Hana's last class: pit fire!!

The last class of the quarter. As you know, we've been leading up to this class for a while, when we decided to do a pit firing. Really great idea, actually, since otherwise the last class would just consist of picking up our finished pieces.

I stopped by the studio on my way to Gary's house. I was able to find all my finished glazed things, I think (and with Jackie's help), and will follow up in another post with pictures of those.

Then, to Gary's. I showed up about ten minutes late, with my two pieces, a camping chair, and a bottle of wine. Other people were also starting to show up, and they brought all sorts of food and lots of wood. We each stuck our pieces into a pit at the end of the yard (next to a chicken coop!) which was filled with sawdust. Then we filled it in with a layer of kindling.

We all stood around a bit awkwardly for a few minutes, then Gary asked who would like to start the fire. No one really did anything, so Gary went and got a flaming piece of wood out of the little oven thing that he had made a while back and stuck it into the pit. Suddenly I found myself at the edge of the pit, blowing on the flames and sticking bits of kindling around, and basically all in charge. It was funny. It was a large pit, so a couple other people joined me, but I'm proud to say that my third of the pit was up and roaring first. Hehe.

Here's a picture of all of us building the fire. Strangely enough, the three of us (I'm not pictured) are also the least talkative of the group, and I think having something constructive to do was a relief for us.

While we were building, everyone else got all the food set up, and there was sake and glugg warming up inside on the stove.

Once the fire was really going, (see the second picture) I started wandering around, snacking, and attempting to chat with the others.

I found Gary's pottery shed, which was filled with great pieces and also, is that... yes! Our group project was all lined up on the shelves in there. All the little sake cups, each one completely unique, and no one could tell which ones they had thrown. Gary told us all to take one, and use it to drink the sake. So we did.

For a while, I stood around and looked at the fire, sipping sake, then a little glugg, and finally a few little cups worth of the wine I'd brought. The sake cup I'd chosen was so small (maybe one ounce?), that I was sure I'd only had about a glass or two worth of wine by the end of the night. Tell that to my hangover today though, hoo-boy.

Occasionally throughout the night, Gary would call out, "Round Two!" or "Round Three!" and we'd all rush into the little pottery shed and pick out another little sake cup from our group collection. By the end of the night, we each had at least four little cups to take home.

After we had run out of wood, several hours later, the pit looked like the third picture. You could see all of our pieces hidden about in there, glowing white. I had to leave at this point, but after this, Gary and whoever was left were going to fill in the pit with sand and leave it for a couple days to cool. I guess if the pieces cool too fast, they can crack. I'll be going back Saturday morning to dig through the ashes to find my pieces.