Weed Pot

Today I went to my first ceramics class, and I failed. When I arrived there were several women slamming pieces of clay down on a cloth covered board, spraying them with water and then kneading them a few times. But the kneading couldn’t be done with your fingers; it had to be done in some magic way that I couldn’t figure out. Apparently the clay to be used for the class had dried out since last year, and it needed to be softened (a lot) before it would be usable. So I slammed clay on the board a few times and sprayed water on it a few times and kneaded it a few times, but I couldn’t really get into the action.

Then they showed me that we were to make a weed pot today. A weed pot is a piece of clay shaped into a flat circle, then folded over with the sides pinched together and the top folded back, like an empanada open in the middle. I realized that I wasn’t having fun and didn’t want a weed pot, so I announced that this wasn’t working for me and I left. I failed. Throwing clay at a board just wasn’t my idea of creative energy. It sure wasn’t anything like Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in “Ghost.”

So, after I left I went to the Activity Center library and worked on a jigsaw puzzle for awhile. That was more my style.