Tuesday 7 August 2007

What A Day!

I spent most of yesterday working on my new blog. I'm not very computer literate so it took me quite a long time to figure out how to do all the things I wanted to do but I think I got there in the end.

Yesterday morning I decided to get out Josh's potters wheel that he got for his birthday in June. The kids have been dying to have a go with it for ages but have always remembered about it at the most inconvenient times. So the plan was to make the pots in the morning and then for them to be dry enough to paint in the afternoon. I could then let them get on with painting while I did some more work on the Papercraft Junkies challenge.

Well, the instructions said to knead the clay until it was soft but not fluid, sounds simple enough?! After about half an hour of kneading I was still no closer to having soft clay than I was when I first got it out of the packet and my hands were starting to cramp up. I decided to add some water to see if that would help and luckily it did. So with the clay now soft and ready to use I called Josh back into the kitchen. He'd wandered off to watch TV after realising that the kneading was going to take a little longer than expected. He sat down at the table, put his foot on the pedal, hands in position and he was off. He was doing really well until he got his fingers in just the wrong position and then, within seconds, the whole thing fell apart!

Now anyone who knows Josh knows he doesn't like to fail. He thinks that if he's not excellent at something straight away then that's it he's no good and he can't do it. I think it's only fair to point out at this stage that Josh is mildly autistic and this makes him see the world rather differently to you or I. Josh looks at other people doing things and thinks that because they can do something well, he should be able to too. He doesn't understand that everyone has different talents or that some people are good at what they do because they've been doing it for a long time or have spent a long time practising or are just blessed with a natural talent. So for Josh not being able to do the pot perfectly first time it was just the worst thing ever! He stormed off saying things like I can't do anything and it's too hard and I hate it, rah rah rah!!

Josh soon got engrossed in Scooby-Doo on the tv and forgot about his "do" with the potters wheel. With the Josh crisis averted I called Ellie in, who proceeded to make a fantastic pot, first time, no bother (smarty pants!) I then had the idea that if I could make a pot for Josh then they would both have something to paint in the afternoon as originally planned. However it soon became clear that Joshua gets his pottery skills (or rather lack of them) from me, as two hours later I was still trying. I even tried to persuade Ellie to make another one for Josh but she said her hands were too tired! I eventually managed to make something without it breaking, getting a hole in it or just it collapsing in a big heap, but by this time the clay was so wet that I couldn't get the blooming thing off the potters wheel. I used the special wire thing to slice through the bottom but that little pot wasn't moving for all the tea in China. I eventually got hold of it and tried to slide it off that caused it to go all misshapen again but there was no way I was going to put it back on the wheel and start again so I just smoothed it all back into shape as much as possible and put it in the sun to dry. It looks more like the leaning Tower of Pizza than a pot but at least Josh now has something to paint. The only problem now is that I had to get the clay so wet in order to be able to do anything with it that they're still not dry. I think we may have to put off painting them until the weekend!

On the plus side though I did manage to do some more work on my Papercraft Junkies challenge. The children went off upstairs to play on the PlayStation while I tidied up the kitchen and as it took a little less time than I thought (given all the clay everywhere!!) I found I still had time to set up my Cricut and have a play before I needed to start making the tea - always a bonus! So "the challenge" is still a work in progress but I feel I'm a little closer to completion now.

And these are the said pots. I'll leave you to guess which one Ellie did and which is my leaning tower!!



I'm going to go and do some more work on "the challenge" now.......

No comments: