It's a Wrap!
Levi and Mary tape up a box as I retrieve another bowl, still hot from the kiln.
Georgia and Byron Knight of Blue Moon Gallery and Sherry Caldwell-Hohl and Bill Hohl (pronounced Hall) of Caldwell-Hohl Pottery fired the last six bowls for me, as I had a kiln firing as well. But Bill and Sherry's kiln apparently had a thermocouple fail and the firing took 20 hours instead of 15, so we had to crash cool the kiln to get the pots out Tuesday. It wasn't through firing until 8 a.m. Tuesday.
I think it was around 6 p.m. when we opened up the L&L electric kiln at Caldwell-Hohl's. Temperature 420 degrees F.
"I'm going over to Blue Moon to get the other bowls," I said to Bill as the heat billowed into our faces from the opened kiln. "I can't be here when they crack."
When I returned to Caldwell-Hohl's, I boxed up the bowl on the top shelf and removed the shelves to reveal the bowl underneath.
"Let's wait a little while," Bill said. "Come in and have a beer."
Bill and Sherry have a lovely log home, and as I sat down at their bar, quenching my thirst with a Corona poured into a frosted mug, I noticed a beam of light slicing into the space above a huge ceiling beam.
"I could sit here for hours," I told Bill and Sherry.
"That's what everybody who sits here says," Sherry replied.
I finished my beer and hopped up to go place another hot bowl into a cardboard box, hoping it wouldn't burn a hole through the box.
Levi managed to get on the road at 7:50 p.m. Loaded with all of the last 83 foot-soaking bowls, he drove to Virginia and stayed at a hotel, and hopefully will reach the warehouse of Collins Brothers Moving Company before they close at 4 p.m. today.
When I get that phone call from him, telling me he succeeded, and if Bill and Sherry will have me, perhaps I'll go sit at their bar with another cold one - for hours this time.
