What are you working on this week? I'm having one of those weeks where I'm not feeling very productive. In fact, I'm almost the opposite of productive -- I feel like I'm backsliding!
In ceramics, I'm having one of those weeks when I feel like I can't get anything to come out right so maybe I should just hang it up and go flip burgers for a living. These pizza plates are killin' me, y'all! I made the one for my friend Sharon last year, by request, and other people who saw me working on it wanted some. It was the kind of thing I'd been thinking about bringing into the shop anyway, so I thought I'd make some prototypes, testing thickness and colors, give them as Christmas presents, and then start on the real thing. Except that all but one of them blew up in the kiln, and the one that didn't had a small crack in it (Sharon's also had a small crack in it - both the cracks appeared while drying). Then I made more, heavier ones, and while they didn't crack, I really didn't like the colors. And I didn't like that they were SO heavy. So I made more, and while these didn't crack, they warped - enough so that the feet on the bottom don't touch the table, but the four corners of the plate do. So when That Poor Man was making me some wooden slump molds, I asked him to make one in the size of the pizza plate, which he did, and I made some. Which also warped. Next time I make them - if I can gather my forces enough to find it in me to make them YET AGAIN - I swear I'm going to set bricks on them and let them sit there for a week. UGH.
So, I'm walking this line this week between "I can't do anything right" and "YOU SHALL NOT BEST ME, CLAY!".
I'm also playing around with a new clay, a mid-range chocolate clay. I love it! I got some just to use for the April mug, but I think I'm going to bring in a couple more things with it just so I can keep using it.
In soap, I'm working on a new fragrance for the shop. It's a little woodsy, a little masculine... I used it in the soap subscription service last year and the comments I got were positive, so I thought I'd bring it in. I want to give it a different name, though, and I haven't quite nailed it down yet. I keep sniffing the fragrance bottle and thinking, though!
In yarn, I'm winding When Doves Cry (I have a couple more skeins I need to dye today, too) and getting ready to release that next week. There will only be two skeins of each base, so if you missed pre-orders, keep an eye out on Friday the 31st for the limited stock! Also, I'm plotting yarn club. I've tested three colorways, and mostly like them... I'll like one of them more with a small tweak... but I'm excited. Very multi-color this next round! The theme is pets, similar to the Laszlo colorway I did when we had the yarn shop.
In other things.... there's not really much else going on. I feel like I've spent most of March in doctor's waiting rooms. I have my annual squishing set for late March, and since we've moved out here I've kind of broken up with my general practitioner, who I have to admit I didn't like that much anyway (it was the way she asked me, when I told her my food allergies, that she asked if I'd tried Organic chicken instead. To which I replied that if her Organic Chicken was still made of Chicken, I was still going to suffer from Anaphylaxis. Gah! Doctors! I get why wait staff at restaurants roll their eyes sometimes at food allergies, because a lot of people will claim allergy when they really just don't want something... but doctors?). ANYWAY. So I found a new doctor in my teeny tiny small town, and I absolutely love her - I mean, come on, she's a tattooed knitter! But when I met with her early this month I had some test results she didn't really like, so she referred me to a specialist, who last week referred me to another place to get some tests, where I'm going Friday. So, lots of sitting around in waiting rooms (and also having to take chunks of time in at least one day every week where I'm not working, and maybe that has something to do with me not feeling very productive). At least I have knitting to do while I'm in the waiting rooms.
Sooooooooooo. That's it for me this week. What about y'all? What are you working on this week? Anything exciting going on in your lives? Tell me how productive you're being, so I can feel productive vicariously through you!