Unspected Failure

Today, I am not a happy man..... After spending all week making a new mould, making head and hand armatures and getting it all ready for the foam latex run, bad luck has come to me in the most important of all process.

  After repeating the exact instructions as last week for the mixing of the latex, setting the kiln at the same temperature and cooking it for half an hour longer(as the moulds were thicker), the foam latex has turned out to be undercooked...

The only reason I can think of, is that the kiln was under-fireing today, or over-fireing last week. Either way, it was already 16 :45 and with the studio closing at five, there was not much I could no. I've decided to cook the latex for another hour and a half at a slightly higher temperature, but I wont know the result until Monday.

What this means is, as I've being thinking about ever since I came out of the studio, that I will probably have a lot of difficulty in opening the mould on Monday. Specially when I just remembered a few hours ago, that I didn't rub the mould with vasseline...... The worst that can happen then, is that I have to start ALL the process again...and the best is that the puppets are fully cooked, and the moulds are as good as new. Between those two possibilities, there are a huge range of things that can go wrong, so I am very pessimistic towards Monday's encounter with the kiln. 
The suspense continues once again....

Ohh! I just wanted to show a little piece of ...whatever this is I made with the remains of the latex during the everlasting two and a half hours of the foam cooking :