January 28-29 L-o-o-o-o-o-n-g firing

Saturday we embarked on an extremely long firing of the gas kiln.  We started candling on Friday night, and finished the firing at 5:30 Sunday morning.  At some points we were climbing at only 28 degrees an hour.

We all worked on our own projects throughout the night, but we spent some quality time interacting and challenging ourselves to be creative.  Elaine worked on her large skull sculpture, Becky worked on her llama, Kim worked on several things, I made some more empty bowls and at 5:30 am on Sunday I was still glazing my bowls for "Bowling for Dollars" in Shelby.  We stayed busy.

I have attempted to create a timeline based on pictures and videos taken by all of us.

8:25 pm Saturday:  Becky sculpting on her llama.

10:55 pm Saturday: Kim and Elaine dancing.
(Little did they know how much longer they would be there.)

12:15 am Sunday:  Fun with skulls.

At somewhere around 2:00 am Sunday, Elaine challenged us to take turns thinking of a word and everyone making a representation of that word in clay in under a minute.  It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot about each of our thought processes.

2:30 am Sunday:  Llama sculptures.

2:30 am Sunday:  lots of "minute sculptures".

4:00 am Sunday:  Kim, still wide awake.

4:00 am Sunday:  Becky still making.

4:07 am Sunday:  Becky combines all of our mini-sculptures.

4:09 am Sunday:  Checking the kiln.  Still going.

4:20 am Sunday:  My people from
"how many people can you make in two minutes?"

4:35 am Sunday:  Bigger people.

It was a long firing and we spent a lot of time together.  The fact that we were still enjoying each others company at 5:30 am says a lot about the quality of our friendship.  I hope you have the good fortune to have friends like mine in your life.

On my way home I stopped for bagels and had to wait ten minutes until 6:00 am when they opened, but I was the first customer for the first time.

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