Toasty, colorful wood stove flames

This is a Gif of several photos that Drew strung together. I need to take a video of the fire next time.

Ahhhh... the joys of a fire in the wood stove. In my opinion, there is nothing more mesmerizing than watching the flames as they move sinuously into a variety of shapes.

This ghost looks like it jumped right out of cartoons I saw as a child!

Some of the shapes are rather ghostly. Can you see the cartoonish ghost in these flames? I laughed aloud while scanning through the photos. 

I see ghostly eyes to the left of what looks like a ghostly duck! Ha!

Scene after scene showed other-worldly figures in conversation, then being transmorgified into ghastly, ghostly shapes at other moments.

A ghoulishly great horned owl! Ha! And, no, I didn't photoshop any shapes in; these occurred naturally.

This has to be one of my favorites, and I dedicate it to my owl-loving friend, Shannon. Hey, Shan, do you see the owl! Wicked cool... Flame photography rocks! I just snapped a hundred or so photos and I couldn't have been happier with the results.

Drew says I have a very active imagination. That's good, right? Ha!
I see a serpent in this photo. Do you??? Ooohh... and to the left of the serpent there is a barn owl swooping in!

What made these colorful results? Well...Drew let the fire get up to about 550F and then threw in a creosote buster block. As the block burns, it is supposed to break up the creosote that builds up in the chimney. The active chemicals in this block are copper sulfate (green flame color), ammonium chloride (maybe faint green flame color), magnesium acetate (maybe white flame color), and trisodium phosphate (maybe pale bluish green flame color.)