There she was at the farmers market...

... selling pottery. Oh, I so do not want that to be me. I will need to work up the courage to do something like this eventually, but the thought of dragging around a box of my work to try to sell to strangers leaves my stomach in my throat.

It was a frustrating day in other ways as well. I had spent a few hours last week gathering and purifying some clay from my back yard. There is a place that was recently excavated down well below the top soil, so the clay is pretty much as it was left by nature some gazillion years ago. It took an especially long time because I was using far too small a screen to filter out the debris, and stones. I had it under the deck drying out on a piece of drywall. Bright and early this morning I went to move it and it just rolled off >kersplat< right into a huge pile of leaves. I guess it was still wetter than I anticipated. Yes, I know they have it in better forms from a store. I was thinking I would like to make my pottery from here, where I live. That is... at least some of it, and if only a small fraction of the clay. I will try again tomorrow with a fresh dig. My classes start next week, so I wanted to have it available to add into some of my work if at all possible.

The boys have a gymnastics class on Saturday mornings, so I looked up an art store to visit for the hour that the boys are occupied. It turned out that the Google map link was entirely bogus, which we realized as we examined carefully how to get there. When we arrived back at the gym, Christian had fallen hard on his knee and so was in pain when he put weight on that leg. It did not appear to be too swollen, and by feeling around the muscles he did not indicate any pains. So we thought to give it some time to see if it would pass. So we went to Hopkins to do some shopping. Angel had a store she was interested in looking at, and I remembered there was a very nice shoe and boot store. I need to get some pull on leather boots, with steel toes if possible for welding and casting metal. I guess its a bad thing for hot metal to melt or burn through your laces and then into the top of your foot. Christian required carrying from place to place and was in a pretty pitiful state. The stores I remember are gone. In fact, the only establishments that seems to have survived that I remember are either bars or antique shops. Neither are of much interest to me. I guess this is partly due to all the renovation done on main street Hopkins, and partly due to the changing nature of shopping due to the internet.

I also recalled that there was a hobby store in the area, but it turns out it moved as well and has changed its entire focus to RC toys, and model building. The best they had for painting was children's by the numbers sets. So, for me the trip was a waste of time. We went home, and Angel took Christian to the doctor.

All in all, a frustrating day for each of us.