Preparing to teach a workshop is a lot like preparing a meal for friends.

At first, there is the pleasure of imagining it. What might we make together? What ingredients will invite people in? How much structure will help them feel comfortable, and how much room can I leave for discovery?

Then, as the day approaches, the worries begin. Will I forget something? Will there be enough? What if they don’t like what I’ve planned?

I felt all of that while creating my newest online Objects of Devotion workshop, The Offering Banner. I thought about each lesson, filmed the processes, gathered materials, and made example banners. I wanted to show how paper, fabric, photographs, and small personal offerings could come together. More than that, I wanted people to feel free to make something that meant something to them.

Once the workshop went out into the world yesterday, the first responses were wonderfully encouraging. People understood the invitation. Their enthusiasm reminded me why I love teaching: I can prepare the materials and demonstrate a process, but I cannot imagine in advance what each person will bring to it. Someone else’s memories, images, questions, and ideas will take the work somewhere I could never have planned.

I’ve barely had time to put away the metaphorical dishes, and already I’m preparing for another gathering: my Objects of Devotion: Ceramic Assemblage Workshop in Santa Fe at Paseo Pottery.

This one asks something entirely different of me. The Offering Banner lives online, where people can pause a lesson, return to it, and work in the familiar surroundings of their own studios. Santa Fe will be in person, in a new place far from home. I’ll be packing tools and materials, thinking through what will fit in a suitcase and a box, and picturing a room I don’t yet know filled with people I haven’t met. There is no “pause” button when everyone is waiting for the next step.

It feels a little like cooking in someone else’s kitchen. I can bring a recipe, but I won’t know quite where the bowls are or how the oven behaves until I arrive.

And yet, that is part of the joy of it. In person, I get to see what happens at the worktables: a found object that sparks a story, a question that changes my demonstration, a bit of encouragement passed from one participant to another. The workshop becomes a conversation. It takes on a life that no lesson plan could contain.

The same thing is true of a good meal. Guests rarely know how many times the host checked the oven or changed the menu. They arrive with their own stories, appetites, humor, and generosity. Soon everyone is passing plates, talking across the table, and making the occasion come together.

I do need to prepare carefully for the Paseo Pottery workshop. I want people to have what they need and to feel welcomed.

But I’m learning that my job is not to guarantee a perfect experience. It is to make a place where people feel able to begin, experiment, and follow what matters to them.

Here’s a “recipe” I cooked up for them about how to turn a little pinch pot bowl into a bird! (He does look a little like a sweet potato at one point :))

So I’ll make my lists for Santa Fe. I’ll pack the tools, plan the demonstrations, and probably check the suitcase and boxes twice, at least.

Then I’ll open the door and see what everyone brings to the table.

That’s when the feast begins.