It took a couple hours Friday night, but I finally got my pots stacked in the soda kiln. I tried my best and fit “almost” everything in… just a few stragglers that didn’t quite fit in the end. Guess they’ll just have to wait until my next firing in October?!

Plenty of pots & pumpkins… all glazed, wadded & ready for the soda kiln. The masking tape is just a little “seat belt” to keep everything in place on the shelves as I bring my cart form my studio downstairs on the rickety freight elevator! Spent my Friday night loading the kiln… after the last day of Summer Camp!!!

So once I had my cylinders stamped & trimmed, Amy Taylor came over to my studio to work on her part of our second ART IN THE GARDEN collaboration project. Amy makes a great line of jewelry that has these whimsical characters on them… called “ADORBS.” So I thought it would be great fun if Amy worked her “ADORBS” magic in clay on the side of my cylinders! And she did!!!

You know how much I love to see these four letters!!! My bisque kiln just clicked off… so now I’m hoping that it cools fast enough that I can start glazing some of the contents tomorrow after summer camp. Fingers crossed… but it is packed pretty tight…

My summer campers just left for the day… so now it’s back to glazing & wadding more mugs! Yes, it’s the last week of summer camp… and I’m trying to glaze & finish a full soda kiln at the same time. Days with the kids, nights in my studio!

Time to “cook” some pumpkins! Just loading one last bisque kiln before this weekend’s soda firing. Lots of pumpkins going in… hopefully all DRY so we don’t have any pumpkin explosions this time around?!

Batch number two DONE!… and DRYING!!!
Again, I need to make sure they’re completely dry before they go into a bisque kiln. To help speed that along, I’m drying them on an elevated plastic grid so that they can get some air exposure from the bottom too!

So my second batch of pumpkins is coming along nicely… stems, warts, colored flashing slip. Check, check & check!

So apparently this is what happens when you go into the studio early in the morning… and have that nagging feeling that you might not have enough pieces to fill next weekend’s soda kiln?! And you have a little panic… and start throwing MORE!!!

It’s gonna be tough to get these all stamped, trimmed, dried, bisqued & glazed before going into my soda kiln next weekend!

Uh oh… tick-tock, tick-tock…

Okay, so I must say that I’ve been kind of enamored by that first batch of pumpkins… so why not try to crank out another batch in time for my soda firing?! So here we go again… another batch, even more this time & slightly smaller. I mean, you gotta have all different sized pumpkins, right?