New Website!

I have put Michael (alias March Hare) to work on our website. He is a master! Although a wee bit OCD! It is coming together nicely. Please check us out as www.madhatterspottery.com!

Okay, okay, I know you want to see them....

My adorable children...no, not the furry one in the middle, although she thinks she is a child.

The Joy of Throwing

Ah….

My studio. Quiet. No voices, no sound of the television, no telephone.

I take the cool clay in my hands, begin to wedge, that movement that women throughout the ages made every morning when they baked bread for their family. My mind wanders to what a simpler time might have been like.

I look outside at the mockingbird perched outside my window. It is a perfect seventy six degrees and the windows are open, breeze blowing in gently. He looks at me and gives me the greeting of a cheerful trill, then flies off.

I have six balls of clay ready. That should be enough.

I sit at the wheel, wet the bat, slap the ball of clay in the middle and begin to center. I am a wet thrower, so before I know it, I am up to my wrists in mud. Vivaldi is playing on the CD. I am in heaven.

Then I hear it. The sucking sound of the studio door opening.

I click off the CD and sit very still. Maybe….

“MOM!!!!”

I don’t say anything for a moment. If I just pretend I am invisible….

“MOM!!!! I know you’re up here.”

Crap.

“What?”

“I’m hungry.”

Okay, this is a fifteen year old boy, perfectly capable of foraging in the pantry for something to eat. Heck, if he lived in some other country across the world, he might be out HUNTING for something to eat. BAREFOOT!

“Chris, go look in the pantry.”

“I did. We don’t have anything.”

Of course, he’s right. I avoid the grocery store like the plague. Then it hits me -- his sixteen-year-old sister that drives.

“Ask Danielle to take you up to McDonald’s.”

“She’s PMS-ing. Mom, I’m really hungry.”

How did I get myself into this? Mother-as-savior-of-all-things-remotely-uncomfortable. Isn’t this one of the things that’s wrong with our youth? Perpetual childhood, a friend of mine calls it. He’ll want his wife to fix him food when he’s forty because I have ruined him.

Then I begin to think about what a good kid he is. How lucky I am that he’s not on the street dealing crack cocaine and piercing his nipples. How he brings home A’s and B’s and has a strong sense of helping those less fortunate. How, when he was little….

“Oh, okay. Give me a minute.”

I wipe the clay from my hands and throw a piece of plastic over my nicely centered little lump of clay. As I go to walk out of the room I look back at the window. The mockingbird is back. And I could be crazy but I think he is laughing at me. MOCKING me!

“Go to hell!” I yell at him.

I go downstairs and shut the door of the studio behind me, knowing I will get caught up in the day and that the little centered lump of clay will be there tomorrow, probably totally unusable.

I justify it. I only have a few more years of hearing my son ask me for something to eat. Only a few more years of my children living under my roof, giving me all the joy and pain that only children can do. Only a few more years….

The clay will wait.

Buyer's Etiquette

After an extremely frustrating morning at the local green market yesterday, I thought it might be nice to set out some guidelines for those of you who frequent such things and come upon people like me who happen to sit amid the produce and the bread with our handmade wares.

1. Please do not stick your nose right into my soy candles, leaving your indelible noseprint on the smooth surface. It is not nice.

2. Please do not pick up every item on my table, then reach for the smallest item, ask how much it is and when I tell you, grunt "huh" and put it back down with a look of disdain. This hurts my fragile little feelings.

3. Please do not tell me the lady at the end sells HER candles for $5. Yes, she does. And her candles are made of paraffin wax with strange synthetic smelling scents like "Oooh La La" poured into little tins. She can afford to sell hers for $5. I am an artist, I make my own pottery, use only soy wax and I don't have any candles scented with "Oooh La La." This insults me and makes me want to tell you that, by all means, go and buy HER candles, instead. And maybe wing something at your head as you leave.

4. Please do not waste my time asking a thousand questions about how I make my pottery, telling me how much you love my candles and think soy wax is a much better product for taking a step toward sustainability, THEN walk past my booth a half hour later with a bag from the $5 candle lady. That is just mean!

5. Please do not let your children grab my candles (pottery is BREAKABLE and not child-friendly) and stick their sweet little fingers into the wax and say "Wow, Mommy, I really like this one." If you must let your child do that, at least buy a candle. It would offset the price of my tranquilizers.

6. Please do not suggest I may wish to trade one of my $20 candles for a few tomatoes from your booth. Tomatoes give me hives.

7. If you are a guy wearing a Harley tee shirt and haven't shaved in a week, I don't believe you are interested in my candles but are trying to hit on me. Go away and hit on the tomato lady.

I'm sure there are more words of wisdom I could impart but I am having flashbacks and those people aren't going to be reading my blog anyway. Now, to get ready for today's greenmarket! (Just kidding!)

Visit my etsy.com site to learn more about soy candles
handcrafted soaps and pottery
.

The New Economy

The term “handmade” conjured up images of little crocheted doilies and baked goods that were sold at our local craft fair each summer. Sweet little old men fashioned quacking ducks out of wood on long dowels and the beer drinkers’ wives made whirlygigs out of the empty beer cans. We looked forward to the summer craft fair and I think we may have made one beer can purchase throughout the years. But did people really make major purchases here? “Handmade” was for hobbyists, right?

Wrong!

In a world of mass production and super Wal-Marts, we are yearning for the craftsmanship and human touch of “handmade.” In a world seeking to find sustainability after we have learned some very hard lessons about excess, we are tired of seeing the tags saying “Made in Sri Lanka” in our mass-produced, oh-so-expensive designer clothing, “Made in China” stamped on our toys, and tired of talking to “Tommy” in India about the charge on our credit card that isn’t ours.

There is a yearning, running quiet and deep in the American soul, for something we have lost. Our great-grandparents knew it, maybe even our grandparents. But somewhere along the way, industrialized economy became our battle cry and the lifeblood of our system. Bigger, better, more, faster. And now, if we haven’t succumbed to Prozac-ing ourselves into artifically induced happiness, we may feel something tugging at our sleeves.

Shhh! There is a movement out there and if you are very quiet, you may just begin to hear it on the wind behind the noise we’ve become anesthetized to. You may pick up a word here or there. “Handmade.” “Locally grown.” “Community.” Look closely. Greenmarkets, WholeFoods, craft fairs, artists’ co-ops. And, the Web. Yes, the big WWW has gotten in on it, too. Because “community” has gone global. Real, honest-to-goodness people creating a real honest-to-goodness economy of the new “handmade.”

Learn more about my handmade soaps, soy candles and pottery.