A very long day

Mica was awake and happy at 7am. Normally she'd fall back asleep in short order, but not today! She dozed off for a while, I thought maybe I'd get a little more sleep, she woke up thrilled to be alive. I'm not complaining, or at least not much, it just made for a longer day than I expected. I did, however, get a few things done.

My bisque firing from yesterday ended up being a longer and slower bisque than I usually go for, even taking into account the moderate moisture level of some of the pieces in the load. I nearly panicked when I went to unload the kiln and discovered that not only wasn't it cool, it hadn't even shut off yet. (I'd never turned it up to high... Apparently the kiln can fire **FOREVER** without shutting off if you leave the infinite switch set to "3".) I switched it to high and it shut off within an hour. I was a little concerned that it wouldn't be cool enough to glaze the contents and fire them before I need to ship my work to Melanie tomorrow. It actually worked out quite well and the kiln has been off for about 2 hours and should be ready to unload and inventory in the morning.

As an added bonus, I have 2 pieces in the kiln which I did just for fun. My friend Heather has given me a few "imps" of fragrance oils from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and I decided to make pendant vessels to hold them. I have two of these imp holders in the kiln with the half moon vessels. They're textured with a weblike texture and glazed on the inside with the dreadful krylon blue from Georgie's and on the outside with a combination of opulence glazes, eggshell over grease for one and autumn frost over grease for the other.

I actually took notes on my glazing today, so if there's anything that I really like i have a pretty good chance (maybe 1 in 4) of figuring out how I got it. I need to start thinking about these things since Kim and I will be doing bead shows this fall and I need to make stock.

Speaking of Kim, she called earlier to say that the pit firing yeilded good results... i'll see her tomorrow and actually see the pieces first hand. I can't wait, I'm picking 2 of the twistie beads to use as arms for an art doll that I worked on some today. She is made from scraps of felted wool from a thrift shop sweater, and has wool hair from some yarn that Heather gave me (you gotta love knitters... they discard the most wonderful fibers...) and a "crown" of porcupine quills with beads at the tips to make them a little less lethal.

Filed in: WAHM Firing Kilns Fragrance Glazing Felting