I need to start the next quilt. I apparently thought I had until March. I do not. I have until January. Uh huh. OK. Oh yeah. It needs to be SMALLER, Nida. Seriously. No freaking big monsters of a quilt right now. Something MANAGEABLE (unlike maybe my day job). I have it half drawn in my head. Can I do it without intense detail? I mean, I can make things smaller and STILL put 3000 pieces in them unfortunately. It’s OK. I got this. I might lose my mind while doing it, but I got this.
So it’s been a remarkably shitty week for making art. I still haven’t put the binding on the current quilt. I keep track of my daily hours on specific art tasks, although I don’t count sewing on labels or other prep to send stuff to shows, and that’s all I’ve done this week. In the last 7 days, I’ve spent barely an hour on art stuff and that just fucking sucks. I know I’ve done some fun stuff this week too that has taken up my available time (the cat just deleted that whole sentence by laying her head on the keyboard, and then was offended when I pulled it out from under her), but it still feels shitty. Grades are due Tuesday and I was hoping to keep this weekend free…excuse me while I hysterically laugh myself under the desk because I have so much grading to do and I haven’t even really lesson planned next week for 8th grade, and we’re camping next weekend, so I need to be able to plan out the following week as well, OMG, I can’t breathe. This weekend is fucked. All the weekends are fucked. So are the random holidays, even the week off, it’s fucked.
In good news, I did manage to get that label on the quilt I need to ship…
Took me almost all damn week just to label it, clean the cat hair off of it, cut slats, roll it, and box it up. Sad but true. The bindings for the other two quilts are still sitting over here, waiting to be sewn on. Hopefully tonight and tomorrow. Handsewing is easier to do in little chunks. I have to commit a big chunk of time to sew bindings on. I don’t want to stop halfway to go to bed. I guess I could, but it seems silly.
Wednesday night…I graded stuff and then dehaired the quilt. Thursday night I went to the Jurassic World Exhibition…free educator night (they want us to bring field trips)…
You know me, I’m finding typos…check out the Data Chanel…
It was cool. I had a really shitty day with the kids, really hard, walk away and try not to cry, quit your job, and go work somewhere that you don’t have to bring home with you every day kinda day. But the dinos made it better…
Also might have been hanging out with coworkers in a less stressful environment. Yes, dinosaur attacks are way less stressful than middle school classrooms right now. So that helped last night. Then spent a couple hours talking to stitching friends…and actually doing some stitching! WTF. I know. All I did was the curtains…
They’re fancy. Buttonhole stitch needle lace thingies. Luna was impressed.
Then I speed graded after that. And then came in and packed the quilt into a box, got a UPS label, and went to bed.
Today repeat. Well. No dinosaurs, but art opening tonight in Liberty Station. Then dinner out. Then hopefully some quick grading and some bindings to sew. I AM going to my quilt guild meeting tomorrow. I will bring the iPad and speed grade on that. Brainless effort stuff. Super fast. I want to hike tomorrow too. It’s been a while. Driving me crazy not getting out into nature and exerting myself. Then start drawing the next quilt. Make it fit on one page for once. I used to know how to do that.
I appreciate the colorful mornings right now. I realize I will lose them again after Sunday’s time change, but I will appreciate the fuck out of that extra hour.
And next week…hopefully there will be more art (sketchbook while camping!) and fewer stressful days at school. It’s been easier in the last few weeks, but the last two days were shit. Wish me luck today. I don’t have a lot of hope for it, unfortunately, but that’s because we’re making kids do hard things, and this group I have has a hard time with hard things. Sigh.
Kathy Nida 