When Left Alone at the Gallery

I don't know if it is a Monday thing or a January thing or a Monday in January thing.  I have "worked" the gallery the last 2 Mondays.  (The quotes are because Jeff does most of my gallery work for me. Today is a holiday, so I actually got to open the store and hang out today.)  It is now one and a half hours before closing on the second day and I've made one sale.  I hoped that since today is beautiful and a holiday that we would have more traffic than last week, but it hasn't happened.

Since I wasn't swamped with customers, I have had time to calculate the sales tax that needs to be sent to the NC Department of Revenue from Susan Jones Pottery and to update my blog (twice now).  Once Jeff came in about lunchtime, I was able to sneak away to take my car to the mechanic to see why it is making that noise (a bad wheel bearing (sp?)) and to run over to the studio to finish up a few pieces that I started over the weekend.  Those last two little errands were made possible by the fact that everything is within easy walking distance here in lovely Uptown Shelby.

Since I don't have anything else pressing to do at the moment, here are a couple of pictures of what I finished up today:

The next two pieces were finished up on Saturday, but I hadn't yet shared pictures of them yet.  These are thrown all in one piece and then cut apart and trimmed so that the lid fits. I think they are kind of cool and I hadn't made any since last year.

I don't like the shape of this one as much as the first, but I did some fun stuff with a metal rib while it was wet that has promise I think. 

The view from the top...

I've got to work on the weight of these.  They all end up being pretty heavy.  There's a balance between strong enough to support the stress of closing the top part up and thin enough that they aren't heavy.  I haven't managed to hit that balance yet.  Must practice more.