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Author Topic: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down  (Read 2933 times)

Sorcha

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In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« on: April 21, 2017, 09:45:22 pm »
Guys, be really careful with candle spells. This should go without saying, and I really should know better, but I made the error of leaving a candle burning on a bed of lavender on a glass plate unattended.

Some time later, I heard glass break. I thought it was just my cat clunking something in my kitchen, but then a few minutes later smelled burning. That got my attention. I went into my main room (I have a miniscule two-room apartment) and found my end table in flames. I smothered it with the closest thing I had, a kitchen mitt, and really no harm was done except that the plate had shattered and my table is scorched, but my tarot cards were right there and could have easily gone up, and next would have been my couch and drapes.

Just... be careful.




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savveir

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2017, 04:58:59 am »
Quote from: Sorcha;205312


Just... be careful.

 
Ouch. Glad your tarot cards are okay. I admit even though I know better, I have still managed to leave candles burning unattended.. usually because I've gotten distracted and gone off to do something else. I'm considering setting a timer on my phone so I can have a reminder.
"I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it."
-Lewis Carroll

Sorcha

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #2 on: April 22, 2017, 09:56:02 am »
Quote from: savvy;205323
Ouch. Glad your tarot cards are okay. I admit even though I know better, I have still managed to leave candles burning unattended.. usually because I've gotten distracted and gone off to do something else. I'm considering setting a timer on my phone so I can have a reminder.

 
I'd have been heartbroken if my tarot cards had gone up. They're my favorite deck.

And yeah, I really know better, too, but I'd been burning that same setup for several days and nothing bad had happened. It was the dried lavender that caught fire and shattered the plate.

I did a banishing spell awhile back that also nearly went awry, but I was babysitting that one so the danger was never too great of actually burning anything down. I just used the opportunity to work some kinks out of spells using dressed candles and name papers.


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Abigail

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #3 on: April 22, 2017, 11:37:55 am »
Quote from: Sorcha;205312
I smothered it with the closest thing I had, a kitchen mitt, and really no harm was done except that the plate had shattered and my table is scorched, but my tarot cards were right there and could have easily gone up, and next would have been my couch and drapes.

 
I did that in reverse last week when making dinner. I was juggling too many things at once and put my oven mitt too close to the tealight.
So when it comes to that mitt, black is the new purple! :D:

Glad to hear most things were left unscorched!

Sorcha

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #4 on: April 22, 2017, 03:39:33 pm »
Quote from: Abigail;205341
I did that in reverse last week when making dinner. I was juggling too many things at once and put my oven mitt too close to the tealight.
So when it comes to that mitt, black is the new purple! :D:

Glad to hear most things were left unscorched!

 
I guess that's what happens when you play with a lot of candles.

I had a banishing spell nearly go awry, too, but that was more inexperience with using anointing oils and name papers in the same candle spell than me just blatantly ignoring basic candle safety.


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Chatelaine

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #5 on: April 22, 2017, 03:47:47 pm »
Quote from: Sorcha;205312
Just... be careful.


Yikes! :eek: Shame about the plate, but thank goodness you and your stuff are okay.

I often leave candles unattended myself (tealights left to burn down in a deep rock salt holder) and have never had a mishap, but I've heard horror stories among others at church who use the traditional oil lamps with floating wicks - both about beginners in the practice who forgot to put some water at the bottom of the glass and had it crack, or explode, in one particular case, and those who found out the messy way that open flames and cats don't mix.
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Sorcha

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #6 on: April 22, 2017, 03:57:47 pm »
Quote from: Chatelaine;205361
Yikes! :eek: Shame about the plate, but thank goodness you and your stuff are okay.

I often leave candles unattended myself (tealights left to burn down in a deep rock salt holder) and have never had a mishap, but I've heard horror stories among others at church who use the traditional oil lamps with floating wicks - both about beginners in the practice who forgot to put some water at the bottom of the glass and had it crack, or explode, in one particular case, and those who found out the messy way that open flames and cats don't mix.

 
Fortunately it was a dollar store plate.

The problem was that the loose lavender caught fire. Ive never had a problem with a simple candle.


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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2017, 06:38:41 pm »
Quote from: Abigail;205341
I did that in reverse last week when making dinner. I was juggling too many things at once and put my oven mitt too close to the tealight.
So when it comes to that mitt, black is the new purple! :D:

Glad to hear most things were left unscorched!


I recently had a similar experience thawing tortillas in the oven. I had them wrapped in a moist towel, but forgot that one corner of my oven runs a lot hotter than the rest. No harm done, and that towel was already brown-and-white, now it's just more so.
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Oskar

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #8 on: April 28, 2017, 12:52:28 am »
Quote from: Sefiru;205470
I recently had a similar experience thawing tortillas in the oven. I had them wrapped in a moist towel, but forgot that one corner of my oven runs a lot hotter than the rest. No harm done, and that towel was already brown-and-white, now it's just more so.


My family lost our house to fire when I was in high school and its an awful indescribable feeling to lose almost everything. In our case it was old faulty wiring. A few $10 smoke detectors are well worth the investment for those who may not have them already.

Louisvillian

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #9 on: May 10, 2017, 08:07:10 pm »
Quote from: Sorcha;205312
snip snip snip

Related note, on Beltane/May Day I made a stew of chicken and barley with leeks. In a dutch oven. A ceramic one. On the stovetop. You might be able to see where this is going; when I lifted the pot off the stove to set it down on a towel on the table to serve it, the bottom just slid off and like 85% of the stew spilled all over the carpet. No abrupt crack or shatter, just slide and splat.

And that is how we had pizza for Beltane's feast.

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #10 on: June 09, 2017, 02:38:26 pm »
Guys, be really careful with candle spells. This should go without saying, and I really should know better, but I made the error of leaving a candle burning on a bed of lavender on a glass plate unattended.


Perhaps this is why Someone ( whom I can't quite identify as yet) seems to be specifically requesting to be honored with color-changing LEDs instead of traditional candles?   😄. Actually they are kind of pretty, if a bit kitschy.   

CoyoteFeathers

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #11 on: June 10, 2017, 12:52:47 am »

Just... be careful.

I've had a similar experience, except I was actually watching the flames climb higher as it happened and decided it was okay. I tried to do a little ritual of my own design that involved burning paper in my tiny little cauldron, and while I waited for each piece to finish burning before putting in another, the coal I had just kind of... erupted. The flame was still contained in the cauldron and I put it out with a bottle of rainwater I'd collected... once the fire alarm started going off.

My parents would die in a fire. They didn't do anything for about five minutes, and by then I'd packed up all of stuff and shoved it away, then went down to tell them that, "Oops! Man, that candle was reeaallly smoking for some reason!" They believed me and and that sent my mom off to buy a bunch of candle warmers in an attempt to prevent us ever having a lit candle in the house again.

And then there was the time I put my breakfast sandwich on a  paper plate with foil decorations on it in the microwave.

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #12 on: June 12, 2017, 05:50:51 pm »

And then there was the time I put my breakfast sandwich on a  paper plate with foil decorations on it in the microwave.

That must have been exciting. Have you ever seen what happens when you microwave a CD?
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ehbowen

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #13 on: June 12, 2017, 06:56:48 pm »
That must have been exciting. Have you ever seen what happens when you microwave a CD?

I'm almost willing to waste a CD to try it!
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Sorcha

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Re: In Which I Nearly Burn My House Down
« Reply #14 on: June 20, 2017, 01:00:21 am »
I've had a similar experience, except I was actually watching the flames climb higher as it happened and decided it was okay. I tried to do a little ritual of my own design that involved burning paper in my tiny little cauldron, and while I waited for each piece to finish burning before putting in another, the coal I had just kind of... erupted. The flame was still contained in the cauldron and I put it out with a bottle of rainwater I'd collected... once the fire alarm started going off.

My parents would die in a fire. They didn't do anything for about five minutes, and by then I'd packed up all of stuff and shoved it away, then went down to tell them that, "Oops! Man, that candle was reeaallly smoking for some reason!" They believed me and and that sent my mom off to buy a bunch of candle warmers in an attempt to prevent us ever having a lit candle in the house again.

And then there was the time I put my breakfast sandwich on a  paper plate with foil decorations on it in the microwave.

Yikes!

So my spell that went awry was basically over-anointing a candle and then attempting to burn a spell paper. The paper got oil on it and of course then the whole bottom of the dish got covered in oil, so the whole bottom of the dish kept catching fire.

My brilliant solution? ADD WATER! To what was essentially a grease fire.

The dish cracked, the flames got very high and crackly, and my candle nearly melted from the bottom up, and it was all very dramatic, but considering I was doing a pretty strongly-intentioned banishing of a genuinely horrible person, it all felt sort of appropriately explosive.

It seems to have worked, too. The person hasn't been any particular trouble since.


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