Built a thing again. Burned it.

Saturday was the spring Equinox, so I built another min-effigy to burn.

I wasn’t sure I was going to. The weather was originally predicted to be rainy, and I didn’t think I was in the mood. But on Thursday, the weather was lovely and Saturday was looking to be clear, so I was inspired.

First, the base, and a gnomon. I had this concept of a sundial/time/something.

It’s always interesting where “inspiration” comes from. For this mini-effigy, I had four very short pieces of 2x2 — for some reason, they needed to be stacked. That led to my deciding that what I really needed was a spiraling construction that wrapped around the gnomon.

This spiral was interesting to assemble. Then positioning it on the base was equally interesting.

I kept fiddling with the curve.

Saturday evening, 7:00 pm-ish, the setting sun once again reflected off the windows of the house onto the westpoint bowl.

We first saw this phenomenon a couple of years ago. It’s a neat thing.

The effigy in its natural habitat:

Finally, it was time to place the effigy onto the fire. (I’ve standardized the base so that it fits neatly into the fire pit.)

My hope for the design was that the flames would “climb” the spiral, like a staircase. After readjusting the fire beneath to make sure the bottom of the spiral actually caught fire…

It was a thing of beauty from every angle.

Eventually of course it collapsed, and that was as wonky as I had expected. I know enough now not to make it tall enough to hit anything if it falls over, but this one just kind of settled in and flopped only a little bit. I wrangled the spiral into something manageable.

All in all, a satisfactory burn. I’ve decided I want to teach a class on Build It/Burn It.

Elsewhere, the improved northeast corner beckoned.