50 Ways to Lose a Pottery Project

I once knew a recording engineer who stated that drummers have the hardest gig. This was significant because he was a guitar player and musicians usually only sympathize with their own kind. His drummer theory stemmed from the fact that your average drum kit consisting of: a bass drum, a snare, two or three toms, a high hat and symbols. Add to that various types of drum sticks and brushes and Drummers therefore were required to play several instruments all at the same time.
I have extended this theory to pottery. Pottery is not just one hobby, it is several sequential ones all rolled into one, and so the number of ways you can screw up a piece is astounding. I've been at it for a month now, and I brought my first completed piece home only today. The problem is the sequence I think. You can do the first 3 or 4 steps OK and then bodge it up at the end.
You can't just unravel the yarn, or pick out the stitch, or wait until the paint dries and have another go. You can't cut a new angle, or erase a pencil line or add some more flour to the dough. When you screw up pottery, you get to start back at the beginning again.
Or, if you're like me you call it a "learning exercise" and keep going just to get to practise the steps that otherwise you would never get to.
Here are some of the ways to screw up a simple pot:
Don't attach it to the wheel properly - and it goes flying off across the room...
Use too much water to centre it - and it is too soft to hold its shape
Don't get it centred well - and it is wobbly or twisted (but not in a good way)
Don't put the hole in the middle - and it is lopsided
Don't open the hole enough at the bottom - and it weighs a ton
Use too much water to shape it - see problem 2
Use too little water to shape it - and it sticks to your hands
Schmuck it up when you cut it off the wheel
Schmuck it up when you wrap it up for drying - this only happens to the really really good ones...
Don't centre it well for trimming - and it goes wonky
Trim it too wet - and you can push it out of shape
Trim it too dry - it will crack
Trim it too thin - and you put a hole in the bottom or the sides

At this point, if you have an object that isn't half bad, don't even think about decorating it. Just go straight to firing. If however you are a masochist like me, now is the time to get clever with painting or carving or stamping or texturing. But obviously this is just a whole host of other ways to screw it up.
Once it is shaped and decorated (ha!) and a handle is attached if necessary, it needs to be dried to green ware stage.
This is where it might start to crack. Or maybe the handle will fall off. But whatever you do, be careful because it will definitely break if you knock it.
The first firing is the bisque firing. It will lose about 10 - 15% of its size and that's when you figure out the perfect sized mug is actually too small, and now you can't get your finger through the handle anymore.
Next comes glazing. If you have gotten to this stage, congratulations! Take a picture because you are sure to ruin this step. Glazes drool, streak, bubble, or just turn out to be a really ugly colour. Glazes also have the ability to accentuate any imperfections in the shape, so something that was quite exciting in the bisque stage is really quite embarrassing after it is glazed.
Thus far, I haven't so much made Seconds as thirds, fourths and fifths.