Found My Happy Scissors…

I’m plugging along on the art stuff. Summer is so strange. I don’t have to deal with the stress of students and lesson plans, but the home stress increases because everyone is home all the time or they don’t want to be home and they’re going to complain about having to pay for gas or whatever. And yeah, I made you come back and wash all your dishes. I’m that mean.

Giant ass sigh. I actually got shit yesterday for making art instead of driving someone somewhere. Someone who has a license and doesn’t need me to go to that place. And I wanted to say, you know, your mom actually made some money last year and this year off her art, and she used that to buy food last summer. Did you eat that food? Plus art. Sheesh. It’s the part that keeps me alive sometimes. It’s the part that keeps me going when I don’t get enough from elsewhere. It is the only thing I really truly know I have, the only thing I know I can trust to be there. I no longer listen to that voice from that early professor who had lost it, the ability to come up with new ideas. About how it would someday be gone and I should plan for that. I am older now than he was then. And I have enough drawings in my sketchbooks to make quilts until I’m 172, so I think I’m good. Fuck you for putting that worry in my head. Or thank you, because I’ve fought to make sure it would never happen. Hard to say which.

I know the girlchild knows how important it is. Notionally. And when she gets older, she will understand more. I know she knows it was more important for me to be sorting pieces than to drive her to have her TB test checked. I was there at the physical. I am at as many places as I can be. My job…that’s what she should really be mad at…because it’s sucked up more time than my art ever has. And I’m blowing my job off to fly her to college, even though I know we will probably argue the whole time and I will go back to my hotel room in tears…it’s OK. I know it will be OK.

But right now, today, this week. Not so much.

So I make art. And apple crisp. And tea. And I try to shut down the part of my brain that gets sad.

I finished cutting yesterday…because I found the good scissors…and I labeled them so I could find them easier next time…

And because I couldn’t be in the living room because it was already occupied, I came into my office…

I think the cutting took about 5 1/2 hours. Everything on this quilt is taking about 5 1/2 hours.

I’ve been having to manage the animals though. Because Kitten, that’s where I lay out my pieces, so you can’t sit there.

No really. Even though Katy is staring up at you…

saying to herself, Oh My God, what IS that? Is it tasty? Does it want to play? Katy, the answer to all your questions is No. No, she does not want to be your friend. Kitten. I need that space.

Then I got Calli, and Kitten moved down onto the chair (see the tail?)…

So I could actually start ironing. And when Calli left, Katy took her spot, so I was always walking over a dog.

I started ironing in the afternoon…

And then onto the legs, after a 45-minute-long conversation on what the girlchild should be allowed to do and who was responsible for what. Because honestly, I’m a little tired of being responsible for everything. More than a little tired.

So the legs were not easy to iron. Fussy little shading pieces that overlap in a very specific way…

Plus I had numbered by body, not by logical ironing order. Or maybe I thought it was logical at the time, but it obviously wasn’t. Because it never is.

So I pulled the 200s before the 100s, ironed the bottom of the front leg (front body’s leg), then the top of the back person’s leg, then the top of the front person’s leg, then the top leg, which belongs to the back person. Oh yeah. Follow that?

I almost quit then, even though it was only 10 or so. But then I realized the remaining leg was a piece of cake compared to what I’d just done, so I whipped it out. Four legs…

Very pale without their outline stitching of course. I could have stopped then, but sleep has been difficult lately, falling asleep, so I figured I was better off continuing the work…

Then a patterned head. This is back into the 100s…

Which are almost done. So I think I have about 275 pieces done, close to half. I need to do the whole torso and the hands (the hands are fussy bitches, and there are four of them.). That will take a while. Unfortunately, my quilt class today is taking up the afternoon, and this isn’t really a portable section of the quilt, so it will have to wait until tonight and tomorrow.

I’ve got a brace on my right foot. Rolled my ankle back in April…now I have another list of exercises. Luckily, my podiatrist is a hiker, and besides telling me to spend about $300 on new shoes, he doesn’t want me to stop exercising and hiking, which is awesome, because at one point, I was looking at the shelves of boot casts in the doctor’s office and saying Oh Fuck, Not Again to myself. So I’m relieved. And pleased.

Now I just need to get my butt out of the studio long enough to do those things. It’s hard, because there is so much art to be made. Meanwhile, I have been bidding on editing jobs, but it hasn’t turned into real work yet. Hopefully soon. Meanwhile. It’s not so bad to be making art. Really.