Seriously, WordPress, why do you think this is an improved posting experience? I have to click on more things now to see what I need. I was told yesterday that I was old school…I guess so. The old WordPress posting is called “classic.” And I still draw with a PEN on PAPER. And sometimes I sew by HAND. I was supposed to draw last night. Remember my plan to draw every week? Yeah. Well. I was pretty fucking tired last night. I did manage though to sandwich and pinbaste the damn quilt together, so it’s not like I did nothing. Plus I made chocolate chip cookies from scratch for something I’m going to tonight. And my dinner was just going to be uncooked cookie dough (as it should be), but I was hungry later, so I made English muffin pizzas. I think I am turning into a college student. I just haven’t had the energy to cook anything when I’m on my own. It’s too much work. I need to solve that problem.
Anyway, so I had enough batting and I found enough of a backing fabric (which was a front fabric on another quilt, so I had a shitload of it, apparently) last night…girlchild ditched me for some Haunted Trails thing with her friends (OK, I would have ditched me too…it’s OK), so I first had to clean the entryway so I could actually find the floor. That was not a bad thing. There’s still a lot of shit in there, but it’s much better. The cleanliness issue is driving me crazy at the moment. I just don’t have time for everything that needs doing. Even my computer is slow…wasting more time I don’t have. Fucker.
So I can’t show you the whole quilt, but there’s the batting! Sandwiched on the backing! Taped to the floor!
Wow, that’s exciting. This quilt actually isn’t as huge as some of mine have been recently. It’s supposed to be 36×60″. I’m guessing it will take about 15 hours to quilt. I’m hoping to start today, but today is already turning into a clusterfuck of time suckage, so we’ll see how that goes.
Babygirl was irritated by my throwing her off the ironing board, so she decided to inhabit one of the green fabric drawers.
I really need to clean this room up. It’s a hoarder’s paradise. It’s driving me nuts. That’s the thing, though. What do I drop so I have more time to clean? Art? Grading? The gym? I could stop reading books, but then I might kill innocent bystanders. Seriously. I need time in my head.
Anyway. It’s ready for quilting. I’ve spent 70 hours and 33 minutes on this quilt so far. Minus the drawing, because I don’t ever time that. There’s too much staring-off-into-space time. Processing time. Which reminds me, I need to draw the next quilt…needs to be done by January 1. Ha ha ha ha. No seriously. It does. It’s OK…it needs to be smaller.
Pinbasting didn’t take long…
I know, Sion. You think I’m nuts for pinbasting. I’m really just very methodical about certain stages of the quiltmaking. I might change my process if I had a good reason. Or if I had time to experiment. I never have time for that. Everything’s always short of time. I never have enough. I should be grading today AND quilting. Plus the gym and the girlchild’s soccer game, and I need to pick up my library book, and because I’m at a meeting all afternoon tomorrow, I need to lesson plan and plan for being in Houston next week and I have so much grading I might fall over and I really need to clean the damn house!
Yeah. It’s deep breaths.
And you know what’s crazy? I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year. I have 28,000 words of a novel and I’m not writing right now (see comments about time above), but I WANT to write. So I’m committing to it. The thing is, I write about a thousand words a day here. It doesn’t take me long, really, and maybe I’ll cut back a bit in November to accommodate the novel. So they estimate 1667 words a day to hit 50,000, BUT…I’m on a plane (or two) on November 1, I have a 4-day weekend thanks to Veterans Day, which includes a soccer tournament and hopefully someone else driving, plus there’s a whole WEEK off for Thanksgiving. I think I can do it (the little voice in the background that is reminding me that grades are due can just shut the fuck up). A school friend gave me her NaNoWriMo T-shirt from a few years ago. And worst-case scenario? I get more written and I don’t hit 50,000. It won’t kill me. But in the 11 days I have off from school, I could do 5000 words a day (could I really? I don’t know that I could.) and be OK.
Hey, you know me. I set crazy goals. Sometimes I meet them. This quilt? Have I been meeting them? Fuck yeah. A few I had to adjust, but I’m doing OK. So I’m estimating 15 hours of quilting. Here’s the problem, though…I’m in Houston for two nights…three days gone…plus catchup when I get back. So my plan is to be done with quilting by November 9. Eeek. That’s tight. Then I need to do binding and figure out what to do with the bleeding spots. Although they’re much harder to see with all the pins…maybe the quilting will help. I’ll still have to do something, but maybe not a lot. And I set this mid-November date…and I really have a little longer. But it needs to be photographed too. And I need to start the next one.
Crazy brain. Thinking it can do all this shit. WTF.
Kathy Nida 