via Up in the Air Somewhere

At the first hand building class, our teacher came over and told him..”I think that’s the best pinch pot I’ve ever seen…”  Gag…right?  It was quite funny driving home together after the second class…here we were…the flunkie and the golden child….what a pair.

As we all got to know each other a little better over the next few weeks, I came to realize…yes, my teacher can be quite an ass when he wants to, but he also has a decent side, and in learning how much he hates his day job, etc..I started to forgive him for his previous nastiness….chalked it up to bad timing.  At our 5th class or so, he even came over to me on the wheel AND HELPED ME!  When I saw him coming, I had this icky, dreadful feeling …things had been going so much better and I didn’t want anything to ruin it…but he was NICE this time and really tried to be a teacher.  Makes all the difference.

The CC honestly earned his golden child title….he made some awesome stuff.  I plan to take a second class in the fall…I’d love to get some more time on the wheel with full visual capacity.  (I was an idiot to have my surgery only 2 weeks into class.  It took me 8 weeks to get my vision to up 20/16 and that was frustrating and unexpected to say the least.)

Here’s a small sampling of what I managed to accomplish…not great, but I really look forward to improving and getting past the basic bowl on the wheel.

A couple of hand built bowls.

We made a set of 4 of these espresso cups for my Dad’s birthday…I think he really dug them….his were in the dark brown clay on the left with my fancy fish scale mat.

OK…now for the good stuff…the Crafty Counterpart’s fabulous slab creations:

Yep…sake boxes, soy dishes and a platter…here’s a close up of the feet etc….

Then there’s this…which we’ve used for olives already….

OK…here’s where I get a bit sappy….I was feeling really down about my eyes one afternoon while he was busy building away at his masterpieces, and he made me 2 mushrooms for my collection to cheer me up.  I mean…c’mon..how lucky am I?

So all is well that ends well.  I look forward to getting back on the wheel, and maybe spending a bit more time on the hand building since you can be quite productive by working at home.  I hope the CC will join me since the man obviously has a gift…

UPDATE: First class was…sucky.  My teacher is a COMPLETE tool.  When my bowl became off center on the wheel, I intentionally collapsed it so I could start over and he lost his s**t on me.  He yelled at me to the horror of my classmates..then stomped off to the other side of the class room and continued to rant to his assistant about how “FRUSTRATING” it is.  He attempted to smooth things over with me at the end of class by explaining how much he “wanted to strangle me” when he saw me destroy my piece…I think I GOT that already, you prick….nice apology.  More than half the class left early.  Gonna be an interesting 8 weeks….