Surprise???

All I can say about surprises is my father's green surprise Father's Day shirt.  You see, when I was much younger (probably about 12), on a trip to Virginia over Father's day my mother, thinking she was slick, slid my father's surprise gift into a shoe bag.  His gift was a green polo shirt.  It sort of stuck out from the shoes and my father, whose job it was to load and unload the car of course saw it when he loaded the bag in the car, but chose not to say anything.  Over the course of the 10 hour trip my mother was dropping hints and trying to tease my father who refused to play the game, making my mother more smug as we drove.  Finally when we arrived in Virginia and were unloading the car, my mother dropped one last remark for which my father proudly announced, "Are you by chance referring to this green polo shirt in the shoe bag?"  Oh it was not pretty watching her face turn red, as she sputtered, and just finally without anything to say in response let out a few choice words and got mad at him for discovering her surprise.  When she finally realized he knew from the beginning and was playing with her the entire trip, it just fanned the flames even more.  From that point on she stopped trying to surprise because she realized he was pretty quick and could figure it out with little effort if he wanted to.  It was also one of those stories that came up time and time again and the surprise green father's day shirt will go down in family history.
I tell you this story, because one it is now my job to repeat that story and allow it to go down in history, and two because it shows how surprises work in my family.  My mother, still trying to keep tabs on me realized that I was spending an awful lot of time at the pottery painting place in Fayetteville and might be working on more than one thing. 

Grapes Tile

To throw her off I made a tile that I will work into a tray, I think (or should I say that is the plan right now).  However she had a pretty good idea that something else was up.  So I regret to say that I have post dated this post because she would snoop the post and try to find her surprise, and I am not willing to make it that easy for her.  The first trivet I started working on was the one for her, however they ran out of a couple of the paints I needed.  I painted a cream background, with dark brown edges and added her initials in an Asian inspired font.  Then robin egg blue dots, to match the writing were added to the edge and chocolate brown dots were added to the middle.  Firing such a piece with a lighter color on a darker one could offer a complex situation and may not work.  However because of using the wooden end of the paint brush to add my dots, it worked out really well and I am excited to say I was able to offer her a partial surprise.  She knew I made her something but did not know what I had made.  Thus when she opened it she still had to make the surprise face and determine if she liked it, which I think she did.  I think the key to surprises in my family is just let it happen, don't give hints or clues, because someone will search for it.