Today's Pots

Today's activity was bottle forms, 6-8" most of the time was spent wedging and reclaiming clay. Oh, and making turning tools.
At the weekend, I'll make a heap of glaze test pieces, even though I've got no glazes as yet. Nor a kiln power supply.
And I'll clean the wheel and throw some white stoneware test pieces. I've got a selection of clays to try.
And teapots, I must make more teapots, and... teacups, and saucers.
Ohhhhhhh, I need a huge lottery win or a mystery millionaire benefactor, so I can buy some old farm buildings in an idyllic setting, build a woodfire kiln, and settle down to making pots. I wouldn't bother with selling them, I just like making......

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

Plums in my friend, Ken's neighbour's garden.

John Keats wrote: "To Autumn"-

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.