Thursday, January 28, 2010

Putting Things Into Perspective

When things go wrong, I get upset for one reason or another, and at that very moment it seems like the absolute worst thing that could ever happen, I'm reminded that it can always be worse. In my own life, having survived Hurricane Andrew, I know first hand what it's like to have your house destroyed by wind and rain - but we rebuilt, we had insurance and we had a place to evacuate to after the storm passed. Sure we lost a lot of our possessions, but it tought us an important lesson - it's just stuff. Everything was OK. Even when you think it's the worst that it can possibly be, it can always be worse.

Well, for the folks that live in Haiti it's about as bad as it can get and a lot of people are realizing that as residents of this planet we need to come together to try to help. There's been a group on Etsy.com that has started up a shop called Hearts for Haiti. Members of the Etsy selling community are donating items for sale. The shop has raised a tremendous amount of money in a very short period of time. As of the writing of this post the shop has sold 1,660 items. There's a lot to choose from and new items are being listing daily. It's a great way for those of us in the Etsy community to make a small difference, that collectively has the potential to make a big difference.

http://www.facebook.com/heartsforhaiti

http://etsyforhaiti.blogspot.comhttp://

http://www.etsy.com/shop/heartsforhaiti

Friday, January 22, 2010

It Breaks My Heart






The process of working in clay and making your way through the various stages of development can be so tricky. Things go wrong. This is one peice that broke my heart. There's a pair of sunglasses adorning the fish. The arm of the sunglasses broke. I tried to repair it and in the firing the two pieces stayed together, just slipped ever so slightly to make a definite crack. The crack is covered with glaze, but the underlying crack is visible. Now, I don't like to sell flawed pieces, but I love this teapot so much and don't have the heart to smash her for the mosaic makers. So, I'm doing something that I don't normally do, I'm selling her as a "factory second." A lot of people wouldn't notice the flaw, but I know that it's there and that's all that matters in my book.