HAPPY EASTER… or whatever holiday you might be celebrating this weekend! Take some time today relax, reflect & enjoy the day. The weather looks pretty perfect… now I just wish I have more of these peanut butter cup eggs!!!

The weather has definitely taken a turn for the better here in Chicago! After a stretch of cold, clouds & rain… we finally have a forecast for incredible warm Spring weather for the next week or so! And after firing inside all day yesterday… it felt great to start today outside on my bike!!! Good chance that will happen again later this afternoon… allegedly…

Always exciting towards the end of a soda firing. The kiln is in reduction, and the soda mixture has been inserted … so it’s flying around inside wherever the flames go. Leaving some soda-glaze magic along the way. Can’t wait to see what this FIRE did to my pots. Fingers crossed.

Glowing orange… the kiln continues to heat up even as it is placed in “body reduction”. Still a few hours to go… but always fun to play with fire!!!

Bricked up & closed for the night. It was a “quick sleep” and now I’m already back at the studio firing!!! Bricks in, peeps in & ignition started!!! An early start to a long day for firing… plus random studio “spring cleaning” projects throughout the day!

All loaded last night… a LOT of pots fit in this time! Feeling pretty good as I got everything loaded…. except for about five mugs that didn’t quite fit! Can’t wait to see how these pots “magically” transform during the soda-firing!

Lots of pots last night on my studio rolling cart… all glazed & wadded. Ready to start loading… looks like it might be a late night?! GIDDY-UP!

Last night… after a FULL day of glazing & wadding… I finally got around to loading the soda kiln. It’s a little daunting when you come down and see this empty box of bricks staring down at you! Knowing that you need to carefully stack pots & shelves & bricks… trying to maximize your spacing, squeeze as many pieces as you can into the kiln, while trying to keep some good air spacing throughout for good flow of the soda atmosphere during the firing. Kinda like “Pottery Tetris’!!!

Last night was the first class with my SURFACE DECORATION students. We decided to “ease into it” with some surface basics… making nice pots & then playing with some thick white slip to create fun textures & patterns. Looking forward to revisiting these later to “play” with some glaze combos to accentuate the groovy textures.

Like glazing wasn’t “fun” enough already… ugh… I also need to add little balls of wadding to the bottom of every pot being loaded into the soda kiln. Wadding is basically a soda-resistant clay that will help keep my pots from sticking to the kiln shelves after the soda-atmosphere adds a layer of glaze on everything!