(Added:) This little collection of my daily viewing (above) has a beautiful old inkwell bottle, a sublimely simple Dinosaur Designs tall blue bottle, a great and unusual handled bottle I brought home from France. The drawing in the background is part of an artwork from school. The turtle bowl in front was made by my mother's hands, with her beautiful drawings - I so love the feeling of this bowl, the peace it gives me to eat out of. It's filled with my morning porridge + stewed apple.

I'm finding so many beautiful ceramic artists (well, their websites - rather than the tactile realness of them), who are inspiring my creative thought process. I keep looking at these, this, and this - would love to add to my morning tea ritual, so serene and soft. Also, this little set, as well as her bowls. These whimsical designs are so cute and silly, yet solid forms of clay.

This is a great little Flickr group that I've been watching for a while. This one is a particular favourite. Though each time I look at the group I see another beautiful vessel - which has been making me notice objects around my house more. We have so many little cups, vases, bowls, jugs, bottles, boxes, trays around our house that are filled with little collections of our life. Our daily experiences, grouped into a .... well, I suppose the parts of our house do really make up parts of our life. Most people decorate their houses bit by bit, adding and subtracting - as in 'life'.

(Added:) These are some still life groupings - assorted bizarreness (two-headed doll we dug out of back yard dirt, dead butterfly + grasshopper + roses + feathers + little paper balloons + bees Ari and I made one day with metal stems. They look lovely fluttering about in the breeze).

Increasingly, I'm wanting to do something more productive with my hands. Possibly because my mind seems to be so taken up by the beautiful - yet incessant - sounds and words of my babes. While there are things I can do right here at home, I keep thinking and wanting to do some sort of ceramics course. Not so much to learn how to - though of course that's really what I need - but mainly to have the feeling of clay in my hands. And of course, the memory of my mother on her wheel and forming shapes with clay with her hands. Yet, the memory becomes more faint - as I realise I didn't really take enough notice when she was there doing it. And, as most things in life - its too late to watch her now, to appreciate the shapes forming under her warm, competent hands.

Thinking about my mother always makes me think about my own mothering. I suppose it does for everyone, yet is possibly more so when I can't speak to her about any of it. So many things I'm curious about - silly things like how old I was when walked, talked, about breastfeeding, mainly just about the fact of being a mother. Now that I have my own daughter, I feel that I'm already hoping for a relationship and friendship with her like I had with my Mum.

(Added:) I've included these two photos in the vessel Wednesday theme as sometimes I feel like a vessel, without much in it. This is my Year 12 major artwork. A plaster cast of my body, tied up. Often I feel a bit like that. There are other parts to it that I'll photograph another day. ::whoops - one just got deleted.