April and May Class - Pottery in Waukesha

One of my favorite things about a commitment to participate in a class every month is when someone decides to take the class with me! This time, my friend Tracy signed up with me for a Pottery class. The difference with this class is that it was actually 6 weeks long, and spanned two different months, so I am going to “count” it for both May and June.

We took the class in Waukesha, at The Potters Shop, with our OUTSTANDING instructor CiCi. Each class was supposed to be 2.5 hours each time – but we were able to get in a little early and stay a little late in case we needed extra time – which we did.

I went into this class expecting very little of myself – I had taken a 2-hour class a few years ago, and got a very misshapen bowl out of it, and I really expected the same. After 6 weeks however, I was rather impressed with how much Tracy, and I learned! Our pieces turned out pretty good – still misshapen, and we could use a bit more practice with glazing, but … definitely better than I expected!

This class was awesome – we were able to glaze and take 10 pieces home with the price of the class, and I was happy with what I ended up with. I am going to do this again in winter, and maybe make gifts for Christmas or something like that. So much Fun!

So, as a little aside, and since I am not going to do a separate blog on it, in May, Tracy and I took another class with a few other ladies from work, and two of the pottery teachers joined in!!!

Things I learned:

1. Pottery is definitely a skill that needs to be worked at in order to do great, but with even just 6 classes, we were able to make some nice things.

2. Always assume that you are going to get incredibly dirty while doing pottery.

3. Glazing is incredibly tricky – the colors look different before and after firing, so you just have to kind of guess what its going to look like. I thought the one-color option would help, but I really like my pieces where I used a couple of colors. Just the opposite of what I thought I would like.