friday night after a long week of work we loaded up the soda kiln.  c- was having an opening for his show in the gallery, everyone was wearing cute opening clothes, c- was even wearing pants, not shorts, but we were all sweaty and disgusting, shuttling work, wadding, loading.  we finished around 10, turned on the pilots and hung around the kiln pad for a few hours drinking and chatting with other a.i.r.s.

somehow i dragged myself out of bed at 6, getting to the clay company and doing my first turn up at 6:20 am.  it was really interesting flying solo.  for the first few turn ups i was a little insecure.  is this enough sputter?  too much?  but eventually i got comfortable trusting my gut.  r- taught me well, whenever i wasn’t sure i’d stop looking and listen to the fire.  sputter-check.

even at 6:20 am, it was already hot.  i spent the 28 minutes between turn ups sitting in one of the cushiony barber chairs yawning and sweating.  oh and i heated up my leftover gyro in the peep.  yum.  when j- rolled up with iced coffee, it was a good thing.

almost everything in the kiln was porcelain with no glaze.  we did a long, full on body reduction, adding wood to the ports in hopes of getting a good amount of carbon trapping.  there weren’t any major stalls, the kiln was pretty even troughout.  at the end of the day we had 11 flat on top and about halfway down on the bottom.  sodaed using a mixture of soda ash and baking soda in “chalupas” and sprayed and then added a bit of wood at the end.

good times!

here are some pics of j-‘s sweet work!