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.

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!

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!!!

Okay, so it turned out to be a late night Friday, but I finally got the soda kiln all loaded & the door bricked up for the night. Then it was home for a quick sleep… so I could return early yesterday morning to start the firing!

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?!

An empty soda kiln full of possibilities…