Mug Shot

My friend Maria loves crafting and is great at bringing her friends together. Recently she invited us to join her at a pottery place called Kilnfolk she found that offered a mug-making workshop. A group of us signed up online, then all showed up at the class. I met all of them but Maria for the first time. Maria made everyone sparkly New Year’s headbands to wear.

The occasion was to celebrate Maria’s birthday, and that ended up being a popular Saturday. Lots of people showed up in the clay studio and the guy – I can’t remember his name – ran around helping everybody get started and answering questions and keeping it fun.

For a fee, they provided all the materials and instructions and ideas and inspiration and assistance and a plan to make a mug. We were encouraged to modify it as much as we wanted to.

When we had our rectangle, then we were supposed to decorate our mug. This involved digging through containers of design rollers and fabrics and sticks and pine cones and all kinds of things with interesting textures. I started calling it the Toybox. Then we pressed our things into the clay. In retrospect, I would have given instructions differently. For all of us, pressing the designs warped our clay, so then when we shaped the mug, everyone’s had to be fixed, some more than others. It makes more sense to me to press the designs, THEN cut out the rectangle shape.

For mine, I rolled a pinecone across the top part, then rolled a design across the bottom part that reminded me of the Mayan designs we had seen over the summer. Then we all sliced diagonally at the ends, so that when we wrapped the clay around, it would make a nice seal. You can see the edge of the diagonal cut in the photo below.

Next we cut out circles to attach to the bottom of the tube. To fix the edges of the tube, or to attach the bottom, we simply wet the clay. There was a bucket of water with sponges and brushes at each table. We used our fingers, mostly. Simply wet the two sides, then stick it together. Viola. That simple. We used more water and our fingertips to smooth out the seams.

I like mugs with no handles. A couple others liked that idea too. The rest embraced handles for their mugs. As we finished up our work, we began wandering around and looking at what people at other tables had done. There were some super great ideas.

The place is in Vancouver, Washington, which is closest to where Maria lives. She volunteered to pick up mugs for anyone.

Pretty fun craft day, don’t you think? It’s not something I would do all the time, because to really be creative, I don’t want to follow someone else’s plan for what to make and how to make it. But as an awesome way to hang out with a bunch of girlfriends to celebrate a birthday, it was perfect! Also, I now have a unique birthday gift for Pedro when we celebrate in February.

Plus, it turned into a second visit yesterday, when Maria came over to our house to deliver the mug, and then we went out to lunch to celebrate my birthday. 🙂

Speaking of my birthday, my request this year was to drive out to Walla Walla, Washington to visit my brother and his girlfriend, Karen. Ian has lived in Seattle for something like 18 years, right in the Queen Anne district, at the heart of the city, beneath the Space Needle. He DID NOT want to move to a tiny rural eastern Washington town, but it was a great career decision for Karen. He’s a good man to support her. They moved to their new home a month after we moved to ours, so I totally understand how they might be feeling, trying to get established, trying to get used to a new home and learn a new life in a totally different setting.

I’m pretty much caught up on my very late 2023 blog posts, so when I get home from Walla (he and Karen have decided to drop the second Walla. ha ha!), I’ll tell you all about it.