After about three hours, I had the soda kiln fully packed with pots from top to bottom & front to back late Friday evening… err, guess it was really Saturday morning! Lots of “Tetris” stacking & packing to load everything in with proper spacing. Can’t wait to see these pots again… after the soda firing!

About ninety minutes in Friday night… and I had the back stack loaded up. Just stacking pots, bricks & shelves from bottom to top. Trying to keep some good air space between for the soda fumes to fly around in… and yet getting some pots all the way up into the arch as well.

A great combination… an empty soda kiln & my studio cart FULL of glazed & wadded pots. Late Friday night I loaded the kiln with a LOT of pots to be soda-fired on Saturday. My rolling cart has to travel from my second floor studio down to the first floor kiln room… on a very rickety freight elevator. So I always add some “seat belt” straps of masking tape to help keep pots in their place on the trip down!

Earlier on Friday night, this is what the soda kiln looked like. Empty, yet filled with possibilities. I got a late start loading… knowing it was going to be a LONG night!

We’re right on track… new Pirate Ghouls coming out soon!!!
Might be a little warm, but they’ll be there!

One last kiln for this weekend…

Two-thirds of the way through unloading… you get a second “reveal” when you take out the front two layers of shelves… and it reveals the third stack in the back. Again, excited that pots look well coated with soda, with some nice bright colors… and still no blasted grayness!!! Lots of fun new pots to share at my next couple art fairs!

When the kiln door is finally unbricked, it’s always nice to take a step back, take a deep breath & admire the work for a second. Appreciating that the firing was a success… that I got some good colors throughout the kiln, and NOT a ton of blasted grayness! Enough admiring… now it’s time to start unloading layer by layer, shelf by shelf, pot by pot…

I just realized that I never quite “continued” sharing my soda kiln unloading from Monday night. So here are a few more pictures… starting with a bit more of the unbricking. Reminding people how much fun that first “sneak peek” is when you start taking the door bricks off layer by layer for the Big Reveal!!!

So my soda firing went quite smoothly yesterday. I started early in the morning, body reduction early on… then glaze reduction later as I put the soda mixture into the kiln. You’ve gotta LOVE when the flames come shooting out every crack in between the bricks! So exciting. So mesmerizing!!!