National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it has come to be known, is a 30-day online challenge taking place every year in November. The goal? To write at least 50,000 words within the span of those 30 days--and to get them successfully counted and registered on the NaNoWriMo website before midnight on November 30.

Are you ready for this challenge? It will--I repeat, it will change your life. As a three-time participant and two-time winner in this great yearly event, I'd like to invite you to consider giving a mere hour or two every day this November toward cranking out 50K words of whatever you consider to be a novel (the definition of "novel" here is quite loose--see the NaNoWriMo website for more details, and the official "rules"). Though what you will end up with is not, strictly speaking, a "novel" by most normal standards, what you will have to show for all those hours of blood, sweat and tears will be a spectacular 50,000-word writing exercise. And rumour has it that some participants do, in fact, go on to edit and publish the "novels" so created. I've never done it myself, but supposedly some people have.

Highly recommended is the NaNoWriMo "handbook," No Plot? No Problem!, available through Amazon.com and on the NaNoWriMo website. I got mine secondhand and saved a few bucks--and as you can see from the photograph at the beginning of this post, it has been well-read and much used.

NaNoWriMo runs on donations. You can get a miniature halo around your username whenever it shows up on their website, by contributing as little as $10 to the cause. Some of us contribute things other than money. In this motivational short video from last year's event, a papier-mache doll looking somewhat like founder Chris Baty wearing his signature Viking helmet appears to contribute its two cents' worth (in speech balloons) to the discussion on how to beef up one's lagging word count towards the end of the month. You'll have to guess who contributed the handmade doll, which later on was featured in a NaNoWriMo silent auction fundraiser attended by hundreds of enthusiastic participants from around the world.

Watch this potter at work!

This is the same Yorkshire potter who did the centering demo on the YouTube link in my previous blog post. In this one he demonstrates how fast he can whip out seven small bowls without stopping. The William Tell Overture played in the background adds a special touch.

The light touch

During the following week, I toyed with the idea of never going back to another pottery lesson.

Perhaps I'm just not cut out to be a potter; I just don't have whatever knack is needed. Perhaps, in my case, it's like juggling, which I've been trying to learn, on and off, for the past eight or ten years. Perhaps I don't need to add another skill to my handcraft repertoire. And besides (and this was definitely a mere side issue) it's embarrassing trying to do something and failing, miserably and in public.

On the other hand, Ed had said he thought I just needed to lighten up a bit. Perhaps it was worth ONE more effort.

So the next Tuesday found me heading to Bristol once again. Ed greeted me in his usual cordial way, then pointed to a different wheel than the one I'd used before.

"That's a much more expensive and better one. Try it," he suggested. I found an apron, filled a bucket of fresh water, chose several of the more essential tools from a large bin, picked up a cube of clay that Ed had sawed from the main block with a piece of wire, and settled in for another couple of what I hoped would not be frustrating hours.

Press hard to center it. With the wheel spinning, I dipped my hands in the water bucket and pressed down hard on my clay. The irregular contours tossed me back and forth as the clay revolved, resisting my efforts to get it all lined up in the exact center of the wheel. Press harder. Bits of slippery, wet clay sheared off from the lump and worked their way in between my fingers. I shook them off into the scrap bucket. Anchor your arms on the edge of the wheel frame. I bent in and tightened my grip.

It will fight you, but you're gonna win in the end. The words of my first pottery teacher, demonstrating the use of the wheel for the class at the seniors' center, came back to me. Hmmm. Is this what the prophet Jeremiah was talking about?

From across the room, over the chatter of the other students, my second pottery teacher addressed me.

"Looking good over there, Barbara."

"Um, I think it's still a bit off-center," I replied, staring at the cone-shaped object going around and around in front of me. I thought I could detect the merest hint of a visual "wobble." How near perfection is "good enough"?

"Once it's off the wheel," he said, "no one will ever know." Really? That's an interesting thought. I bent over the wheel and stuck my thumbs into the middle of the now-well-enough-centered lump of clay, "opening" it as I pressed down and outward to create a hole.

Remember, light touch. Gently, I drew the hollowed object upward, then eased it outward, enlarging it. I dipped my hands in water again and again to smooth the clay's surface. Water ran down and pooled in the bottom of the pot. Don't let water remain in the bottom of the pot. The clay will absorb too much and then crack during the drying period. I soaked up the puddle with a sponge, then dipped my hands in the water bucket again. The lump of clay was beginning to look like a bowl.

By the end of that class, there were three newly-turned objects on the shelf with my initials scratched on the bottom.

Here's a YouTube video of a Yorkshire potter showing (repeatedly) how to center the clay on the potter's wheel. When I watched this video, I re-learned something my first teacher had taught us but which I'd forgotten: Always take your hands slowly off the clay. Moving quickly can throw it off-center and you'll have to do the whole thing over again.

The potter's wheel

Recently I was able to start taking some "throwing" lessons in a potter's studio, One of a Kind Gallery of Bristol, Tennessee.

I'd been able to play around a bit with a potter's wheel in a community seniors' centre class in Kingsport, a couple of years ago, but (even with basic instruction and a demo from the Clay Class teacher) had never really produced anything much more than a few lumps of soggy clay--all of which, after half an hour or so of being pounded and smoothed with wet hands, were considerably smaller, though not noticeably shapelier, than they had been before I began working with them. This was disappointing. I'm an artist, right? I should be able to conquer the potter's wheel! Besides, think of all the gifts I could make for friends and family! And--stranger things have happened--I might even be able to sell my work someday!

I mulled over my failure to learn pot-throwing quickly and easily, while the huge block of raw clay I'd paid for at the Seniors' Centre sat quietly and unused on its shelf in the Clay Room for so long that they finally moved it to a permanent storage spot in the closet.

Then I met One of a Kind Gallery shop owner/potter Ed Lockett at a craftsmen's fair last Christmas. Admiring his hand-thrown coffee mugs, I asked casually whether he ever gave pottery lessons. Yes, he did. He had a classroom setup in the back of his shop, where he could accommodate six or seven students at a time. He gave me schedules and prices. It didn't sound too impossible, though I'd probably have to wait a few months till I'd sold a few more portraits and dolls.

Ever since, I've been nourishing this secret hope that a few "real" (structured) classes in this art would make a potter of me, or at least a slightly more advanced student-practitioner.

This fall, it looked as though my secret hope might be fulfilled. When I called Ed to ask about when the current season's classes would be starting, I learned that he had one slot left in the Tuesday evening group. The class had already had the first of five lessons in the series, but it appeared that one of the pre-registered students wasn't going to be able to make it. This meant there was one wheel just sitting there, unused. I could come for the last four classes and then make up the one I'd missed when the next series started. Did I want to come just to observe and see if it was something I'd like to be part of? Did I!

Circumstances intervened; I showed up for the next week's class an hour late, wondering if this was going to work after all. However, within minutes I found myself wrapped in a clay-stained apron, seated in front of a wheel, one foot on a speed-control power pedal, the other propped on a brick, as I tried to center a lump of clay on the spinning surface before me.

I produced a small bowl during that first half-lesson, although since I had neglected to mark it and didn't remember exactly what it looked like, we weren't able to locate it later on. The next week I came back ready to try again. This time, I failed to produce a single pot, cup, bowl or plate, or, in fact, any recognizable object whatsoever. All that was left of two hours of unceasing effort was a pile of damp clay scraps, a bucket of muddy water, and enough clay splashed on my face and arms to give evidence of my activities that evening.

"I'm just not getting this," I told Ed, throwing my clay-caked apron in the studio's laundry bin as I prepared to leave. "I don't know why it's so hard. I've worked with clay before, you know."

"I was watching you," he told me unexpectedly, "and I think you're pushing too hard. The only time you need to use strength is when you're actually centering the clay on the wheel. After that, only a very light touch is needed."

more later...

This is what my "craft room" looks like at this very moment.

Sunday Gardener papier-mache doll

Just posting a picture of this one because I think she's pretty. She displays a lot of handwork: hand-crocheted lace and hand-worked beading on her blouse, for example, not to mention her sculpted paper-mache head. Her hair is natural golden brown llama wool. Her arms are painted cloth.

All the fabric used in this doll is recycled.

You can see a few more images of this doll at my Etsy shop (see link, above right).

Rag Mop

Picture #1: This is a close-up of a rag mop I made using the leftover button and buttonhole plackets, collars, collarbands, yokes and cuffs from the garments I cut up to recycle the fabric for my handmade dolls. Until now I've been throwing many of these cut-off pieces away; they're too small to be worth taking apart properly in order to use the pieces. I felt bad about wasting them, but they were also too small to be used as rags. UNTIL I thought of using them as the rag strips in a wet-mop.

Husband Peter went shopping for me and found a mop handle with a clamp at the end instead of a mop. Though one can also buy the replaceable mop heads, we decided to create our own, using these long, narrow rag strips.

I chose only cotton fabrics, for absorbency, and decided to use two cuffs as the top and bottom that would hold the other strips together (see picture #3--I canNOT get these pictures to appear in the order I want them) as they were just twice the length of the clamp. Having done some minor Internet research on making one's own rag mops, I discovered that 12" is a fairly good length for mop "strings," so I laid a double row of my narrow rag strips along one of the cuffs, making sure they crossed the cuff where they would be sewed on, and stuck out about 12" on either side of the cuff. I didn't want to make this part too thick, since even my strong sewing machine does have its limits--it can handle up to 9 layers of denim, but with some of these rags there were close to that many layers in the seam allowances. Then I laid another cuff piece over the strips and sewed several times down the middle to hold everything together.

Folding the newly-created mop head in half, I inserted it into the opened clamp and screwed it shut. Behold, a rag mop!

Then I decided to go back and loosen the clamp so I could wrap a few extra cuff pieces around the exposed part of the clamp (picture #2). I hate it when the hard part of a mop scrapes the floor while I'm mopping, don't you?

I believe two of these "mop heads" could be used together in the clamp at the same time for a thicker mop, but I haven't tried it yet. The advantage of a mop like this is that you can remove the head and throw it in the washing machine when it is dirty, thus avoiding the perpetually wet, smelly, mildewy and eventually rotting-out problems that can happen with non-removable mop heads. One could also rotate several heads, thus always having a clean one to use--or even designate different mop heads for different parts of the house (one for the kitchen, one for the bathroom, etc.) One could go farther and colour-code the heads (kitchen is warm colours; bathroom is cool colours...) but some might think this is carrying it a bit too far. I'm all for it, myself, and may use colour-coding for my next series of mop heads.

Haven't tried it out yet...but I wanted to get photos of it while it was still new and clean. Kind of like taking pictures of the kids in their fancy clothes BEFORE the pizza party.