My blogging friend
Trish sent me this mug all the way from
Alberta, Canada. Thanks so much Trish. The mugs is smooth to the touch and soft to hold. It fits my hand perfectly and there's a spot for my thumb to rest on the top of the handle which I really like. The mug makes me imagine a winter landscape in Canada - a soft glow to the sky and a bit of mountains showing through. A place I'd like to visit are the
Alberta Badlands and Dinosaur Country. Click link to be taken to a you tube video. Embedding was disabled, but worth the click. I was especially inspired by the hoodoos. A
hoodoo is a geological formation also called a tent rock, fairy chimney, or earth pyramid. I feel more clay towers forming in my mind.
After replacing the relays I did a fast test fire of my kiln. The kiln fired just fine. The black coating on the kiln shelves fired off; it must have been the copper migrating around the kiln. I've decided not to use copper as a wash any longer. The fast fire to cone 07 took 4 hours, wow, that was fast. If only all firings were that fast. Still it took a long time for the kiln to cool down.
I've known since I got my kiln that it fires hotter when set by the kiln's program to cone fire. Today's test fire was no exception - 07 and 06 are down, 05 is standing upright. Now I'm re-firing the bisque which stopped in the middle. This time I set the kiln to fire to 05 instead of 04. It will be interesting to see what the cones do. There's an adjustment which can be made to the kiln to calibrate how it fires but I don't want to get into that right now. I have lots of work piled up so I'll be firing bisque and glaze loads for the next week.
Relatives from New Hampshire and Finland are coming for a visit in March and I want to serve them meals on my own pottery. So I'm making extra plates and bowls. Today I made four fern dinner plates and I used a red iron oxide wash on the ferns. They're firming up before I form the rims. I plan to glaze them with a green glaze. But wait maybe I should glaze each of them in a different color glaze, no need to decide now. We shall see how they turn out. Thanks for reading and for all your comments.
