– Creek Road Pottery LLC Newsletter – August 16th, 2026 –
Hello from rural Pennsylvania, where the Art of the Abingtons tour, at No. 27 Cafe event is on its last day, and the Harford Fair is underway. I am running on the kind of sleep schedule that only makes sense to someone who fires kilns for a living. The last two weeks have been the busiest stretch of the year so far. A decade of running this pottery as a business finally turned a corner into something that feels more like a daily practice, and the timing could not have been better with two shows landing back to back.
This newsletter covers the run from early August through the Abington show and into the fair. The theme is simple even when the schedule was not: show up anyway, catch the mistakes early, and trust that the work adds up even when you cannot see how it will all come together until it does. You only need one good pot to say, “Look what I made. I hope you enjoy it in some way.” Here is the full report. Do not try this hectic schedule at home.
Plant the Tree Today
We might wait a long time for the perfect time. The perfect time may never come. Creating can be thought of like planting a fruit tree. The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago if you want loads of apples. The next best time was yesterday. If you have never planted one, the best time is now. Waiting for the perfect time, or waiting until you are ready, might also be a way to hide. Doing new things we might mess up can be uncomfortable, but if we waited until we were good at walking before we started to walk, we would all still be crawling around.
There is no such thing as being perfect, just making the good better. Even if you are messing things up, at least you are trying, which is far better than all those who just thought about trying and never did. That thought turned out to be more than a nice idea this month. It became the reason I finally sat down at the wheel as a daily habit instead of a deadline response.
Ten Years In, Still Not a Practice
I have been running this pottery as a business for ten years, and somewhere along the way I realized the pots themselves were never actually the practice. The deadlines were. I would say every time I had a hard time getting work out for shows, that having an inventory would help me make better decisions, and then I would do fine anyway and always wish I had more. But maybe good enough is good enough, and done is better than perfect. So I decided it was time, ten years in, to finally make pottery a practice the same way the writing became one two and a half years ago.
The first night of that decision produced fourteen bowls, made tired after a full shift at the factory, made because I said I would rather than because a show demanded it. Epictetus said the faculty of walking is confirmed by walking. I had been walking toward being a potter for a decade by making pots when I had to. That first night I started walking toward it by making pots because I decided to. Those are different roads through the same studio.
Six Mugs In
Practice comes with mistakes, and one night while attaching handles I noticed something was off and made the call to stop rather than push through and ruin a whole batch. I have messed up a whole batch before, and it taught me that a mistake many times is not as big a problem as long as the next decision you make is to correct it. When making pots, I have my own standards for what a good pot might be. I have no idea what a good pot actually is, only a little about what it is not, and that view keeps changing as I gain experience.
After discovering my mistake, I took a break, then went back and discarded all the pots where I had made the bottoms too thin. I was distracted while throwing and pushed too far into the bottom. It did not take long to correct, and I saved myself the cost of firing pots that would have cracked. I caught it six mugs in rather than at sixteen or twenty. Error embracing has its place too. Chattering on pots likely started as a mistake from dull trimming tools or clay that was too dry, and now it is used intentionally as a design texture. The trick is knowing which mistakes to fix and which ones might become part of the work.
Firing Through Thunder
The four-day streak of making pots a daily practice ran straight into a bisque firing with thunder rolling in the distance. I have fired in the rain before, so it was nothing new, and since these were bisque firings they did not need the close monitoring that glaze firings demand. The rule holds as long as all the moisture is out of the pots before they go in. I learned that lesson years ago at three in the morning during a stretch so difficult I nearly quit the whole thing. Nothing since has compared to that night, which means every hard firing since has felt manageable by comparison.
Many of my hardships come from my own procrastination, not making pots consistently enough to build real inventory. That has changed. The kilns fired out fine despite the thunder, and the next task was glazing before the morning firing, light colors first, then cobalt, then iron last, since iron and cobalt stain everything they touch.
Thirty-Six Hours
The stretch that got the work to the Abington show tested every part of the new practice. After a full night shift I loaded the updraft gas kiln and started the small kiln for the raku pieces, ate a quick breakfast, and drank two cups of strong dark coffee to stay upright. Four of six raku pieces survived without cracking, bringing the total to seven for the event. The large kiln came down around 3 p.m., thirty-six hours after I had last slept. A five-hour nap got me back up to clean the raku pots and spray the finish, then it was on to setting knots into wood-fired shave brush handles with two-part epoxy.
From experience, I plan for the worst and hope for the best, so before the large kiln was even unloaded I pulled and cleaned pots already in the shop in case of a total loss. Back to bed at 9 p.m., up again at 4 a.m. to pack while the kiln was still cooling. By 6 a.m. the pots from the large firing were unloaded, checked, crated, and loaded in the car. The Abington venue already had a beautiful 360-degree display stand set up right by the door, which felt like a vacation after the week I’d had. By 9 a.m. I was set up with a coffee, waiting for the first people who cared to see the pots. Somehow it all came together. I am still not entirely sure how.
I hope everyone is having a great start to the end of summer. Every comment, visit, and bit of encouragement is most helpful to hear. Be sure to keep making work that matters for the people who care and pick yourself rather than waiting to be picked. Life is far to short not to.
Until next time,
Alford Wayman
Artist/ Owner
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