April 3 (this one's exactly 400 words!)

I was able to make four more salad plates today, so now I have ten of the twelve plates that I need done.  I have six salad plates, and I need to make two more of the bigger ones.  Today was kind of frustrating for me, even though I feel like I got a lot done.  It felt like I was struggling more than I was yesterday.  All of the pieces I threw today were successful, still.  I was mostly frustrated because I felt like I spent way too much time getting myself set up than I did throwing.  I spent a really long time wedging clay, and I still had lots of air bubbles in my plates. Having air bubbles in your clay is actually the most annoying thing there is.  I’m convinced.  And all of the kids in their ceramics classes are super messy, so I had to clean stoneware off of everything before I could start.  But I kind of got in the zone when I actually did start, and I think all of the plates I made look really similar.  I need to get my own tools.  It’s the same problem with sharing the space, everyone is really messy and they ruin the tools by letting them get all mangled and rusty.  I’m getting excited, picturing all of the work done and set up on a table.  I can’t wait to take it all home and actually use it.  That’s probably my favorite thing about ceramics – that you get to actually use the pieces that you make.  That’s why I’m so interested in functional pottery in general.  It’s sad to see pieces of pottery, like teapots, that are just sitting there and not being used.  It’s really validating, too, to see something that you’ve made in use, even if it’s just you who’s using it.  It makes you feel worth something, like you did something that was actually helpful.  I think part of the reason that I was frustrated today was that I was all alone in the studio for a really long time, and somebody had left John Mayer playing in the office, and the door was locked so I was unable to turn it off.  I considered walking all the way across campus to my car to get headphones, but I decided I would just wait it out, and it turned itself off eventually.