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January 2026: Mile 26

  • Writer: Mary
    Mary
  • Jan 6
  • 3 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

My schedule for January feels packed. Jasper turns 5, we’re hosting a belated Christmas, there are several celebrations to attend, and kindergarten applications are due. While most of these appointments will be filled with joy, this is quite the end to a marathon of a holiday season. My dream January is a month of cozy rest, but my reality will be a white-knuckle last push to cap several weeks-long endeavors.


As a result, my intentions for January are to:

  • do my best to enjoy the actual moments of celebration and not stay stuck in prep/host mode, scurrying around, tidying, serving, etc.

  • feel grateful for what all the bustle signifies: loved ones to gather, friends to see, care in decisions, babies to parent.

  • hold off on setting goals for my pottery practice and business. I won’t have the mind space for it this month, and I like the thought of aligning this part of my life to the Lunar New Year.


Below, my standing agenda of updates for a snapshot of life lately.


Pottery

I do a poor job of keeping up with social media, but despite what my online presence would suggest, there's been a lot going on in my basement studio.


In December, I completed a last rush to get some made-to-order items out in time for gifting. I saw a modest uplift for the holiday season, enough to be encouraging but still fitting within my current production capacity. In that last batch, I made several Anji espresso cups and Brea double espresso cups, two designs that I hadn't revisited in quite some time. I rediscovered my love for them (Brea in particular), and I'm antsy to make another batch as my inventory is already moving.


Right now, I'm racing to finish a bag of Laguna B-mix 5 clay ahead of having to clean house and host on Saturday. This means dismantling the hand-building station on my kitchen counter and the wedging station downstairs, as well as tucking away my wheel, buckets of reclaim, and in-progress work. There will be a lot of sponging and mopping required, after which it becomes tempting to keep these items packed up for just a while longer. It's very nice, after all, to have our home in the rare, guest-ready state of tidiness.


With this bag of clay, I've been making canvases for the next round of Bamboo Brush collection items to have my dad paint. In the days between Christmas and New Year's, when I was off from work and day-to-day schedules were erratic, I was fortunate to have been able to squeeze in daily (sometimes twice-daily) sessions on the wheel. In addition to many mugs, I also threw my tallest vase and biggest lidded jar yet. It's been really rewarding to get consistent reps in, and I've felt myself get better and faster at every step in the process over these past two weeks.


I settled into a welcome routine of throwing, trimming, and reclaiming on repeat. Here's hoping I can keep some semblance of this up despite returning to the swing of things at the office.


In a recent break-through, I identified a major issue with the way I was making lidded jars, resulting in s-cracks forming at a discouraging rate (3 out of 4!). When throwing, a crucial step to prevent these cracks is to compress the bottom of the form. Although I was doing these per usual, I'd then wire each one off of the hump with a chunk of excess clay at the base so that, during the trimming step, I could trim away the bottom from the inside and open up a deeper vessel from the top down. The problem with that is the clay beneath where my fingers had touched wasn't compressed, making the new, lower base much more susceptible to cracking. In hindsight, this approach was a lazy shortcut to making taller jars without pushing myself to actually throw taller jars. Lesson learned for the hundredth time: there are no real shortcuts in pottery.


Potter's Corner

Here's a recipe for kiln wadding. I plan to use little bits of wadding to prop my jar lids during firing to prevent them from fusing to the base.


Garden (Windowsill Edition)

This year, I'm growing an amaryllis bulb and paperwhites on a windowsill. I'm not sure why I haven’t done this in previous years; I'd say they are now a winter-time must. It's remarkable, that little bit of brightness they bring to each day. I've loved watching them grow and form buds, and I'm excited to see them bloom.


Recipe Box

 
 
 

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