxes in the studio.  Alas, Spring will arrive, I will discover it when I clean out the studio, GASP......  and take a hammer to it.  I just can't do it now.   

The same gallery asked for two potters lunch boxes.  No problem!  Made 6 sets, chip carved and all.  The final glaze fire three cracked around the foot ring.  Never had that happen before.  The glaze was wonky too.  These got hammered immediately! 

Can't fix ugly.......  I think I have glazing angst.

and the kiln went down.........  God, I love gardening.