Sticking my neck out.

This week my Giraffe has finally grown a neck! There are some more leaves growing around him and a bit of tree has sprung up behind him too.

I've started working on the hoop as it was getting tricky to keep the fabric taut as I worked further into the design. I've made some progress on the birth sampler too but haven't got a picture of that.

I was also busy in my pottery class this week. I started, and pretty much finished, a coil pot. I just have to scrape the excess clay out of the inside and then glaze it.

Making good progress.

As I promised myself last week, I spent most of my stitching time this week on the birth sampler, which of course I then forgot to photograph - d'oh! However, I also made some good progress on the Panda Collage. There's now a happy Giraffe smiling at me from the Aida...

...although DH insists it looks like he's sporting a Richard Branson-esque beard :D

Another successful creative exploit came to semi-fruition this week. I started a pottery evening class 3 weeks ago and my first project was a pinch pot. When the tutor said we'd be making pinch pots my heart sank. In my experience, pinch pots usually look something like this...

Now, no offense to the creator of the pots pictured, but that's just really not my cup of tea I'm afraid. However, I was very pleasantly surprised when the tutor showed us a technique to join two pinch pots and make them into a lovely smooth clay sphere, ready for us to decorate as we wished.

I chose to turn mine into a Sea Urchin inspired tealight holder, using various objects I found around the house to make the decoration. I used part of a broken zip, the barrel of a ball point pen and even a wine pouring device to make this little beauty.

Now it just needs to be fired before I probably go and ruin it by glazing it! I'm thinking I'll make the raised circles white and the rest a turquoise/teal colour, if that's even possible. Not sure yet how I'll do that. Probably by using a white glaze all over, firing it, then masking the circles and re-dipping in the teal glaze. I'm sure the tutor will be able to let me know the best way.