Saturday, March 03, 2007

Make Your Own Pottery

At a shop called "MAKE" on the upper west side, you can "make" your own pottery. In the adults-only evening hours, they provide wine to release inhibitions and let your inner kid take over the process.


Making pottery at this shop does not, as I originally imagined, involve wet clay and a pottery wheel. No reenactments of "Ghost", even for the grown-ups! (Just as well, since I dimly recall disliking the movie.) Instead, you purchase a pre-formed piece of unglazed pottery, and then you paint on it with washable paints (at $6/hour). If you make a mistake, you can actually wash it off with a sponge. Stencils are available, such as one for the outline of a house with a heart in the middle of it. Here, the house was stenciled in red:

I did a very simple yin & yang design on a salad plate (aqua and green, separated by an orange stripe), then I painted the rim of the plate orange and the underside red. Unglazed, the red and orange look pretty darn similar; the colors are quite pale, even after multiple coats. When they are glazed and fired, they supposedly will darken. I'll find out in a week.

Today was spring in so many senses of the word. 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Birds chirping in the courtyard. Sunshine streaming through the windows. So I spent most of the day outside, on a long walk. I ran whenever a song spurred me into it, with a spring in my step. That worked out to roughly 15-20 minutes of running, in song-length spurts. With long sleeves and long pants, it was even a bit too warm. Most runners were out in shorts and t-shirts!

I liked the name of this gardening store (PlantWorks) because it reminded me of a now-defunct Boston-based speech recognition company named SpeechWorks. Whenever their employees would get together to organize group activities, it would be "SnowWorks" (for a ski trip), "RaftWorks" (for a rafting trip), etc. I went rafting with them the weekend of September 14-16, 2001 up to Maine. It was a good trip, and one of the psychologically healthiest things I could possibly have done at the time.

1 comment:

Runner NYC said...

Can't wait to see the final product! Yesterday was a glorious day! I'm glad you enjoyed your run/walk!!