Crawl and Soda

The morning was spent finally posting a handful of canisters into my Etsy shop.

A little cone 6 crawl...

and a spot of cone 10 soda...

Now I just wish I could find my stride on writing those darn descriptions.

A Quick Look in the Box

I'm still sorting through and cleaning up works from the latest soda firing while I get caught-up with all of the gardening. There's a good amount of sell-able works, a few racers that I'll pull aside for summer exhibitions, and there is a fairly sizable number of losses. It's a fair trade for a first attempt at soda.

I can only hope the kiln gods are appeased for the next few loads. Matt and I are already anxious planning the next.

The story is that this kiln is an old “Wind Kiln” that was contributed to Clay Planet in Sana Rosa, CA. by Steve Davis. It's now a co-op kiln shared among a small handful of ceramic artists in the Bay Area. It’s an approximately 15 cubic foot doghouse coffin kiln powered by 2 squirrel cage blowers. It’s proving to be a very nice and simple design that fires really well in 5 hours or less. Check out Steve’s site for a look at his newer version of this kiln, it's very cool and big. The word is that the sweet spots lurk under the shelving. This is where the soda seems to accumulate really well. I got to fire this critter with Matt Brown of MossBeach Ceramics last weekend with great results. There seemed to be sweet spots all over this kiln! The only cold spot seemed to be the far back, but this most likely had to do with having to switching out the old blowers with new underperforming blowers. No problem... it's just a matter of an adjustment in strategies.

It's fun being back to the exciting life of living on a new learning curve. This one is rather steep, but Matt and I are already planning the next firing. It's couldn't be soon enough.