oh man, getting to the busiest of the busiest, sort of....

You get to December 24th and you relax in a pile of exhaustion:  orders filled, bank acct (hopefully!) filled (so you can pay the New Year's property tax bill) and belly filled.  Saturday and Sunday I am at the final fair of the year for me, the last of 4 weekend events in a row (which is GOOD PLANNING, because I never had to unpack, but I am flippin' tired) BUT it is now too late for anybody to ask for a ________ made and fired and shipped by Christmas.  Do you know what a relief that is?  I LOVE getting orders all year long, but there is a special kind of ANXIETY attack that comes with special orders given after Thanksgiving:  you have to make what they want, glaze and fire it and ship before it is too late (and it is now too late).

The elephant bowl here was a special order from somebody who had seen one like it on my webpage last week and wanted one.  No probs, says I:  at dawn Saturday I threw the bowl, then went out to the craft fair.  Sunday morning I was firing a group of dry items (my last orders, etc) and so I trimmed the bowl and added the elephants then PUT THE TOTALLY WET pot in the kiln to be slow roasted all day, then up to 1800 degrees in the evening (do you know how insane it is to put a wet pot into a kiln? I had no choice but to try, it was the last chance to get a special order made, fired and shipped!).  WELL, the pot did not explode, was glazed and fired and is PERFECT (and perfectly cute) and on its way to its new owner.

NOW, aside from a few other orders of  items to ship, and tomorrow's HUGE craft fair (Little Red Wagon, 10-6 Sat-Sun, Space at Green Star, Ithaca!), I can concentrate on..........MAKING WHAT I WANT.

This seems to happen every year.  I get to the Christmas press and the ideas are pinging around in my head and then once the Christmas rush ends I can kick back and have fun and begin to explore what I want to make in the new year...last year, well, still this year, it was flowers and plants and far-eastern styles...this year will extend that. I also feel like this:

I turn 50 in 2016.  I am enormously healthy now but my 40s have had some weird health situations, (now managed) such as celiac and glaucoma.  I see what I need to see perfectly well and have not lost much vision, but I am feeling like I don't give a flying fart if somebody wants me to make a dozen widgets, life is too dang short to waste doing what other people think I should do....I need to follow the muse...

The cups below show that:  I have been fiddling with a new celadon glaze and holy CATS it looks great.