My melodramatic life.

The last couple posts I've made probably gave you the impression that things were going pretty well in the realm of Lori Leaumont. Kick ass pottery was being made, genius ideas were being hatched and attempted, and stunning graffiti was discovered. I'm sure you were all hanging on the edge of your seats to hear the outcome of some of my recent escapades.

DISASTER! DESPAIR! HEARTACHE! Life sucks right now, in short. Sorry to disappoint you.

After feeling like some kind of she-woman mechanic that could fix anything, both our cars are once again breaking in every imaginable way, and I'm so exasperated with both of them that I just want to drop them off at a mechanic, or possibly a junk yard, and be done with them. My driver's side door will no longer open, so I have to crawl over the passenger side to get in. Also, the lack of a muffler (did I mention my muffler fell off?) is causing the interior of my car to be filled with barely tolerable gasoline fumes when I drive. I also apparently changed the spark plugs and wires for nothing, because the car still sputters when its wet outside, which leads me to believe I need to change the distributor cap as well (that's assuming I know what the hell I'm talking about, which I don't. I know only as much about cars as I have gleaned from a 15 minute perusal of one section of the Chilton's manual, which obviously makes me an expert.)

Remember, also, that really cool deer head project I was so excited about? The one that was such an unbelievably cool idea that it was probably going to be the center piece of my booth at Oranje in September? The one I was patting myself on the back about, dusting off my shoulders, and daydreaming about how stores and customers were going to be knocking down my door to get one of these? (Maybe you don't remember all that, because maybe I didn't say all that in my blog; however, that's certainly what was going on in MY head.)

Well, it fucking FAILED.

The slots shrunk and were too irregular; the slabs were too thick, and the parts were too brittle to withstand me trying to force them to fit together. It snapped multiple times, and in my further attempts to improve upon the design, it became rapidly and abundantly clear that this was NOT a good idea for a ceramic construction. I've given up on the damn thing. At least, for now anyway. (Grumble, grumble, stupid deer head.)

Guess what else? Remember that pitcher and bottle set I made with all the cool carving and painting and whatnot? Well, my kiln decided to choose now, right before a slew of shows and fairs, to stop working properly and underfire, leaving me with a bunch of very brittle and delicate bisqueware. While everything else is ok, and I've already managed to successfully glaze a lot of it, I suffered a casualty - the handled pitcher. I foolishly picked up the pitcher by the handle to glaze it, and it snapped right off. I was pretty disappointed, but I decided to just file down the nubs left behind as close to being level with the surface as possible, and paint over it. I'll know tomorrow what it looks like when I get it back from the glaze kiln. Also, my super secret project was weirdly affected by the glaze firing, and the colors came out all wrong, not to mention the bottom of one of the pieces stuck to the kiln shelf due to warping, so I have to grind shelf and glaze off the bottom and hope it's salvageable. *sigh*

TLDR

In short, money is tight, my kiln probably needs new elements, my cars are screwed up (Nich's got a flat yesterday. It NEVER ENDS), one of my favorite pieces broke, and I've been having chest pains for two weeks that lead me to believe I should go see a doctor and get back on some anti-anxiety medication, especially since driving a forklift at night that I'm still not completely comfortable with still freaks me out, and has caused me to break down into tears at least once.

On the bright side (DEAR LORD, there's a bright side?), I mixed up my dates for the upcoming Handmade Promenade which I'm attending, and inadvertently gave myself an extra week to prepare by rushing to get things done this past weekend. I got a bunch of new stuff glazed, and I'm really pleased with the outcome of a lot of it. I've got some crappy cell phone shots so you can see what I've been up to.

If you're in Indianapolis, you can stop by Handmade Promenade from 4:30p-7p on Tuesday, July 27th in the Schapiro's parking lot on south Meridian. It will be going on in conjunction with the Stadium Farmer's Market, and there are going to be some awesome crafters there, so it's definitely worth checking out. If you're out and about, stop by and say hi, pat me on the back, and tell me everything is going to be ok.