Jeff saves the day!

What a week it has been. Remember our firing over the weekend, the one with all of the Christmas orders? When we un-bricked the door on Monday, half the kiln was filled with hideous glazes. It seems that the bottom reached temperature and the rest was spotty. We also weren't sure if our new batch of green glaze had some bad gerstley borate in it. I just wanted to puke. My mind raced ahead to letting everyone know that they wouldn't have their pigs for Christmas and having to refund boatloads of money. Jeff told me to calm down.

He was going to re-fire everything in the raku kiln. We couldn't re-fire in the bigger gas kiln, because we are getting ready to have the tank moved and we pretty much drained it with this firing.

Here are examples of the re-fire results in the raku kiln...

I love the way this glaze combination re-fired! The orange is beautiful.

Jeff also got great copper reds from this little kiln. He had some tests that were a rich, deep red.

The green pigs were packed and shipped before I took photos, but they all looked awesome.

Nuka white always looks good. This double bowl was fired in the raku kiln. Luckily all the whites in the bigger gas kiln also looked fine. What a relief. I told Jeff he is the kiln wizard.

I have spent the last couple of days packing pots. Late yesterday I took a car load to the post office, just before they were about to close. When I got out of my car, there was a despondent looking woman, sitting in her car with the door open. She asked if could help her. Of course my first thought was, she is going to ask me for money.

I was wrong.

She said that she needed to pay bills, her English wasn't good, and she didn't know how to write the dollar amounts in english. No one in the post office would help her. I told her I would bring my boxes inside, and then I would see what I could do to help.

She had three bills. Her checks were all signed, she just needed me to hand write the dollar amounts and find on the bill, who to make the check payable to. It took maybe five minutes.

She was so very thankful and appreciative.

We all hear so much negativity towards non-english speaking people in our country. Most commonly heard is if you are living in the United States, learn to speak english. 

My grandparents spoke both English and French. My great grandparents lived in this country for a long time and never learned to speak English. I wonder if they experienced prejudices back then.

The Kiln Gods (and Jeff) saved me from a major stress this week. It was a small token of repayment for me to help someone else who was distressed and needing a helping hand.

...and that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.