Well, some things are going well (at last) and some are not (still). The pumpkins came out great, in my humble opinion! I anguished over getting an orange glaze for them. I did not have time to 'test' the ultimate mix of glaze and colorant before glazing the whole bunch. So I had my fingers crossed when I loaded them all into the kiln. I was delighted when I emptied the kiln and found orange pumpkins!
Then on the other side of the coin...I woke very early (3:30 am) eager to open the kiln and get it re-loaded. It was not quite cool enough to open yet so I went back to bed but could not sleep. After an hour I went out and opened the lid just to peek in. Oh, horrors...the cone pack had exploded and EVERY piece on the top shelf had trash fused into the center of it. I closed the kiln and went back to bed--maybe to just give up! But after a bit of withdrawal I mustered up the courage to empty the kiln and see what else was destroyed. Fortunately, the other 2 cone packs had not exploded. (I had used a very plastic clay to make the cone packs and they were very wet when I put them in the kiln. In the past I have had a coarser clay to use and it weathers the firing very well.) Most of the rest of the kiln was filled with the pumpkins--so there was a bit of satisfaction in spite of the misfortune!
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