Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Life is Good Again+

I said a little prayer over the kiln (honestly, I DID) as I turned it on low, low, low, I fired it on low for the longest time to properly banish the water from the ware. My electric bill is going to skyrocket this month. Greenware inside the kiln, shhh, be quiet, greenware can turn on you if you don't treat it right. See, that was the trouble all along, I am so impatient I hurried the firing the first time and cracked some things and warped the rest. This time I filled that puppy to the gills and said that prayer and started the 14 hour (or so) firing. Viola - good bisque upon opening the kiln.
Glaze, glaze, glaze, load kiln, fire, fire faster, glazed bisque is not as picky. The glaze firing ended about an hour ago and I am already itching to open the kiln. BUT - BUT - BUT glaze fired ware is picky about leaving the kiln before it cools so patience, patience, patience.

This is day # 23 of the 50 days, I am caught up but not everything is glazed and fired so I'll just keep praying over the kiln, keep firing and pay the bill when it comes. What else can I do?

Friday evening is a gathering at Sanchez Art Center, the artists will come and we can discuss our joys and sorrows I guess. Sanchez started a Google group to discuss on-line and I was invited but the moderator won't let me in, so, oh, well...I can only ask 3 times, that's my limit. Besides I can concentrate on working instead of visiting, I can visit in person!

4 comments:

Life Looms Large said...

Fingers crossed that this firing went well! That would be maddening, to have things end up getting damaged in the kiln.

I guess the weaving corollary is when I put something through the washer and dryer and it changes in a way I don't like.

I'm impressed with your 50/50 project. I'll be interested to hear what you think of it by the end!

Good luck!

Sue

sheilabythebeach said...

Things are going great, thanks!
I miss my weaving, I have some tea towel warp on the loom and I'm nearly finished. I may try to tie on a "dummy warp" since I'll be doing more...same pattern, same size, etc. Is that lazy or smart???

Life Looms Large said...

I was going to reply "lazy = smart = efficient" until I realized that tying on a dummy warp is something I've never tried. There are production weavers who do it all the time - because it's faster and because there aren't any threading errors that way.

Hopefully that isn't totally bad advice!!!

Sue

sheilabythebeach said...

Yeah, and I'm so fast and accurate while threading - NOT!
This is one threading that I didn't make fatal errors in and I'd like to preserve it for just one more set of towels.