25th Birthday Celebrations

On Friday August 26th i turned 25 years old… when i type it like that it makes me feel old…

The day didnt start off too great as i woke up with a migraine. My migraines start off with auras where i loose part of my sight to a mess of white fuzzy spots which leaves me unable to do anything but sit there and panic. As the auras wear off the headache starts and it’s usually in the worst place in the front of my head just above my eyes. With this happening on my birthday it made me feel quite down and upset however i took some paracetamol and ate some breakfast.

Before all this we had been away on holiday in the campervan for 10 days up in Scotland, so on my birthday we where parked at a farm near Bamburgh Castle which we had visited the day before. Mum had planned a birthday surprise for me and wouldn’t tell me what it was! So we packed up the van and left the farm. The journey felt like it took a lifetime. We set off at about 11am and we didn’t arrive to my surprise until nearly 3pm mum didnt tell me what my surprise was until we arrived. My surprise was a pottery throwing class!

I have been wanting to learn to throw on a wheel for a long time but ive always been very nervous about learning to throw infront of people so every time ive had an opportunity i havnt taken it because of my anxiety. While making my final pieces for my last project i was building some big pots that i built using the coiling technique however to speed the process up i coil built them on a wheel. I felt very anxious sat on the wheel as i felt worried about making a mistake to the point it wasn’t enjoyable at first. With lots of encouragement and realising that the wheel wasnt going to eat me i began to enjoy using the wheel. I took it slowly from simply standing beside the wheel and using it as a banding wheel to sitting in it with it turned off to actually using it to create my pots.

Moz showing me how to coil build on the wheel at university.

(sorry this is going to be a very long blog post i have so much to tell you)

So back to my birthday.

We walked in to the little pottery studio past the kiln and right infront of us was a huge kick wheel. Ive never seen a kick wheel before and it was alot bigger than i had expected. Julie Smith the ceramicist showed me and mum how to properly wedge clay and then we weighed out 3 1lb balls, Julie then demonstrated throwing a basic cylinder on the kick wheel we then both had a go. My mum Alison decided to use the kick wheel where as i wanted to use Julie’s Shimpo Wisper VL which is my dream pottery wheel. I was shocked how silent and smooth the wheel was and the smoothness helped to reduce my anxiety and even though i felt scared of making a mistake i felt less stressed than i used to get on the university’s wheels. Centering for the first time went like a breeze as did opening the clay out however i didnt like having clay in my nails. The most challenging bit for me was knowing where to put pressure on the clay with which part of my hand and pulling the walls of my pot which i found difficult as I couldn’t get the position of my knuckle right.

(The smaller pot is mine the larger one is mums)

Over all im very pleased with my first attempt at throwing on a wheel and i cant wait to experiment more with wheel throwing in the future. Thank You Julie Smith for showing me how to throw on a wheel.