It has been a while. i won't make excuses as to why I didn't blog nor will I promise to be faithful. The truth is I just didn't want to. I haven't wanted to do anything creative since March and the anxiety of that coupled with the fact that I didn't feel like what I was doing mattered to anyone just made it difficult to get off the ground. The silence after a post can be more deafening than the noise of a crowd.
It wasn't until June that I started to feel my stride and with the failed market of July I determined even more that I will not stop. Well, here I am.
So much has been going on. I hope you have been following along in my IG stories and posts. I won't try to pile it all on now but suffice to say we have a lot to talk about. The first thing I will share with you is images from my workshops. Yes! I finally took the plunge and started offering workshops. I am fresh off the high of the last one for the year. It feels great to know what I do can enhance them. Get more highlights here

​Sorry folks no clay today.
​I`ve been on a self imposed timeout since last Sunday. This week was a whirlwind of highs and lows with the lows winning by a landslide. It started with the final mad rush of last minute preparations for the biennial sport meet for our secondary schools on Monday, which was a blast. This is where the highs ended.  OnTuesday came tiredness and post sport burnout then Wednesday...
​Wednesday needs its own paragraph. Wednesday forever changed the course of how we peerate at school and how we as women will view our relationships with men. Wednesday the incidence that we hear about but still seem a little detached from came home. We awakened to the news in the wee hours of the morning that a colleague, a friend, someone we sat across from and worked and laughed with; someone we cared about, along with her daughter and her fourteen year old friend and the landlord were all murdered because someone couldn`t take no for an answer
​It highlighted even more deeply how much at risk we females are. We are vulnerable to so many attacks whether societal, spiritual, physical, emotional...
​There was a point on Thursday as I wrestled to come to terms with it all, as I learnt of all that was stacked against her and her struggles to hold things together for her children, that I felt cursed; I felt afraid. Being female, which has always been a badge of honour for me felt like a great chain that I was shackled to. I found no solace in clay, no solace in food, no solace in family. It didn`t help that comments on social media by other women showed a total lack of compassion and awakening. It hurt deeply this lack of support for the fall of one of our own and the oblivion to the fact that this could be any one of us.
​I and my co-workers  have all been in a dark and twisty tunnel since Wednesday: Long, winding, dark and twisty. I fight against the angst, the looming depression and the sadness that is pervading as we prepare for the funerals this week.
What is the use of this tunnel? What is the sense of this darkness? Why must it be this way? All questions that have been asked before by many others and unfortunately will be asked tomorrow and  the next day and the next. I could have shared some of the pots from this week and talked clay.This is a pottery blog afterall. I just couldn`t. My art; my making is fuelled by my thoughts and the thiings that inspire me: my experiences, my senses; my emotions, my spirit. I must then use my art to effect, if possible, social change and to speak, shout, scream for my fallen sister who no longer has a voice. It`s a long post but I hope you read and l hope you don`t miss the opportunity to help someone by listening to what isn`t said, by not turning away, by not speaking ill or out of turn.  We need to support each other as females and as a race of human beings-male and female, we need to protect each other from the evil. 

A little snippet from this week to break the sombre.

This week was filled with ups and downs. The high this week was the photo shoot- the first ever, not counting the obligatory wedding shoot, with a super photographer Jason James. I must say that I was not looking forward to the whole thing but it was necessary for me to get professional images for an upcoming interview and also for any other promotional opportunities. I had sweats thinking about the whole but he promised I would have fun and I did. And he made it as short as possible. The results: some super shots, like the one shown and the editor liked them as well. I'll share just a few with you.
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​The down- and this for me is a big down- was that I lost my rhythm and neglected my planning. As a result, I missed some big opportunities because I wasn't ready and as a result of that the blog post for this week was late. I have been feeling so mentally fatigued lately that I sometimes don't know what to do with myself. I have had no energy to do anything but I feel I must establish a strong habit  and I know I haven't yet. It is sometimes so hard to manage the discipline with the feeling but to coin one of my fav child shows back then (It has changed so much now) "It's a long hard climb but I'm gonna get there"