Home time

We're heading home today. Thank you so much the wonderful people of the USA.

There's so much to write about, many pictures to show and stories to tell. I'll get them uploaded in the next day or two - we've been so busy living it all that there's been little time to write about it.

We head to the airport shortly and a long, long journey back to England. Ang left for Australia yesterday. We arrive back in London at 7.30 am tomorrow.

Our time here has been amazing, completely mind-blowing. Thank you to all the sweet people we have met on our travels, everybody has made us feel so welcome. It's all quite overwhelming.

Huge, immense, big-time thanks to our fantastic friends and hosts, Hollis and Dee, Dan, Ron and Sarah, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Ang's video from Liberty Town

Thanks Ang

A message from North Carolina

Our great American adventure continues. We're in North Carolina now, sitting in the sunshine outside Ron's house. We didn't have internet access for a few days , so I'm only just getting caught up. Our Virginia experience was fantastic, with many sweet people, who made it a special time. Not least our wonderful host, Dan Finnegan, who looked after us so well. We're missing his company - hopefully he'll be in the UK in the summer and our paths will cross again. Thank you Dan, so much.


Here's Dan during our workshop, after we set him the challenge of making some red clay pots (the properties of the clay are very different from the stoneware body that he is used to throwing). I don't think we converted him.
These are some of the lovely group of people who were at the workshop, a number of whom are bloggers too. I'll put links to their blogs in a later post.
Dan drove us two hours further south east, along the blue ridge mountains of Virginia, to Kevin Crowe's pottery, nestled in the woods at Amherst.

Kevin makes beautiful pots.
Here we met up with Ron and after a tasty chowder, a tour and a pot swap, we said our sad farewells to Dan and headed onwards to a warm welcome at Meredith Heywood's home and pottery in Whynot, North Carolina, where a group of local potters were gathered for a social evening. It was another great pleasure to meet an old friend of blog and Facebook.



This is Meredith and her husband Mark. We stayed overnight, Ang and Hannah stayed with Meredith, Ron and myself with Ron's friend, potter and pizza maker, Tom Gray.

The next day, we were joined by blogger Tracey Broom(next to Ron) - it was a delight to meet her. This tour is full of wonderful surprises, meeting people for real, that we have communicated with for years in the virtual world through blog or Facebook - some people call it all a waste of time, but I think it's amazing that the internet creates the opportunity to meet so easily with like-minded people.

Tracey and Meredith took us on a tour of some of the many potters in North Carolina. There are hundreds, rows and rows of pottery shops, lining the roads. It was a great day. I'll post pictures later - I need to sleep now, as tomorrow morning we will be presenting our final workshop in Shelby, North Carolina. This blog post has taken several days to finish as we've been pretty busy - it started three days ago in the sunshine and now it's the middle of the night.
This is tomorrow's venue. We're nervous again tonight, it'll be good to get underway in the morning.




This poster made me laugh! I'm sorry to be missing it(click on the image to enlarge)

Goodnight all

A quick note from Virginia

Hello there!!!!!

Well we made it to the States safe and well and we're having a wonderful time with fantastic, kind people.

It's been busy, busy, so I've had little time to blog and where we're staying now in Virginia has no internet, but I'll be sharing lots of pictures with you all in the forthcoming week or two. Here's

Our Cape Cod workshop went really well, in spite of our stressing and worrying. Hollis and Dee looked after us so well - they're lovely folks. we gave Hollis nightmares, literally, with all our flapping and worrying. I have some great pots that Hollis made that I'll share with you later.

You can read all about our adventures on Hollis's blog here

Here's Hannah's perspective on the events right here

We're staying in a beautiful farmhouse in Virginia for the next few days with Dan. Here's what he's saying right here

And here's a video that Ang made of the workshop at Cape Cod. You can see what Ang has to say right here

There's so much to tell, but I have to go now and prepare clay for tomorrow's workshop. We're showing short films about our lives this evening at the opening reception, so we're a little anxious right now. It'll be fine once we get going.



Our lovely hosts, Hollis and Dee
Hannah taking a paddle in Hollis and Dee's local 'pond'
The fantastic Cape Cod Potters

Hannah doing her thing
A picnic in Washington DC yesterday
The beautiful house where we're staying
Guy Wolff, who we visited on our way from Cape Cod to Virginia. It was great to meet him

Eeeeek! This is serious! I'd better go and pug that clay, bye for now, have a nice day y'all

Here we come

Today London England...........................

tomorrow Boston USA!

On my way to the USofA

Life has been crazy lately, hence my lack of blogging, with lots of very late nights and early mornings, trying to get everything done.

I'm sitting here waiting to be collected by my good friend Nic Collins. We head off this afternoon to Uppingham and the Goldmark Gallery, where Nic's exhibition opens tomorrow. It was a great privelige for me to be asked to write the essay for the catalogue, if you'd like to have look, click here. I saw the pots before they were dispatched, they're amazing.

My friend and fellow potter Paul Young wrote this of Nic in an email to me this morning, 'Nic is probably the finest potter of his generation, his work carries a strength and confidence far beyond the parameters of anything being made today.' He's absolutely right about that. I'll be meeting Paul there, it'll good to see him.

Here's an extract from the film that has been made to accompany the event.

From Uppingham, my journey continues, via my parents', to London, where I'll meet up with Hannah, then Heathrow and on to the USA. My bags are packed and I'm filled with excitement and trepidation. For a long time I've been putting it to the back of my mind. I spend my days alone in a shed in the middle of nowhere, so the prospect of being in front of a room full of people, doing what I do, is pretty scary.

I'm going to try and get back in the blogging groove and I'll share the journey. I've never been away from my family for a month before, it's going to be very strange, but thankfully the internet will help us to speak to each other, albeit virtually.

If you follow this link, you'll be able to see pictures of some of the stuff that's been happening in recent days. Check out the amazing sgrafitto harvest jug, decorated by the super talented, Andrew 'Frank' Grundon.

I have a couple of exhibitions in the UK while I'm away,

Slip at the Ruthin Craft Centre, 2nd April - 12th June

Artists of the South West, Long Room Gallery, Winchcombe, Gloucs, 9th - 17th April

Well I'm off to check that my passport is in my bag. I'll post some pictures from Nic's show soon.

Bye for now