We have just entered winter here and the hot spell has finally ended. Only a month ago it was still 30oC. Now the cold has at last set in and the weather has finally realised that it ought to be winter. The days are short and the nights long, we light the fire in the kitchen stove every night now. It cooks our dinner and heats the hot water tank as well as us in the kitchen.

Now that it is cooler and a lot safer, we have started holding our winter wood firing workshops each weekend.

We have also done one overnight stoneware firing in the big wood kiln as well.

This firing was absolutely average at 15 hours, We sometimes finish in 12 to 14 hours , but at other times it goes for 16 or 17. So this is smack in the middle of our range. Lots of good pots and interesting crystalline wood ash glaze surfaces, combined with a lot of grey-ish flashing effects that we don’t often see. Possibly because the damper tile broke at the end of the firing and jammed not-quite-closed. I had to get up on the roof and put a kiln shelf on top of the chimney to finish sealing it off at the end of the firing. This changed the cooling cycle a little from the usual.

It’s all part od life’s rich texture. I’ll tell myself that when I’m up to my arm-pits in Ceramic castable, making a new damper tile.