Chilly wednesday

Doors and gates, we don't have many like this over here! I do have a bit of a thing I realise looking back at pictures from other trips to places, about door ways and gates. Lots of images of them crop up in my albums and sketchbooks. I am not aware of them creeping into my work at all, not consciously anyway.

A tile from the Ceramic Museum in Barcelona. This was about two foot tall I would thick and about half an inch thick.

Another guest decorator today, this time in the form of John Threlfall who is a wildfowl painter. I haven't really met John properly before though he lives not too far away and I am very aware of his wonderful work. We got to chatting as you do and discovered he was brought up in his early years about 6 miles from where I was in Bolton and moved from there to the same street as Paul lived on with his family in Sheffield. Small world - though I still wouldn't like to paint it.

I have been busy making even with my visitors but I don't seem to be getting anything finished. It's like that sometimes isn't it, things in every stage except completion. I find it frustrating because I can't see the progress so easily. A lot of the things I'm trying to make at the moment are made from more than one bit too ie lids and two bits joined so it looks like far more 'things' than there actually is.

More Gaudi

A roof at Parc Guell, I love these lids on the buildings, they I think may find themselves as lids on some pots. . .

I love all the work that is going on inside the Sagrada Familia, that is just as interesting to me as the building itself. There is a museum underneath with scale models and his experiments for finding the right angles to position the roof struts in to make them capable of bearing the load. It's fascinating.

Another roof, in Parc Guell again - how does that stay up there exactly? Some of the constructions look almost impossible. We were laughing imagining the response you'd get if you took plans of this to a council here for planning permission today, you'd get laughed out of town.

Another guest decorator today, this time my friend Hazel Campbell, painter extraordinaire and general great lady. Hazel's first introduction to slip trailing. I think it went very well.

I tried to take a picture of the sky this afternoon, I was rather taken with the grey/blue/purpley colour but this photo tells you next to nothing. The flocks of birds were just settling in the trees there as I watched but by the time I got the camera they had settled themselves comfortably for the night.

22 to minus 3

We woke to a shockingly cold but utterly beautiful sight this morning, a chill minus three outside and thick frost and the low sun. Compared to the days of 22 degrees C that we had last week in Barcelona - yes that was answer number one folks, it was somewhat nippy.

So many pictures as you can imagine. It's hard going from here to a big city, there's something everywhere that is so different to my everyday views that I find it hard not to stand and stare agog all the time, I have to be careful not to get myself thumped sometimes. For certain on our list of things to do were visits to Parc Guell and the Sagrada Familia both Gaudi lovers heaven.

The church is a lot further on than it was ten years ago when I last visited but there is still an unending amount of work to do it seems. I'd be almost sad if they did ever finish it because the whole work in progress is fascinating to see, I love seeing the moulds being made and the highly skilled crafts people at work there swinging from windows or measuring precise and accurate angles on giant blocks of stone. It was very busy, so many people walking around just going snap snap snap with their cameras and not appearing to actually look. I tried to draw things but there's just too much there so many we stood and gawped.

Even the shadow of the unglazed windows on the pillars is great though my pictures do it no justice what so ever.

Ceramics Museum? Of course we went there! Tasty! In a way I thought it was better than the V&A in that each piece had so much more space and you could really look at just one without being distracted too much by it's neighbours. Some of the pots had mirrors placed so you could see their bottoms, always attractive to a potter. There are plenty more pictures here and I'm sure you'll see some Spanish influences in the pots to come too.

La Boqueria, the large fruit and veg and fish and cheese and bread and tastynesses of all variety market in the centre of the city is just colour and shape and smell and noise vibrant. You could spend a whole morning wandering around there.

So it's been back to work properly today, lots still on the list to be done. I'm getting through the orders though. This afternoon though while listening to my BBC Radio 4 dose I heard this great programme, part of a series that I believe runs the whole of the week, "Whatever happened to the teapots?" A whole fifteen minutes about clay and pots, more Radio 4, more! I think you can only listen to it from Britain but I could be wrong there.

Remember

This morning saw me with my Cubs and the Scouts at the Remembrance Day service at the cenotaph in New Galloway. I've been at services in the centre of Bolton and Manchester, both big busy towns and cities with hundreds of people, all the uniformed organisations and hundreds of the general public. I've been a number of times at the service at the memorial on the top of Great Gable in the Lake District, a strange and other worldly experience joining again hundreds of others at the very summit with lines of tiny figures approaching from every direction to stand in silence on the sometimes sunny sometimes wind swept sometimes blizzardy rocks at the top. This year I was in New Galloway on a glorious crisp autumn morning, it's the village where my Cub group is based, a small rural community, a part of the Glenkens. All the services are moving for what they represent but this one here in particular makes me think and realise more than the others. A list is read of the names on the memorial, and from a tiny village like this there are a lot of names, then comes those that are obviously of the same family, some with two or three and one with four members all killed in World War One. One boy aged just 15 killed on a ship in the Dardanelles, I think that one is the one that does it, many of the kids I am with there are 14 and 15 and you can see them all sit up and listen more when his story is told as the vicar said this morning this boy was from a family of artists in the region, who knows what could have been. What a waste.
This poem the Cubs often read during the service

"Will you wear a poppy?" the lady said

And held one forth, but I shook my head.

Then I stopped and watched to see how she’d fare

Her face was old and lined with care.

But beneath the scars the years had made

There remained a smile that refused to fade.

A boy came whistling down the street

Bouncing along on carefree feet.

His smile was full of joy and fun

"Lady’, he said, "May I have one?"

As she pinned it on I heard him say

"Why do we wear a poppy today?"

The lady smiled in her wistful way

And answered, "This is Remembrance Day.

The poppy there is the symbol for

The gallant men who died in our war.

And because they did, you and I are free

That’s why we wear a poppy you see."

"I had a boy about your size

With golden hair and big blue eyes.

He loved to jump and play and shout

Free as a bird he would race about

As years went on he learned and grew

And became a man as you will, too."

"He was fine and strong with a boyish smile

But he seemed with us such a little while.

When war broke out he went away

I still remember his face that day.

When he smiled at me and said ‘Goodbye

I’ll be back soon so please don’t cry.’"

"But the war went on so he had to stay

All I could do was wait and pray.

His letters told of the awful fight

I can still see it in my dreams at night.

With tanks and guns and cruel barbed wire

And mines and bullets, the bombs and fire."

'Til at last the war was won

"And that’s why we wear a poppy, son."

The small boy turned as if to go

Then said, "Thanks lady, I’m glad to know.

That sure did sound like an awful fight

But your son, did he come home all right?"

A tear rolled down each faded cheek

She shook her head but didn’t speak.

I slunk away, head bowed in shame

And if you were with me, you’d have done the same.

For our thanks in giving is oft delayed

Though the freedom was bought and thousands paid.

And so you see, when a poppy is worn

Let us reflect on the burden borne.

By those who gave their very all

When asked to answer their country’s call.

That we at home in peace may live

Then wear a poppy, remember and give.

Author: Don Crawford

Fill in the blanks - the clues are in the photos

This week we have been in sunny.............

to celebrate my ...........

I'll give you a clue the answers aren't "sky" and "fireplace".

Happy Halloween

Wet slip again, it never doesn't make me want to either take a bite from it or pour a bucket full of it all over myself. Why is that? Delicious stuff.

Today I spent what felt like hours wrapping and packing pots to be sent away. One big parcel off to the Stirling Smith Art Gallery in Stirling and the other pile of boxes off to the National Museum in Edinburgh, both for their Christmas exhibitions. Hopefully they will be swapped in good time for a nice cheques.

I put a new blade in my stanley knife this afternoon while I was packing up the work, oh my how much easier and more pleasant that makes life. A small thing but oh it makes me happy.

Yesterday Silvana McLean came to decorate her pot for the Twelve Pots of Christmas exhibition. The pots are really coming together now, still quite a few more people to work with but it feels like it's happening finally. I had to turn Andy's dish this morning, a bit nerve wracking after all the time he had put in. I don't go through the bottoms of pots very often these days but somehow the pressure was much stronger when it was just my work that I would be spoiling.

I was just about to put on my pumpkin outfit and take a picture for you for Halloween but have been informed that the outfit has been sent away to be stored until next year. So you'll have to wait for that pleasure, the Cubs were most amused at out Halloween party on wednesday last, I dread to think what the really think about their leader, sometimes the looks they give me are priceless.

Busy Day

It feels like it's been an age since I have decorated any pots, only a week in actual fact but somehow seems much longer. Funny that isn't how time sometimes doesn't fit with how it should feel, like the fact that monday just gone made it four years since Paul and me got together, in some respects it seems like a life time ago, far more than four years and in others it's just like yesterday.

So a couple of newly decorated plates, these two inspired by some little slip pots that I saw when I visited Mary Wondrausch the other week.

I spent this morning in the company of Andy Priestman, a potter and painter friend who I know I've mentioned before. He came to decorate a pot for the twelve pots exhibition. Andy is the only other potter involved and I wanted to work with him because I like his pots and he doesn't decorate as such on his own work so I thought it would make for an interesting combination.

He brought with him a mug for me and a lump of clay now how much better a visitor can you get? A mug AND a lump of clay, how lucky am I? It just shows how easy it is to win me over.

I had a mug of Andy's a while ago which I smashed in a quite disastrous day taking out I think it was two mugs and a teapot all in one foul swoop. Anyhow here's my new one which has been enjoyed many times today already.

And here's my wild clay, it is from Luce Bay, to the far west of here, I've made a little pot this afternoon, a small bowl but I haven't cleaned the clay or anything so we shall see what happens. Exciting day!

I also had some visitors in the form of some returning customers bringing with them a friend of theirs who had just finished a pottery course. It turned out that I already know their friend who is a fellow Scottish Potters Association member Bill Runciman who has just finished at Glasgow School of Art doing the distance learning course. It was great to see them and we had some good potting chat with them too.