I'm really trying to catch up on things! These are the Patreon ceramics from April... stacked book planters. I already have ideas to make more of them for the shop (hopefully before Christmas, but we'll see) where the books will look more like leather-bound tomes, with gold leaf pages. Above is part one, making the stencils and glazing. Below is part two, stenciling the titles (and the finished objects at the end). Enjoy! Thanks, y'all!

When I glazed these this time, I used the exact same colors I used the first time, but the mugs came out COMPLETELY different. Last time, a pastel. This time, SO BRIGHT. But my friend Lesley loved the color pink, so honestly I think she'd be happy with either one. I wonder what they'll look like next time, after these sell out?

Have I posted this already? Here, I mean? Y'all, I am LOSING MY MIND. I have a list of videos, and what stage I'm at on them, and where I've posted them, but every time I think I've got the list right, I confuse myself. Like, if I've checked off "posted on socials" do I mean just Facebook and Instagram, where I can post for both at the same time? Or do I also mean TikTok, that I forget about half the time? I also post to YouTube, but Widescreen, not Portrait, so that I can also write a post about them here on Snarkland, which will automagically send a link out to Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and even Tumblr (do people still use Tumblr?

This will be April, May, and June (if you missed January-March, you can read that here). As I said at the beginning of that post, WARNING: I’m going to get pretty raw, here, and say some things that I’d kept private for a while. I’m not interested in advice, I’m not interested in judgement, and I’m not interested in “well what you should have done was”. But first, holy hell, I can't believe I forgot to mention that in January (I know, everything that ever happened to anyone happened in my January), I paid off the mortgage for my property.

Recently, I said some things over on Patreon when posting a video about some ceramics I wasn't particularly thrilled with, that made me think a post like this was in order. The TL;DR is that I can't believe I was all "I feel like nothing has happened this year" at the same time I was all "holy shit this year has been a shitshow." WARNING: I'm going to get pretty raw, here, and say some things that I'd kept private for a while. I'm not interested in advice, I'm not interested in judgement, and I'm not interested in "well what you should have done was".

Earlier this year, around April and May, I worked on a custom order for a friend. I'm really hoping the above slideshow above is showing up correctly... honestly from this end it doesn't look great, and I think I won't be able to figure it out and fix it until after I post this. Wheeeeee! Sigh. I guess that's what I get for trying to cut corners; I'm tired, cranky, have a hella bad sinus headache, and still need to finish mowing the lawn as soon as the riding mower's batteries finish recharging.

RANT AHEAD! If it's one thing I have zero patience for, it's a Gatekeeper. "You're holding your yarn wrong." "You shouldn't use Gmail for your work email." "You should always make your pottery logo stamps yourself, by hand." I'm not talking about unsolicited advice (which I also ignore, fyi). I don't mean "have you thought about this" and "you know what you should do" and other random implied criticisms that you might not have thought a thing through just because you didn't launch into a twenty minute soliloquy about how you came to what you're doing (side note: the people who jump to give you unsolicited advice are usually the same people who wouldn't listen to you tell them how you got to where you are with your thing in the first place).