infryq

Yesterday I finished the hem, sewed and felled the back yoke seam, and glue-basted the placket in place. Lunch, crossword, then I dithered around on the internet while P went to the store. Finished October Man. I like the alternative magic notation and hope he keeps up the thread. Started Monster In My Closet, the first book in the setup series for the Harlequin series on djinn I was reading earlier this year. Hokey, but entertaining enough.

We went over to the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts to watch T put the soda into the kiln, and hung out for a bit. It’s amazing to see the kiln mid-fire with your eyeballs instead of on video; everything is glowing orange in a way that somehow isn’t quite captured on camera. Also, since everything in a soda kiln gets wadded anyway, you don’t bother with shelf wash, the refractory stuff that usually stops drips of glaze from sticking to the kiln furniture. So everything from all the previous firings is all drippy from the underside of the shelves, too, glowing the same color orange. Very compelling. The soda is soda ash (Na2CO3) not baking soda (NaHCO3) as I’d assumed before. You basically open all the ports, then spend an hour walking around the kiln spraying ten seconds worth of slurry into each port in turn while steam rockets out of all the others. Breaks for water and standing in the comparatively cool 87-degree heat outside the shed. Once that was done, she added some prepared sections of wood, which had been soaked overnight in a soda ash solution and then coated with a paste of soda ash and calcium carbonate. Closed all the ports, tightened the damper and put the kiln in reduction. The wet wood burns more slowly than the sprayed solution vaporizes, giving the soda more time to circulate inside the kiln. A half-hour’s worth of reduction to pull the oxygen out of the glazes, then pull out the damper to rocket the temp up to cone 10 and make sure everything is vitrified, then shut all the ports and dampers and turn off the fire and let it cool for a couple of days. We’ll have stuff Tuesday night at open studio.

Afterwards, popped back to the house to pick up P’s laptop, then to Sqhill to put me in the library with my embroidery for an hour and P at Commonplace so he could get internet (for some reason his laptop turns its nose up at library wifi). Home, dinner, scrabble (atrocious; 497), Legends, snack, sleep.