wadding

Wadding is what happens before one can put work into an atmospheric kiln (like soda, salt or wood kilns). The reason for this is to prevent one's shtuff from becoming stuck to the kiln's shelf and therefore ruining the shelf and the piece, as one swift whack with something hard is the only way to pry it off after the glaze has attached itself to the shelf. This happens because of all the shite floating around the kiln while it is being fired. In salt and soda firings you pump salt or soda into the kiln at a certain, very high temperature and it melts to your pieces creating a very cool glaze and it makes normal glazes even cooler. or it makes them ugly as hell. but that's what re-firing is for. And in the wood kiln, ash is what settles down and melts on to the pieces. Its all very neat. But it means extra work for yours truly. What in god's name is wadding you ask? It's a secret formula you carefully glue (yes, i use Elmer's) onto the bottom of your piece.

looks like this:



This takes a long time. It better be some pretty cool stuff coming out of the salt kiln or I'm going to be very busy refiring things and that might make me cranky. who knows. It'll also just be nice to have some FINISHED things finally.


And here is some knitting. Same yarn, the open knitted looking side is not felted ( really, it's called fulled) and the denser, softer side went through two cycles of hot water and a little soap to shrink it down. I basically did the whole, "oh shit I just shrank my favorite wool sweater" fiasco on purpose. It should turn into a bag when it is done. Might not.