Views from the kiln...

You might have read on here before that I do a bit of pottery (for fun) during the winter months... well, last night was probably one of the most memorable firings I have ever been to. Let me explain... Once a year a local potter has a special firing in an outdoor kiln (pronounced "kill-in" here). We wait and wait for a nice night to drag the big metal kiln outside to bake our pots and sculptures that we have been working on for a couple of weeks. The evening is usually a lot of fun as we all stand around the kiln talking and warming ourselves as it heats up to 1000C.

As I walked down to the pottery studio last night I noticed that there was a very faint rainbow out over the sea. I stopped along the way and took a couple of pictures, but they really didn't look all that spectacular. As the night progressed, however, the rainbow kept growing brighter and brighter... and longer and longer... until it was the brightest rainbow I had ever seen and it reached completely across the sky. I stood out there with my pottery friends in amazement at the beauty of this somewhat common occurrence in Ireland.... One of my friends in the class made the statement that she never gets tired of watching the sea and the weather, that they are always so amazing and magical.... I had to agree... In the end, the rainbow must have lasted an hour and half before it faded away into nothing, and we all had a fun and memorable time around the old kiln...


















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