Y'all! I had 41 kiln firings in 2016! Only, like, two of them had stuff blow up in them, too (maybe three, I forget, I've blocked it out)! Here's every one of them, in all their colorful glory...
January - Two firings; one a glaze run, restocks and color tiles, and one a bisque firing.
February - Three firings, two glaze runs and one decal firing.
March - A whopping six firings in March! Mostly because I started getting back on the wheel after my hand was fully recovered. There were two bisque firings and four glaze ones.
April - Only two firings, one of which, the bisque firing, had a good-sized explosion. Sigh.
May - Two firings in May as well, one bisque and one glaze firing.
June - Four firings in June; two bisque and two glaze.
July - Three firings in July; one bisque and two glaze firings.
August - Three firings in August, one bisque and two glaze firings.
September - Four firings in September, leading up towards the Florida Fiber-In, with one bisque run, two glaze, and one decal firing.
October - Only one firing in October, a lone glaze firing. Although technically it was four firings, because the jumbo mugs in the photo for October were really fired in the little kiln I'd just bought... I just wasn't sure if I wanted to show all the little kiln pictures.
November - November was sort of the same; my official count is five (two bisque, one glaze, and two color test tile firings), but I really fired some of those glaze pieces in the smaller kiln.
December - In December I decided to go ahead and make the tiny kiln firings their own photos, and that means my count for December was six! Two glaze firings in the -- oh! Oh no, I just realized I left a photo out. It was really a total count of seven -- three glaze firings in the large kiln (I'll use the forgotten photo as the featured image for this blog post), three glaze firings in the small kiln, and a disastrous bisque firing in the large kiln in which two of four shelves worth of goods exploded.
Overall it was a good year of firings, even though all I tend to remember and focus on are the explosions or the things that didn't come out quite the way I wanted. Overall, truly, I'm happy with them. I'm making new things, and testing new colors, and learning new techniques, so things are good. I hope 2017 brings more of the same!