on being, not doing

I do a lot.

I keep getting this feeling that there are so many things I want to knit, and learn about knitting, that it could go on forever and ever. I do not doubt this feeling. It could go on forever. Things left for me to learn: modular; fair isle; entrelac; colorwork; socks. Crochet, I guess. And "ssk" -- that awful slip two stiches, knit them together maneuver. Why not just knit two together, I ask again and again.

So, I do a lot, for sure.

I think it's time to make bread again. Make mobiles. Make pinch pots. Fingerpainting with black fingerpaint on really big paper sounds good, too. Touching, like that article's title that Maria Schutt gave me years ago: "everything we touch is touching us."

I learned to throw clay in the fall, five years ago. Maybe it's the cold and dry weather that keeps getting me. I'm ready for the skin on my knuckles to split open, to wear Patagonia fleece only -- because the cuffs are elasticized well, and I could shove them up to my elbows, while keeping a bit of core body heat. To wear one pair of pants for a month until they're so covered in slip, I could probably fire them and get a shell shaped like cordoroy.

And the hum of that standing kick wheel. How my hiking boots were made for the kick, how the millstone bottom would spin forever, how the throwing platform had concentric circles to help with sizing, and that perfect middle, where the post was that connected to the millstone, where the platform went concave for a minute. Where my fingers always found the center of the lump and pulled it open.

Don't even give me a kiln, maybe. Just start me with clay.

Besides, what good would an electric kiln that fires to cone 10 do me, when all I want is reduction firing and the copper hazes it makes? Or at least raku? I could build a raku kiln, I guess, if I had a gas line. Or I could ... no, I wouldn't really want to use an electric, open it up when it was super-hot, and throw pots into metal garbage cans full of newspaper and leaves and feathers and horsehair. Not a top-loading kiln, at least. That sounds terrifically dangerous and full of imminent burns.

Could I make burnished terra cotta pots, smoke fire them? I feel like one would need a lot of wood and space to make a fire hot enough to smoke fire pots. But those would be cool. Super-black and smoky. Good for mugs, maybe.

Let's start with breath and sleep and balanced meals. Let's start with a late lunch.