Hi world. This week has been rough. Lots of busy moving crazy racing. Not a lot of relaxing. Ironing every night though. I did much better the last two nights. Because grades were done. That helps. It does mean I’ve been ignoring school a bit (except when I’m there). It’s OK to do that. Not forever, because it will catch up and hit you upside the head, but just a bit.
In quilt news, I’m still ironing. I’ll be here for days. But it is progress, much easier to see than when I’m tracing or cutting things out. Wednesday night, I finished two pedestals and started a third…this was after finishing Thomas’ and starting Alito’s…
Finished Alito’s and started Gorsuch’s…
So you can see the progress on the whole thing…
Building it in pieces. Last night, I finished the Gorsuch pedestal and carefully removed the ironing sheet from behind that bit (I only have three big ones, so they need to be reused)…
So much detail that needs to come out in the stitching.
Then I started on the other side with the stuff below the pedestals…
I lost both the N and the C for a bit, but found the N (it was numbered strangely). I’m sure the C is hiding somewhere. Or I sneezed at the wrong time and it’s under the couch, in which case, I’ll make another one. Here’s the big picture at the moment…
I have the sky folded over so I can iron down all the stuff that goes under it. Y’all, this is tiny fussy fiddly work…and I love it. Seriously, this is one of the best parts of making the quilt, watching it come alive with color. So I enjoy it, even though I’m exhausted at the end of the day. I do look forward to doing more of this than I am at the moment. More art, more quilts.
I got great news yesterday that My Body. My Choice. tied for Best in Show at the No Boundaries exhibit at the Virginia Quilt Museum. The show closes tomorrow. That quilt was last year’s hard-to-make, hard-to-live-in piece. I guess this is this year’s equivalent.
Yesterday, in an attempt to return to pre-COVID art shenanigans, I went to a friend’s opening at the San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery. This is Grace Gray-Adams and a piece from 1972 that I loved…
That’s underwear and this is the period…
Love this show, Glimmers of Grace. Definitely worth a trip out there, even if I looked ‘shell-shocked’, as a friend described me. I was tired. I came home and worked on school stuff until I couldn’t anymore, and then I ironed.
Oh wait, this is also hers, from 2010. She found this paint-by-number Mary and then replicated it and had her friends paint them.
So beautiful.
Sometimes my students are hard, although this year is much easier on that front than last year. My advisory is so quiet, only the mouthy ones speak up, so I made sure the vote was unanimous, on a Google form, so everyone’s voice got heard. We had to create a class vision (I have a hard time with these), but after all the yelling about money and cars etc, this is what they voted on for why they go to school…
And I swear, every time I read it, I get tears in my eyes.
I can do this year. I can. I may not always be graceful or happy or calm about it, but that’s maybe just how I roll. Today? Oh today is chaos. Assembly day, so short periods, with stations, one of them a lab with balls. And collisions. Yeah. Could be bad. Plus standing for the last 90 minutes of the day watching the assembly. I already have a headache. Should go take meds, hydrate. Loud noises coming. Then home to iron and read and sleep. And maybe relax.
Kathy Nida 