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Well, I must never ever do this again!  That is:  leave my blog unwritten for so long!  It's been incredibly difficult to get going again with it.  I don't know where to start...  Just launch into it I guess.... and ramble on, as usual...

The 'Thinking, Out of the Box' project, detailed previously, resulted in a mix of success and failure.  I didn't exactly end up with the finished work I'd anticipated.  The main problem was with the decals of the various 'doodles';  these were pretty disappointing because they arrived from the printer in a size which required a microscope to be able to see their detail!  I had some of them reprinted, but the cost of having them re-done meant that I couldn't really get them all printed as I'd wanted. The second problem was that I didn't make any 'spare parts' in case of breakage, and, as I was putting my final piece together, a fellow student accidently knocked it over and one of the sides broke in two!  To be honest, I wasn't devastated by this event - the work was pretty poor anyway.  And all was not lost: I liked my original idea and at some point I should revisit it, and try and make the box again.  Also, because I'd done vast amounts of research and testing during the project, I got a pretty good mark.  Actually, when it came down to it, I didn't really mind that much about the mark either:  this was my favourite project so far and I learnt so much along the way that (cheesy as it may sound!) that was reward enough in itself. 

So, I'm well into a new project now...  but I'll blog about that later.  (At least that's the intention!)

One other ceramics-related task I had to complete during November was the completion of a 'wedding present' that I'd put together for Eileen (my mother) and Keith (my step-father) when they finally got around to getting hitched after 27 years of 'living in sin'.   They had a wonderful wedding ceremony in a beautiful suite in the Dorchester Hotel in London with just 32 guests made up of immediate family and close friends.  I had the idea of making some ceramic tiles and getting the guests to secretly decorate them for Keith and Eileen, and include messages of good wishes, etc.  I can't really take full credit for this idea:  I'd participated in a similar activity when Jane, the teacher from my first ceramics nightclass went off to get married and left Newcastle in 2008.  Her colleague, and close friend, Christine Constant had encouraged all of Jane's students to make similar ceramic tiles for her.  I thought it was a wonderful idea!

Anyway, we ended up with 16 tiles, many decorated by the children in the family.  Although these were presented to Eileen and Keith on the day of their wedding, they were (finally!) properly mounted in a frame as a 1st anniversary gift.