Infiltrating My Brain

Awww school. You’ve infiltrated my brain dammit and now I’m in panic mode. I keep looking at the calendar and reminding myself that there are hours in there and I will get organized at some point. My brain is unraveling. I haven’t bought supplies, I don’t have my stuff into the print shop, my room is a disaster.

Walk away.

So I had my stitching meeting last night and started the next month’s blocks. This is May though and not April. April is not sewn down yet. I did stems and legs and grass. The legs are awesome…two couched threads with bullion knots over them.

I have lots more to do on these. Obviously. And I should start sewing April down too.

When I got home, I finally started ironing more quilt parts together. I iron the eyes separately and then put them on the face.

There they are. The eyes are the most important part of the quilt, I think.

Aliens in my quilt, polluting my world.

Seriously. Alien ships give off CO₂, right?

Ironed the head/land to the rest. Most of it’s rolled up.

But then I realized that I hadn’t washed the background fabric in Retayne, and the dark fabrics, especially the batiks, bleed like a motherfucker. And then they say not to use the high-efficiency washers to do that, so I stirred for 20 minutes.

Which was good, because it didn’t bleed at all. Midnight did not fucking care.

Then I finally got her ironed down. She’s taller than I am. Not that that’s hard.

Head ironed. Woo hoo.

Now I need to stitch the whole thing down. Like today. Ha! Well. It will probably take 5-11 hours, based on the last two quilts. Probably closer to 5 hours. But I need to do school stuff too and deal with the bedroom and the garage, all of which are stressing me out.

I’m glad I’m at this point though. She’s good. I’m good with her good. But now I need to go do shit so I can stop panicking.

For a Minute There I Lost Myself*

School today. Not the start, just the prep. The stuff we do every year that no one pays us to do but that has to be done. Sometimes I only do this stuff alone, at home, staring at a computer, but we’re trying to finesse what we built from scratch last year, and that takes both of us. Next year maybe we won’t have to meet beforehand. You miss the people…not the workload. Well. And not ALL the people. Just like any other job.

I wanted to be done with the ironing yesterday…COULD have been done, but ’twas not to be. I started well…doing all those stupid little windows in the morning…see how small they are? How many of them there are?

Can you find the two cats? It’s hot and humid here. Cats don’t like hot and humid generally. At least that’s the impression I’m getting.

Then I had a good visit with an artist friend but when I got back, it was apparent to me that thunder had happened. Calli doesn’t like thunder any more. At all.

She tried to dig out the hat tree in the corner of the entryway, she tried to go under my desk, and in doing so, knocked down the ironing board with the quilt and 17 thousand safety pins on it. She also tried to dig through the couch, in my bathroom, and on my bed. Poor baby. There’s more possible thunderstorms today. I’m debating bringing her with me to school, just in case. Not that she’ll be better there, but at least she won’t be alone. And destroy the house. I debate the thundershirt idea every year, but haven’t done it yet.

So she was semi-frantic when I got home and needed about 4 hours of petting and sleeping to get over it. Meanwhile, the internet disappeared, and then so did my time, because fixing that took about 4 1/2 hours and a trip to the not-so-local cable services store for a new modem. And four different guys. The last one was named Lloyd and he promised to fix it in three minutes and he did. That’s all I really need folks. Follow-through and accountability. Or something. Thanks Lloyd.

I did this while I was waiting…

The white lazy daisies up on the top right plus the fern stitch. I also sewed 4 eyeballs down, but that’s not documented photographically. Just imagine the elephants from a couple days ago, but with no pins through their eyes.

Oh yeah, and I stopped by to see my exhibit, because it was near where I was visiting…just sat there and stared at it for about 5 minutes or so. It’s funny, because I walk in and start to explain who I am and they’re like, “We know who you are.” Oh. OK. Hi.

It’s still weird to sit in there and see all my stuff.

Before I left the house, though, I had finished those windows…

And ironed the arm from the night before on top of it all…

Then after the internet fiasco, so many hours wasted on the phone and otherwise, because then the phone was not working once we replaced the modem…I went back to ironing and finished up the torso…which looks ever so strange without boobs, quite honestly.

And then did the last bit of land…and a rocketship, and the wind behind her head. It’s a cheery landscape? No?

Eventually I will iron these two together, once I finish the head.

That’s today’s goal…along with stitching it all down. Hopefully. I have my quilt meeting tomorrow afternoon, and I might have nothing on this to take with me if I don’t catch up. There aren’t many pieces left, but it was enough at 12:30 last night that I was too tired to keep going, plus I knew I’d have to be up early for school today. Ugh. That phrase. Damn day job. I need another month. Seriously. Finish the quilt, the cleanup, the organization. Need more time. Always.

*Radiohead, Karma Police

It’s More Likely to Happen if I Talk about It

This happens every year. I get close to the beginning of the new school year and I decide to just make art nonstop. Like screw the housecleaning and the to-do list. Probably I should be more mature and get the car smogged and the bedroom out of chaos mode (I have two drawers and the hope chest still…just cannot deal. Cannot.). But no. I need this quilt done. I’m irritated that I’ve finished no quilts in months. This one isn’t even that big…although it does have a ton of pieces.

The last week before going back…it just sucks. You realize how many hours you’re going to lose…not just the hours at school, but it’s back to daily grading and planning, to kid problems that never leave your working brain, to adult drama (seriously), to stupid professional development that aims to teach you what you already know (some day they might differentiate…but it hasn’t happened yet), to endless meetings. UGH. I need to change my mindset. Somehow. Maybe if this summer had been more of a recharge and less like hard work. Reminder for next summer, eh? Then again, LAST summer at about this point, I was getting kicked out of an AQS show for an invisible penis. So. There’s that.

Anyway, I had another dental appointment in the morning, but then came back and refused to do anything but art. That’s not true. I moved a few things into the garage. But the humidity is killing me at the moment. Ugh. So I started ironing. Which isn’t hot at all. Stop laughing.

I did the rest of the hills…hard to see it all in this picture. We got oil things and a dam and a cracked highway and a volcano. Like you do. Some power plants.

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I added some oil drums to the top right…

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Then ironed all the bottom stuff to that…

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It’s super long, so that’s harder than it looks to keep it all attached. Right now it’s all rolled up under where I’m ironing. Somewhat dangerous, as I might accidentally iron it all to itself. That would suck.

I did some of this after dinner. I think I was doing blue in the top, above the tree. Just filling in spaces with whatever makes sense.

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Then back to ironing. I did about 5 hours total yesterday…up to almost 14 hours of ironing at this point, but I’m much closer to done now. These flowers were a bit of a challenge.

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Then the body behind it, attaching it all to the bottom bits and building one arm. The hand went in front of and behind the flowers.

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I did some of the torso (the yellow sun thing) and then turned the teflon sideways to do the other arm separately. I numbered it before the torso, but the torso has to be finished before, because it’s behind the arm. Complicated much?

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Awwww. Tiny bird.

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Then I ironed the other arm where it belongs, although it’s not ironed down where the buildings need to go. I just wanted you to see everything I ironed yesterday. It was a lot of little pieces. I gave up when the buildings were next.

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It was after midnight, I was tired, and I didn’t want to deal with all the tiny windows. Although, now it’s morning and I still don’t want to deal with them. Huh.

So then I was trying to figure out how to photograph this thing. Finished, it’s 61″ long…I’m not finished yet.

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This is a slightly better view. You can see I need to finish the torso, the land above it, and her head.

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So I’m in the 1000s. About 320 pieces to go. That’s it. Then iron it to the background and start ironing it down. See now I can see an endpoint, a light at the end of the tunnel. So it’s really hard to NOT work on it right this second. I have about an hour and a half before I have to leave again. But I need to get the dogs. And really I should clean something (ugh I so don’t want to). I could be done with ironing today if I worked hard and if my schedule allowed. Hard to say if that will happen. Stitch down by tomorrow? Quilting by Friday? I don’t know if I can pull that off. Probably not. But I can talk about it. It’s more likely to happen if I talk about it.

Back from That Soul Vacation*

It’s frustrating to keep making plans to get a certain amount of art done, and then you end up barely getting anything done, whether it’s because of limited time or because things take longer than you thought they would (my fault for so many tiny pieces) or even both! Which is what I’m dealing with today…along with a cracked filling that needs replacing because I grind my teeth. The same with exercise and cleaning and organizing and getting everything done. Life is time-consuming.

Anyway, I’m back to the dentist today to deal with the filling, unfortunately…but it’s gotta be done. I don’t know what to tell her about grinding my teeth…I was busted for that the first time my freshman year of college. I need to socket the exercise back in regularly. I am definitely a work in progress. Sigh.

I did some of this while I was finishing something else up…more stitching in the bottom left, the lighter color, pistil stitches and fly stitches.

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And I have almost all of these sewn down…just eyeballs and those big yellow flower things. I need this done by Friday. Maybe Thursday. And I was watching the last bit of an episode I can’t watch on the computer…

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So ironing started late. Same time as when I’m teaching, ironically. What else did I get done yesterday? Some major cleaning in the bedroom again (still not anywhere near done), boychild needed shoes, some other stuff. Then I ironed the rocky crotchland.

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So yeah, this sits right above the legs…and then the land sits above it. Normal people might just do one piece of brown behind all the rocks and water. I am not normal. But I like how it looks, so that’s my problem. I didn’t get much more in height yesterday…

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I did start on the land, but you can see there are a ton of tiny pieces here…

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The sheep will look more sheeplike with outlining. Hopefully. So this afternoon, when I’m recovering from the dental crap, hopefully I’ll be ironing. Before that, I’ll be dumping 10 bags of clothing and other crap at the thrift store. It’s progress. I know when I’m done with this, it will be a good thing. It’s just sucking up so much time. This is nothing new, right? I’m so at peace when I’m ironing though. Makes me want to do more. Less likely to grind my teeth, right?

Anyway. Teeth call. Louder than the other things.

*Train, Drops of Jupiter

Ironing in My Spare Time…

Interesting weekend. Surely was. I think I have 14 minutes to write this post. Already been to the dentist…sigh. This is what happens to the end of summer. Errands and appointments and meetings.

Anyway, so Saturday morning/afternoon, I worked on the other leg…

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There’s a plane in there that will show up better with stitching and a dark background.

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The lowest land bit goes behind one leg and in front of another. You wanna know why? It was not planned. I had already drawn one leg all the way down and I liked it. The other one wasn’t done, so the land went in front of it.

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Why do I have land at all? Well this quilt is for a show where there’s no nudity allowed, so my land bits solve that problem. But I didn’t just want two, because I don’t like even numbers for shit like that. So land…in three parts.

This is how far I got Saturday before I had to leave for the afternoon’s shenanigans…

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Polar bears…very tiny polar bears.

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Snagged a Groupon for a 90-minute cruise on this boat, wine and snacks.

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It was nice…mostly cloudy actually, with people who were good at talking, although I have to say, I don’t know how people afford to travel as much as some people do. I can’t afford it. All their trips sounded awesome (except I don’t want to do cruises)…

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Wildlife of course…

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Then we headed over to Arts & Amps, at the Karl Strauss tasting room over near Pacific Beach. We’ve been here before…we enjoy the mix of music and art. Cohort Collective are a local art group that has a lot of muralists in it…but today they also had Spenser Little, wire artist…

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And I’m pretty sure this is Christopher Konecki, although I may be wrong.

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And this is the Schizophonics, who were very hyper and loud.

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Spenser attaching his wire bits to the sign…

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That’s when we left…needed food. But it was good.

Then Sunday dog sleeping. Some family health excitement in the middle of all that. Suffice it to say that all is well (for now) and hopefully will stay that way.

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I had 4 nights of catchup on this unfortunately. Mostly down in the bottom left.

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Then more ironing after dinner…other leg above the land.

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A recycling truck…

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A city and a tornado…

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Yes. Those are tiny windows. I only lost one of them. So it looks like I’m halfway done, but I’m not in terms of pieces…because hands and fingers and two more land bits. I’m somewhere in the 400s…got plenty more to do and not a ton of time in which to do it.

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Today is errands and more cleaning and hopefully ironing at the end of it. I wanted to be done with ironing by today, but that’s not a thing. Not today. I’m pretty sure it’s another 10 plus hours. Maybe today and tomorrow? It’s possible. Time is frittering away. Drives me nuts. Feel like I am only ironing in my spare time…and that’s what I do during school. It should be better right now. Oh well…there’s progress. That’s a plus.

A Balance of Sorts

I really did take a (timed) nap with the clothes on my bed yesterday. I was so tired. Set the timer for 20 minutes and did the perfect nap, drooling on the pillow, woke up and (here’s the important part) GOT UP when the alarm went off, and felt mostly awesome the rest of the day. I love it when the science works. Now if I could just figure out the falling-asleep-at-a-reasonable-hour stuff, followed by the staying-asleep-all-night stuff and the not-waking-up-too-early-in-the-morning-and-then-not-being-able-to-go-back-to-sleep stuff.

Yeah. Well. Been working on that shit all my life and I still suck at it. I have bad sleep genes.

So I did deal with the hangers last night. The crochet-covered wooden hangers in the bag were all made by this friend of the family, an ancient woman named Craigie. She died when I was pretty young, but I do remember her. Makes it harder to just get rid of the damn things, but I can’t keep all of them. Mom gave me permission to pick the ones I like and thrift shop the rest. I kept some of the plastic skirt hangers, with the squeezy part? You know what I’m talking about? Because you can hang quilts (small ones or blocks) from them. And then I came in my office and realized I have like 10 of them already. Sigh. OK. Don’t need those, do I?

I’m feeling squeezed by time. Again. As always. I know when school starts and I want this quilt to be almost done if not completely done by the time students show up. Looking at the calendar over the next two weeks makes that a little panicky, because I still need to deal with bedroom and garage. Plus put time in there today and tomorrow for relaxation and enjoyment of life, right? It’s all good. I’ll figure it out. But it worries me that the left eye has twitched all summer. I need to slot some exercise into the mess. Boychild has been working for grandpa for days and it’s been too humid and warm for a hike, but trying to fit something else in before he leaves would be good. Plus smog the car, buy him new shoes, read the two books the library just automatically checked out to me (only a thousand pages or so), and geez. I don’t even know what else. Panic. Cull my tshirts. I don’t need that many of them.

Anyway, I managed to iron in the afternoon (GASP!) AND the evening after gaming. A little crazy, that. I toned down the water on this one. The quilt is about climate change and how it affects the earth, and I didn’t think that beautiful turquoise water I love so much would be appropriate, so I went for the grays…

It’s very stylized in places, like with the fishies.

I added the ocean behind, with a couple whales and a shark lurking about.

Then I went to gaming and killed a bunch of goblins and an orc, but also shot splinters into my own people (ah, the chaos star), but they were OK with it (at least they said they were), because I killed the orc. All that’s a foreign language, eh? It’s a story…I like stories. But I stitch during the game, because it helps me focus and not fall asleep. Plus it’s relaxing as hell to do both.

So this is the 9th block I’ve finished in Sue Spargo’s Folk Tails. The embroidery is pretty fun to do. People always freak out that I work on other people’s stuff, but my own stuff isn’t very portable sometimes, and I don’t have to think hard about this. There’s something very relaxing about hand embroidery, especially on wool.

Here’s the 9 finished blocks so far…they aren’t in order. You can see one in the bottom where the left side is done and the right side isn’t. I sewed them together because there’s overlap.

I haven’t quite finished prepping the next month’s worth of blocks…I have one done (that one you see above) and another one almost done. So then I can start the embroidery on those. Probably not today, to be honest. I don’t get a lot of this done normally. But I do enjoy it.

After gaming, it was late, but I had almost finished this leg…so I determined that I could finish both legs below the knee and THEN go to sleep.

Well, see, that’s the crazy shit, because then art brain is awake and wants to keep going until she (or I) collapses. So I got the one leg ironed in place and then started on the next one.

The land goes in front of one leg and behind the other…and there’s other stuff to be ironed higher up on the right leg, so that’s where I quit. After midnight. Again.

I’m hoping to do a couple of hours today, maybe deal with the two drawers in the dresser, the other two drawers in the other thing, the hope chest (oh fuck no, I’m not doing that today…I’m afraid of what’s in there). I’m slowly selling things on Craigslist, I’m slowly shoving shit into the trashcans, I’m slowly moving stuff out of the house (that’s much more slowly…nowhere to put it but the driveway). As I clean out the house, my brain makes these complicated quilts. But I love that part of me. I look back at older work and the new stuff is so full of images and I love the process and the product. I haven’t bought any fabric all summer, but will need binding for this one probably. Maybe not. I’m trying to use everything I have for now. I know that won’t last. I’m too addicted to having as wide a palette as possible. But as I was picking fabrics out, I would search in the very back of the drawers for pieces that hadn’t seen the light of day, give them a chance in a new quilt, let them poke their little fabricky heads out and be seen.

The boychild and I talked briefly about what it would take to redo this room, my studio. I’d have to move everything out (I’ve done parts of it due to water heater issues), rip off all the wallpaper and paint it, then scrape the ceiling crap off, replace the trashed floor. Then maybe do something different with the sliding glass door, which is currently inaccessible. Maybe some built-ins for fabric. But realistically, it’s so low down on the list of rooms that need help. The bathrooms and the kitchen first. Thinking way far out, once college is done and paid for. And maybe there’s extra money. Maybe.

Yeah. Well let’s just get through today, eh? Ironing some stuff, hopefully selling a table, cleaning up a little, then a relaxing boat ride and maybe some art and music later. Food of some sort. Some human time. A balance of sorts.

A Spray of Stars Hit the Screen*

Been up all hours now. Stayed up too late finishing the cutting-out stages on the quilt. Then up bloody early cuz I couldn’t sleep, plus some crazy person drove from Long Beach to buy my serger in the early dawn. I don’t serge. I also don’t early dawn. You don’t even know what a serger is, if you’re one of my non-sewing readers. Do I have non-sewing readers? Probably a few. I can’t even thread a serger. It takes 5 YouTube videos to thread a serger. Certainly not happening with the brain power I’ve got at the moment.

The Don’t Shut Up show is down. I got to leave early to come home and spend two hours writing the blogpost for it. You can see that here, if you didn’t go to the show. Shows are a lot of work, even when you’re not in charge. I still need to suss out the videos I’ve got and post about the artist talk, but that’s not happening today. Straight up, I need a break from all the cleaning and doing shit. Which is silly, because it’s not like I’ve been doing it full time or anything, but it just gets very overwhelming to have to make that many decisions about what to do with stuff and/or how to store it or get rid of it. I found a cardboard box full of silverware yesterday. In my bedroom cupboard. I didn’t even remember its existence. They’re not solid silver, unfortunately, because then maybe I could pay somebody to clear all this out, but they’ll supplement my stash. My eye is twitching again. The internet is ever so helpful. Causes are stress, fatigue, and caffeine. Well yes. I do have those. Thank you, internet.

Anyway, I will deal with the hangers today, but I’m not planning on a lot else. Well, there’s the pile of clothes I just dumped on the bed. More to go through…aaargh.

So yeah, I stayed up way too late last night because I just needed to be done with the cutting out of tiny little pieces…

See…there’s someone who knows how to sleep properly.

I finished cutting stuff out sometime after midnight. I think it was about 13 hours total.

And then early this morning, while waiting for the serger woman to show up, I negotiated space on the light table with Kitten…

Apparently it’s her table, not mine.

I just worked around her. Like I always do.

I sort all those tiny pieces out again into bins…they’re easier to deal with 100 pieces at a time…

I was visited by a hummingbird.

So this took two hours…and most of the last hour was sorting through pieces like in the bottom box. Tiny pieces. Crazy pieces. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?

These pieces are either missing the paper or missing the fabric. Not bad…and that piece 485 is either the gray or the red. I’ll figure it out when I iron it all down.

All sorted.

Fourteen boxes of pieces for today’s ironing pleasure. If I can wake up enough to do that. I have shitty role models around me, all of them asleep. Think I’m going to go take a nap with the clothes on my bed. They probably won’t bug me too much…then maybe I’ll be able to iron for a while.

*Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kiss Them for Me

You Said That You Could Let It Go*

OK, I don’t have much time here. I have to hurry rush go very very fast to get downtown and sit for about 6 hours. OK, probably not sitting the whole time, but it’s deinstall day at the Don’t Shut Up show…it wasn’t up for long, but we did a lot of stuff while it was up. So much work to put the show together and then it comes apart in a day.

I preloaded a bunch of resized photos onto a flash drive and I’m hoping someone will be nice enough to share the school wifi password so I can write a couple of blogposts for the two art groups I’m in. It takes a good 5 hours to write those posts sometimes: Find the photos. Resize the photos. Ask people for better photos sometimes. Start writing. Find all the artists’ names. Find all the names of the art. Resize things again because Blogger is a pain in the ass. Check all the spelling. Email three people whose labels you forgot to photograph. Save a draft. Save a draft again. Preview it. Go back and fix everything you fucked up on. Rewrite Blogger’s code because that’s easier than starting over. Save it again. Maybe publish it.

Now do it again for the other art group. And then sit back and wait for the stuff you know people will want you to fix.

So I’m gonna try and get that done today in between people picking up art. Or maybe we’ll be able to start spackling and painting…who knows?

Yesterday was mostly about cleaning the bedroom. I don’t know about you, but I have no freakin’ clue why I have so many hangers…I don’t even hang most of my clothes up. I live out of the laundry basket most of the time. In fact, you could take my wardrobe down to 7 pairs of black pants and 7 black shirts and I’d probably be OK with that.

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I still haven’t dealt with most of that pile. It was overwhelming. I walked away. Cleaned something else.

Then I found this. Oh sigh. Really? So we grew up (and this may be some weird thing with just my family; feel free to tell me that) with wooden coathangers that some poor soul had crocheted over. I think when my grandma died, my mom packed up all of HER crocheted wooden coathangers and put them in a plastic bag with my name on them. This was early on post-divorce, so I apparently shoved them in the back of my closet.

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Where they stayed for like the next 10 years. I think. I just don’t even remember taking possession of that bag, and now I have to figure out what to do with all these.

When my parents die, there will be another 100 of those fuckers.

After dinner, I headed for the couch. I did pistil stitches in a white variegated thread in the very bottom area. Trying to branch out. Or fill in. Or whatever I’m doing.

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Boychild joined me and merged the dogs into one. They should be easier to take care of this way.

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Then I cut stuff out while watching A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was pretty funny.

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I’m so not done. I’m taking this with me too, just in case there’s no wifi. My hand hurts today though. Shockingly.

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The stuff on top still needs cutting out. I did about 3 hours yesterday and I think I’m 9 hours in total right now. I didn’t start until late because I was cleaning most of the day. The cleaning is very difficult…I have to spend way too much time thinking about the implications of the 100 vintage scarves and hankies I found, plus the kid’s book that my grandma’s grandma made (do the math…I can’t). Like where the fuck do I store stuff? I have too much stuff in that room. It’s traumatizing. And cleansing. And dirty and stressful and at some point, I just gave up and vacuumed the living room because it was easier. And then I resized 150 photos for the two blogposts.

I AM HAVING A VERY HARD TIME GETTING SHIT DONE THIS SUMMER.

OK. There we are. Feeling better. Need food, need more caffeine. Leaving soon.

*Gotye, Somebody That I Used to Know

Running in Circles, Coming Up Tails*

So I bought 6 bars of soap in November 2008. I’m allergic to a lot of soap-like things. Hell, I’m allergic to a lot of things in general. Like when I tell people I’m allergic to fish and chocolate, they just lose it…over the chocolate part. Whatever. So I bought these bars of soap online because I couldn’t find it locally any more, and it’s the only soap in the world that I’ve found that doesn’t cause my face to itch like a bitch. So I was running out, getting low, and thinking, shit, I’m gonna have to drop cash on a whole 6-pack. Then I checked Amazon and saw how long they lasted. I’m laughing. I should just buy a lifetime supply now. I’m buying 6 now and I won’t need more until 2026. We probably won’t even use soap in 2026. We’ll just walk into the Tardis and it will deal with the oil and dirt and bacteria, right?

Here’s hoping.

So I’ve been working on the bedroom…which includes scary spaces like the closet and random nightstand drawers. The cats are fascinated, because I leave drawers empty and open and they like to sit in them. It’s going to take a while to clean all that stuff out. And I’m running out of time. I have 16 days, but there are 4 completely booked days already. So I try to clean during the day…it seems to work better…and then do the art at night. I finished ironing everything to fabric yesterday. It took a really long time, 20 hours. For 1320 pieces? I think it was all the fussy grays and greens. Lots of buildings that needed to be next to each other.

Of course, when I moved back to ironing, the cats followed me…and sat in other open drawers.

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I think that cat is why one of my green drawers is broken…and they don’t make this size any more, so if I’m going to fix all this, I have to buy all new, and the sizing is off. Sigh. Pain in the butt. I replaced all the rest of the fabric drawers in the last two years…again, they probably lasted 15 years or more. Plastics. Can’t afford to do anything else in here. Although I might be smarter about what’s there. Put a floor-to-ceiling shelf in and put drawers on the shelves? Sounds expensive. And time-consuming. Back of the brain. Not necessary right now. I’m at the end of the summer…everything has to be necessary to get done.

Speaking of necessary, this quilt needs to get done and photographed. Here’s the tail end of the flesh pieces…

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The face and the neck.

So this quilt used a whopping 139 fabrics…which is a lot, even for me…so that’s where the time comes in…picking each of those out takes more time. Lots of grays and variations on gray.

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Here’s what I have left to cut out…remembering I started cutting them out last week at my quilt meeting…these pieces have been to three meetings and a hair appointment (not mine) so far.

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I am trying to stay caught up on this…so I did something…some sort of fly stitch with straight stitch. On the right side still, down in that wave. I need to do something in the top right now…or go down and finish the bottom. It’s right up on the edge of the fabric.

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Then I cut stuff out for a few hours, with Kitten’s help. She follows me around the house. Although, I don’t know where she is right now?

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The cats seem fascinated by all the spaces I keep opening up in the house when I clean. She’s probably in a drawer somewhere.

I have about 7 hours into the cutting…all the cut-out stuff is on the left and all the to-be cut (which is still the larger pile) is on the right. So another 7 hours? Yikes. I could do that in one day, if I hated my hand and had nothing else to do.

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Yeah, not so much. So probably not finishing until tomorrow…tomorrow when I’m booked almost all day. Then sort and start ironing Thursday night? Or Friday. Friday is wide open…and then next week starts to bog up. Get it all ironed by Tuesday of next week? Then stitch down and quilt…I actually have a small chance of getting it done before school starts. If I stay focused and no other crazy shit happens (and there we are…because that’s why nothing gets done in the time I think it should…because of crazy shit).

I need to start drawing the next two as well. Minor issue. Gonna start with the closet…one thing at a time.

*Coldplay, The Scientist

Not Close Enough for the Champagne to Get Chilled*

Weekends. I got some stitching done in the car yesterday. Got some cutting out done at the meeting. People make fun of me for always working…although there are down times (Saturday nights usually)…but I actually find cutting those tiny pieces out mostly relaxing. So if it’s a meeting, I actually pay more attention when I’m cutting. I know that sounds weird, but the action of cutting keeps the part of my brain that gets off task from affecting the part of my brain that’s listening.

So I listen better when I cut or sew or draw. I’ve had huge issues over the years with mostly control-freak teachers and bosses who believe people are best paying attention when they are staring into your eyes, unblinking. Yeah. Well they’re wrong. Interesting insight for me as a teacher. I totally understand the kids who are trying to read a book while we’re teaching…luckily we do much less of the direct instruction than we used to, so now they have stuff to do. I would have been drawing AND trying to read a book at the same time, so I get it.

So I cut these out during the meeting…got almost two hours in. AND paid attention like a good member.

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So it’s harder to know how much more I have to do, whether I’ve hit the halfway mark anywhere (nope. Bet I haven’t.). I have about 3 1/2 hours into the cutting. Nowhere near half. But that makes sense, because I only exceeded the halfway mark on ironing pieces down sometime yesterday…here’s my fabrics for the bunch of wildflowers she’s holding…

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I had more greens, but turns out I didn’t need them.

I did over 3 hours of ironing again yesterday, mostly at night. I’m 14 hours in, so I think I’m going to go over my 15-hour estimate by quite a bit. Unfortunately. I’ve barely started the 900s, so probably tomorrow will be when I finish ironing. Today is kind of busy.

On the left is all the stuff that’s ironed down. On the right is all the stuff that’s trimmed.

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And here’s the disaster I left on the ironing board last night. Actually, I think I made myself clean it up.

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The pile on the right is all flesh fabrics. Usually I cut all the flesh in one go, but because of how this quilt was drawn, there are little bits of flesh and then big whopping bits of land and all the things on it, so I just keep the pile of flesh fabrics separate and pull them out when I hit the next fleshy bit. Sometimes I write numbers on the drawing for the colors…1 is the lightest, then 2 etc. In case there’s an overlap farther up or the arms need to match the color of the shoulders. The drawing is not sacred in any way.

I did just check and on an average quilt, I hit the halfway point in total construction somewhere in the cutting-out-fabrics stage. So close to halfway but not close enough for the champagne to get chilled. That’s for sure.

So I’ve finished all the flesh up to the shoulders, but all the stuff in the chest area (buildings, sun, nuclear power plants) all need to be ironed. And I saved out the decorative stuff on the arms: waves, veins, tattoos, etc. So I can work on that now, although I think there will be an issue with food at some point, and I have to be two somewheres this afternoon. Sigh. Busy summer.

All the crap from the garage is now on Craigslist though, so there’s that. I’m not quite done dealing with the garage, but it’s manageable now. I think I have to start working on the bedroom honestly. And worry about school? Not yet. Girlchild goes back to Boston tomorrow…feel like I’ve barely seen her, but she has friends she wants to see as well. Shockingly. And I’ve been busy too…not entirely on her.

Anyway. The to-do list is massive. Time is limited. Sleep is optional. With that in mind, I’ve got art to do and cleaning as a backup.