Beanie Wants a Pottery Wheel…

For a while now, we’ve been asking the girls what they might like to receive as gifts for Christmas. Our little one, Beanie, aged 7 1/2, said that she wants a pottery wheel.

Great.

Now, while I appreciate and support my children’s desire to express their creativity, and there’s a lot that I will do for them just out of sheer love and affection, but I’m not wild about the idea of having a pottery wheel in my house. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the housekeeping as it is – I’m not so sure I want to invite MORE mud, dirt, and dust into the environment, you know what I’m saying? That being the case, I have spent a good portion of the morning working out a compromise and trying to find pottery classes to sign her into.

I’m surprised by how difficult a hunt this is turning out to be, actually. There is no shortage of places which specialize in painting pottery – shops where the walls are lined with unglazed plates, bowls, pitchers, figurines and various other bits of ceramic-y goodness which a customer chooses, paints with whatever color glazes he or she desires, then hands over to the staff who fires the pieces and gives them back a week later all shiny and colorful. There are at least three such shops within local calling distance of my house, as a matter of fact, but none of them deals in the actual creation of the pieces. No one’s got pottery wheels in the back where people can get all muddy while making their own plates, bowls or platters.

There’s a crafters’ guild in a nearby town that does offer pottery classes, but these are geared specifically toward the adult; the courses run for six to eight weeks a piece and are held on weeknights from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. I’d be more than willing to pony up the $200 asking price for the classes, but I can’t have Beanie up that late on school nights, even if the instructor were willing to take in a 7 year old student.

I may have hit paydirt with one of the paint-your-own places, though. I was on the phone, explaining what I was looking for to a lovely woman who apologized profusely while telling me that they didn’t offer classes. The owner of the shop overheard the conversation and interrupted with the fact that, while they don’t offer pottery lessons, they do rent space to someone who does! They’re going to get in touch with that gentlemen, ask him if he’s got any small-person classes coming up in his schedule, and get back to me, hopefully by the end of next week!

Wish us luck!