Beads, beads, beads

When does a little ball of clay become a bead? My answer is when someone uses a straw to make a hole through which to thread it. I make a lot of them. I find making beads salves the too busy mind, lets me be productive when I don’t feel particularly creative, and lets me play in the clay when we are on the road. Beads are small, round (thus durable), repetitive, yet fruitful. They use up clay that may be getting dry. With my long history of rolling cookie balls for our favorite molasses treats, clay balls also avoid a lot of calories. 

What does one do with clay beads? About an inch across, they might qualify as weapons of mass destruction if one were to wear them, although it has been done and smaller ones work well for necklaces and as weights for crocheted shawls. I put them in my windchimes, but the clever manager at Lost River Artisans’ Co-op, Doug Gronholm, uses eight of them to make sets of weights for picnic table cloths. I’ve used Doug’s weights many times and they are great. Like making windchimes, Kahoka beads are well worth rolling! 

Simple Pleasures

This is the time of year to notice and appreciate the simple things that can get lost in the glitz and glitter. What are your simple pleasures? I have too many to list but I cherish the time to think about them-- to put aside the busyness and dwell with the moment. There are the birds that stay around and accompany us through the winter, the impressions that pine needles and cedar twigs make on the clay, and the clever and thoughtful homemade gifts that people give each other this time of year-- not the big fancy gifts but the creative ones. There is the warmth of the wood stove and the pleasure the cats cozying up to it. There are the dog’s circles of sheer joy in the snow. There is the music so special to the holidays, and those memories from the past. I love small gatherings, the catching up, the quiet times, the lights and goodies, and chances to learn something new. I love the opportunity to reach out to someone I can assist in some way, and the time to hope all over again for peace.  I wish you the warmest season’s greetings, wherever you are. May you have safe travels and quiet moments. And may your pleasures be simple and profound. 

“A sensitive being, a creative soul” (Wordsworth)

People ask why I keep making pots and writing. Apparently, people my age don’t haul around 50 pound boxes of clay. Being retired, to me, is the chance to be creative. I have always been driven by two values: learning and creativity. The learning part is easy to explain. School was a good experience for me, and when I was ten, my father drove home my great, great Aunt Lillian’s Model T Ford. He had to take it “as is,” which meant with the back stuffed full of National Geographic magazines going back to 1918. Over time, I read them all. I pretty much just kept going to school. Creativity was hard to express in my health care career until I learned to combine it with learning, which is why I loved teaching all those years. Creativity involves being engaged, enthusiastic, imaginative, resourceful, and inventive. Being an artisan, I don’t want to know how something “should be” done; being retired means I can do it my way. I love it when the muse takes over. I love watching a chunk of clay and a few leaves turn themselves into lovely celebrations of nature!

Class act

My kiln is full of pots I did not make. Last Saturday was the final session of my class through Lost River Artisans’ Cooperative. We hold it at my studio, since moving wet pots bodes doom. Six students met two weeks earlier to make their coil and slab works of art. After those were cleaned, dried, and bisque fired, the students returned to glaze them. Most find glazing a trickier task than the building, since it is hard to imagine what the opaque glaze will look like after it is fired. There will be some grand surprises when they pick up their pots!

Some students had previous experience throwing on potters’ wheels, but few studios offer handbuilding classes. Perhaps we are a society too dependent on complex machines to think of rolling out clay and pressing leaves into it as creative. To handbuild, you need only your hands, some clay, and a sense of what you and the clay might do together. It is quiet and peaceful. Even my slab roller is a simple mechanical contraption. No learning curve there: turn the wheel and the roller squeezes the clay flat between two pieces of canvas. The potential is endless!