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opened the kiln this morning and every single piece on the middle shelf had slumped. not cracked, not exploded, just... leaned. like they all decided to take a nap mid-fire. twelve hours of waiting for that. the worst part is two of them actually look better slumped. one cup basically turned into a little melted creature and i'm genuinely considering keeping it. the other three are just sad puddles and they're going in the wastage bin which has honestly become my favorite shelf anyway. think i loaded the middle shelf too low in the kiln again. i always do this. i write myself a note, tape it to the kiln, and then the next firing i'm like "this time will be different" and it is never different. i've got a stack of these little notes now. might glue them into a zine at this point. anyway if anyone has tips for actually checking kiln shelves without a pyrometer made of vibes let me know. or just tell me about your best catastrophic firing, make me feel less alone in the clay chaos. vale, back to the wheel.

opened the kiln today and one of the bowls came out looking like a sad potato with a face. i didn't even put a face on it, the glaze just decided that's what it was going to be. i'm honestly keeping it. it's the most honest piece i've made in weeks. everyone talks about the beautiful surprises from firing but nobody mentions the ones where the kiln just insults you. like thanks, i know i slipcast that badly, you didn't have to make it look embarrassed about it too. putting the potato out at the market next sunday with a little sign. "face not intended." see if anyone bites.

opened the kiln this morning and the piece I'd been most worried about, this tall wonky vase with a face melting out of the shoulder, had blown itself apart. shards everywhere. and honestly? best thing I've made this month. not the shards themselves, that's junk. but the way it failed, the face kind of slumped and dripped into the glaze before it cracked, I saw exactly what I'd been doing wrong the whole time. too thick at the base, the weight pulled everything down. I can see the fix now. sometimes the kiln gives you the answer it thinks you need. knew this group would get it. who else cheers when a piece dies. rebuilding it today with a hollow foot. if it works I'll post it, if it explodes again you'll hear about that too.

I was so sure this little vessel with the face emerging on the side was gone. There was a line I thought was a crack after the bisque firing, I almost threw it in the recycling bucket. Decided to fire it anyway out of stubbornness, or laziness, honestly, I was tired. Opened the kiln at 8am and it's not a crack. It's a thin dark line in the glaze that follows the curve of the piece and it looks like the figure is smiling through a scar. I sat on the floor with it for five minutes just turning it in my hands. These moments where the kiln decides something for you. I swear half the time I'm just the assistant and the fire is the real artist.

opened the kiln this morning and two pieces I was actually proud of came out cracked down the middle. one was a little face vase I'd been staring at for a week, the glaze came out perfect, colour exactly right, and there's a hairline running straight through the face like it's having a bad day. and the weird thing is I'm not even mad. I've been at this two years now and I've started to almost respect it when the kiln kills something I love. it keeps my ego in check. every time I think I've got it figured out, the fire reminds me I don't. took the cracked one home anyway. it's sitting on my shelf next to the other three failures I couldn't throw away. my abuela calls them my little museum of almosts. she's the only one who says it fondly. whatever. bisque firing tomorrow, six new pieces going in. the cycle continues. joder, I love this messy life.

opened the kiln this morning and five pieces came out with cracks through the middle like they'd been through something. one of them was a vase I'd spent like three days on, smooth curve thing, and now there's a fault line right through it. my first reaction was to be mad at the clay but honestly it was probably the way I attached the base. the kiln doesn't lie, that's the thing. it just shows you what you actually did. kept the cracked one though. there's something about it now, the way the light goes through the fault. might wire it together and call it a feature. my grandma would say that's just me making excuses for a ruined pot and she'd be right but she'd also kind of love it. anyway. second firing today, crossed fingers. if this one blows up too I'm taking it personally.

opened the kiln yesterday and one of my favourite pieces, this little mug I'd been using every morning for months, weird handle, slightly too thick, perfect, had a crack right through the bottom. must have been a hairline I didn't see last time. water just pours straight out now. unusable. felt stupid how much it bothered me. it's just a mug. but I made that thing in my first year of actually trying, you know? it was ugly and clumsy and I loved it. so I spent today making its replacement. same weight, same slightly-too-thick walls, same stupid handle that doesn't fit in anyone's hand properly. but this time I know what I'm doing a bit more. we'll see if it survives the fire.

Joder, just opened the kiln and half my pieces are cracked. Some of these little faces look like they're screaming now, which is... on brand I guess? But still, so much work. I think the temperature was a little too high on the glaze firing. Back to the clay dust for me, I guess. At least the ones that survived look pretty cool, especially the ones with the blue glaze pooling in weird ways.

after six straight firings where something cracked, blew up, or decided to become a puddle at the bottom, i finally opened the kiln this morning and everything came out in one piece. like actually recognisable as the things i put in there. i stood there holding a little face jug like it was a newborn or something. dumb smile on my face. my studio mate was like "are you okay" and i was like no i'm not okay actually this has never happened before. the little victories. the bar is on the floor and i'm still celebrating.

opened the bisque firing this morning and there's this little jar I threw last week, nothing special, just practicing a taller cylinder, and somehow during the drying a face appeared in the cracks. like two eye-holes where the clay pulled apart and a mouth line. I didn't carve it. it just happened. now I can't unsee it. it's sitting on my shelf staring at me while I eat my toast. my grandmother would call it a "compañero", like the clay decided to keep me company. thinking I might lean into it for the glaze firing. give it some iron oxide around the eyes. make it properly unsettling. the kiln gives you gifts sometimes, even when you weren't asking for any.

So my grandmother has been keeping a shelf in her house for like three years now, every single piece I've given her. Some are genuinely terrible, first kiln disasters, a mug that came out looking like a sad potato. I always thought she just loved me too much to throw them away, which, yes. But today I was at her place and she pulls out this box and hands it to me. She'd been re-firing the ones that survived in her own little kiln, glazing them properly, fixing my botched bottoms. She said "you were too close to see which ones had something." And she's right, I only ever saw the cracks. There's one little face vessel from a year ago that I was honestly embarrassed by, and she's turned it into something I'd actually put in the shop. I'm not even mad she went behind my back with my own clay and glazes. She's 78 and she re-learned how to do a proper kiln sit just to fix my messes. Cried a bit on the bus home, not gonna lie. She's the only one who ever got it. Anyway I'm putting that face vessel up for sale this weekend. Honoring the grandmother glaze job. She deserves it.

I keep a couple of pots around that I don't sell. Not because they're good, but because they remind me of a specific moment. There's one from like three years ago, a little wonky cup with a face that came out looking half asleep. My grandma saw it and said "este tiene alma" and I think about that every time I glaze. Today I finally admitted one of them was never going to be anything. The bottom cracked when it was leather hard, I patched it, fired it anyway, and the patch just made it worse. A cup that leaks and looks like it's frowning. So I soaked it and scraped it into the reclaim bucket. It felt like putting down a dog that was already dead. And then I immediately dug the clay back out and pulled a new one with the exact same shape, so I guess nothing is actually over. The face came out slightly different this time. Less moody. Slightly confused instead. Maybe that's the whole job. Just keep scraping things and rebuilding them until the face looks right. Anyway the reclaim bucket is full and smells like a swamp, that's the real update. Need to wedge it tomorrow and my back is already complaining. Vale.

Opened the kiln this morning after a bisque fire and three pieces came out with cracks through the base. One was a vessel I'd been glazing plans in my head for three weeks. Joder. You can feel the exact second it happens when you're loading, that little not-quite-dry whisper under your fingers, and you load it anyway because you're impatient and the kiln is full. The worst part is I know every single one could have been saved with one more day of drying in the studio. But no, Mateo had to fire today. Anyone else got a cemetery of almost-pieces they caused themselves? Tell me I'm not the only one who does this to themselves. My grandmother says impatience is my thing. She's right, it's the same reason I burn my mouth on coffee every morning since forever.

so I threw this tiny porcelain cup a few days ago, really thin walls, nice shape, felt good on the wheel. opened the kiln this morning and it's completely warped, not just a little oval, I mean it's leaning like a drunk person at 3am. the rim is basically a sine wave. at first I was annoyed because I was trying to be delicate and precise and it just laughed at me. but now I've been staring at it for like twenty minutes and honestly? it's kind of alive? it's doing something my perfectly straight cups never do. I'm trying to decide if I should lean into it and glaze it weird or just crush it and try again. my instinct says crush it but my gut says wait. the kiln chooses lol. anyone ever kept a "failure" that ended up being the thing people liked most?

I keep a separate bucket just for pieces that come out of the kiln wrong and honestly it's become my favorite place to dig through. Today I pulled out a little pinch pot from like three weeks ago that cracked down one side in the firing and I swear the crack saved it. It was boring before, just a plain bowl, and now it has this jagged line running through it like it's telling you something. I glazed over the edge of the break and it looks intentional. It might have been the best piece I made all month and it was a failure. I know everyone preaches about embracing the happy accident but my abuela always says my whole career is just organized accidents. She's not wrong. I've started leaving the bin full on purpose now because half my market table comes from stuff I fished out of it and told a story about. The kiln does what it wants. You just have to be paying attention when it happens.

Sold a little vase at the market on Saturday that I thought was one of my worst pieces. The glaze came out cloudy and the lip slumped to one side when I was being lazy with the wire. I almost didn't even put it out. Some woman picked it up, turned it around for like five minutes, and said it was her favorite thing on the table. Paid full price without asking for a discount, which never happens here. And look. I took the money. I smiled and wrapped it up. But I've been thinking about it all week. Either my taste is completely broken or people genuinely see something in the wonk that I write off as failure. Maybe both. Because the pieces I actually love, the ones I photograph and post and get excited about, those sit. It's the accidents that sell. My grandma always said the kiln knows better than the maker. Maybe she's right and I'm just too close to see it. Anyway, tonight I pulled the one I was convince was ruined and I'm leaving it out on the shelf. Not hiding it in the back. We'll see who's wrong.

so my abuela sends me this photo out of nowhere today. just a pot i made like four months ago, one of those early ones where the rim dips too much on one side and the glaze crawled in a weird spot near the bottom. i almost didn't sell it bc i thought it was a failure, ended up giving it to her. and she's got it on her little shelf by the window, with a dried lavender bunch inside, and the light is hitting it just right so you can see the texture i was fighting with. she wrote "mi nieto el artista" underneath. joder. i sat on the studio floor for a minute. you know when something small just hits you right in the chest? i forget why i do this sometimes, between the cracked pieces and the kiln disasters and wondering if i should just get a normal job. then she sends me that.

ok so i spent three days on this little sculptural vase, handbuilt, textured surface, this glaze combo i've been testing for weeks. really proud of it. posted a reel of the process, lighting nice, good music, the whole thing. got maybe 300 views. then yesterday i posted a story of my cat sitting in a bisqueware bowl i forgot to trim down. phone footage, bad lighting, my thumb in the corner for half of it. 4.2k views. 14 dms asking if the bowl is for sale. i don't know what the game is anymore. i'm not even mad, just... confused. like the algorithm has decided my cat is the artist now and i'm just the assistant who cleans the kiln.

I keep noticing it in my slab pots and cups with faces pressed into them: every single one reads sad, even the ones I'm not trying to make sad. I'll be in a good mood, building something playful, and then I open the kiln and it's just this wall of melancholy staring back at me. I think the problem is the glaze pooling in the eye line. I carve the face before bisque, put a white slip on top, and the glaze settles heavy into those scored lines, so the mouth curves down even when I made it straight. The piece is technically fine, the proportions work, but the feeling is wrong and I can't control it. This one with the little figure on the shoulder, I genuinely meant it to look mid-laugh and it came out like she's seen some things. Anyone else fighting the emotional accident thing? Where the material does the opposite of what you intended and it works, but only if you lean into it? I keep trying to fix it with the tools and I think I need to fix it with the glaze math instead.

Okay so I finally wrote down the actual hours on a piece for the first time. Big mistake. Huge. This vase, the one I posted last week, the green one with the little face peeking through the glaze. Sold it at the market for €80, felt like a win. Real figure, fine, whatever. Then I counted. Seven days on and off because the clay kept slumping when I built it too tall, two failed attempts in the kiln, the glaze crawled on the first fire and I had to sand the whole thing down and redo it. Like 55+ hours all in. €80 for 55 hours. That's about €1.40 an hour. A kid with a lemonade stand earns more than that. I don't get how other makers survive on this. Either they're way faster than me, or they're not counting either, or they've got a partner with a real salary. My grandma keeps asking why I don't just charge more and honestly? Fear. I'm scared that if I put €180 on it nobody buys it and I've made a thing that just sits in the studio taking up shelf space. But at €1.40 an hour I could flip burgers and have more money and more free time. I want to know what the actual number is that makes it worth it. Not the dream number. The one where I don't feel like a clown doing this.