Kathy Nida

I finished choosing all the fabrics for a new small piece…

Most of the brighter pieces are only used once or twice and in a really small area. Not a lot of color.

And I even cut them all out.

It’s amazing how quickly I can get through each task on a small quilt. The big ones can take forever. So this one is ready to iron onto a background. Maybe today. Maybe not.

I have another large quilt where all the pieces have been cut out for a long time, like maybe since April. I suck at finishing quilts between May and June. It just doesn’t happen, which tells you a lot about my mental status for those two months…not only am I frustrated by not making art, but I can’t even make art because everything else is so much more mentally taxing.

Anyway, sometime in February, I mapped out the background fabric for this new large quilt, which is currently nicknamed Strata, but that’s a stupid name and it won’t stick. And if it does, don’t remind me of this post. Anyway, I have this little notebook where I keep track of quilts while I’m working on them, and by keep track, I just mean “attempt to do math and fail miserably.” Apparently, in February, I decided to go buy the background fabric for this quilt and another one…more of my attempting to work on art during the school year. Very commendable of me. So I sketch the fabric requirements out like this…

Actually, I only sketched out the larger top part and the one on the left that says 44″ by 126″. Now, the question is, where the hell did I get that 44″ measurement from? The fabric was barely 41.5″ wide. And on top of it, I needed it to be 46″ wide, so I should have cut it the way I have it mapped out on the right. Um. So I pull the fabric out and I had apparently cut it back in February. I don’t remember cutting it. Not only that, but because of how I’ve cut it, I can’t possibly make it work. The stuff at the bottom is my trying to figure out how to take all the random pieces I actually had and make it fit the size I needed. It continued on the next page…

Where I made it into the real world, realized I could piece my ass off and still not have a logically sized piece (plus I like my tops to NOT have all these fiddly pieced bits in them, especially if they’re all the same fabric). So. I walked away from it. And then I pulled another piece of fabric out of the stash, cut the center piece out of it, and cut borders out of the chosen fabric…

the stuff to be ironed should hide most of the gray…and if it doesn’t, I have all these funny little long bits I can fuse over it to save the day. Please file this under “what the hell was Kathy thinking?” Apparently my brain was on vacation back in February as well. What’s funny is that this isn’t really math calculations…it’s visual stuff, and I should be good at that. Oh well.

So now I have two quilts to iron onto backgrounds. I would like to spend some time today either starting that process, starting to quilt the piece currently known as Stump, or picking fabrics for the piece currently known as Ball. I would also like my brain to start coming up for replacement titles for the one-word nicknames I’ve been using. Actually, Stump is going to stick. The other two? Not so much.

The grape applique continues. Here it is after an hour and a half waiting at the kids’ dental appointments, plus another 45 minutes at piano lessons for the boychild.

And then after last night’s session watching the last season of Weeds on DVD.

Lots more grapes to fill in the holes, but progress is definitely there. No progress on All Around the Town. Sorry.

In other news, I took the kids to the Zoo at Night last week. We have zoo memberships and I feel like we should be able to go to the zoo for a few hours and enjoy it, especially in summer. They have a new elephant exhibit, which we unfortunately saved for last, and it was almost dark. Photography becomes more difficult in the dark…animals move, which makes them blurry, and flashes don’t necessarily project far enough. That said, the big cats were in attendance.

Yes, it would have been nice if he would have stayed still long enough FACING me for a good picture, but this is way closer than I’ve ever seen the tigers.

The puma.

I think this was the snow leopard, and it was standing on its back legs, with its front paws on the wire, looking across the zoo road at the porcupine. Maybe it was hungry.

The kids enjoyed themselves.

Mostly because I fed them.

Lots of animals were asleep or off display, but we still enjoyed what we saw. Next time, we will start at the new elephant enclosure and go the OTHER direction. Of course, our schedule for the next three weeks is already constrained by camp and meetings and a quilt show, but we will fit it in somewhere.

Calli (apparently there is no “e” in her name) has been running us all ragged, up early and not potty-trained yet. Even Ivy seems to have hurt her leg while playing with her (or I don’t know when).

Last night they were sleeping side-by-side, although the puppy kept repositioning herself, sometimes almost right off the couch.

Another sign that it’s summer? I’ve finished two books in the last three days. The Art of Racing in the Rain is Garth Stein’s third book…

I’ve ordered the other two of his books through library loan, so that tells you that I liked this one. The book is about a dog named Enzo and his race-car-driving owner, Denny. Denny marries Eve and they have a baby, whose name is escaping me at the moment (I had to return the book…Zoe!), but what you need to know is that the book is mostly from the viewpoint of Enzo, the dog, and I must have a soft spot for narrating dogs. It was good, and a quick read. I’ll let you know if his other two are any good when they show up here.

I also read Jodi Picoult’s Handle with Care.

It was good, but typical for her, with the right amount of medical and legal hoohaw and a tricky ending. Another quick read. My kids teased me because I apparently ordered the Large Print version of the book from the library. You can hold it a really long way away from your face and still read it! Wow!

Not sure what’s next on the reading list. Am considering a kid fiction book, but it means I have to go back and read the first two before I read the third book. Not sure I’m up for that yet.

OK, so it is the 4th of July, and there will be fireworks tonight. Although the kids go to their dad in a few hours, I do join them for the fireworks every year, so I’m not sure I’ll get much else done. I don’t seem to function well in the midday heat (shocking!)…evenings and night are so much more comfortable. Enjoy the 4th…may there be plenty of corn on the cob and barbecue for all.