Cristy on sat 29 may 04
I have to write and share my story since this has never happened to me =
and might never happen again. It's lengthy, but a good story if you =
have time.
All day Thursday I had been watching weather.com making sure the weather =
was going to be perfect for my glaze kiln later that day. Matt, my =
boyfriend, left work and started her up for me at 3:00...after about 10 =
minutes of trying to tell him how to make sure the program was right. =
Anyway, I come home the lid is just about ready to be lowered and things =
are going great. I'm so excited because I've tested these glazes and =
can't wait to see them on the actual pots. So around 7 I check the =
weather again. My stomach sinks, right over southern Illinois there are =
massive storms heading our way. Matt is rationalizing to me that they =
will miss us, but I know in my heart they aren't. As the night goes on =
I can hear thunder all around us. About 10:00 it hits. And it hits =
hard. The electricity flickers a couple times and I am running back and =
forth from the garage to the wheel and around the house unplugging =
things...and the electricity goes out. If you can imagine a 25 year old =
on the verge of losing it already, standing beside the kiln and =
everything goes dark, you can imagine various not so nice words being =
muffled by the garage door trying to bang itself from the hinges. I had =
one hour to go before she would shut off, and I thought all was lost. =
I'm already behind and to have to restart the kiln tomorrow made my =
stomach churn. BUT, low and behold the electricity came back on about =
1/2 a minute later, the kiln shook to wake herself back up and started =
going again. The storm raged on and finally died out and my kiln was =
still going strong. Come to find out a tornado had touched down about 3 =
blocks from my house and just barely missed us. A lot of people lost =
their homes, but no one was seriously hurt thank goodness.
So that's what happened to me. I can imagine now that if the tornado =
had actually hit our house, you could probably see me floating in the =
air attached to the kiln's lid handle making sure it was still going. =
Sometimes I amaze myself with my stupidity of placing my kiln over =
myself. I love her though and she's been real good to me. =20
So if you have made it this far with my story, thanks for reading. No =
one at work understood the importance of my kiln, but I'm hoping maybe =
some of you will.
Cristy Reynolds
Zippy Dragonfly Pottery
Lexington, KY
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make
mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to=20
keep." --Scott Adams
Catherine Yassin on tue 1 jun 04
In a message dated 5/29/2004 4:09:08 PM Central Daylight Time,
cristy@INSIGHTBB.COM writes:
> BUT, low and behold the electricity came back on about 1/2 a minute later,
> the kiln shook to wake herself back up and started going again
Cristy, I'm so glad you had a happy ending to your story! But I am
wondering... when the electricity shut off did you turn all your switches to off and
wait until it came back on again the 1/2 minute later and then turn all to high
again? Or do you have a computerized kiln? I am curious because I have a
Paragon kiln (not computerized) and I have to turn it back on when the sitter trips
so I can do my soak at the end. I have been told that I should turn the
switches to off before I turn it back on so as to not damage the switches. Anyone
know otherwise?
-Cat Yassin
San Antonio
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