Sellin' in the rain

All the prognostications say it'll be fine weather for ducks. 70% chance of rain, and maybe I should stay home? Except that Jeff offered me a bunch of cracked walnuts, and wants to deliver them down at Market, and I absently agreed.

Looking at the hourly forecast Saturday morning is reassuring. Overcast, yes, but no showers till after 10 am, and an unexpected cessation of the rain at 5 pm. I've always said, if I can load in and load out dry, everything in between can be borne. So I made my lunch Friday night, brewed a thermos of hot honey lemonade (I don't drink either tea or coffee) in the morning, and headed out.

It is godawful dark at 7 am; even more so when it's overcast. I sweep all the wet magnolia leaves off my square and set up the rainy-day version of my canopy, all sides up and the special pin in the center post that keeps the roof tight, so rain runs off rather than collecting. All the empty boxes stay in the booth, rather than stacked behind. It's a little crowded, but bearable. The hardest part is not being able to see anything except right in front. Starts to feel claustrophobic after awhile, not being able to see if anyone is coming down the sidewalk. (From either direction.)

The rain does hold off until a little after 10, which gives me time to get to Farmers Market and back and even make an early sale. Once it starts, however, the people vanish. Market itself is very thin on vendors: large gaps in the center of the block, and no one at all on the east edge. In my neighborhood, there's two reserve vendors, me and Danny, plus a tie-dye, polymer clay jewelry, the mystic healer, who sells art cards on the side, and a caricaturist.

Around 10:30, I start noticing zombies drifting in from downtown. Seriously, there's this guy in rotted out fatigues, his rib cage showing through the torn shirt, Spanish moss hanging from his worn-through pants (which reveal his femurs, I swear to God). More shamblers appear, with chalk-white complexions and blood-stained COVID masks. All converge on the music stage, where, promptly at 10:45, the speakers start blasting out "Thriller," and all the zombies, vampires, and at least one pirate (?) break into dance. Yup, "Thrill the World" has returned. They gyrate through a couple of songs, then disperse, only to return again at 2 pm for another, dryer go-round.

Only at Market.

Also only at Market would I be visited by a wandering Ronin. Well, actually a wandering veterinary school student and her parents from Cincinnati. Her hoodie is gorgeously detailed to look like Japanese lacquer armor, though the hood is a little over-generous. Presumably so she can practice battle using her other senses? Or maybe the force...

Mask adherence isn't as good as previous weeks, perhaps because there's fewer students. Something I do notice repeatedly: If a group of three people walk by together, two will be wearing a mask, the third not. And it's always the guy who's not masking.

Vanessa stops in mid-morning to tell me she's put my frog bank up on the Saturday Market Instagram. A few minutes later, a young woman stops in and buys it, says it's going to live next to her pet pygmy African frog. I cross over to the info booth to tell Vanessa, come back an put out a replacement, which promptly also sells. I also sell a couple of incense dragons, and both small oval bakers, and Denise sells some watercolor cards.

Mid-afternoon, the sun actually makes an appearance, and I have hopes it'll clear up, but in half an hour, the clouds are back, darker than ever, though the rain holds off until nearly everyone is packed up. I'm folding up my roof as the first droplets begin to spit, and am halfway home before the sky opens up again.

For as slow as the day started, it actually turned out pretty well, selling slightly less than half of last week's admittedly exceptional total.

Parallel

Wheel-throwing potters get understandably bored with circles after awhile. They're so easy, and everybody's doing them! Like my colleagues, I fiddled around with breaking the tyranny of the wheel at varying points in my career. Some of my experiments stayed, like squared and oval bakers, and my stick butter dishes.

Others, like parallelogram vases, have fallen along the wayside. But I was recently asked to make one again, a companion to a piece I made years ago commemorating a fellow KLCC dj's doggy, so I had to dust off my thrown-and-altered-pottery skills.

First, you throw a cylinder with no bottom, to the desired height and circumference. Clean up the rim and shape it with your chamois (a thin, soft piece of leather that gets very slippery when wet). Squeeze some water onto the bat, inside and outside of the cylinder, then run your cutting wire underneath, cutting it free and pulling some water with it. This allows you to slide the clay freely across the bat as you reshape the pot. Using the bat pins a guides, run your finger from bottom to top along the inside, creating the first two corners.

Measure an equal distance from each and do it again, creating a parallelogram. Roll out a slab of clay for the base and let both firm up overnight. The next day, score and slip the two pieces together, and cut off the excess bottom slab about half an inch from the side with a wood knife, angling it slightly toward the wall underneath.

Flip the pot over and paddle the slab onto the walls, beveling outward on the edges. Follow with a wet chamois, folding the excess clay in on itself and sealing the join. Flip the pot upright and attach coils to pull to make crock handles.

Dry slowly, to prevent the bits from wanting to crack and separate.