count down till vacation

Another week flew by and now there is only a week till I’m up visiting in NY – Yey!

I’m spending the time wrapping up lose ends before I go and visiting a few people.

Over the weekend I headed over to Joe and Natalie’s site. They live in a canton by the Santa Anna volcano in the midst of coffee fincas (plantations?). It could best be described as a Christmas weekend. We made ancient gingerbread (meaning the recipe was really old, medieval old), and strung up the Christmas lights while listening to Christmas music. I was originally only going to stay one night, but they slowly convinced me to spend a second. I haven’t been so lazy in quite a while. I think Sunday was truly spent reading, napping and eating – Joe cooks really well.

Monday morning came and I thought I would take the long way back to Sonsonate to stop by Mary Susan’s site and pick up coffee – her site makes great organic coffee. Unfortunately, that morning I received a phone call from my kiln constructor (for my project) saying that the first kiln finished was used and the entire product inside was destroyed. Needless to say, I ran home as quickly as possible.

It proved not to be so disastrous when I arrived. 40 out of 120 comales (large, clay plates) were badly cracked, but not utterly destroyed. And all the pieces were located in the same area of the kiln – by the chimney. After talking with a few people, a number of reasons came up.

• The kiln wasn’t completely dried before use, so the humidity affected the pieces.
• The pieces were heated to rapidly.

And the most likely

• The pieces were cooled to rapidly. Upon speaking to a great guy named Larry who specializes in ovens, I learned that if the wood burning chamber wasn’t closed up after use, the chimney would act in reverse and suck cool air down.

Now, out of precaution, I’ve stopped new construction until the artisan fires again. I’m thinking it was just a flook. Nevertheless, I held a meeting with all the artisans to explain the situation and lay out how we were going to precede – an effort to stop any gossip that may spread.

And don’t worry about the artisan that lost 40 comales – I paid her for them.

Other then that, not much going on. I’m just starting to pick up gifts for people and will soon tackle opening my suitcase – a scary step since one never knows what bug has moved in.