Oh no!

A few days ago, I am knitting on this shawl, which I am just a row or 2 away from binding off. I am counting and was at 330 when I was pushing on what I had just done and the cable broke! Oh my goodness, I almost screamed. There were at least 30 dropped stitches, just hanging there, as I am trying not to go crazy. I got my glasses on real fast, but carefully, so I wouldn't lose it all together. Got all the stitches back on, with a few little mess ups that I hope to be able to fix. And I got the cable back in as far as I could. But there's still probably a 1/8" that should be inside the little metal thingy. It's rough. I can't do anything right now. So I will take this little mess to my little yarn store in Chattanooga this afternoon and see if they can fix it for me. It's the longest cable too, because I think there must be 1000 stitches on there. Geeze, it's going to take me a month just to bind this off!

                                              The owls look really worried, don't they? I am too.

And in other news, last night was my first pottery class! I was SO excited! There are 7 of us, all women. With a man instructor. He wanted us all to practice working with the clay, pounding out any air bubbles on the table. I tell you what, that first cut of the clay to get a bit off was amazing. I had seen people do it, but to do it myself, well, that was really cool. And the clay was so soft and smooth and felt so good on my hands too. Just a cool thing right there. I was amazed the whole night really.

So we went to our little wheels and plopped that cone of clay down in the middle and practiced centering it. That took awhile. And I'll tell you again, my left hand hurt! So got mine centered real good.

Then the fun part! Making a hole. I just really enjoyed every part of this experience. He wanted us to make a cylinder. Well, we were all over the place! Every one of us. We had bowls and plates and all kinds of shapes. But no cylinders. Mine was pretty much a wide cylinder, with the bottom way too small. I was going to keep it, but after getting it off the wheel and onto a board, the more it sat, the more wonky it got. By the time I was ready to leave, I went over and smashed it up.

I did get to practice on another piece. Did pretty good, but smashed it too. It's hard! I had no idea. But the instructor, he was whipping out bowls and cups and tall cylinder-like vases and cups. Then he'd cut them in half so we could see the way ours should look. Then he'd smash them up and start on another piece. Oh to be like him some day. But it will take SO much practice. They encourage us to come during the week to practice so believe me, I will be going! I really want to do this. I want to make yarn bowls.

So this is the ancient pottery wheel my friend Daryl gave me. It's heavy. And foot pedaled. What fun, right? We just have to figure out how to get it all together. And what is that half round piece of metal for? Can't figure that out and Daryl couldn't remember either. And it needs a seat. We can just make a seat out of plywood I think. And then I might can practice more on this.

I just hope we don't all float away from all the rain we've been getting here. I woke up early this morning and it was pouring. Thunder and lightening all around. And more rain to come! Yay! I guess this is a good thing. For ducks maybe. And rivers and streams and lakes. But I am sort of over it all, thank you. And I have got to get new boots. Plastic bags don't last very long.