With the holidays coming quickly, it’s time to start firing my holiday ornaments! They’re wheelthrown and then propped up on these little tripods that I make for them. They’re in the soda kiln, so the tripod raises them and allows for all sides to be affected by the soda atmosphere. It’s always my hope that none of them decide to jump off their perch during the firing!!!

The sun is streaming into the studio and hitting these cute little star ornaments. Sure, they really need a bit of glaze and wadding… but the sun is shining in?! Which “kinda means” that I might just NEED to go outside to play on my bike again this afternoon? I mean… we don’t get these glorious 70-degree days very often in November in Chicago!!! I gotta take advantage of them… and quick!!! So my loading might be a smidge later than planned this evening… shucks.

So I’m still glazing & wadding for my soda kiln… which I will be loading later tonight. I think I’m getting down to the end. Like these ornaments that now have some tenmoku inlaid glaze accents. Some of them will still get a blush of colored glaze before going into the kiln too. Things are coming along nicely… no need to panic yet!

Added some accents & details of colored flashing slips onto my latest batch of holiday ornaments. Hopefully these colors will “pop” after the soda-firing! Which is coming up very quickly… it’s THIS Saturday!!!

Trimmed, stamped & top rings attached…
and now they’re starting to look more like Christmas ornaments, right?!

With the temperatures dramatically dropping into the thirties overnight, I guess it finally “feels” like the right time to start making more wheelthrown holiday ornaments!

Not a bad ware board of “demo pots” from this morning’s wheelthrowing class. We tackled lidded jars – both traditional & my favorite “trick” jar. The lids we threw off-the-hump… and I had some clay left over on the hump… so we did some impromptu ornaments too!

So remember that stray ornament that jumped off the shelf and into the firebox during my last soda firing?! Well, I had just taken it a set it on a table in my studio. Kinda forgot about it. But since then, the crusty residue has disintegrated and fallen off into a powder. And now we can see more of the ornament… and just how much of it was “eaten-away” by the excessive soda mixture & flames hitting it in the fire box. The walls are now super-thin… and actually see-through in a couple places!!!

So for the most part my soda kiln was beautiful… no glops from the ceiling, no kiln wash flakes in the bowls, no unhappy accidents. Except… for this one ornament that decided to make a “swan dive” all the way down into the firebox sometime during the firing. Then after a sitting right in the flame for so long, the ornaments is now overly-blasted with soda and the hanging ring has practically dissolved into nothing!!!

Here it is… and a normal ornament that didn’t jump for comparison. They both started out with the same hanging ring. Amazing what a too much flame & too much soda can do to the clay?!!! Kinda makes it look like a shadow…

Some say diversion, some say productive…
either way, tonight found myself adding some inlaid tenmoku glaze
to my latest batch of wheelthrown & stamped ornaments for no apparent reason.

Did I need to do them tonight?… NO.
Did I enjoy the random tangent… of course!
It’s never too early to make Christmas ornaments, right?