pit fired pots without digging up the yard - making pottery in my new campfire pit

These pictures are from a previous attempt at firing a little bowl in my fire pit purchased at Menards for having backyard campfires.
By using some organic fuels, coloring agents next to the pot and then wrapping in newspaper and tin foil, and finally allowing it to burn in the fire for several hours, I can make our evening outdoor fires have a little of the anticipation a child feels at christmas.

Trying to be humble, but pretty darn excited!

Yesterday, after many months of anticipation, I was greeted with a package on my doorstep from DRG Network. Alas, my yarn bowl was back home, and accompanying it on its journey were 2 hard copies of the current issue of Creative Knitting Magazine. Wow, the cover shot is of a finished top to die for. Wish I had the time to really delve into knitting when I see some of these creations. If you're a knitter, this would be a fabulous magazine to subscribe to - and either the online version or the snail mail version are available. Perusing through, I find an overhead shot of one of my yarn bowls on page 11 "Knitting with a conscious" article - with a great writeup on eco friendly green yarns. The article continues and there on page 90 in all her glory a full shot of my bowl. The yarns they chose to feature in the bowl couldn't have been more perfect. I am normally a very humble person, but I can't help but be terribly excited about this - thank you Creative Knitting!
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There's hard Chunks in my Coyote Shino Glaze - Oh My

Just thought I would take a minute to post this for anyone out there who is perplexed about finding hard little chunks that won't dissolve back into their shino glaze, which has just happened during the past few months. I keep my glazes in the basement. A dungeon of sorts, since it is a very old house, which is not heated by ducts. It's winter and sometimes drops into the 50's temperature wise, which I found out, is why my Coyote shino glazes were getting gritty/chunky. I didn't realize that just being cold would cause this, but it does. One of the ingredients in it doesn't tolerate cold temps well (neither do I for that matter).

So I posted my problem to my friends on the Etsy Mud Team after I had already glazed a bunch of mugs with it, chunks and all, thinking they would just melt down during the glaze firing. On the good advice of some of the members, I found out you need to immerse your glaze container in a bucket of nice hot water to warm up the glaze until you can get the chunks to dissolve. I tried it and it worked perfectly!

But in the meantime the already glazed pieces went on to be fired. The result was a somewhat mottled spotty effect, which worked fine over the black glaze that I had layered the shino on top of. Above is a picture of one of those glazed pieces heating up in the kiln at the early stages of a glaze fire.........every little hardened speck erupted in the glaze. It almost looks like gorilla glue oozing out all over the mug doesn't it? I found it so interesting I couldn't resist sharing.