The Wind Through the Leaves…

Hmmm. Yesterday was the perfect summer day for me. Some reading, some clay, some fabric stuff. It was warm but not too bad. The day before was pretty good too…more reading, more fabric stuff, a long hike, some drawing with dinner, more fabric stuff. I’m hoping to project this level of enjoyment/relaxation into the new school year (yes, I know some people don’t consider it relaxing to work on stuff like I do). Sunday afternoons at the ceramics studio? Why not? Because school. I need to shorten up the Sunday crazy and figure out how to get more of it done during the school day. I will have help this year; that will be nice. Also more literacy stuff and more sex-ed curriculum stuff. I never filled out the feedback form, dammit. Ah well. Put that on the list.

I guess Saturday and Sunday made up for Friday, when the boychild and I moved almost everything out of three bedrooms into the living room. We left beds, desks, and big dressers. At some point before the carpeting starts (next week; we now have a date), we will have to empty dressers and strip beds (not sure why I say ‘we’…it’s ‘me’), but for now, the living room is a hoarder warren of crazy shit that makes everyone claustrophobic…

Except Luna…who sits on that highest shelf, surveying her domain.

We moved everything early because the boychild might end up on a fire, and then I wouldn’t have been able to get all this moved. The Man can’t lift more than 10 lbs (injury) and I can’t lift most of this by myself. We have a cart, but again, by myself would have been a challenge. And at some point, we might have been doing carpet today instead of next week. So this was the solution. Sunday night/Monday morning will be a lifting event for me (all the drawers), but that’s a lot easier than all this. The real problem is where will we PUT all the drawers…and where will we sleep the first night (it’s gonna take two days). We’ll figure it out…couches and air mattresses.

The stained glass window got replaced on Saturday finally…it looks great!

The window was made by the previous owner. The wood around it was decaying and some of the cross supports had come loose, so the window was in danger of bowing out and/or breaking. I finally found someone who specializes in fixing these (took me like 6 months). They stabilized the window between two tempered glass pieces, my contractor guy replaced all the wood, and then we’re just waiting on the final bits of sealing the wood and window for it all to be done. Although then I need to paint that whole wall…and the other walls, if I want to be consistent. We’ll see how far I get. The wall opposite has a textured wallpaper the cats thought was a scratching post back in the day, so it needs to be removed. That’s a bigger challenge. Maybe not a 2024 challenge. I still need to paint the hallway…which includes 5 doors. Ugh. I have a bunch of sanding on my list for this week as prep for that, priming too if I can get to it.

I stitched down another quilt I had ironed together while waiting for my sewing machine to come back, and for my Art Brain to have enough power to draw a new big one.

It took a couple of days because it was in between all that moving shit and hiking around.

This is from some smaller drawing I did either on a plane or while camping or something. Oh wait, I found the drawing…from 12/20/18…so probably one of those Drawing a Day over Winter Break things I did. Hence the Christmas lights. So a 6-year-old drawing. Last December, I picked about 12 smaller drawings and enlarged them to work on in between things. I had just finished the Supreme Court quilt and another couple of smaller quilts, and my brain (due to school) was foggy as shit. So I started some of these.

I cleaned the entryway floor earlier today, so my next step is to sandwich and pinbaste the two smaller quilts for finishing.

I’ve been cutting things out on the big quilt for a little over 17 hours now…Friday night…

Saturday night…

And Sunday night…

The box on the bottom left is all that’s left…somewhere between 300 and 400 pieces left. I feel like I might get close to finishing that today. Maybe. Then a few hours of sorting, made almost impossible by the piling of shit in the living room. I mean, I could do it, but I would have to unpile and then repile some of that shit. I don’t want to wait a week for the next step though, so I’ll do it. Sometime in the next couple of days.

In clay news, I’m slowly working on the world figure’s upper torso. I have a base it sits into as I build, but I did check it again to make sure it’s going to shrink appropriately. It’s like a 12% shrink.

I’m OK with an imperfect fit, as long as it actually fits. I got one hand put on…holding that up, because the forearm and elbow haven’t hardened enough to fully hold it. The right arm, I got the elbow and forearm put on. At the moment, the whole upper torso is sitting on a separate base I built just to support this.

The support is under the plastic. There’s a sponge holding that hand up as it dries. The right arm is on the base until the hand goes on. I attached a partial version of hair (fire) to the head and then persuaded the head to attach to the torso. That back sponge is holding it up until it hardens. This clay is not great for sculpture, but it’s what I picked (what I used in class). I’ll pick one with more grog next. Maybe a little more? I don’t know. I like the smoother texture of this, which is half porcelain and half stoneware.

I made a heart.

I think I know how/where to attach it, but I need things to stiffen up first. There will be carving on the fire hair and the heart, and the plan is to add more ‘hair’ in the form of smoke from the fire. Yeah. Crazy.

The other piece made it out of the kiln!

Just a few cracks…iron oxide with a little bit of clear next, I think. Only clear on the underglazed bits. Then fabric wings hanging from the arms. And fabric coming out of the things on her head.

I numbered this sweet little thing. It only has 390 pieces.

Can’t trace it until the carpet is done. That’s OK. I have plenty to work on and this has a later deadline.

I also pieced this thing together.

I finished the embroidery on the center panel, and then thought I’d be sewing all the little houses together, whee!, but no. There’s a border around the central panel with 5 flowers on it. It’s fine. I won’t be sewing houses together until 2025.

We hiked in the Lagunas on Saturday…we were hoping for cooler weather, but no.

We started hiking around 4:30 PM and it was still 85 degrees.

It cooled down around 6 PM, which is when I would have preferred to start, but we were going to eat dinner up there and the restaurants all close by 8 PM.

It was beautiful, though, even though it was warm. There weren’t a ton of people, which was nice.

I love hiking around the little lakes and meadows up there. Well…unless there’s cows.

We had to walk right through a group of them, lots of calves, so potentially nervous moms. They were standing on the trail for a goodly portion of it, so we did some nervous (but calm) movements of our own to get across the field without pissing anyone off.

A tiny adrenaline rush. This hawk had a snake and was being chased by a smaller bird.

And here’s one of our three friendly crows here at home. I took the dog out in the morning and it was up there squawking at me because the Man hadn’t put out the trays of nuts for the birds yet.

And I am still reading about the period. Good book. I’m reading two books, actually, one fiction and one nonfiction…

This is too real for all the crazy shit going on these days. Like how do you show your Supreme Court is corrupt without saying they’re corrupt? Just look at what they allow and disallow. Sigh. I don’t know that I have another Supreme Court quilt in me. Certainly the bullshit is all still there.

OK, it’s a Monday, but it feels like a Saturday. I have some stuff I have to do today, but first, I am going to pinbaste these two quilts, because that’s sweaty business and I want a shower. Work for it! Also hopefully going to get close to finishing the cutting-it-out phase of the big quilt. I’m sure there’s more on my to-do list that I haven’t remembered, like watering, for sure (it’s been hot and dry) and filling up greenery trash cans (never stops)…but also some reading…and appreciating how quiet it is today with all the kids inside or at camp or I don’t even care WHERE they are, it’s blissfully quiet except for the birds and the bugs. No tree trimming, no sawing, no yardwork, no screaming, no yelling. Just the wind through the leaves. And the Man watching some loud thing (it just got loud…).