Well, I should have waited to fire the kiln.  It was bucketing water from the dreary, cloud-filled sky.  It had not let up for days and days.  Literally, we are talking 40 days and 40 nights…we should build an ark!  But, no, I was determined to fire that kiln!  So I did.  But it didn’t ever get to temperature and no matter what I did…switching tanks, putting it into oxidation, opening the flue, adding more pressure from the tanks…NOTHING worked.  I convinced myself that there must have been an explosion that caused chards to block the flue or something, but nope, it was just too stinking rainy!!  When Adriana Christianson visited on Monday, she indicated that it was a problem with the barometric pressure and that must be the answer as nothing blew up.  But the top and lower cones never made it past cone 8, only a slightly bent cone 9, so most stuff was under fired.  Here’s what they looked like, so a refire is on the books!