Last night was my first night back to pottery class in a couple of years!
I was so excited! Finally get my hands back in the mudd!

I get to class right on time.
I am "the new" person.
I have met the instructor as a craft fair in november, but she didn’t remeber me till later!

I am shown the studio and told since i did not arrive on time (mind you is was 6:32, class started at 6:30, and the 2 minutes were spent at the front desk waiting for some annoying teenager to be signed in)
I would not get a regular wheel, but would have to use a kick wheel (at which point, i was ready to just go home – i have a very nice wheel sitting in my basement).
I just stared at her. She said it would be ok and i could use her wheel. (she had to bring her own from home).
Then she showed me some re-pugged clay that i oculd use, since they did not have any clay ready for me to buy and use. I said I had some cone 10 in my car (albeit old…) and I would use that.
The clay was actually almost too hard to use, nothing i threw was any good – I threw it all out.
I started chatting with everyone, attempting to get to know them all – I was really really chatty, it was kind of bizaro.

At one point I asked about the clay that they did use.
One nice lady said, it’s pretty reasonable- only $22 for $25 pounds!
I almost spit on her! I said – WHAT? (In my head I’m thinking that is almost a buck a pound, that is fully not cost effective for me, when I throw a bout a bag a day, and sometimes if the day is not going well, the whole bag is bunk)
The head lady stopped by around then to confirm that it was $22 for the bag, but that included the glaze and firings…  (hello? )
I was a little relieved, but still not quite able to believe that it could be that much, and that was on top of the $86 dollar class,

So, let me sum up the day so far, no wheel, no clay, overly expensive clay when you can get it…  But wait there’s more….

Turns out all the lovely ladies in class are all moms of kids under 5 or so. HOLY MOLY could my day get any worse?  Sesame Street on ice is not what I want to spend my evening talking about!

Don’t get me wrong, they were totally sweet, very friendly, some even had very interesting previous lives…  But now they all are revolved around their kids, and are just happy to be out of the house…  Not really my world…

So as I continue to not be able to throw anything with my hard clay, they pull out the glazes to start glazing their currently fired items. There are only 6 buckets on the truck. I have 4 buckets of glaze at my own house right now. Hmmmm…  Colors are pretty nice, but ….   Come on now!  I guess I must be spoiled being from so-cal, pottery meca.

I decide around 8pm, I should start to call it a night. Why stress myself out with this crazy atmosphere.

So final tally – $86 for class, $22 per bag / for me that would be per class, 7 classes, extra $154, no guaranteed access to a wheel, only 6 color choices, the children’s classes get precedence over the adult classes, which also leads to the quandary – do i want children’s clay masterpieces that have the tendency to blow up in a kiln with my stuff, and we had to listen to Santana over and over and over again in the CD player.

So, I just called to ask for a refund….

Guess 10K isn’t looking so bad for the basement to get done at this point, eh?