Mondays are hard, even when you’re supposedly on vacation. Maybe it’s because the weekend brings all this hope of getting stuff done AND enjoying yourself and Mondays just feel like the day you have to work. And I do! I usually am copyediting on Mondays because I took the weekend off. So maybe that Monday feeling is my fault. I need to do the words first because they actually take more mental energy. Then I can do the art.
I redid the calendar on the fridge yesterday and realized that school is only four weeks away, but also, the girlchild is leaving before I even start school. And the boychild leaves less than a week after that. It’s certainly easier with other people in the house. Plus they entertain the puppy. I’m not looking forward to the exodus.
I ironed most of Saturday, over 4 hours…so I’m at 13 hours and 40 minutes so far. My sewing machine goes into the shop today, pick up on Wednesday…I don’t know if I’ll be done with the ironing Wednesday, because I have to copyedit today, plus we’re gonna hike. So those are kind of time sucks.
I started Saturday morning with the giraffe on the right…I think he started out in the 400s.
I finished the giraffe and went on to do grapes and grape leaves…it’s fussy in here, because the ribs go over some stuff and under some stuff. Which is my own crazy.
When I’m drawing, I don’t think about HOW it will get made, whether it will be a pain or not. When I was drawing all this earth-related stuff, I drew a homeless woman in there. Because she seemed like something an Earth Mother should be paying attention to…carrying close to her.
She’s tiny, but she’s in there. With her shopping cart. The homeless population in San Diego and El Cajon has always been there…but lately it seems like we aren’t really helping them. Can we house all of them? I’d like to think we could house those who wanted it. I know a few don’t, but most of them do. But instead we do sweeps and tear their camps down, and we put up sharp rocks so they can’t sleep there or even sit there, and we carry all this fear about them. I’m sure they carry fear too.
Then Saturday night, I went to the Visions opening and to watch a band in Pacific Beach…I got to see the sun go down at the pier.
It was quite pretty out there, which makes up for the fact that most of PB smells like vomit and pee.
Sunday was busy…Calli got to run after the ball a lot, which made her hot.
Grandpa got gnawed on by Simba.
And then I kept ironing…butterflies, cocoons, and poppies…
A gecko…he was fun.
And sometime after midnight, this happened. Because playing with the puppy after midnight means he might sleep through the night. Maybe. Actually, he was asleep, but we were trying to deal with a giant fur matt in his nether regions, and he woke up vicious and bitey. Both kids are involved…you just can’t see the boychild except in the shadow. If you throw balls down the hallway long enough, puppies get tired.
While all that was going on, I was finishing the left side, ironing passionflowers, like you do.
Luckily that whole piece ironed easily onto the flesh background, so that’s the lower torso done. Next is the arm that bisects that…and I’m now in the 900s. Still not halfway, sadly. Close! But not quite.
Here’s a closeup of what I was doing most of Saturday and Sunday.
It’s really not a huge area of the quilt, but there are a lot of pieces and details.
In the last Earth Mother, I wasn’t allowed to do any nudity or politics. I’ve obviously blown that off this time. Although the nudity isn’t really a huge deal. Someone asked me what this one was FOR. It’s for…well…I just needed to do it. So I did.
Anyway, I probably won’t get to iron more until tonight, and I’ll be tired from hiking. Oh well.
Kitten is still living under the ironing board, playing with the strings…
It’s been hot, so that fur-free belly is probably a good thing. OK. Back to work with words. Then maybe I’ll get to the fabric.
Kathy Nida 