We went to the Faire

We went to the faire about two weeks ago; our faire is small in compared to some (Crownsville, I’m looking at you) but it’s always a good time and a great event at which to people watch. And run into people you haven’t seen in a while. This year it was so crowded we had to park in the overflow lot of the overflow lot… and when we left, they had added another lot to the end of that one. Good thing it’s out in the sticks! The faire said on Facebook either that night or the next morning that 15,000 people had come THAT DAY. That’s about a third of the population of our whole city!

This year we were lucky in that we randomly walked by a pottery booth at the time they were having a how-to. At first I didn’t realize what was going on, and I was just looking at the pottery because I’ve been thinking of learning how to throw. As soon as I realized they were doing a demonstration I sort of arched one eyebrow at Tim and sat down as close as I could get. It was near the end of what she was doing, but she was nice enough to go through it all again because a lot of new people had shown up.

So I moved closer to sit up front and got a great view of what she was doing. Ideas were of course bouncing through my head, and here’s a rough idea of what I was done thinking by the end of the day.

• I want to learn to do that, because it’s something I don’t know how to do.
• I want to learn to do that, because I want a new medium for making yarn bowls as I like to make them but am frustrated with my current way.
• I would only learn to do this if I had access to an electric wheel, because there is no way my knees, already bad, would survive years of kick-wheel action.
• This is a skill set that would serve me well.
• It does not look like something I am going to enjoy doing. 

So. I want to learn, I feel like I should learn, I can definitely use the skill, but it doesn’t look fun. Of course, I said for years that weaving didn’t look fun, and LOOK AT ME NOW.

So I ask myself, why doesn’t it look fun?

• I would have to spend money on a wheel.
• I would have to have a place to put the wheel.
• I would have to have a place to store all the bats I’d need.
• I would have to have a place to store the new clay I’d need.
• I would have to have a place to keep pottery while it was drying.
• I would have to invest in a whole new line of tools, clays, glazes, and equipment. To my surprise, there is not a bag of money in the street (I know, I just checked).
• It looks like it is really, really hard on the arms (Tim’s Aunt Cetty has recently confirmed this for me, but more on her in another post). 
• I could not do this in a location where anything near me would need to be kept neat. (Because my other clay hobbies are SO CLEAN.)

So then. A lot on my mind. I will continue this thought later, with a post involving a conversation I had with Tim’s Aunt Cetty (I know y’all will be on the edge of your seats).