Free the Pins!

Oh my. I’m not even halfway through the week and I feel like a truck hit me…not because of COVID…I’ve been fine except for some residual phlegmy grossness since last Tuesday. And yes, I just taught two days in a row for the first time this school year, but geez. I know I’m getting older, but man oh man. Three more days? It’ll get better…I’m doing labs all week with 8th grade, so that’s a lot of physical movement…a LOT…and then 7th grade is the mental thing…they still don’t know how to do 7th grade science and their behaviors are insanely inappropriate: yesterday was walking out without permission, arguing about observations (I’m right! The teacher can’t be!), throwing oneself across the table (not me, y’all…not me), yelling “he didn’t do anything” when I sent a student outside for a discussion (dude, not talking to you), plus a plethora of minor stuff, stupid noises, yelling out. My co-teacher uses a citizenship points system that I’m implementing just with 7th grade to try to curb some of this crazy. I know it’s because I was out for 6 days, so I will just need to stay the course and be that hardass mixed with personal conversations (had two good ones yesterday with boys who need attention, and yes, they do!) until they start to get it. There’s rules. Disappearing for 25 minutes during class is breaking some big ones.

Sigh. So it’s making it hard to get art stuff done…and I have a bunch of administrative-type stuff I’ve been doing…entering shows, cutting slats, putting on labels. All good, because it means showing my work. It doesn’t mean a lot of progress on the current quilt…but now that I know it won’t make the deadline I was hoping for, it doesn’t really matter if I speed through it. It’s all ready to be ironed together, and hopefully I will start tonight.

As I was doing all that stuff, Kitten knocked down a piece that has been hanging on a board in my studio that is basically hidden by a pile of batting (that Kitten likes to sleep on)…I totally forgot about this piece…

People have been trying to date it based on the fabric…I can tell you it’s probably early 2000s. But the best part is that I never finished the sleeve.

I swear, I have a million sewing pins stuck into an in-progress piece, which is why I keep having to buy more, because I run out. Mind-boggling if you think about it. I should finish that damn sleeve, yeah? Totally. FREE THE PINS!

So that night, nothing but admin. Last night, I graded late…trying to stay on top of things. But then I remembered that I had scanned some photos for a 9/1 deadline for a coloring book one of my art groups is doing, but I needed to clean them up. So I spent an hour doing that (stayed up later than I should have, probably not helping with the exhausted feeling this morning, but I wasn’t watching the clock).

Kitten is entirely unhelpful. She had her head on the keyboard at one point. Even now, her tail is whacking up and down in front of the screen. Anyway, drawings are done and emailed. Woohoo!

I did finish sorting all the pieces on Monday night too…it only took another 10 minutes…I was sure it would be longer. So here’s the whole quilt…

Doesn’t look like much right now. Hopefully it will look better in a week, although it’s supposed to be like 106 degrees this weekend, so I’m not sure how much ironing I’ll be doing. I’m just hoping they fix the A/C at school. Rumor has it they have the parts and they’ll be installed this morning, just in time for the beginning of the heat wave. Woohoo! Gonna need that.

Growing mushrooms at school…my co-teacher and I are trying to do a fun/tutoring thing with science after school once a week.

Hopefully will be successful pizza in a few weeks.

Here’s my first compost tomato (that wasn’t stolen by wildlife)…

Are cherry tomatoes just immature tomatoes? Or are they a different subspecies of tomato? Is this a cherry tomato? I just don’t know. It is awfully cute though.

Yeah. Did that. With a bang.

Now I’d like to move on to surviving the rest of the week. Or even today. Pilates after school. Then finish packing this quilt up so I can start ironing in the hottest time of the year. Woo! No really, I love the ironing-together part of quiltmaking, because it’s the first time I see all the fabrics together the way they are in my head. Really love it. First, though, finish this tea. Need more. Then get outta here.