Starting a New Hobby
A friend of my husband texted recently that he was looking for a pottery wheel for his wife. He wondered if I had any good sources or advice.
Seriously, that’s not an easy question to answer without a lot more information. Like most tools, there’s a huge variation in cost, quality and capability. Since we were already out and about, we stopped at his shop (he’s a cabinetmaker) to learn more.
He was on the road, but his son was in the shop, which in this case actually got us closer to the story. He’d gotten his kids a toy pottery wheel, which mom played with while she visited the grandkids. Pottery would be a new hobby for her.
I am all for new hobbies. Most people, in my opinion, should go for a few more hobbies in their life. But I don’t believe that buying a pottery wheel is necessarily a good idea when it comes to starting to craft in clay.
In general, I don’t believe in investing a lot of money into tools for any new hobby. When just starting out, invest in education first. Take a class or a workshop. Learn using someone else’s tools. If you fall in love with the process, start investing in your own tool set.
In my case, I knew that I wanted to be a potter since I was a kid. I occasionally dabbled, but had neither the time nor the resources to get seriously into it. As I was approaching the gentle age…
