Date night & cracking the kiln

Yesterday's kiln opening was full of surprises. Many potters refer to opening the kiln as 'Christmas morning' because you never know what you will find. Despite hearing one scary cracking noise while I was working the studio, there was not a broken piece to be found! The only oddity of the firing was that one of the glazes - Ellen's Blue - did not fire as it has for me at Manassas Clay. For the most part, my batch turned out very flat with not much character. That being said, it did come out a most beautiful navy blue, just not the color and effect I had hoped for based on my prior experience with the glaze. My concern is that the kiln was not held long enough at the highest setting and fortunately this is something that I can (hopefully) fix by re-firing. Of course, undertaking a third firing places the pieces at risk again, but I must experiment in order to turn out the best pottery that I possibly can.

daecabhir and I had a date night yesterday - dinner and a movie! We dined at Pancho Villa in central park and then saw The Avengers. It must have been a pretty good movie since we didn't smooch once during it! (We did hold hands through the show though!)

Speaking of that husband of mine, he has gone in to work today in order to only have to take one day of leave off for Balticon. I understand his reasoning, but I will be missing him today for sure.