Best teacher skill ever! We’re all experts. I’m writing this and reflecting on yesterday’s work or not work while listening to a podcast on how to reduce time spent grading assignments. Ironically. Because I didn’t finish a full assignment yesterday. I almost did, but it hurt too much, and I quit early. Not really early…it was almost midnight. OK, to be truthful, I graded a bunch and then quit and drew some stuff and THEN tried to grade some more, because I wanted to be done, and I made it through three and stopped AGAIN. THAT was almost midnight. I was tired. My head hurt.
I find when I’m feeling this way, like I’ve done nothing, I should reflect. I did take a bunch of stuff to dad’s dumpster yesterday, stuff the boychild deconstructed. I took one dog to the vet for a shot and got medicated shampoo for the other dog. I made it to the pet store and stocked up on dog and cat food for at least the next month. I like having everything set up for the next month when I come back after break, because it always feels overwhelming to just EXIST after a break, so I need things to be easier when they can be. No matter what I do, it will feel overwhelming. I cut up and cooked a ton of apples for scone-making today, again, to freeze for the next month or so. Baking today. Good plan. I did grade MOST of one of the largest periods of assessments. I can easily finish today and start the next (and last) class. The essays are gonna kick my butt, and that’s all there is to it. I did my drawing a day…can’t explain it, but obviously whatever I was watching had some effect…
You would think so, but I was watching more Craft in America and it was mostly Native American artists…so not so much. All the Craft in America stuff is available on YouTube, by the way. I’m really enjoying it. I even know some of the people in it, like in person.
Here’s the grading help I had…
Oh yeah. And thanks to the kid who thought light green colored pencil was the best choice for his messy handwriting. My Head. Ouch. I did quit soon after his. Hmmm. The first time I quit. Actually, right after his. I blame the light green.
Now I have also been trying to clean up small areas of the house, to throw stuff out and better organize it. I got one counter space cleared (mostly! That’s always the problem…isn’t it?). I keep looking at this pile behind where I sit at the table, but I can’t deal with it. I need a better filing space for house files…they’re all legal sized and I don’t know where to put them. Or how to organize them after 4 refinancings. Sigh. So that overwhelms me. The next space is the art desk and the top of the piano…and the light table, which has all the Christmas books (I want to read them ALL RIGHT NOW). I dealt with a small piece of that and found two patterns and three kits. Why do I buy kits? I don’t have a good answer for that except that when my brain is slow, I like stitching other people’s stuff for relaxation. My own work is not always in a stage that can travel, so I take kits on travel trips, long drives, anywhere I might have to sit and pay attention. I suck at that without handwork. So I buy kits, mostly wool, mostly hand embroidery. Although sometimes quilt stuff…more rarely, or cross stitch. I found one pattern that was an iron-on and ironed it onto fabric. I need to pull threads and put the fabric in a hoop and put it in a travel bag. It won’t take much time. Can you say staff meeting? Yes, I’ve gotten in trouble for that before. Somehow that is MORE offensive than pulling out my sketchbook and drawing. I don’t know why. I know how I learn best and hear best, and it’s while stitching or drawing. So let me do that.
But then I found a wool crazy quilt table mat from 2014. A kit, nonetheless. Holy hell, did I buy that? Well. Now’s the time. I love crazy quilting. It’s fun, relaxing, and easy for me. So I (well, I started to type WASTED TIME by piecing this…but it wasn’t really wasted, because it’s something creative my brain could do and not be super stressed by it…and while I was doing it, some ideas for the next quilt popped into my head, and I wrote them down. Hello Art Brain. How are you?) pieced the mat…
Easy to cut out with freezer paper, although I put it on muslin instead of using their fusible interfacing instructions…mostly because I don’t have any fusible interfacing and didn’t want to buy anything to do this.
In retrospect, I should have done it their way, because after pinning this, you do a zigzag in black (barely shows) rather than proper applique…it’s all wool and stretchy as hell, and the interfacing would have made it stay in place, but whatever. It worked. I stitched it all down and ironed the hell out of it. This designer fuses stuff on top instead of just pinning it. I’ve done another quilt (well, most of it…let’s not talk about the unfinished projects plan I had for last year that totally tanked…instead, let’s make a NEW unfinished project. Um Plan, I meant. A new Plan. ha ha. Ha.) in this method, and it’s pretty efficient. So I traced all the other pieces on Wonder Under, found their mistake in the pattern, redrew things I didn’t need to redraw (I did check at least 5 times and yes, there was a mistake, but I missed HOW it was a mistake until later. No worries.) and then ironed all of them to the wool bits, making only two mistakes on those. Maybe three. Who cares! No one will know. Except me, and I will promptly forget about it. Now I just need to cut all those pieces out and iron them to the mat, and then I can do the fun stuff.
What’s really the point here is that I spent at least an hour on this instead of (a) cleaning the space I was supposed to clean (in fact, I now have potentially a bigger mess to clean up) and (b) getting anything done on the to-do list or (c) starting the new quilt drawing. Whatever. Obviously my brain needed a break.
I’m tired. The hot flashes are back in force and waking me up multiple times a night, plus the neighbors above, who are moving out, left their porch light on all night, and it shines into my bathroom window, which shines into the bedroom. I’m really light sensitive. Basically sleep is a losing game for me. I should have closed the bathroom door, but I’m always afraid one of us will get up to pee in the middle of the night and half awake not realize the door is closed and walk right into it. So I don’t.
It’s a beautiful warm sunny day today. What’s on the plate? Finishing one class and starting another class of that damn assessment. My next drawing will be Goddess of the Fucking Rock Cycle. I’m going to the gym. I’m making about a million apple cheddar scones and a similar number of blueberry scones. I’m going to Costco, otherwise known as My Suburban Hell. I will probably find some other project I NEED to do instead of what’s actually on the list. The man thinks I need to go to this community meeting about a high school they’re trying to put on this tiny piece of land where traffic will be hellacious. Ugh. I hate people right now. Oh fuck! The grocery store…I need to go there. When we went Sunday, half the freezers had stopped working, so we couldn’t get two things we needed. I was supposed to go yesterday and forgot. So after the gym, run sweatily through the store for those two things. Good plan. That’s a lot of shit for one day, and I haven’t even put in the drawing of the day, plus progress on a quilt. Really, what I need to do is contact my photographer about when to bring that quilt in…I think that’s the only way I can force myself to finish it. Silly, really…sitting in front of the telly and stitching sounds lovely. Why can’t I do just that?
No idea. Procrastinate EVERYTHING. It is my brain.
Kathy Nida 