I’m Sorry We Do This*

I’m on hold. With Apple. It’s OK. It’s only 11 more minutes. She apologized. I will have to go to work at some time, that’s for sure. I’m relieved that it’s a short week…but I still need to get through the day. I’m deeply in need of sleep (always) and exercise (always) and some quiet hours away from school. Sometimes this job just leaches your brain away…which is why I haven’t been working when I get home. Well…not on school stuff. I’ve been tracing a ton of Wonder Under. In fact, last year at this time, I was doing exactly the same thing…tracing Wonder Under for some quilt. It makes sense…I like having the more brain-consuming tasks for holiday weeks, so I try to plan for that. I’m not sure what quilt I was working on…it must have been Give Me Time, because that’s the only thing I finished after October last year.

Anyway, I did go to book club and still came back and traced for over 2 hours. I tried to go to bed at a reasonable time, but apparently I suck at that.

It’s really boring to see this every night…even for me, it’s hard to focus some nights. The process is meditative, but standing for another 2 or 3 hours after work can be tiring.

I think I have 5 or 6 yards traced at the moment…but most of them are the big pieces of the main figure. I’m up into the little heads at the top, and they have a lot of little pieces, so I’m filling in all the empty spaces between the big spaces.

So I may not need more than the stuff I already have cut…but we’ll see. I’m looking forward to some hours on the couch watching bad television for hours while cutting out a million little pieces of Wonder Under. Braindead time. I’ve been watching Mindhunter…it’s really good. Scarily so.

More tracing tonight in my future. I’m still not even halfway. I’m close, but you’d think with 9 hours in, I’d at least be halfway. Sigh. Well I did most of the big pieces and they take longer to trace than the little ones.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself right now.

I spent 10 minutes cuddling with this big beastie. The other one is still looking for Midnight…makes me sad.

This one likes faucet water. This is him telling me he needs faucet water. Or him just being a brat so he can hang out on the kitchen counter. It’s hard to say.

So tempting dude. Seriously. A mean person would totally turn that faucet on. You are a very trusting beastie.

OK, Apple is done clearing me (it only took 30 minutes on hold to get there). It sounded like she was reading out of an instruction booklet to figure out what to do next. I’m glad she was successful. Now if only I could be as successful for the rest of today. Looking forward to the light table interaction tonight anyway, even if it’s just to get past the halfway mark.

*Jem, They

And You Got to Take a Little Dirt to Keep What You Love*

The morning starts with Apple disabling my ID. That’s always nice. Perhaps later you can crash my computer again and then maybe delete all the grades I input on Monday. I’m not out of the woods yet…it’s still verifying my existence. I could be no one all day.

That might be nice for a while.

I traced for a good solid chunk of time last night, but I wasn’t particularly fast about it. First I finished my book for book club tonight. I read it in 3 days flat. It wasn’t that good unfortunately. Calli wanted to play instead of watch me read.

Simba was perfectly happy to sit on me while I read.

Yes! An actual book from the library.

Then I did some red-orange blanket stitch around the eye on the right.

I also sewed the hippo down on that other piece, and then I decided I could trace while we watched another difficult movie, but I had to fold the drawing so it didn’t cover the couch, since someone was sitting on it.

Sometimes it’s hard to pay attention to something on TV and trace, but I really don’t like just watching TV and not doing anything else. It’s very hard for me to do that.

I think I’m in yard 6 or something. There’s a lot of big pieces on here, so they take up more space. I traced a baby and then most of her torso, except for the heart. I’m in the mid 300s…no wait…400s. I think. Must be for me to take 3 hours to do it.

You can see how I try to fit the smaller pieces in the spaces between the bigger ones. I don’t like to waste Wonder Under…

Well I’ve spent all this time trying to clear my Apple ID and it’s still disabled. So I guess I get to call those assholes later…you know, between school, my union meeting, and book club. Laughing hysterically. Ain’t got no time for that.

Speaking of time, gotta book outta here early. Tonight? If I have the energy to stand for another hour or so, I’ll be tracing.

*Tonic, If You Could Only See

Can’t You Hear You Talk Too Loud?*

Sometimes I wonder why I try to get enough sleep, go to bed earlier to prep myself for the week or for early meetings. Because then I’ll be working and I’ll totally lose track of the time (like you’re supposed to) and then it’s almost 1 AM and I still need to go to work the next day. Whoops. Oh yeah. Two jobs, sometimes three…sigh. I did about 2 1/2 hours of tracing Wonder Under last night. AND made dinner from scratch. AND finished grades. Plus I had to go buy more Wonder Under after school. I should have gone over the weekend…if I’d thought about it…because it would have been on sale. Oh well. Life goes on. And it’s getting dark so early. Ugh.

I did two nights’ worth on this first…on the left side, fly stitches in purple and lazy daisies in pink…

Then after dinner, I started tracing. I got all the way up the landscape on the other side, and then started tracing body parts…

In this photo, you can see the dog sprawled on the other couch…because the paper from this is covering the couch in front of the light table. I finished tracing both arms up to the shoulders, all the hands, and the torso below them…

I’m up to the high 200s in numbers, with about 3 1/2 hours in total. Usually it’s about an hour per 100 pieces, but the stuff down below was pretty complicated to trace. So I’m figuring about 16 hours total. So with Friday as a holiday, maybe I’ll be done then. We’ll see. That’s my goal. I really want to get all the ironing done the week of Thanksgiving. But in my head, I keep deleting next week (seems a relatively good attitude). I wanna go straight into a week off.

Not happening. I have to deal with school next week.

So I keep forgetting I actually have more time than I thought. Finish tracing this week, then cut it all out next week, ready to iron going into the holiday week. Sounds good. Plus the copyediting that’s coming in that week. Gotta balance it all.

These guys. Man, Kitten looks pissed. Look at that face. To her credit, Satchemo is kinda socially inept. Sigh. The two of them will hopefully get along at some point.

I was still tracing when that happened. I said I would just be half an hour…it was more like over an hour, because I got into it and forgot to look up at a clock. I’m on the third yard of Wonder Under…big pieces do that.

Should be tracing time tonight, but I will have been on my feet all day, nonstop walk and talk, so we’ll see what level of energy I have after that.

This guy…barkarama…

This was after I closed the windows and doors that gave him access to whatever part of the house had an animal outside it…or maybe it was the helicopter that was circling out there after midnight. Probably he was just looking for a lap on which to sleep. I don’t have those when I’m standing and tracing all night. Poor baby.

*Caesars, Jerk It Out

I Used to Live Alone Before I Knew You*

Well progress has happened. I blew off school for most of yesterday…and did art instead. I also ran more errands and dealt with my increasingly disastrous shoe issue (they all die at once apparently), and I cooked stuff for lunches and visited the parental units, but mostly I made art all day because that’s what my head could do. Grades are due Tuesday, but I’m far enough along that I think I can easily finish tonight. That’s the plan anyway.

So I drew for about two hours…added some tools, a UFO, and a sun and comet…like you do. When I put the final version together, I think I’m going to move the comet down and away from the sun a bit…but I don’t need to worry about that now.

On the other side, a rocket and the moon…

I’m totally leaving the rocket there.

Above, I added more stuff and things…science, a pocket watch, the dollar we don’t get paid…

A screwdriver and more science stuff…

But the top wasn’t pulling together, so I added the banner…yes I was watching Einstein while doing this, and he’s kind of a dick toward women (then again, many were, right? Not excusing it…).

Then we went to the parentals for dinner and I saw this picture again. Well that’s amusing. We actually got the boychild to smile.

My parents won a family portrait, so we were all in it. It’s a little frightening.

While I was there, I sewed down the snake and started on the hippo.

Then we came back and I numbered the drawing. I was hoping for the 800s, but knew it was way too big for that (it’s about 60 x 70″)…but 1348 isn’t bad. Really…it’s not.

That’s totally doable. I’m really liking this one…

I already marked the salt as knots…French knots instead of fabric dots. Makes more sense. Although there are small pieces in this thing, I didn’t need to make more.

Because of Daylight Savings, I had what felt like an extra hour, so I kept going for a while and did about an hour of tracing…

I got one side of the landscape traced, into piece 82 or so. Then I went to bed early and couldn’t sleep. Too many things in my head for that. Sunday nights suck for teachers…it’s so hard to clear your brain of the week so you can get enough sleep to get through it.

Anyway, the plan is to finish tracing Wonder Under this week and get all of it cut out hopefully by Monday, so I can alternate copyediting with fabric-choosing. I have some Thanksgiving stuff I have to do, but I’m hoping to have a good chunk of the week to do what I need to get done…I don’t have endless amounts of time to make this quilt, so I need to be on task. As always. OK now to face the week…

*Rufus Wainwright, Hallelujah

A Cat Would Be Nice

Well hello. I am still supremely sad about Midnight. I’m trying to do all the stuff I’m supposed to do, like grades and errands and finding obscure lightbulbs (don’t even ask), but it sucks sucks sucks. She hung out in my office all the time, and now she’s not here, so it’s hard to be in here…

Her fur is still on everything, because she laid on everything. She’ll be in every quilt from now until I die. And beyond probably. Aargh. Dammit world, why?

It’s hard to be out in the living room too, because she was out there too…

Thursday night before she got sick, monopolizing my sketchbook. She seemed fine then. So it’s gonna take me a while I guess. The hardest ones are when you get no warning. You spend months medicating a cat and taking it to the vet and giving it subcutaneous fluids and it’s almost a relief for everyone, including the cat, when it’s done. I’m sure that’s true for people as well. For 5 years, my grandma had 6 months to live. We were somewhat ready when it actually happened.

So I’ve been keeping busy, because there’s just too much shit to do to NOT be busy.

Friday night was gaming…I sewed these blocks together and then worked on the bottom left block. That guinea hen needs feet, but apparently I need to sew something to the bottom of it for that to happen. I need to finish the flowers on that block and then the monkey has a bunch of stitching, and then I can move onto the sheep.

I did two nights on this (actually I did three, but the second picture is crap). I’m mostly trying to fill in on the left side now.

Then I was trying to get the rest of the June block organized, since I’ll need it soon enough. I wanted to keep all the blocks separate, because it’s easier to embroider a single block than a conglomerate, but that doesn’t work with the road and overlapping shit, so I gave up and sewed all this together. June is the three blocks that still have pins in them. So I’m still sewing wool down for those. Obviously.

All that happened on Saturday afternoon, when I was done with grades (well, for the day) and I had run errands and I had very little brain power.

Then we went to an art opening in the roof area of a hotel in Little Italy…great views, shitty parking. But it was a good base for hanging out in the evening, and a friend of mine was in the show, so it was a good excuse for it.

I was lame and didn’t take any photos of my friend’s work, Kim Kane Niehans, but you can go look at her website and know that she does beautiful work.

So this show is associated with 1805 Gallery, which does artist residencies in this tiny studio, all glass, on the street level in Little Italy, here in San Diego. The goal is to interact with the community, so artists deal with that in different ways. I was not consistent about taking photos, but I liked this work by Chantal Wnuk…very expressive.

And these pieces by Lauren Siry, the organizer/gallery curator/owner.

A view of the entire space…very cool…5th floor on a gorgeous San Diego night.

Then dinner down the street at Queensland Public House…

And home for some episodes of Orville and drawing…I added Kitten into the quilt. She stars in lots of them.

Still trying to persuade her to come sit out with me in the living room. I know I complain about them sitting on the light table, but I like their presence…just not their effect on the drawing.

Then I started adding more hands…an apron…80 cents to a man’s dollar (still trying to figure out how to show that), a uterus…

On the other side, I went for birth control…because that’s gonna get more expensive, harder to get, which equals more babies that people can’t feed and maybe don’t even want. Sex is a biological urge, but women aren’t supposed to have it? Men can, and we’ll even fund the drugs for them to have it longer and harder than their bodies will allow, but women, we’re supposed to be prim and proper and fuck you, seriously?

I’m pretty irritated with politicians and white men and a huge swath of the voting public at the moment.

I’m just filling in spaces at the moment, trying to visualize what the final drawing will look like. I’m close, very close. I just need some time with my head and some tea and a cat would be nice. Sigh.

I Got a Mind Like Weather*

Well one thing about teaching middle school: some of them have incredible empathy and some of them are socially inept and some are just jerks at this age. One hopes they will grow out of it. Most of them were in the empathetic to inept range yesterday…inept in that they blurt stuff out and want you to explain everything when you don’t have the emotional energy to do so, and probably don’t need to burst into tears yet another time. Then again, at least one adult was in the socially inept range.

We rescued Midnight out of a tree in 2005 and she was the girlchild’s baby from there on…

She’s the only cat we’ve ever had who would ride in a stroller.

When I got home, I petted this thing a lot…he misses her too. He went looking for her yesterday. They were buddies.

You know he doesn’t understand where she went.

Eventually I found the mental energy to stand up and draw…I don’t feel like I got much done, but I did whatever I did for almost an hour. I suspect most of it was staring at the paper. But I added a background landscape…

It’s simple enough. Just a place to land the body…

I used to always just drop them in space…and sometimes I still do, these legless torsos, like busts on invisible pedestals, floating in the middle of nowhere. Now I feel like they need a home. I’m sure that says something about me.

I added in the sewing stuff that was in the original drawing but wouldn’t fit on my second try. And I added the glow around Midnight…that solves the problem of dark cat on dark background, but also makes her look (as a friend said yesterday) a bit more badass…

She wasn’t really that badass. She looked it because she had that long nose and those green eyes, but then she’d rub up against you or knead your belly with her claws and chirp with this tiny little voice, and you’d realize what a big softy she was. I miss her. It’s hard when there’s no warning, when they’re fine one day and the next they’re so ill there’s no way out of it. It sucks for those of us left behind.

This morning’s sunrise.

It must be about Daylight Savings Time…for me to be seeing sunrises. I try to get up after that…OK, off to school and the mostly immature emotions of 12-year-olds. Hopefully they’ll be on task and I’ll be patient with them when they’re not. Some days that’s harder than others.

*Max Frost, Adderall

The Big Sad

I don’t have a lot of words in me this morning. This shit is never easy. I’ll just give you mostly pictures.

2006: Midnight with girlchild…

Midnight Thursday night…

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Ahhh. Poor kitty.

Walking is good.

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I stitched a little.

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I drew a little.

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And some more than a little.

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Women’s rights…

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Women’s issues…

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Midnight…

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She gets to be in this one. It’s hard to put a black cat in a quilt when you tend toward dark backgrounds.. But I’ll figure it out.

And the dumbasses who tried to follow me on Instagram. Fuck you assholes.

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Let’s hope today is a little easier. First time I’ve cried in front of students. Today might be the second time. Oh yeah, rejected from two art shows in one day. It’s OK. I wasn’t really paying attention to that.

We’re gonna really miss you, Midnight.

Hoping…

Rough 12 hours in Nida artmaking world. I got home and Midnight seemed more dehydrated. I had a vet appointment for today, but I changed my mind and took her to emergency last night. Probably a good choice. Still waiting to see what the specific issue is, but it’s something in the GI tract, gallbladder, pancreas area. Later this morning I’ll have more info, hopefully before I have to start teaching, since I’m not the best emotionally with this shit sometimes.

At the vet last night…she wouldn’t stop nervous purring…she doesn’t like the vet anymore than the rest of us…

I hate leaving them there. Then I don’t sleep.

People always comment on the cats in my quilts. I think I’ve had a cat since I was about 7 years old…I didn’t have one in my actual household for the 4 years I was at college. After college, I think it was about 3 or 4 months before I got Juniper. It didn’t take long for more cats to show up. I think 1989 was the last time I only had one in the house. We maxed out at 4, which was rough (emergency situation) and only lasted about a month. We lost a couple to coyotes in the early days of letting them out. Now they are all indoor cats.

The oldest one was 16 when he died…most of them live to about 13. They’re almost all rescues of some sort. Midnight was plucked out of a tree outside the Target in El Cajon. We heard her mewing from the indoor soccer field across the way. We put signs up and no one claimed her. She’s officially the girlchild’s cat, but you know how that goes. Midnight is currently 12 1/2 years old…I thought she was younger. She doesn’t act like an old cat. Let’s hope her body agrees.

Satchemo is the newest addition. He came with his daddy. He’s about 8, we think, and kind of a bastard sometimes, although he also just wants all the kitty loves and pets. Plus he drinks from the faucet, which is just weird. He’s still adjusting to being here after two months, but I have great hopes for kitties sleeping together for warmth. He gets along fine with dogs, which is kind of funny.

Kitten is mine 100%. She’s 9 and a strange one. Calicoes often are. She’s still adjusting to Satchemo. She is the current inhabitant of bedroom territory. I’m hoping she ventures out again, but this is her safe spot. She and Midnight were never besties, but they tolerate each other with minor hissing.

She’s the dumbass who swallowed thread a year or so ago.

Anyway, when I got back from the vet and ate something, I had another pile to grade…and I really needed to do that first. So I did. And then it was late and I was tired and stressed, so I went to bed instead of drawing. I’m hoping for good news today so I can draw tonight. Hoping.