New wig! see more photos on my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ksalchli/

It took all summer to order a kiln, get it here, and get it up and running. I'm so glad to be able to fire things when I want to now!

I opened the box when the kiln arrived, but I left it in the box until the electrical hookup was ready. It then took a few weeks to get an electrician to come. I read the instruction manual, the control box manual, loaded the kiln, hit the buttons to get to cone firing mode, and... there is no cone firing mode. Crap. I had noticed that the controller didn't look like the one I thought I was getting, but I figured it would work. Without cone firing mode, I would have to figure out how to program ramp/hold programs, and I'm not going to begin to try and explain that here, but I'll say it's a bit more difficult to a person with no prior kiln or porcelain firing experience. So I call the distributor, they call the kiln company, I got a call back saying they sent me the wrong controller and they're going to send me a new controller. Don't worry, the man said, it will be easy to re-wire. In sets the panic... anything involving wires and electricity terrify me! But really, it wasn't bad. It was like pulling plugs and reconnecting them, and the support guy talked me through the whole thing. The worst part was that some of the connections were really hard to get off, I ended up prying them off with a butter knife, and it took a half hour. But then I was able to hit a few buttons and start firing doll parts. All's well that ends well, but everything I do has a few road blocks along the way.

My kiln's name is Calcifer, BTW. I always name pets after characters from books or movies, so my kiln too gets a literary name. Calcifer is a "fire demon" from Howl's moving Castle. Fun book. Good movie too

More coming later. I am still trying to figure out the finer points of blogging, getting things laid out the way I want and such.

Here's a view of my girl that shows her legs. I'm working on re-sculpting the legs, they just don't pose right. The joints don't lock and they slide around. They should be just right before I make any more. Hopefully I will re-mold them this week.

So now that I've finished my first porcelain ball-jointed-doll, I decided to start a blog about it... I know it's about time, everything takes me a long time. It took me a month to decide on a blog name. "Higher Delights" are some words I plucked from a Jane Austen quote. I liked it. Clever is not my strong point. But hopefully doll making is... thanks to all who have followed me in my doll making thread on Enchanted, Marina Bychkova's fan forum. Thanks for the encouragement and kind words. I would love to own and Enchanted Doll one day, I envy those of you who do. But my own creations will have to do for me for now. I will be changing the look of the blog as I go- computer skills are not my strong point either, I'm proud of my progress thus far... stay with me, better things are to come.