planning

last week completely got away from me.  The pitchers are in the kiln (one or two, that is), and I have several other pitchers in various states of being made or fired or completed.  I am working towards a festival in Overton Park in lieu of a home sale this spring/summer, trying to keep my retailers stocked, and working on the planning and experimenting stages for a really big project.

When Gary and I got married in 2000, I had already begun a collection of blue and white dishes.  Some old blue willow, spode, asian-import bowls, an antique set of wedgwood.  I loved to mix and match the very old and fancy with mass-produced transferware and heavily mass produced restaurant ware, all unified by their blue and white color scheme.  Many of these are still my every day dishes, and I've begun adding my own blue and white pieces to the set. 

I'm working on a new idea, combining the more traditional floral (and bee!) patterns I played with heavily in 2012 and mixing them with more abstract, organic, geometric blue and white renderings.  Sometimes in the same piece, sometimes in coordinating pieces.  I'm very excited about this project and will have some pieces up in the shop and locally, but I am keeping most of these back until the new year.

Fifty percent of my making time has been filling orders and making many of the same things I've always made (but I am dropping a few things here and there), and fifty percent is dedicated to R and D mode. I hope, at the end of this year, that I'll have a more unified body of work to streamline my making, my supplies, and my time.  Refining has been my underlying goal for this year, and I'm beginning to see things that I like.

Hope y'all have a good week this week.  School ends for us on Wednesday.  I am not ready!