Happy New Year!

How I like the quiet morning hours of New Year's Day! It's this time again of making resolutions and although I don't like this as I seem to lack a spirit of optimism, I can't avoid to think about some. In the past year I made some ceramics I'm very proud of and I received some positive feedback I'm very grateful for. (Some of these items did not show up here in their finished state yet, so my first resolution should be to take photographs of my finished stuff!)

My list of things to try has grown longer and I'd like to carry out some designs I have cooking in my mind for a long time. I'm keen to work more with glass (The fascination doesn't fade!) and I'd like to try throwing on the potter's wheel again.

It's also time for my annual booklist, this year a lot shorter than intended because there have been months that went by without me reading a single line. My favourites have been the hilarious stories by Max Goldt and for a serious and thought-provoking read I also recommend Victor Klemperer's LTI. I hope to read more good books in 2010!

Books 2009

Vivi Edström - Astrid Lindgren
Bernhard Schlink - Der Vorleser
Carl Amery - Hitler als Vorläufer
Max Goldt - Der Krapfen auf dem Sims
Max Goldt - Für Nächte am offenen Fenster
Alistair Moffat & Colin Baxter - Remembering Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Monika Krumbach - Schmuckideen für Keramik
Norah C. Gillow - William Morris. Designs and Patterns
Jill Duchess of Hamilton, Penny Hart & John Simmons - William Morris. Gartenkunst und Ornament
Michel Lorblanchet - Höhlenmalerei
Peter Kunze - Durch die Jahrhunderte. Kurze Darstellung der sorbischen Geschichte
Ulrich Krempel & Susanne Meyer-Büser (Hrsg.) - Garten der Frauen
Victor Klemperer - LTI
Julia Friedrichs - Gestatten: Elite
Winfried Glatzeder - Paul und ich
Max Goldt - Ä
David Sedaris - Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Stefan Koldehoff - Van Gogh. Mythos und Wirklichkeit
Michel Foucault - Über Hermaphrodismus
Ulrike von Stokar - Malen auf Keramik. Techniken und Dekore
Alasdair Gray - The Ends of our Tethers
Waslaw Nijinsky - Ich bin ein Philosoph, der fühlt. Die Tagebuchaufzeichnungen in der Originalfassung
Max Goldt - QQ
Michel Onfray - Der sinnliche Philosoph
Penelope Curtis - Barbara Hepworth
DLA Piper Series - The Twentieth Century. How it looked and how it felt
Claude Lévi-Strauss & Didier Eribon - Das Nahe und das Ferne
Judith Nesbitt - Peter Doig
Germaine Greer - The Boy
Lars Distelhorst - Judith Butler
Hannelore Bublitz - Judith Butler zur Einführung
Klaus Huhn - Wahrheiten über Gorbatschow
Michel Onfray - Wir brauchen keinen Gott
Ariel Levy - Female Chauvinist Pigs

A Pot and a Book

This week I made a pot in class but I forgot to take a picture. One of my friendly helpful mates rolled the clay for me and then I pressed a doily into the surface of the slab, cut it into a rectangle and wrapped it around a newspaper-covered plastic pipe and attached the bottom. I smeared the pattern when I put the seam together and when I had to shorten the slab to arrange it to fit, so my pot won't look that nice. I intend to use it on my balcony for flowers once it is finished and this time it doesn't matter that much to me if it has some flaws, although I usually want everything to be done especially careful and neat.

Another one of my friendly claymates lent me a deeply interesting book about ceramic jewellery. She said she had to think of me immediately when she saw this book. This is so nice! It contains many useful tips and I think I can learn a lot from it. It's influence might be visible here sometime soon.

My annual Booklist

It's time to look back a little and doing this I'm very, very glad that I started taking pottery classes last year! It's something I thoroughly enjoy and I even think I'm really good for an absolute beginner with aching hands and very little practice. The coolest (or rather hottest) thing I did last year was melting glass. Okay, it happened in the kiln, but still... (Really, I'm totally proud of this fact. I melted glass, woohoo!)
My New Year's resolutions are quite the same as last year: I'd like to do crafty stuff as often as possible (and I want to get better with my pottery) and I'd like to read more books (or at least as many as last year). As I have the bad habit to put my booklists online, here's my list of books I read in 2008 with my favourites being Virginia Woolfs "Mrs Dalloway", that I reread after a long time, Herman Melville's ambigiuous "Pierre" and Richard Dawkins' atheistic educational pamphlet.

Books 2008

Georg Schramm - Lassen Sie es mich so sagen
Ian McEwan - Atonement
Eva-Maria Metcalf - Astrid Lindgren
Walter Womacka - Farbe bekennen
Lisa Moos - Das erste Mal und immer wieder
Fiona Davidson - Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Emily Brontë - Wuthering Heights
Eric J. Hobsbawm - Nationen und Nationalismus
Roger Willemsen - Afghanische Reise
Stephen Fry - The Hippopotamus
Daniela Dahn - Demokratischer Abbruch
Rolf Hochhuth - McKinsey kommt & Moliéres Tartuffe
Georg Vobruba - Entkoppelung von Arbeit und Einkommen. Das Grundeinkommen in der Arbeitsgesellschaft
Bruce J. Dierenfield - The Civil Rights Movement
Alex Hannaford - Scissor Sisters
John Henry Mackay - Die Anarchisten
Patricia Highsmith - Carol
Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway
Zadie Smith - On Beauty
Naomi Klein - No Logo!
Helmut Blazek - Rosa Zeiten für rosa Liebe
Matthias Arnold - Van Gogh und seine Vorbilder
Tatjana Rasina u.a. - Die Volkskunst der Sowjetunion
Shuichi Kato - Geheimnis Japan
Shirin Ebadi - Mein Iran
Banksy - Wall and Piece
Fjodor Dostojewski - Der Idiot
Albrecht Müller - Die Reformlüge
Herman Melville - Pierre oder die Doppeldeutigkeiten
Wolfgang Herzberg - Gerry Wolff. Die Rose war rot
Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street and other stories
Ralf Husmann - Nicht mein Tag
Robert Hughes - Lucian Freud. Gemälde
Jean-Louis Ferrier - Paul Klee
Wolfgang Hütt - Walter Womacka
Jutta Ditfurth - Was ich denke
Charlotte Roche - Feuchtgebiete
Jutta Ditfurth - Durch unsichtbare Mauern
Phil Braham - Naked Men
Milan Kundera - Die unerträgliche Leichtigkeit des Seins
Pierre Restany - Hundertwasser
Charlotte & Peter Fiell - Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Měrćin Nowak-Neumann - Meister Krabat, der gute sorbische Zauberer
Patrick Bade - Lempicka
Jürgen Miermeister - Rudi Dutschke
Will Pryce - Die Kunst der Holzarchitektur
Helmut Kuhn - Arm, Reich - Und dazwischen nichts
Alice Schwarzer & Barbara Maia - Liebe Alice! Liebe Barbara!
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion
Niki de Saint-Phalle - Der Tarot-Garten
Brigitte Reinhardt (Hrsg.) - Niki de Saint-Phalle. Liebe, Protest, Phantasie
Marjane Satrapi - Persepolis
Max Goldt - Vom Zauber des seitlich dran Vorbeigehens

Soothing Sewing

Here's a picture that combines sewing with polymer clay. I took it because I think the colours of the threads go so well with those of my bowl. Especially the orange looks so lush with the pink and purple and blue hues.
(It's the bowl I named 'Tapio'. You may have noticed I started to give my creations cheesy names because I thought it's much nicer than calling them 'big bowl' or 'tiny bowl'. Whenever I look at this one, it reminds me of Tapio Wirkkala for some reason. I have no idea why, but it seems my brain sees a connection. So this one's called 'Tapio' now.)

I'm doing a little more sewing in small and slow steps at the moment to test how much I can do at a time without straining my wrists too much and I really enjoy it. When I'm claying I concentrate so hard on what I'm doing that I feel exhausted somehow. Sewing is so mind-relaxing! It works very well to distract me from brooding over troubles and political stuff, which can be quite depressing.

I read "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë in the past few days. I got the book more than a year ago but the motivation to read it just now is very sad and grim. The book's cover illustration shows a tombstone inscribed with the name Heathcliff, the character Heath Ledger was named after. I was really shocked when I learned he is dead. It feels so wrong and still it doesn't sink in really and I feel weird at the thought, that tens of thousands of people die much more gruesome deaths each day, yet I am so touched by the tragic of this one, although I only ever saw one of his films. But I saw "Brokeback Mountain" a lot of times and it means as much to me as a film can do.

Nureyev and Me

It's my pain anniversary today. I wondered if I should mention it in my blog. Nobody likes to read about pain and suffering. Things like that disturb and don't fit in a world in which a human being has to be efficient. But hey, my blog is about my struggles and pain is a big part of me and it shaped me. I'm unproductive, slow and weak and need far too much help, but it's my experience that other people have more problems to accept this than I have. 15 years ago, same weather as today, freezing rain, I had a little accident with serious consequences. Rudolf Nureyev died at the same day. I still remember when it was in the news and although I never was his fan, I feel connected. ( I rather prefer Vaslav Nijinsky who turned mad, which in my opinion might be the only sane reaction to the society we live in.) My hands and arms hurt since Nureyev is dead! Does this sound too melodramatic?

Everybody is talking about New Year's resolutions these days, but I don't
have any. I'd just like to do crafty stuff as often as possible and I want to read more books again. Here's my list of the books I read in 2007. Usually I put those lists on my website, but unfortunately it suffers from lack of updates for far too long now and needs a relaunch.

Books 2007

Robert W. Connell - Der gemachte Mann
Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty
Edward Lucie-Smith - Erotik in der Kunst
Robert Merle - Moncada
Werner Alberts - Uta Ranke-Heinemann
Michel Foucault - Das Leben der infamen Menschen
David McCullough - 1776
John Berger - Albrecht Dürer
Pierre Radvanyi - Jenseits des Stroms ~ Erinnerungen an meine
Mutter Anna Seghers
Isabelle Anscombe - Arts & Crafts Style
Stefana Sabin - Ethel Rosenberg
Henri-Pierre Roché - Jules und Jim
Alasdair Gray - A History Maker
Bertha von Suttner - Die Waffen nieder!
JT Leroy - The Heart is deceitful above all Things
Eric Frey - Schwarzbuch USA
Christine Orban - Eine Liebe der Virginia Woolf
Norman Mailer - Heiliger Krieg: Amerikas Kreuzzug
Jeanine Warnod - Valadon
Hanif Kureishi - Intimacy
Suzanne Raitt - Vita & Virginia
Alasdair Gray - Unlikely Stories, Mostly
Gavin Miller - Alasdair Gray ~ The Fiction of Communion
Alice Schwarzer - Die Antwort
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Willa Sibert Cather - My Antonia
Marc Heiremans - Murano-Glas im 20. Jahrhundert
Helmut Ricke & Ulrich Gronert (Hrsg.) - Glas in Schweden 1915-1960
Keith Cummings - A History of Glassforming
Nikita Woronow - Sowjetisches Kunstglas
Rudolf Hoffmann - Thüringer Glas aus Lauscha und Umgebung
Helmut Ricke - Neues Glas in Deutschland
Ouzi Dekel - Intifada ~ Zwischen den Fronten
Arlene Hirschfelder - Native Americans
Kathleen Berton Murrell - Russland
Christian Brandstätter - Design der Wiener Werkstätte 1903-1932
David Cathers - Stickley Style