Happy Holidays! So far, December has been a really strong month for pottery and print sales - hooray! It's nice to see people putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to shopping locally this holiday season. I've had two Open Studios, and many people dropping by randomly to check out my wares. In fact, it's time to get throwing once again! And while the Open Studios are fun, next year I'm hoping to have a few stores in the area stocking my pottery and beads. Or the things I make with the beads, or prints - whatever.
In the meantime, I have a couple of other projects in the works. There's a dragon sculpture for my shop roof coming that will be functional as well as decorative. The gutters that were in place weren't very effective, so we removed them when we started painting the house in the fall. My dragon will have wings, one wing will keep the rain from my front door. And potentially there will be drainage from the back of the dragon to one of the heads, then into a rain barrel. One of the three heads. The biggest issue is keeping it light, so I'm thinking recycled plastic..but I'm still working that out.
Another project is my longtime ambition to finish the local annual triathalon, the Josh Billings Runaground in September. Not that long ago, I was in shape. And while that's no longer the case, I'm working on getting back on track, with the help of my friend, Shay Pegorari, a newly certified personal trainer. We've just had our second session and I'm feeling pretty great. Not only do I have a definite goal, I have preferences about how I reach them. Or maybe I should call them conditions. I will not join a gym for more than one reason, but the primary reason is that I can't stand them. I've belonged to a few gyms, and the only time I stuck with it, I was playing racquetball early mornings with a friend three times a week. Now that's fun. Then two days a week, we spent our sessions in the nautilus area, which was always a little creepy. And odd smelling. Not fun. And I'm terrible at dieting because one of my favorite things on earth is cheese. The only diet that is cheese oriented, the Atkins Diet, completely worked for me the first time! Until I started eating normally, when I gained back every pound I lost plus a 50% bonus...whoops. On top of that, I have a naturally rebellious inclination, so the minute I try to deprive myself of something I love, I absolutely cannot live with its absence. I know. Ridiculous. But that's just how it is.
I like outdoors and fresh air. But I will have to conquer my fear of riding a bicycle on the roads around here because the first leg of the race is something like 26 or 27 miles starting in Great Barrington and landing at the Stockbridge Bowl. And this terrain is serious business - nothing but hills in just about every direction. However, there are so many elderly drivers running over people around here every year, it's a little risky. Last summer, one rider was dragged over 100 feet by a 92 year old driver who had no idea he hit someone! What are you gonna do...well, when I ride my bike, I wear a big, white, flapping shirt and hope for the best. I also tend to ride like a little kid so drivers are a little more careful around me. In my experience, if you wear the little road racer super suit and the helmet, drivers practically decapitate you with their side mirrors. I rode my bike back and forth to work for about four or five months, and the school bus drivers practically ran me off the road about three times a week. But if you skip the helmet, wear regular clothes topped by the flappy bright shirt, people actually slow down and go around you. For real! My theory is the more reckless I seem, the more careful the drivers are...silly, I know. But true. Now that I'm going to be putting on some serious miles, though, I'm going to have to relent at least on the helmet. But I might add a big waving fluorescent flag, or something..
Now, I like to add at least one picture to every post, so here it is:
I was matched up with a fellow art trader for a 1:1 trade on www.illustratedatcs.com, and she requested a two-headed woman. And, in exchange, she drew this way cool chick with a meat tattoo! But I don't have her permission to post it here..so if you're ever in my shop, ask me and I'll show you! There's another Art-A-Thon on that site next week, for five days straight! I'm gearing up already...Another pile of images, coming right up! Happy New Year!!
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