XXIX

Just a quick note before I take my "disco nap"! I lit the fire at 2:30 this morning and the firing is going really well, can't explain it. The wood is a little green and the potter a little weary, but as I was leaving Matt Kelleher in charge for a little while we had cone 1 going down! The kiln was getting real hungry. I think I can say that the responsiveness is do to diligent flame envelope enforcement (D.F.E.E., which means, I left a lot of room around the area surrounding the pots and the stack of shelves. ) Maybe too much room at the bottom of the kiln as it is tending to be ahead of the top of the kiln, (not good.) Generally I like to keep the top of the kiln a little ahead in temperayure so I don't have to damper in to get heat at the top, for fear of too much reduction. But today the smoke reading is pretty good. Up till now there has only been a handful of stokes that were really black and occluded. Most of the stokes yield a grayish brown smoke that isn't too thick. But there's plenty of time for that to change. Courtney is coming to help later this afternoon, so I better get my nap in, so that I can be ready to blast the kiln off. We should finish by dinner time, but I won't hold my breath. Anything can still happen.