Nichos Again

I'm back to making nichos but I'm not sure why. Maybe I need to feel enclosed? Maybe I'm in a box? Maybe I just need to ponder my bellybutton some more.

The nicho above is After cleaning up from raku firing, this picture below is Before cleaning up from the firing. All the nichos shown here were raku fired which involves lots of smoke and hot fire. Unfortunately, we still have a burn ban in effect due to the drought we are having so there won't be any more raku firing done until we get some rain.

Susan speaks:
Robyn thinks our oven is clean. Ha! The myth is greater than the reality. The oven is pretty bad (see picture) but is easy to clean because it has a self-cleaning feature. You just set that option and a few hours later you wipe out the ash reside and your oven looks like Martha Stewart cleaned it with her q-tips. One problem however -- the odd odors from the self-cleaning cycle set off our smoke detectors! The alarm blares, the alarm company calls us to tell us the fire department is on the way, and we run around like idiots trying to shut the alarm off. Note to Self: Ripping the back-up battery out of the control box is not a good thing to do. The only way to do the cleaning without having cardiac arrest is to open all the windows, have several fans blowing and alert the alarm company before you start. As a result of all that hassle, I just let the oven get really, really, really ugly before I clean it. After all, it's not like I'm eating food off its surface.