When a basket handle comes tumbling down!!! Well, I kinda knew it would. When I got this basket bowl out of the bisque, there was a small one-inch piece “missing” and sitting down inside the bowl. Sadly, I recall “allegedly” trying to put a kiln shelf in and having it “bump” a basket handle because I didn’t measure the height so well. Guess that “bump” broke the handle!!! Whoops!

But, when I was glazing, the missing piece still fit into the gap and gravity held it in pretty snug. I decided to go for it. I glazed the pot, the missing piece, and wedged them together… and gave it all a second dip to help seal it together. I had my fingers crossed… but wasn’t too surprised to see it had fallen out during the firing.

What did surprise me though was the way one side of the broken handle totally “imploded” and fell right into the bowl!!! TIMBER!!!

Conveniently, two of my “original” class demo pieces came out of the cone 10 reduction kiln too! Each of these used the crackled slip technique – this time with black slip on porcelain. One of them I left white, the other one I colored the porcelain with ivy green mason stain. A thin spray of clear glaze gives them a finished shine!

As with any soda-firing, there is always a good chance for some of the soda to get where you don’t want it. Like the “boogers” that dripped from the kiln ceiling and landed on these pots. Luckily, the two biggest glops of soda landed on my pots and not the student’s pots as much. It’s a risk you take during a volatile soda-firing… there’s going to be a few sacrificial pots!

After they had all the FUN of unloading their newly soda-fired treasures… they also got to experience the “FUN” of cleaning the kiln, scraping & kiln washing the shelves, and making the kiln room better than we found it – ready for the next loading team to come in. So they learned a lot in this workshop… and they also got to participate in this sweaty GLAMOROUS side of soda-firing!!!

As part of last week’s class demo of “throwing-off-the-hump” we tackled a few Christmas ornaments. It’s never too soon, right?!

Topping off a trio of lidded jars with stamps, knobs & colored flashing slip accents. Just finishing up a few of last week’s class demos… with a couple extra lids “just in case!”

Looks like Rikke has continued her adventures with texture using one of my carved rolling pins from Stodola! We started this in our Thursday morning class when she wanted to go bigger than her textured rubber mat would allow. The carved rolling pins from Stodola allow her to go as big as she can! The texture & pattern is working well… and we’re both loving the “wood texture” inside some of the pressed squares!

Click here to see more from STODOLA!!!

Just sitting around the studio stamping another platter
while waiting for the cones to go down in the soda kiln!

And the stamp that did most of the work…

While I’m firing the soda kiln today, it’s a good chance to get some work done in the studio like glazing, cleaning & re-organizing! Glazing is always my least favorite part of the process… but it’s got to get done at some point. And since I’m “trapped” here all day firing, today might just be the day to tackle glazing these new berry bowls!

So I’ve wiped off the drips from the liner glazes & cleaned the rims of the mugs. Next I’ll add some wadding to the bottoms and they’ll be ready for loading into the soda kiln… my “Plan B” in case my Soda-Firing Workshop students don’t have enough work to fill the kiln tonight when we load in class later tonight. If these don’t make it in… there’s always my next soda kiln… one step ahead…