Opened - Too Flipping Soon Fool That I Am

Well this morning the pyro was reading 80. I stuck my hand in through one of the spy holes and it didn't feel as much as that so I took the four spies out and went and had a cuppa and tidied up the workshop.

Here's the first view of the top. Blimey it got hot up there! Mighty glad we didn't go on any longer. The cones at the top all went completley over, I usually fire to 03 over, this was 02 over and some. Will put a hotter cone in next time just in case, would have been interesting to know. My honey glaze has loads of iron in it and where it got really hot it's gone pretty dark, not always in a bed way though.

Some of my pics are blurry - again! Must try to be better at not wobbling around. This is the middle front, the mug on the right is I think my 3rd favourite in the firing. I like the slip and body combination and althought he sprigs were a sort of mickey take amusement thing I rather like them as it turns out. Funny.

This charger was leant up against the side wall, the one that backs onto the firebox. It has a glaze on that is new to me, nice glaze, very glassy but I've put it on too thick in the centre unfortunatly. On the rim where it's thinner it looks lots better. Shame really. Kind of nice though and lots of potential there. I know lots of the Toft chargers were fired on their rims and I wanted to find out what would happen to mine if I did the same. The rim has only buckled very slightly.

"Ooh" men. I had 4 of these in, just wee things to amuse me by. They are naked and were fired raw right where the flame comes into the kiln, boy did they get hammered, boy do I like them!

It's massively more successful than the first firing, I suppose it flipping well should be shouldn't it. I wish my firing squad from wednesday had been around when I unpacked though, would have been good to talk them through as I got them out of the kiln.

Picture above, bottom shelf, back of kiln. The clay body where it was naked has got some wonderful flashing and colours, deep metalic in parts, beautiful.

So here's a good bunch of them. I need to sit and go through them all properly yet. I want to split all the three glazes up and look at how they all were in each part of the kiln.

There's a lovely plate that I seem to have failed to photograph too, about 10" diameter, I slipped it last week and blogged it, brushed slip and feathers trailed on. It's come out good.

There are about a dozen that are either cracked from the thermal shock (one of the big chargers but it was rather brown too from over firing) or that had bubbled and not fully settled. Then there's a few that are heading for the dark brown area of pottery though of course "brown is a colour too". There are though at the moment I think a dozen really great pots (to me) and lots of quite good pots too.

What's next? Write down what to change the next time and get on with flipping making! Heck it takes a lot of lot of pots to fill it! Best get a wiggle on hadn't I.