We Really Got to Ramble*

At some point, I give up on the school stuff and move on to the art. It is not a full and satisfying life without the art. I did spend some time yesterday at an art opening, but I’ll have to post about that later…no time this morning. Making the art really is the most important part for me…I know for some people the exhibition is a huge part…and I guess I DO it, so it must be important. But I’d really probably rather be in here cutting stuff out or ironing it together than listening to people talk about the work around me. Which reminds me, I have to explain my Quilt National piece on video this week. I should go read the statement again, so I don’t spend the whole 2 minutes staring at the piece.

Yes, Quilt National opens this week. That’s exciting…although getting there will probably kick my butt…it’s kind of nice to have a couple days off work this time of year.

I love this app, Momentum, even though it’s pretty simple (it gives me stuff to stare at, plus a highly visible to-do list). It always asks me what my focus for the day is though, and I often can’t grab that…as you can see by Saturday’s focal thought. I often am not focused.

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I did spend some time Saturday trying to figure out my solo show. I couldn’t SEE it, so I made a doc and started dropping pieces in so I could see the walls. I’m almost done…

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I might need better photos of a couple of them, so I really should figure that out.

A mural on the way to the art show yesterday…we saw this artist at ArtWalk too, but I tossed all the paperwork…but a quick Google search reveals this is Catnap by Michael Summers.

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Then there was this…I couldn’t even figure out what it meant, being outside a clothing store.

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After home, negotiating laundry elsewhere (the washer died for reals this time), groceries, school stuff, making dinner…then I did two days worth on this…some straight stitches and French knots in yellow on the left and then some green around that weird purple flower under the tree branches.

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Finally in here to iron…

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Tiny little pieces…

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It got late, but I kept going…

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She just needed to be done. And she was, around midnight. A good time to stop.

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And now she’s ready for a background and some stitching down I believe. Which is good, because I think she’s supposed to be done on Monday. But right now, I need to go to work. I don’t feel ready, but I’ll be going in anyway.

*Led Zeppelin, Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You

Sturdy Up Your Heart*

I’m frozen again. It’s 95 degrees out there. But my brain. Frozen. Too many things on the list. Dogs have been to the vet…one is now coneless and fancy free…the other is on more meds, a bloody abscess cleaned out, and still a conehead. Fun stuff. The washing machine died (again…it died last August too) last night while trying to finish up the boychild’s bedding. I really don’t have the time to deal with that right this second. Maybe tomorrow afternoon? I just don’t know. This might be an online thing. Trying to decide if it’s worth trying to fix again (I never actually fixed it last time…gave Sears the money to fix it and then spent 4 months trying to get the money back because they said my husband let them in the house and they fixed it. Interesting. I have no husband. Or male who lives here at the moment.) or whether I should just accept that the last 9 months of forcing it to work, even though it was apparently unfixable, was better than I thought I would get. Write that shit off. Because buying major appliances when I have no paycheck during the summer seems like a good plan? Fuuuuck.

Deep breaths. The list is long. I will get through bits and pieces of it, a little at a time.

There’s the nervous conehead at the vet. She gets all freaked out.

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And on the way home, she wouldn’t shift over to give the puppy some room…

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Don’t squish your baby brother.

I’m typing now with this one lying on the caps lock. I keep shoving her over.

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I did do some stitching last night…two nights’ worth on the stitch-a-day…it’s about all I did. I was so exhausted. I’m better today. Got over 8 hours of mostly OK sleep. I really needed it.

I stitched a (dammit…just forgot the name of it) feather stitch in blue and then straight stitches in the purple vine, and then put in a few French knots and a stem stitch under the eyeball to finish the thread. Then I did a pink lazy daisy in the feather stitch and straight stitches off the purple vine.

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Filling space. Plus trying to relax. Then I graded for a while. I’m so incredibly behind, it’s not even funny. Trying to catch up. Frantically.

I did work on this at gaming…

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I did the frog and started the grass…plus the symbol on the tree. Still debating going back and adding bullions to the outside of the tree. Then this one is done. Not taking it with me to Ohio.

It’s funny, I’ll be frantically stitching while gaming, trying to keep myself calm (not) and awake (that works). Stress levels are a little insane at the moment.

I woke to good (but a little scary) news this morning. Both the pieces I entered into Threads of Resistance got in.

This is Absolutely Nothing, originally in an exhibit called Women at War…

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And this is Work in Progress, from the exhibit Expressions of Equality.

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These were made one after the other…hence the tree showing up in both…I wasn’t done with that imagery apparently. Much like the bathtubs I keep doing.

So yeah, I didn’t have time to make new work for this show, but I do often roll in those topics anyway. There was a climate change one I wanted to enter, but it was like 2″ too big. It’s all good.

So why is it a little scary? Well. So. A few of my quilts have upset people’s sensibilities. And these two have about 10 penises between the two of them, plus yes, full-on nudity, and one is NOT very nice about how I feel about the way women are treated in society.

So. I guess we prep for the media storm this time…because some of these venues could be an issue. The plus is I know the group that organized this show has my back. Most of them have supported me in the past with personal messages or posts online. So I’m feeling OK about opening some eyes, or getting those heads nodding up and down in agreement. And I know the Mancusos will just invite the press in…still think I should get a kickback on their ticket sales if I make the news again.

The show opens July 15 in Lowell, Massachusetts, at the New England Quilt Museum. And then it travels through 2018. Or longer. So check it out.

Now I gotta get through this to-do list or I’m gonna go crazy.

*The Beautiful Girls, La Mar

Come Inside Where It’s Okay*

So. Thursday. What certain days feel like. Thursdays are. Thursdays often have a meeting at the end of them. Thursday mornings are tired, but not as tired as Friday mornings. Thursdays don’t really have a wish or a hope attached to them…just the potential for hanging out with people after work for once. Thursdays often have dinner issues because I’m tired of what I’ve been eating all week, but I don’t want to cook. Right now, Thursday also has deadlines, things that have to be done before tomorrow. Some of those things have been stacking up, getting pushed into the corner, but no longer small or quiet enough to stay there. Now I have to step around them, they’re so big and in my face. I should deal with them. I’m pretty sure at least three of them are on my calendar for before school today. With my headache. My stayed-up-too-late-again headache. Yup. I named it. Then I medicated it. Feels like I will have to medicate it again.

Sometimes I can’t handle all the people around me. Ironic, since I’m a teacher and I’m surrounded. It’s less the kids and more the adults. One of my former students found me yesterday after school. She was a tough little thing, lashing out, never quiet, not the best student in the world, a lot of Sorry Ms. Nidas. And then she would turn around and yell at some other kid at the top of her tiny lungs. I recognized her. Couldn’t remember her name until I got home and found my old pictures. She’s graduating this year, not like a lot of others, she says. Too many baby daddies and mommas. Sad. I know about some of those. Then she says something about taking Biology three times. I think about what I remember of her…ask her if she finally passed (they have to take it until they pass). I look at her shirt, some logo about not caring. I tease her about that. Then she says, no. I took three different Biology classes; I’m going to college. I love Biology.

Wow. OK. Cool. I tell her the shirt is a lie. She admits it. I tell her I’m really proud of her, because I am. Because you know when they seek you out 5 years later to tell you that shit that you were part of what mattered. And I needed that yesterday. Her name is fixed in my head now. I hope she rocks the next step.

That reminds me. I want to try some experimentation with at least one quilt this summer, to make it in a way I don’t usually make it. But I have to decide about deadlines. This is after I got two rejection notices yesterday from a show I didn’t enter this year. I was so confused. Freaking out really, because I knew I’d entered one of the pieces in another show, so I thought I was going a bit nuts and had forgotten completely about an exhibit. And that I’d double-entered something, which is a big no no. Well. I didn’t enter…didn’t have new work available. So I wasn’t crazy. It was a weird moment though.

I sewed on this…the purple looped feather stitch (that’s what they called it…I call it a stupid pain-in-the-ass stitch)…on the left.

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I graded some…because I need to get caught up. Aargh. Always the catching up.

Then I cut tiny pieces out for a long time. Too late…

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But I didn’t finish. I needed to go to bed at least a half hour earlier…so staying up another half hour or more to finish these would have been really fucking stupid.

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Tonight I finish those and hopefully start ironing.

That’s the plan anyway. Plans go awry. And I haven’t been good about anything getting done lately. Or being with people apparently either. Not just an introvert, but a mostly antisocial introvert. Woo hoo!

*Elliott Smith, Thirteen (yes, Big Star)

You’d Better Change It Back or We Will Both Be Sorry*

There’s too much shit in my head right now, swirling around. Massive to-do lists banging into me like two dogs wearing plastic cones on their heads. Wait. That’s real life. I’m tired of their doggy heads banging into the backs of my legs…or both of them trying to get through a door before I’ve opened it all the way. Thunk! One dog gets 7 1/4 pills in the morning; the other gets 1.6 ml? or µl? of some white stuff that he tolerates. Treats for all! Plus soaking of the feets! So time-consuming. And then there’s all the stuff I should be doing for school but keep blowing off…grading, most of it. But also calculating grades and awards. Then the boychild is home in less than a week…I think his room is pretty clean, but the bedding definitely needs washing. And I need to vacuum, but my vacuum is dying a not-so-pretty death, so I need to deal with that. And then I’m gone for two days next week to go to Quilt National…yay! But that’s a planning nightmare for school. You just don’t take off during the sex ed unit. Or. Well. You do. You just plan really well for it.

And this block I’m working on is supposed to be done by the 29th…which it probably will be. It’s not a hard thing to do. It really only needs to be a top, but since the drawn line is really important to my quilts, I’ll have to figure out how to do that without quilting it. I might use batting anyway. Or maybe not, since I think I’m one of the ones in charge of sewing this thing together. I can quilt it later. Maybe. I don’t know.

Anyway. I did manage to finish all the ironing last night…although I did this first, two night’s worth…I did some red straight stitches and then some weird whipped stitch just to the right of the eyeball. Then a barbed chain stitch (I don’t know if that’s a real stitch…it’s just what it looked like as I made it up) and French knots in green near the eyeball and that whipped stitch.

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The color is really dull because I took that photo basically in the dark without a flash. So the next time you see a photo of it, you’ll be amazed by how bright it is.

Then I ironed all those flesh fabrics from last night and cut out the rest of it (a heart…an ovary)…

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So that’s 32 fabrics, a pile of stuff to be cut out tonight, and about three hours of work.

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Like I said, it’s not a hard thing to do…in fact, maybe I should do a few smaller ones. So that reminds me, I need to put an official list together of what is going to be in the Visions show. I should do that this week, because next week is gonna be a cluster. Plus I want it done. I basically know what’s in there…I just have a few wishy washy issues. And being overwhelmed is not helping me deal with them.

I wish I were her sometimes. It looks so easy…

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Goofball dogs.

But really. I think it’s 21 days left of school…and I’m gone for 2 of those. But then I have jury duty. And I need to pick up some copyediting jobs for the summer. Plus I need a big project (or three) for the summer. Right? It’s true, I love that about the summer…a big meaty project or two to focus on with all that “free” time.

OK. Well I still have a headache, so the tea isn’t cutting it. Yesterday we eased into sex ed with Liking vs Loving…much easier than slamming right into anatomy, which is how we’ve always done it. We ramp it up a bit today with relationship abuse, and then tomorrow, we bring out the penises and vaginas. Whoa Nelly. Then slam them upside the head with puberty. It’s on!

*The Human League, Don’t You Want Me

Let’s Put Our Heads Together and Start a New Country Up*

Well whatever crazy internet thing that was going on has dissipated. My blog hits are back down to normal. Hello normal! Nice to see you too! I often forget there are people out there reading this (hello boychild! I know where you got that photo you sent to the girlchild!). Mothers’ Day. Sheesh…some holiday taken over by the media folks that messes with my head. It’s hard to have them so far away…and looking at pictures of them, trying to decide what to post, well that doesn’t help. Oh well. Moving on…I did get a long FaceTime call with the girlchild at my parents’ house…

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Wherein she tried to explain the chaos of her living and working situation for the next two-three weeks. She still has one final to finish. Then at least two jobs. And living out of a suitcase for a while.

Here’s the photo I found, from 2004…both their hairs are completely different now. OK, well, hers is similar, minus the dorky barrettes. Ages 7 and 8 about…

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And the girlchild posted this…I am just not going to explain it.

Just to say, well, the kitchen is still a mess and I have a cow costume in case you ever need to borrow one. (And that’s not my wine.)

Yesterday, I found time to weed for a while…the rains this year have kicked my landscaping butt. I was watched by this bunny for all the time it took me to fill one of those big recycling bins. Yes. One.

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That was about a third of the front yard. I didn’t even try to pick the grasslike stuff. I’m gonna weed whack that part. Sorry bunny (he lives under that deck).

In the house isn’t much better. Kitten jumped up to dust this with her paws. Right? That’s what she’s doing up there? Sigh.

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I had three days to catch up on this. I did finish the hand with one of the days, filling in with stem stitch and doing some cross stitches over the seed stitches below. Then I finished the bush to the right of the hand…only half the leaves were done. Then I did some blue fly and lazy daisy stitches in the pink below the bush.

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Back to filling in empty spaces. Still haven’t hit the halfway mark. Embroidery is relaxing though.

Then I retraced some of the pieces (old Wonder Under sucks…which is why Saturday found me at JoAnns with my 50% off coupon buying a new bolt of the stuff), cut them out, and sorted them. Only three bins.

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So easy peasy. Ironing tonight? One would hope. There’s some cleaning that needs to go on in here, the studio. In fact, that’s often the only thing that gets cleaned…the areas where I make art…the entryway floor so I can lay out quilts…etc. Oh well. I do my best.

Also, one of the shows I entered (notifications haven’t gone out yet), Threads of Resistance, posted all the entered work, because it’s an important exhibit even if all the pieces can’t be in the show. You can see the work here. There’s a ton of work, so there will be a ton of rejections…but the work is all out there for viewing. I’m interested to see how what they pick might differ from what I would pick…how to show all the possibilities of resistance with a clear, consistent show that doesn’t violate copyright. That’s a hard one.

OK…working my butt off today and then coming home to be an artist. Oh wait. I’m always an artist. Obviously not a gardener or a housecleaner. I suck at both.

*REM, Cuyahoga

Sleep Don’t Visit, So I Choke on Sun*

Hello Friday. I appreciate your showing up this morning, albeit a little early. Perhaps you could make sure that you are more quiet in the morning next time, so you don’t wake the puppy up. He barks and wakes me out of a deep and sound sleep, which at my age, is a rare enough thing that you should be much more careful. That said, you’re here, and I am glad. I’m hoping you go quickly, though, at least the daytime part, so I can, well and let’s be honest here, go back to sleep and wake up to Saturday. It must be hard to be Friday, to be so celebrated but basically asked to go away as quickly as possible…or at least get to the dark part of Friday, because it’s much easier to handle.

I spent about 3 hours at the vet yesterday, arriving after the dogs and my ex, to find out that the dogs were significant victims of foxtails. (Not my yard.) Oh yay and the future is fun. Pills for some and liquids for the other (in retrospect, pills might have been easier…), soaking of feetsies (oh my, they love that), and general mayhem with cones and trying to lick and manipulation of the cone zone. I guess I need to learn to shave those paws. Or find a groomer. Yes the right paw is the worst. Poor babies.

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And those claws. Yeesh.

It was significantly late when I got them home. I had these threads in my mailbox, trying to pick an iris color…long story. It will make sense later. The one on the left is out…debating between the other two.

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I have until tomorrow to decide. I think.

More progress on the hand. I did do seed stitch in the lower part of the wrist area and then filled in with some stem stitches. It’s almost all filled in.

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Yeah. It’s strange. What can I say?I’m sure some people would be happier with all flowers, but I was getting sick of them.

Then I traced. Finished it, in fact. It’s small. It has only 290 pieces. It only took a little over 2 hours…

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I was going to start cutting them out last night, but I was way too tired. I actually went to bed before midnight. Twenty-four days of school left. I’ll be gone for two of them. One of them is testing. One is a field trip. One is the last day of school, which is always a bit hellish. We start teaching sex ed early this year…more content…so next week. I don’t feel ready. Oh well.

And then there’s this. Some of you may have seen this.

I don’t doubt that…it’s just the definition of nice that’s the problem. Some parts of this world we see every day are really pissing me off at the moment. It makes it hard to be NICE. Really. Anyway, I’m hoping to have some energy to cut stuff out tonight, but will also have all the stuff I was supposed to do yesterday and didn’t do. Crap. Oh well. It is Friday.

*Radical Face, Welcome Home

Far from This Opera for Evermore*

Somewhere about two months ago or so, I must have run out of Wonder Under, the fusible stuff I use when I make quilts. I’m sure somewhere in my head was a reminder to buy more, a reminder that fell into a back corner of my brain, pushed out by more highly prioritized items, like buy cat food, sleep more than 4 hours a night, and don’t forget to do the laundry. That’s unfortunate, because when I finally made it home yesterday after testing (Day 1 of state-induced hell), a team meeting, a union meeting, AND book club, I was looking for Wonder Under to trace the new piece…and not finding it. Ugh. Argh. Crap.

So I found what I could…

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Which was little bits and pieces and one larger piece. And that larger piece is pretty beat up. But it’s better than nothing, right? It’s not like I have time to go to the hell that is JoAnns for more. I have quilts to pick up from the photographer today, plus apparently I’m going to have to try to fit a vet visit in…I’m pretty sure that’s not gonna work, but both dogs are still sucking on toes even with cones on. I had to involve my ex, the dog whisperer last night, to deal with Mr. BiteyFace because of the cone.

So I will make do with what I have. Despite exhaustion again last night (sure, it’s an every night thing at this point), I traced for almost an hour, until my SIL called to discuss…well…never mind what she wanted to discuss, but it was one of the more amusing phone calls I’ve had lately. Lots of discussion of the shitty jobs we had in college and right out of school, as well, though…which is something to keep in mind as my own kids job hunt. Nobody had a great job out of college. I worked as a temp for at least a year. Shockingly, degrees in art and comparative literature don’t have great job prospects. Things they don’t tell you in college.

Anyway, you can see what I did get traced…I think I’m in the 100s. So another night, probably tonight, I should be done.

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I do have to put on at least one quilt label tonight and figure out hanging hardware for a drop off on Saturday.

I did more hand…almost filled in now. Well, if you ignore that huge space at the bottom. Maybe I’ll fill that with Xs or seed stitch.

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Saturday’s drop off is for this show, opening May 27, 6-9 PM.

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Here’s the other side of the card, featured All Stacked Up in My Head, the piece that needs a label and hanging hardware.

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It’s one of two pieces I’ll have in the show. I won’t be at the opening, but my work will. It has a better social life than I do.

One thing I’m looking forward to today? Kids are done with testing at 12:30 and then we can go OUT to lunch. I know that seems like no big deal, but as a teacher, we never go out to lunch because, well, lunch is 30 minutes long and that includes shooing kids out of the classroom, heating up your food, and peeing for the first time in three hours, so it’s a fast thing, not a leave-work-and-travel thing. First, though, we do need to survive Day 2 of testing, a challenge in itself. Lunch will be well-deserved.

*The White Stripes, Seven-Nation Army

Watching in a Trance*

I had been distinctly NOT thinking about the next piece that needed doing. It was too broad a topic, like all the crap going on in my head and in the news anyway, so it’s not like I could consciously process it properly. Once I got confirmation that the block could be horizontal or vertical (I wanted vertical), even then, I didn’t think about what to put on the block. I let myself get through the work day, then dinner, and then finally stood up and looked at the blank paper I’d mapped out yesterday…just a rectangle that was the right size.

I figured it would take me a while, and I was pretty tired, so I wasn’t expecting much.

I was wrong. I think it took a whopping 30 seconds before I saw the hand in front of her mouth…and then another on her breast, well and then there’s the pussy, of course.

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I did start with a rough pencil sketch on this one. I usually don’t, but I wanted the proportions to work out OK…plus it’s easier to know where the stuff is going before you draw the stuff behind.

Once I had the body in generally with the hands, I filled in the rest.

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The whole time, I kept saying “Keep it Simple” because I know my deadline is only 19 days away. Yeah. I know. But it’s small and I kept it simple. Ish. Only 290 pieces. I had to keep telling myself to stop drawing detail. It’s not in my nature.

It took me about two hours to draw it…maybe.

And then I numbered it. The face is a little crazy, but it really is more simplified than what I normally do. Two pieces for the hair? Never happens.

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Tonight will be busy, but I’m hoping to have the energy to start tracing it. I basically have two weekends, because I’m going to Quilt National the following weekend. Just a little crazy shit going on here. Nothing new.

It’s teacher appreciation week…one of my students was a sweetheart and brought me lunch…

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It was good.

I did do this before I did all that drawing…the hand that will never be finished.

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Midnight watched. Then apparently at some point, she went and puked on my bed. Nice cat.

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The calico did whack me, by the way…while I was doing this. My Tivo is old and occasionally has massive brain farts and only records 1 minute of all my shows with now notification. So sometimes I have to find them on the computer instead. So I worked on this for a bit…outlining the tree bits.

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Wool stitching is so relaxing. Really. It is.

So both dogs are coned at the moment due to foot-licking activity. Probably both had foxtails involved, but I am assured that Calli’s is out (I don’t know that I agree, but whatever)…and I couldn’t find anything on Simba. But with cones, they are very sad dogs.

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Very sad. I am a horrible dog mom.

State testing starts today, so it’s a minimum day from hell with the kids and then meetings until like 6 PM. Woo hoo! And then book club…I’ve read the book, so that’s a plus. I don’t always make it to book club because of all the crap that comes before, but I’m going to try…I need the socialization. But hopefully after that, I’ll be able to stand and trace stuff. We’ll see.

*Peter Schilling, Major Tom

She Expected the World*

I think I’m about to get whacked by a calico cat. I’m never really sure when either cat is gonna either whack me or bite me. Sometimes I wish they could just use their words. “Pet me.” “Stop petting me.” “Pet me differently.” I guess that’s a huge part of their potential vocabulary…minus the swear words probably. I imagine cats swearing all the time…just based on their looks. As a teacher, I have those looks where kids don’t need to hear the words. Cats do too, if you’re paying attention. This one, though, back to the calico…she’s whacking me with her tail already. Obviously I’m doing everything wrong.

So last night, I was trying to make a simple fix, to sync my contacts on multiple devices, after a year plus of not having that. Boychild walked me through part of it and we found one bit that might be part of it, so then I tried to fix that one bit. Over an hour later, on chat with Microsoft, we get a partial fix. Not fixing the original problem, of course…just the first step toward being able to do that. So yeah, the first fix was entirely Microsoft’s fault…and it took a level 2 fix. OK. So now on to the original fix, which goes back to iOS. Sheesh. But after an hour, I couldn’t deal any more. So I’ve been on a cleaning fit (it’s OK…it’s been brief)…I was going to go deal with the pile of papers that’s been in the little living room (weird side room) since December. Obviously they are very important papers. But instead, I cleaned up my photo files from May 2015 and 2016, so I could stop looking at them while making May 2017’s files.

Giant sigh. Too behind on everything. But at least I have time to do that, I guess. We’ve mostly planned everything for the school year. We have a few things left to do…some ends to gather up. And at some point, we’ll have to start on next year. Revising and all. But not yet. It means I’m refusing to grade at night at the moment. That might change, but right now, I’m fighting the good fight.

So I didn’t start making dinner until 9 PM or so. I know. But I wasn’t in the mood. So after that, I did my one thread of stitching…still beating that hand about…

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And then I had cut a piece of paper the right size for the piece due at the end of the month, read the instructions for the theme etc, and realized I wasn’t sure if the orientation could be vertical or horizontal. So I emailed the organizer. Who didn’t answer immediately. Sigh. I wasn’t really expecting that…it’s OK.

So I decided to draw the Desert Daughter that I tried to do the other night. Because that one sucked. The original Earth Daughter was drawn on a plane returning from Boston after dropping my daughter off at college…I always wonder what people who sit next to me on the plane think…

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Here it is when I finally made it as a quilt, almost a year later…hey, they’re in line sometimes.

Art Quilts and Fiber Arts

The plus to that piece is that it’s technically no nudity, which means I can enter it in some shows I otherwise couldn’t enter. It’s also not huge…only 28″ wide (OK, that’s small for me). The original drawing was done in my travel sketchbook, which is about 9×12″. So I went back to that book for this one, pulling from desert imagery.

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The heart even has cactus spikes. I think this one turned out really well. Although the top right is bugging me. She’s not centered, which is OK by me, but…maybe that’s what my issue is with the right side. I’ll figure that out.

But I still don’t have a drawing for the one due May 29. Huh. Well. Waiting for an answer. I did spend a lot of time staring at a face and blank torso before I got to this…and then it just spilled out. Lost the fennec fox…the incredibly simplified ocotillo parts ended up in the lungs, the rattlesnake covered one breast and some very bulbous cactus the other. OK. So I made a list of daughters I could draw…or I could work on the climate woman…or or or. Isn’t it nice to have the mind space to have choices? Yes. Yes it is.

*Coldplay, Paradise

When All You Do Is See Me Through*

Drawing is a weird thing. Something it just flows right out of me, the line barely lifting to move to another part of the paper. It’s like being possessed by the pen and my brain, a direct connection from one to the other…I’m just the physical entity that holds it and directs it. I can hear art brain mulling about where or what next, but there’s no delay.

Then some nights, the first part is quick and then there’s a delay. I get the eyeballs in and then I stare at the paper. I stare at the holes, the openings, the empty bits, and my brain fills them in, directs me to put the pen there and draw that. Look that up, because you’re not exactly sure what it looks like. I always have to look up the Earth…to get the continents sorta right. They’re never REALLY right, but I try. Sometimes I don’t. But mostly I want it to be recognizable as our planet. I want the lion to look like a lion. Obviously I don’t care as much with flowers and birds and fish, because I make them up all the time. I think it’s because I’ve drawn them longer…so I can improvise easier. Maybe when I’m 90, I’ll have the continents down flat and lions will be everywhere. Or maybe I’ll have forgotten all of it, and you won’t be able to figure out WHAT I’m drawing. That might be interesting…if I can roll with it and it’s not frustrating.

So I currently have a whole barnful of images poking at the edges of my brain, wanting out, begging to make it on paper and be chosen to become fabric. That’s almost harder, because I can’t concentrate on just one thing. So I sat down last night to figure out one drawing that I know is coming up by the end of May, and that’s not that far away. So two things I know: (1) It’s small and (2) I don’t have much time. Well obviously I don’t always make good decisions about the “it’s small” thing, because I put a million pieces in a small quilt. And time. Sheesh.

I TRIED…but about halfway through the drawing…no, not even that far…I realized this was not the drawing for that piece. Because it had way too much detail. And it was all over the map. I had a theme I needed to work for, and I know I could make it work, but I can’t do all those tiny little pieces and get it done in time.

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But it’s OK, because I’m kinda reveling in the ability to just sit and draw. This one’s not done, but it’s going somewhere…interestingly, it’s not going where I need it to go for any of the upcoming deadlines I’m considering. I think. There’s one a ways out…

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Climate change is obviously on my mind. But so are gender issues. The world is such a troubling, disturbing place at the moment, at the same time it is absolutely wonderful and amazing (Thank you France for restoring my faith in humanity at the moment).

This drawing did not come easily…it had to be wrested out of me. Sometimes it’s because I routinely draw the human figure, so how are they not all the same? I have to be conscious of that. But mostly it was that staring into a blank space and trying to decide how to fill it. I don’t like blank space (obviously). So there’s more coming out of this drawing…somewhere.

I did also work on the creepy hand…

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Someday I’ll go back and fill in the black spaces that are still there. But not today.

Puppy slept a lot. He doesn’t like rain, plus he has an owie on his foot that he won’t let me see…

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And it was cold and rainy…not his favorite weather. I was OK with it once I was done running around and doing stuff. I cleaned out two drawers and two cupboards as part of my Spring Cleaning into Summer campaign. I’m not sure why I had half the stuff that was in there…but I did. Sure, I could have graded something instead, but eh. No. I couldn’t have. Balance.

*Tears for Fears, Pale Shelter