Where are They Now? Serving trays, mugs, vases...

As I am making more ceramics items, I continue to find welcoming homes for the ones on my kitchen island and living room window sills, and I always ask the new owners to send me photos of them in their new home.  I'm still waiting for a few more photos, but here are the new ones I have received.

This cherry design serving tray (#27 from my Pots that Pour class) now belongs to my mother-in-law, and is adorning the side table in her dining room.  The bluish ceramic ikebana vase in front of it is not one of mine, it was made by a local artist in the Zion Canyon area of Utah.

This vase (#11 from the Pots that Pour class) also now belongs to my mother-in-law, and has become a pencil holder on her communications center desk, along with the phone and answering machine.

Remember this mug (#9 from my "Get a Grip" ceramics course), the one with the funky bumpy blue inside which I found "unappetizing", but which my youngest son - and also my husband - liked?  Well, my friend Shelley came for tea the other day, and took an interest in this mug, and next thing she knew, it had become her coffee companion :

By the way, I have wonderful friends.  I need to spend more time with them, like the recent afternoon tea I had with Shelley, Helen and Beth.  Helen made this wonderful photo mosaic of our tea, which I would like to share :

I have a pretty extensive collection of Royal Albert china plates and bowls, so didn't even need to use any of my ceramic bowls for the table.  And instead of my handmade teapots, we used 2 glass tea pots - one I bought in China, so we could view my blooming tea (see top left photo).  I was a bit disappointed, that due to the shape of it, unless it was filled very full, it tended to steam up along the top, and so the flower was most visible from the opening, not as much from the sides.  The second tea pot was a nifty auto-dispensing self-straining one which Helen brought over, and we tried one of her loose Roiboos teas.

As I have lots of ceramics nearby, I often mobilize them for one task or another, holding candies or other temporary tasks.  This globe-shaped vase came in handy for keeping some lily-of-the-valley (I have both the white ones as well as a pink variety in my garden) fresh on our bathroom counter, filling the whole room with sweet fragrance :

Tomorrow is sadly the last class in my current Clay Sampler course.  Then I don't know what to do for the summer, since I have Wednesdays off, but didn't find a class on Wednesdays.  Instead, I signed up for a 4 week course on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, but I think I'll drop it, since I already have a schedule conflict for 2 of the 8 sessions, and likely will have a few more schedule conflicts by the time the course starts.  With that many missed classes, it may not make it worth my while to take the course.  Too bad, since I was looking forward to a course with Fredi Rahn.  She is a gifted ceramic artist.  Maybe I'll just attend the Wednesday drop-in workshops, to work on more of what I've learned so far, make some of the items I've been thinking about, as well as pick up new inspiration from the other ceramics students.