mmmmm… soup.

So I put the can back in my backpack and went and had Chinese instead.

MMMMM… sugar covered deep fried chicken chinese feeewd.

I’m really just biding my time until the magic pill is invented.

Every year work let’s all the parents bring in their snotty-smelly-loud offspring to do trick-or-treating around the office. I think it’s a fun and safe idea.

And every year I have toys and candy waiting for them.

See? See all this candy waiting??

I don’t even cheap out with the snack size candy – only man size candy bars here. I want your brats to be obese and insulin dependent.

Usually only a few kids stop by… I’m down in IT and people don’t like bringing their kids around the strange people down here. But this year there was not a single kid.

What is a diabetic *chomp* supposed to do *chewychewychew* with all this *lip smack* candy?

The only problem I saw was that part of the bottom picked up the kiln wash on the bottom. L Overall still pretty happy. Now I’m feeling more confident about taking the time to make something nice and actually have it turn out.

Little did I know that my kiln had a slow-clay setting on it. That might’ve been useful to know before destroying the good bowl I started with.

Tonight or this weekend I’ll be painting and glazing. Let us see how bad I can screw that up!

D: “You know, you are so lucky. You get all these opportunities to shine.”
Me: “Oh yeah, yet another opportunity to stay all night at [work]!” :-/
D: “True.”

I am lucky, he was right. Some of my projects are high profile and get looked at by the most senior level staff. But I spent all of last night here and I’d really like to just go home.

Man, I can’t wait to sleep in on Caturday.

So my first thought was that the clay that I was attempting to fire still had internal moisture that would need to be dehydrated. After a few quick searches on the internet I found that it was suggested to keep the kiln at low temp over night before firing. So last night after putzing around in the shop for a while I set the kiln to 150, vented the kiln by propping open the top and the peep hole and let it go for 12 hours.

I immediately wanted to set the kiln to fire up and bisque fire it. But I wasn’t going to be home today and didn’t want to risk another explosion while it was unattended. I’ll sit down tonight and fire it so I can watch it for the first few hours. After the temperature creeps past the boiling point I’ll feel better about leaving it run.

Hopefully it’s not another clay bomb. I just put a malformed bowl in there so it’s not a huge deal if goes kablooey.

It has been years since I’ve made bowls, pots, mugs and anything else with clay, so it sounded like fun. I made a small bowl, carved it all up with a pretty design and let it dry for a week.

Last night I was out in the shop and saw it was bone dry finally and put it in the kiln. A few hours later I ventured out to take a peek to make sure everything was going fine when I found this.

Oops. I guess I should’ve fired it at low heat for a while first to make sure there was no internal moisture left.

So until then I guess I just make sure quick crappy bowls until I get it figured out. No point in putting all that time into something fancy when this will be the outcome.

Anyone have some tips for me?

I took the night off tonight.  I didn’t work late.  I didn’t hit the gym.  It was totally a free night. 

I started prepping the new canvas.  But I still have no clue what to paint.

So I went and cleaned my glass shop.

What to paint… what to paint…

The question is: What to do next?   What cartoon characters do I identify with.

Cartman?  Butters?  Bender? …. Thoughts or suggestions?

Don’t worry; it tastes far worse than it looks.