First glaze firing since the snow fell ...

Well, the cold weather really did cause havoc in my pottery studio ... 

We don´t keep it permanently heated, so the freezing nights turned my glazes to ice blocks, and there was certainly no way I was going to be able to work with clay in the studio while it was so cold and with the water frozen in the pipes. 

Although I´ve used the cold weather as an opportunity to come up with some more ideas and collection thoughts (working on a collection that properly "blends" Simon´s wood-turned pieces with my ceramic pieces), I was still hankering to get my hands dirty and get back in the studio.

Part of my messy but functional studio

Thankfully, I had already biscuit-fired some pieces and applied glaze to some of it before the "freeze" set in, and so I decided to take the plunge and try and use some of those frozen glazes and complete enough work to make it possible to stack the kiln for a glaze firing.  

It took some mixing and ice-chipping, but I finally managed to pack the kiln with enough items to make it worthy of a firing ... and I´ve just opened the kiln today.

First glaze firing since the freeze

It´s quite possible that some of the ware has cracked, as I´m not sure how happy the biscuit-fired work was to be left in the freezing studio, but it´s always exciting to see what each firing has to offer - as each one can be so very different from the last.

The good work will go up for sale on our site, www.blendedmonkey.co.uk, and there are a few very experimental pieces hiding in this kiln, so it will be interesting to see how they´ve turned out ...