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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.

Vale, real numbers because I'm tired of vague advice. My last three glaze process reels: 340, 210, 180 views. A story I posted from the studio at 23:40 with a photo of the kiln door and the words "esto va a salir mal, lo sé" (this is going to come out bad, I know it): 1200 views, and 9 people replied asking what I was firing. So the thing that "works" is me admitting I don't know. Not the finished piece. Not the timelapse. Me at midnight, in a dirty apron, betting against my own work. I think this is because everyone can smell when a post is a shop window. And a kiln at night is just a kiln at night, no selling in it. The problem is I can't schedule genuine dread. I've tried. I posted a very constructed version of the same thing last week with nice lighting and a caption I wrote twice and it got 90 views, which honestly is what I deserved. Also my firing did come out mostly fine, one small crack at the foot, so even the dread was a lie in the end. Do any of you post the actual middle of the process, the ugly boring part, or am I just going to keep accidentally making content out of being anxious

The pyrometer on my little kiln reads about 40 degrees off when it's cold, then catches up somewhere past 900 and lies the other way. I know this. I've known it for months. And still every firing I stand there like an idiot sniffing the peephole like it's a wine. But the smell thing is real. Around 600 the last of the water comes out and it smells like a wet stone wall in August. Then it goes dry and a bit sharp and I know we're into the organics burning off. By the time I can smell nothing at all I'm close to where the glaze starts to move and that's my cue to stop pacing. Anyway I've got two mugs with the same wonky handle shape in there right now, cone 5, one in a celadon I've never fired before and I'm fully prepared to lose it. My flatmate says the smell is just my kiln element dying. He's probably right. I'm not telling the pyrometer either way. If you've got a kiln that lies to you, I want to know what your tells are.

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 built these three little heads last month, all from the same lump of clay, and i swear they were meant to be the same face. same pinch, same eye sockets, same mouth line. open the kiln this morning and two of them have the mouth pulled open like they're saying something, and the third one looks like it's asleep. same clay. same firing. i did nothing different and the kiln decided they were three different people. my grandmother came by and said the two open ones look like they're arguing with each other, which is fair, they do. now i have to price them and i don't know if i can sell the argument. it's mine now, in a way the sleeping one isn't. anyway the glaze crawled off one of the chins, so there's also that. friday.

People always ask to see the studio like it's this beautiful light-filled workshop. It's a corner of my flat in Ruzafa, 4 square meters if I'm generous, and my little kiln is wedged on a table next to the tostadora because it's the only circuit in the piso that won't trip. So when I fire, the whole flat smells like hot dust and I can't make toast for 8 hours. My abuela came over Sunday, looked at everything, and asked if the kiln was "a new appliance for the family." I said sí, the most expensive one. What I actually like about it: I can't spread out. So I build small. Small means I try more things, and when one dies in the firing I'm sad for maybe ten minutes then I'm already building the next. Last week I lost two faces to a glaze that came out like wet cement. But the third one, the mouth cracked open in a way I could never plan. That one's on the shelf looking at me. Anyway. Curious how much space everyone else actually has, because I keep seeing these huge studios online and I need to know if I'm the only one firing next to the breakfast

so I've got this tall hand-built vessel, maybe 60cm, leaning on purpose like it's about to say something. been working on it for three weeks. spent two whole evenings on the face that comes out of the glaze around the shoulder. opened the kiln yesterday and the glaze crawled off the chin. just. gone. a bald patch right where the jaw was, and now it looks like the figure has a scar I never planned for. here's my problem and I need someone to be honest with me about it. half of me thinks the scar is better than the face was. the other half thinks I'm doing the classic thing where I call a mistake a "choice" because I'm too tired to start again. I've got a market in two weeks and this is supposed to be the piece on the table. I know what the fix is technically. grind it back, refire lower, thin the glaze on the second pass. that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking how you know when an accident is actually better, and when you're just lying to yourself because the kiln is a bastard and you're tired.

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.

Spent three weeks on a tall handbuilt vessel, the neck leaning like it's listening to something. Textured with a wooden rib until my arm ached. Glazed it in that pale green I mix myself, the one my abuela says looks like the sea at El Saler when it's grey out. She named the piece, actually. Called it "la que escucha." The one that listens. Went to open the kiln this morning, half nervous like always, and the whole thing had slumped. Not cracked, not exploded. Just folded over on itself like it got tired of standing. Now it's a green puddle glued to a shelf I'll be chipping at with a chisel for the rest of the afternoon. The worst part is I know what I did wrong. Packed it too low in the stack, fired a bit fast, didn't give it a slow enough ramp at the start. Rookie stuff. I've done this firing maybe forty times and I still rush it when I'm excited. Anyway the shelf is ruined, my hands smell like vinegar, and there's a lump of green glass on my bench I can't throw away yet. Going to go sit outside with a coffee and pretend I'm fine about it.

Opened the kiln this morning and my tallest piece, the one I'd been building up for three weeks with the neck leaning like it's listening to something, came out in two pieces. Clean break at the shoulder. No drama, no explosion, it just decided. And here's the thing: I'm not gutted. Six months ago I would have sat on the studio floor for an hour. This time I picked it up, looked at the break, and the two halves actually look better than the whole thing did. The inside is this pale unglazed white I'd never seen because I always cover it. So now I'm thinking, do I join them back with a visible seam and some gold-ish glaze, or do I leave it as two objects that know each other? Also means my shelf for the market on Sunday has a gap in the middle. Which, honestly, might be the best thing that could happen to that table. Anyone else had a piece that broke into something more interesting?

my abuela never asks me for anything. she has a whole house of things she's kept since forever, she doesn't need another mug. so when she called last month and said she wanted a bowl, una fuente, for the rice on sundays, i got quiet for a second. i spent two weeks on it. hand-built, no wheel, walls maybe 4mm at the rim and thicker at the foot so it can take the oven. i was so scared of it, honestly. i made three, the first two cracked in the drying because we had that wet week and i rushed them. the third one i covered with a plastic bag for eleven days and just stared at it like an idiot. opened the kiln tuesday morning and it was whole. nothing. not one crack. i sat on the studio floor and ate a mandarin and didn't touch it for a while. i gave it to her yesterday. she turned it over, looked at the bottom, said "this one you made with your hands, no?" and put it straight in the cupboard with the dishes she actually uses. not on a shelf. in the cupboard. i've sold pieces for more than i'd like to admit and none of it felt like this. i think i've been making bowls for strangers and waiting for one person to say it's good enough to eat from. anyway. it's a bowl. i'm a mess about it.

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.

Everyone thinks the studio is loud. It's not. Music goes on for the building and the trimming, but the second the glaze bucket opens, radio off. Full silence. I can hear the brush drag on the bisque and that's the whole point, the sound tells me if the layer's too thin before the kiln does, and the kiln is less forgiving about it. Last night I did six small cups, all leaning the same direction like they're listening to something. Three of them I swear the glaze went on perfect. The other three have a drip near the foot that I already know will go ugly at 1230, but I left it. Sometimes the drip is the piece, you know? Sometimes it's just a drip. The silence also means I hear the neighbours fighting through the wall. So. Pros and cons. Anyway the kiln opens Thursday morning and I'm not sleeping Wednesday. That part never gets easier, everyone tells me it does, it does not.

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.