Pottery Sales

Being Thankful

Day Two

Today I sold my pottery at the 100K Farm, Fresh and Homemade Market in Huntsville.

I signed up for the season, June 15 to Oct 12.  I knew I would not be able to make every Saturday morning. Going with Dave to his motorcycle events and summer in general I'd miss a few. On the civic holiday Saturday I sold at the Windermere Garden Center's craft show and flea market instead.  Last year was my first year in this 5 year old craft show.  With the down turn in the economy and a hot day my sales were almost the same as last year, pretty good.  We have seen a lot of rainy days this summer so I don't blame the cottagers for staying on their dock instead of coming to the market.

This Saturday was the fifth time I have been able to attend at the 100K Market. The weather was cool and rainy, something to be thankful for. You might wonder why I would be thankful for another cool wet day in August.  As I mentioned in the previous paragraph hot weather keeps the cottagers away.  Today they were out in their rain gear and fancy umbrella's of all colors and designs.  It would have been interesting to see this sea of color from above. 

Every Saturday I have sold at least a couple of items. Today I had the best sales of the season - two of my pitchers and a flower vase along with a few small items. This is a picture of my pitcher.  The color is not as dark green as it should be, because I took it in the evening inside.  Natural light shows a truer color.  All my pitchers are this shape with a variety of glazes on them.   I am thankful for all the sales I have gotten, today and always.  God has blessed me with an amazing gift of making pottery and decorating it.  My mind swirls with ideas, too numerous to do.  Never a lack of creating.

Not only was I blessed with sales, but I also had a friend who has slowed down in making pottery, due to health and age.  A couple of years ago she gave me several buckets of her recycled clay.  I have gotten through half of them.  She is moving to her daughter's down south on Wednesday and only wants to take some of her old clay with her.  She blessed me with old clay and her glazes today.  Dave kept hauling bags and buckets out to the truck until it was full.  I have enough clay for a year or maybe more.  The pottery supply places won't be seeing much of me for a while.

With the sales today and the clay God has blessed me in my calling.

Much to be thankful for today.

Thankful for Jesus, Healing and Hospitalty

It takes 40 days to make or break a habit.

I hear people complaining more than I like to, even me.  I want to blog about something I am thankful for every day for one year.  There will be times I will not have access to the internet or my computer, those days I will be thankful that I am probably traveling. Hopefully in 40 days I'll be thankful enough that I won't notice the negative, for there is negative and positive in everything. We have a choice to see the negative or the positive.

Day One

I am thankful that as a child I accepted Jesus and as an adult I began to follow him. Without Jesus in my life my family might not be Christians and I wouldn't be who I am. 

I am thankful that Jesus has healed my insecurity so I am no longer afraid of people.  Today I am thankful we were able to drive in the truck to Barrie to get some shopping done and meet our new motorcycle distributor.  I am thankful for my gift of hospitality which helped me to be comfortable with Steve and Anett. 

One Day Too Soon

A few years ago I made this square plate or tray. 

The glaze runs therefore I did not glaze down to the bottom of the tray.  At craft shows many people picked it up looked at the bottom and put it down.  It was also for sale on my Etsy site. 

Last month I decided to take my chances and glaze the outside to the bottom.  To make sure it didn't sell on the Etsy while it was in the kiln or sitting with the glaze on; of course that would be the time it sold; I took it off the list for sale. 

It turned out beautiful.  The green and blue glaze ran together just enough to creative a wavy blue and green stripe.  More than what shows here. I wish I had taken another picture of it.

Last night while cruising my Etsy I noticed  I had not reactivated it back on my site.  Two clicks of a button and it was back on.

Saturday mornings I sell my pottery at the 100 K Farm, Fresh and Homemade market in Huntsville, Ontario.  This morning a gentleman picked up the blue and green square tray and said, 'May I take this off your hands.' My kind of sale. 

If I had waited one day to put it on, would I have sold it today? Did putting it on my Etsy caused it to sell?  One never really knows, but I'm going for that it had nothing to do with it.  I believe it would have sold even if I didn't put it back on my etsy.  Although -- I have posted a listing on Etsy and then sold it locally, so maybe. What do you think?

God Stops A Truck

Some times I feel I need to open my eyes more to God's blessings.  I really won't know how much God had blessed me until I get to heaven, but for now I will count my blessings one by one.

This is a funny blessing.  My husband and I were visiting a friend we hadn't seen in 25 years. Joe was showing us his town and decided to drive by a famous person's mansion.  He dropped us off on the side of the busy road so we could take some pictures. He drove down the road to turn around to come pick us back up.  I was wondering how I would quickly get in the back seat of his two door car and not tie up the traffic.

His yellow car came around the corner with no traffic behind it.

Joe said, "You'll never believe this. A cop stopped the truck that was behind me."

I thanked God, and said, "This sort of thing happens to us a lot."

Just another way of God blessing us.

Share how God has blessed you? 

Bless the Lord Oh My Soul

For a few years I have been writing a devotion on the Etsy Christian team every second Monday of the month.  You can see them at  http://castteametsy.blogspot.ca/

I also write in a journal what God has or is putting on my heart.  I feel he wants me to share on my thoughts on my blog. 

I have always struggled with saying Bless you Lord as I feel he has everything, so why does he need my feeble blessing.

Today as I read Psalms 134, 'Come bless the Lord, All yea servants of the Lord.' I pondered what it really means to bless God. Do I go around saying bless God or is it deeper than that?


I worship God, I try to put him first in my life, to be obedient to Him and follow Him as best I can. I believe that worshiping God with my life is the same as blessing Him for that is what he desires, me.

Muskoka Lakes Art Festival

Today I worked at a day camp showing kids how to quickly sculpt an animal, pinch pots or  flowers.

One Of a Kind Kitchen Back Splash

When I was growing up I learned to sew my own clothes for 3 reasons.
   1) In those days it was the norm for girls to learn to sew.
    2) Material was .25 to 50 cents a yard, which meant I could make nice clothes really cheep.
    3)And  I like to have things that are different than what other people have, to be unique.

These days instead of sewing I make decorative and functional pottery.

 We had a pile of plain white ceramic tiles for our kitchen back splash.  Since I still gravitate to different things that others don't have I put my artistic gift  to some use.  Using China paint I decided on a theme of birds, butterflies, insects and berries and started to paint. 

After many hours and two firings in the kiln I had 10 unique tiles.  That was last summer. Once winter came Dave had some time to put my tiles on the wall. 

Now I have a unique kitchen back splash that I doubt any one else has. And all it took was imagination, several hours, paint and tiles.  If I had to pay some one to do this it would cost me several hundreds of dollars of labor time.

So what do you think of my back splash? I can't take it with me if we move, but I can make another one.