Thank you, my friends and customers. You helped make December 2014 my highest sales month this year, both on the website and in The Gallery Downstairs. I'm always looking to grow, improve, and also try to create new designs. Your interest and patronage this month gave me a real boost!
What to do now? Save or spend? I'm thinking of buying a de-airing pugmill (that is a biggie) ...more ready-made underglaze colors at $10-$40 a pint...a couple of new Bison trimming tools (a decade or so ago, they were $55 apiece)...and of course December's sales totals don't meet all those dreams. I'm getting carried away. So I will let another quarter or two go by, and try my darnedest to make good work and keep those sales going.
I figure, if I can make it to advanced age, with clay work happening in my hands, I will be happy all the way. (And seriously, a pugmill to knead and de-air my clay would really help my back and wrists along the way.) So I've got (theoretically) lots of making of work to do yet, and maybe, if I follow in the footsteps of Mikhail Zakin and Karen Karnes (Ms. Karnes is still working and showing), and that amazing Mama of Dada, Beatrice Wood, I may still have time to use that pugmill and those expensive tools, and there may yet be a good bit of time to experiment with colors and clays and forms...
Imagine that.