A visit to the Clay Cafe.

Today we took a drive to Hout Bay.

It was a trip down memory lane for me, I always love to see what has changed and what has stayed the same in the last 3 years.

Anyway, the reason for heading that way was to visit the Clay Cafe.

I, despite having worked in Hout Bay for 6 years, had never been there before.

The idea is you choose a piece of pottery and paints etc. and paint it with your own designs.

It's a lot of fun and quite therapeutic, I could easily have painted all day!!

Then they glaze and fire your items for you and you get to collect them a couple of weeks later.

I suggested that they choose a "functional" or "useful" item and (fortunately!) they all seemed to agree with me!

Abigail painted a star design on her bowl.

(She's going to need a lot of cereal to fill that bowl at breakfast time!!)

Niave loved the painting and was so proud of her bowl, funnily enough she chose a "Chinese rice bowl" - quite an appropriate choice seeing as she would quite happily eat noodles for breakfast, lunch and supper! I was quite surprised at how well she behaved, I wasn't quite sure if I was doing the right thing by taking her with us - I had visions of pieces of bisque flying off the shelves, but she was very calm and seemed to understand the whole process! and of course she loves painting with water to rinse the brush off - just up her street!

Abigail's friend, Kelsey came along, she chose an Espresso cup and saucer! I'll have to warn her parents they might be in for some late nights!!

I painted a plate. My designs always come out skew but hey, I enjoyed myself!

The colours are a lot brighter after the glazing and firing is finished.

All in all it was a fun morning and one I will definitely do again.