I’m Not Expecting to Grow Flowers in a Desert*

I was more successful at making art last night. Despite the long day, I managed almost 2 1/2 hours on the quilt…mostly dealing with the fleshy bits. But before that, there was dinner and a little bit of this. Remember last week when I said it would probably only take 5 more nights to finish these? Except I wasn’t home for the next 4? Well here’s where I finally worked on it…

Still not done. Working on it.

Then I came in here and dealt with paperwork for one show, prepped it all and sent it off. I still need to do another one, but I need to buy a shipping box, which means I need to get to the place that sells them during their opening hours, which means I need to NOT be at school during their opening hours. This is more difficult than you might think. I’m going to try this morning, I think.

Then I finally started ironing. I pretty much started with the flesh run…6 fabrics from light to dark. Which means crawling around on the ground under the sewing table, because that’s where all the flesh colors are. I mean, something has to go under there…it’s not like there’s colors I don’t use so I can hide them away. I realize when I’m 70 that crawling under the table might be an issue, but at 51, I’m still doing it.

So I ironed all of those down. It takes about an hour to pick them, and this is a smaller, less complicated figure than most…and then an hour to iron them. Here’s one of the colors…

I do try to fit them together in such a way that I’m wasting the least amount of fabric. When people think that I am only right-brained, I show them things like this and explain why, and they raise their eyebrows right into their hairline. It’s the same when I tell them about numbering over 2000 pieces.

It’s a process. It works for me. Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…not a lot of color yet.

It will come. She’s decorated. It’s part of the poem. So there will be color all over her. I just haven’t gotten to that part yet.

Here’s the pile of stuff to be cut out.

The real question is how much do I have left. I don’t know…because when I pulled the flesh pieces, I pulled from the 100s, 200s, 300s, and 400s…and this is what’s left.

This is the hair, the decorations, the tree, the eyeballs, the lungs, the heart…all the non-fleshy bits. They all still need ironing. I guess that’s tonight…after yet another meeting. I’m supposed to have book club, but I don’t think that’s happening. I haven’t given up on it yet…but I’m pretty sure I’m not going. Sigh. It’s OK…I haven’t finished the book anyway. I will…just not this week, not with meetings and crap every night until I collapse on Friday.

Meanwhile, here’s Satchemo, lying on my lunch bag. He likes the kitchen counter. It has the potential for foods.

Here’s the poster/announcement for the Extreme Fiber Art show I’m in right now in Springfield, Missouri, great idea of Pam Rubert. My quilt Untied is in the bottom center, next to Susan Shie’s work.

Pretty cool show…

And then I saw this yesterday…Richard Scarry was my favorite when I was a kid. I blame him for my artistic need to fill the page…OVERFILL the page. Him and Dr. Suess…way too much influence, if you ask me.

Ruben Bolling is apparently a pseudonym for Ken Fisher, a cartoonist, the author of Tom the Dancing Bug. “His pieces demonstrate concern about the power of large corporations and satirize the way government has been corrupted by money.” According to Wikipedia anyway. Well, I appreciate his comic anyway. You can go check out some of his other comics here. I could spend some significant time over there, but I need to go buy a box. Before school.

*Big Country, In a Big Country

With All These Things That I’ve Done*

I just completely freaked out because I was checking all my art exhibit entries for the last few weeks, looking to see what notification would be next, and I noticed a double entry. That’s incredibly unprofessional. My stomach dropped. I never do that shit (OK I accidentally did it once a million years ago when the kids were small and I was newly divorced, but luckily, I only got into one of the shows I double entered…which is how the odds go anyway, usually even lower odds than that, honestly). But it’s OK. One of them is only in print, so I don’t send the piece anywhere. Deep breaths. Panic over.

I did get into the Power of Women show that will be at IQF Houston, so that’s good, since I made the piece for that show…not that I wouldn’t have been able to show it elsewhere, though. God knows I do that often enough…here’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman…

Lots going on in there. Wish I could go to Houston with her, but I’ll be in Boston the following weekend and Chandler, Arizona, the weekend after. Seems like enough travel. Plus Houston is pretty expensive. So she’ll travel without me, like most of them do.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at some of the people who friended me on Facebook recently. I do actually scroll through their feeds and make a decision, like if there’s nothing there, I assume they’re a bot or a Russian spy, so I don’t accept. And if their politics are out there, well and truly not gonna get along with mine, I don’t accept. I’m not always sure why they’re friending me, except maybe to get me to like their store or their quilting or whatever, but then you’re posting pictures of guns and kneejerk Trumpisms, and I’m like, I don’t want to see that on my feed, plus you’re gonna hate my vulvas, so why are you clicking friend again? Such a complicated world.

Anyway, that’s two shows that have notified in the last week, and both were acceptances. Good odds so far, but it’s guaranteed they won’t all be.

I had a long work day yesterday, and all I wanted to do when I got home was walk the furry beasts, so we grabbed them and ran. Well, only a little running, just to see how tired the little one was after 2 1/2 miles.

It was a lovely temperature. We went down this hill we never go down, but then we had to go up it as well. Funny, the picture does not convey the real upness of this hill at all.

Then I made dinner and did some stuff to get my printer to work again, which involved a cable, because our internet is super bad at the moment, or maybe it’s just mine on the computer, but the (previously wireless but now wired) printer was refusing to work. And I needed it to work. So it was late when I started ironing.

Cherries…I started with cherries…

And then I did the rest of the fruit bowl, plus ironed the dirt from yesterday.

I didn’t get far. I was tired. I didn’t sleep well the night before, plus I walked a lot. So that makes it hard to want to stand and pick out fabrics for a long time late at night. Here’s the rest of the 100s, laid out, ready for me to iron tonight.

I get into the fleshy bits pretty early on in this quilt. She has a lot of decoration on her, so I have to decide if that will be in flesh color or different colors…probably the latter. This is not a political statement quilt…just a reaction to a poem I wrote years ago. It’s a nice break from the last quilt, which was difficult and in my head in a much different way. Last year at this time, I was doing the gun quilt. That was really difficult.

Anyway, art…make it often and in spite of all the other crap.

*The Killers, All These Things That I’ve Done

Hot Funk, Cool Punk, Even If It’s Old Junk*

It was a busy crazy weekend. Quilts were delivered…always good. Went to a show. Pix below. Made some art, watched a movie, graded stuff, dealt with the death of a phone (well, not totally dealt with yet, but hopefully today)…all that. Didn’t sleep well last night. Hours of tossing and turning and hot flashes and busy brain. Feel pretty braindead this morning. Lack of sleep is not the best way to start a week, unfortunately.

So we drove up to the Boehm Gallery at Palomar College for the show That’s What She Said, here with 3 other FIG members under Helen Redman’s work (the amazing woman in the pink scarf). This is here to remind me to put it on the FIG page as well.

Helen does some amazing work on wood and paper…

Michelle Montjoy also has work in this show…

There was no statement for this one, a bunch of marks covering a pillowcase, counting up what? I wanted to know.

As a mom and a teacher, living today, right now…this was particularly good.

There were many more.

Also in the show was the Sien Collective, the collaborative work of artists Meagan Shein and Siobhan Arnold. I particularly liked the cyanotypes…this is a uterus on legs.

And it was as tall as I am. This one is much smaller and unfortunately photographed crooked (there was an issue with lighting)…but very cool.

Meanwhile, in Springfield, Missouri, the Extreme Fibers show was opening at IdeaXfactory, with two of my pieces and some very interesting works by other artists. The pieces in the back are Fruits of Nature and Storybook Paper Dress by Hannah Klein. Mine is In Deep.

Then my work Untied, with Big Head by Shen Chen Hsieh, and the dress again in the background by Klein.

It’s always cool to be invited to be in shows, especially when the work is so varied.

Saturday night, we watched Annihilation, and I cut out the whole quilt. There’s the book I’m reading…book club is Wednesday, and I probably won’t be able to go, but I’m trying to read anyway.

Sunday was a chaotic day. Then we went to the parentals for dinner. Simba has to be on a leash, because he takes off into the upper regions of the yard and can’t be retrieved. In the far distance, my dad is explaining all the sprinkler issues to Calli…or maybe to the boychild.

Yes, I was grading. It needed to get done. Then we came home and I did some stuff for school…and then set up for sorting Wonder Under, which I’d really wanted to get done way earlier.

Sorted!

Then back to the office, where I had to clean up from the last quilt. Lots of trying to organize by color. There’s definitely a space issue in here…always has been.

It took about an hour to clean everything up. It was late then…but I did start picking the base fabrics…plus the background, that blue at the bottom.

I didn’t iron all of them though, because it was after midnight and a school night, so that means it’s bed time.

I have lots more to do on this, obviously. All week? Well, all week, I have meeting after meeting after meeting. Plus back-to-school night, which is exhausting. So I’m going to get some of it done, but I suspect it will take me all week to get ironed. Maybe not. Cutting out by the weekend? Sure. That’s doable, I think.

Kitten’s not sure…

Meanwhile, I need to go function. Unlike my printer at the moment. It’s not functioning. Or my brain. Annoying. The music is trying to wake me up, but the boychild says it’s fully apparent that I am not functioning well. Only half a cup of tea in me. Definitely still asleep.

*Billy Joel, It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me

Sitting Untouched and Growing Cold*

You know how I like to make art every day? Well it isn’t always possible, but I do try to at least do something with fabric and/or thread every day, although I guess technically Wonder Under isn’t fabric, but it’s fabric-related, and same with drawing, damn, I just talked myself out of my own plan. Fuck. Anyway. I try. Something. But some days, especially Fridays and Saturdays, there isn’t time or energy or whatever to let me do that, and most days during the school year, I don’t touch anything art-related until after 9 PM. So yesterday was one of those days, and that’s fine, because it was gaming night, and while I am gaming (no we aren’t freaking done yet even though we killed the Prince of Ziinch holy crap it’s Tzeentch they never showed me his name and now I know why they were pronouncing it so weird or something I don’t even know who he was, but he had feathers and was way smarter than any of us and wouldn’t freaking die, I shot him 3 times and so did everyone else, and now I have all these crazy wounds and flea buboes and I think I have chaos gases surrounding me), like I said WHILE I am gaming, I stitch. Because my Friday brain would otherwise be snoring away, exhausted by the day…damn, the week.

In the aftermath of the game, where I stopped stitching, just before we started putting away 7800 chips, another 450 dice, and all our other crap, each of us sporting a pile of wounds. But no. We’re not done with this campaign. It’s OK…it’s just kind of amazing.

Slow progress on this. I finally finished the July blocks…at least, I think they’re the July blocks, by finishing the hippo’s ears. The August blocks are the three across with the rhinos, bird, and butterfly. So that’s what I’m working on now…

Then I think the other three that are randomly not done are the September blocks. Maybe. So there’s the rhinos. They still need more work. But I got most of the flowers done. The blue flowers are complicated as hell…

They have french knots in slippery rayon, drizzle stitches, outlining with more of that crazy rayon shit. I’m still outlining…

Petting small furry things…

The boychild is followed around by animals all day and sometimes he gets annoyed and brings me one or two. This morning, they followed me around, well, the cats don’t really follow unless the little one thinks there’s food and the big one wants pets.

So last night, after gaming, I graded stuff. Because that’s what you do at 11 PM on a Friday. I think I’ve actually made my life easier (eventually) with the new warmups. They take longer to make/plan, but less time to grade. And they’re still writing.

Then I got up this morning and finished packing up quilts, wrote 4 statement pages, found some nails…delivering in about an hour.

I did NOT cut any of this out. I don’t know when I WILL cut any of this out. Sometime soon, for sure.

I did get into another show yesterday, Futurecraft at the Boehm Gallery, Palomar College, with Allied Craftsmen, one of the local groups to which I belong. The openings are Thursday, October 11, from 1-3 PM, and Saturday, October 13, from 2-4 PM (that’s the one I’ll be at). The show runs through November 7. There’s also an artists’ talk on Thursday, October 11 from 2-3 PM. I won’t be at that either. I have two pieces in the show…Part-Time Oasis…

And Mammogram…

So that’s one acceptance out of eight entries so far…not bad. Then again, this was the one where I was guaranteed to get one piece in, so not so impressive.

OK, on with quilt delivery, then an art exhibit, then some drinks, then IDK what. Food probably. That would be a good plan. Art will come in eventually (besides the management and delivery of said art).

*Cowboy Junkies, Cold Tea Blues

Might Have Known What You Would Find*

There was a quote in my head last night when I went to bed from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the movie, which I watched last night…possibly for the second time or maybe not, while I was packing up quilts). I wrote it down somewhere. It wasn’t the whale or the petunias who said it…definitely it was Marvin. Now I can’t find it. Perhaps I wrote it down in my sleep and dreamed the whole thing?

I got home yesterday and the plumber showed up to deal with the water pressure thingie and some other doodad wasn’t attached right (who knows who the hell did that) and all of a sudden, the place was jumping and water was flowing down the driveway quite boisterously but eventually everything got back in place and people could flush toilets again. Very important. Plus the boychild cooked dinner, which is always a wondrous thing. Somewhere, if I were smart and/or organized, I would keep track of all these random contraptions that get installed and then go bad with no warning. I need a house that thinks a lot harder than me. Or remembers stuff, because I can’t.

I have 4 quilts that have to be delivered Saturday so they can be installed next week up in Orange County. One needed a label, two needed slats and hardware, they all needed ironing and dehairing, plus I needed to figure out how to pack them up. None of that sounds like fun, because honestly, it isn’t. I have been putting it off. I forced myself to deal with most of it last night. I now have two rolls that need to be put in boxes…

And then I need to write (or find) statements, but otherwise, they’re ready to go. So that’s good. It took a while though.

Before that, during the dinner TV hour, which is more like 43 minutes, I was working on these. I think there’s about 15 more of the dark orange balls to go.

So that’s 5 or 6 nights of embellishing, but not the next 4 nights, because I won’t be home for any of those. Impressive, eh?

Puppy helped. He’s three today, so no longer a puppy.

As you can see, turning 3 is exhausting.

So it wasn’t until 10:30 PM that I was ready to trace. Ugh. This was supposed to be faster. Oh well. Life does what it does. I got another hour in…

I am still filling up the second yard. I’m at piece 437, which is the neck. So I have the head, the tree, and the cat/bird…otherwise known as about 250 pieces. I have a meeting tonight, but maybe I’ll be able to trace afterwards. Gaming tomorrow, another maybe after…at some point, I am not as tired after school. I can’t remember when that is…October? Maybe. The weekend is getting busy too. But I’ll get there. Not as fast as my brain wants me to, but I will.

*The Church, Under the Milky Way

Some People Say I’ve Done Alright for a Girl*

I wake up in the morning and my brain is still heavily involved in a conversation it was having with itself last night before I went to bed. Like maybe it went on all night while I was sleeping (not that I slept all night; y’all know how that goes…it might be why my eyes are a bit twitchy this morning) and it will continue to go on while I’m teaching and maybe I’ll get reinvolved in the conversation some time after school. If it lets me. I wonder sometimes if I’m a little insane, because it really does feel like parts of my brain are over there discussing things without telling me until something is decided. And then I remember Art Brain. I constantly let her go wander around with drawings. She always comes back, sometimes years from now, like the most recent quilt.

This is Womanscape.

She’s big…54″ wide by almost 82″ high. I like to do one really big quilt a year, usually over the summer. Last year was a bit weird for that, because I finished the big one in January or so. There’s a lot going on in here…honestly, this is a picture of my brain having a bunch of mostly related conversations…starting with a drawing from 2012, tearing it up into bits, and reworking it into this.

I also finally photographed this one, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman…

Yup. It’s me. Back when I was young and skinny. My kids are in this one too. Shadows. I just realized girlchild has what looks like a target on her uterine area. Whoops. She’ll love that. Anyway, obviously I made this one for the IQF Power of Women show, but if she doesn’t get in, she’ll get in somewhere. So that was the summer…two quilts. Nice.

I think I entered 8 shows in the last 3 weeks. Waiting to hear on all of them. It’ll take a while. Probably be a bunch of rejections too. I do have one where I’m guaranteed to get one piece in. That’s a plus.

So I finally finished all those pink bullion knots! A miracle. There were a lot of them for some reason. Now I only have one color left, this blush orange, they call it. And here’s why I left it for last. That stitch. It’s crested chain stitch. It’s not HARD…but I keep having to look at the book to remember what to do next.

Plus I’m not very good at keeping it even yet. Oh well. It’s progress. I always feel like I could embellish these Sue Spargo quilts forever, but then I remember I have more of them and maybe I should just finish it and move on! I know. Crazy.

I did finally get to tracing around 9:30 at night. I had tutoring after school and then went to Home Depot for wood slats for the quilts I need to deliver and then I was trying to book a hotel or AirBnB for the Chandler opening of Things That Matter in November. Yes! I’m going! It’s a long drive, and I may hate myself in the middle of it, but I’m going. We’re going. November will be a clusterfuck of travel. What’s new? Anyway, I traced for about 45 minutes, and then I was tired and nausea took over my brain.

These new diabetes meds are a constant issue. The positive is they’ve brought my blood sugar down. The negative is they regularly make me sick to my stomach. I’m not sure what to do about it. I thought it was getting better, but the last week wasn’t great. Patience, I guess. This is how they make you lose weight (it’s one of the side effects)…you can’t eat or you throw up. Fun stuff.

Anyway, I took a break for about an hour and then felt better and started tracing again. I don’t do well with nausea. But then it was late, and even though now I felt fine and wanted to keep going, I also want to survive a day with middle-schoolers, so I went to bed. I’m in the 300s somewhere. So much for being done last night. I’m just under 3 hours in. More than halfway.

Maybe tonight I will get more done and/or feel better. Some nights it doesn’t bug me…not sure why. And I get dehydrated but plain water makes it worse.

This is Kitten Television. She has pushed the slats over so she can watch the birds and the bunnies in the front yard.

And if she’s really offended by their existence, she bangs the slats and wakes me up. My cat is so weird.

*The Dollyrots, Brand New Key

Drive Until You Lose the Road*

It’s a shorter work week…normally someone would make me do back-to-school night this week too, but it’s next week for some reason. I actually might have some brains this week. Who knows? I’m feeling a little rough this morning, but I know I didn’t sleep well. The brain wouldn’t turn off and I couldn’t get comfortable, either mentally or physically. I’ve had crazy dreams the last three nights. Can’t remember what they are…just that they’re crazy and they wake me up and I’m lying there with hot flashes or shivering (make up your mind…), trying to remember why it was so bad in my head. At least if I remember the dream, I can parse it out, make some sense of it. Not remembering seems worse.

I’m sitting here, trying to remember what I’m teaching today. Oh yeah! I’m giving a quiz. It’s OK…it’s open note. They’ll survive. We’re still short computers, though, so that’s an issue. Everything online has to be printed out…ironically, I’m teaching digital citizenship and some kids will be doing it on paper. Sigh. Deadlines though! I have to get everyone in my homeroom through the lessons and passing the test by a certain date, and it always comes up faster than you’d think.

Anyway. School. So much mental energy goes there.

I’m still doing these. Who knows if I will ever finish? Well, I only have 1 1/2 of the pink balls left to embellish…

So there’s progress again. I have no idea what stitch I’m supposed to do on the orange balls. I left it last, so it must be complicated. Maybe. Who knows. I’ll find out tonight, I guess. After my prediction that I’d be done with these by the end of July, I’m hesitant to set another date…but end of September? Seems reasonable. So did the end of July, though.

Yesterday, after the hike, I basically ran around doing bits and pieces of things. I found the four quilts I need to pack up for Saturday. One needs a label. I pulled that one. I found wood slats for the quilts that didn’t have them. I’m one short, unfortunately, so that’s a trip to Home Depot after school…today I have tutoring, so I might be dead by then. I paused all that until the wood is purchased. I started using the new composter…the old one needs to sit for a while. There’s too much stuff in it. I’m going to let it go for a while, turn it occasionally, and then empty it onto the front yard dirt. The logistics of that might be somewhat complicated. How to get dirt from Point A to Point B. Through the house. I have a couple months to figure that out. I took my sewing machine over to my mom, so she can drop it off this week. I did some school stuff, setting up those digital citizenship lessons, at least through this week. I read my book for a while! I love being able to do that. It’s a good book too. It’s my book club book…and I probably won’t be able to go to book club for a second month in a row. Oh well.

And then finally, I started tracing Wonder Under. This piece won’t take long. I mean, it will be weeks, but I could probably finish tracing Wonder Under tonight. I could have done more last night, but the hike did my feet in. They were tired. Standing can be hard.

I got to piece 194, but that’s when I realized that there were two of them. I really don’t know how my brain skips backwards while I’m numbering. Maybe I walked away from it. But there’s duplicates from number 183-192. Hmmm. Thanks brain. Your dedication to your job is noted. So I’m about a third of the way through, with only an hour and a half in. I could easily finish tonight.

I keep track of all my time…last week, I only did about 4 hours of quilt stuff…compared to the previous week, with 15 1/2 hours. Then the week before school started, I got almost 22 hours in. Four hours is a little light, but that’s mostly because I was between quilts…I drew some, but I don’t count those hours until I enlarge a piece. Then any further drawing time counts toward the final total. Anyway, I’m not expecting a lot of hours this week, with gaming and tutoring and a meeting and who knows what else I’ve committed to in my head that I’m not remembering right now. I’m caught up on grades until Friday. But I think I can get the Wonder Under traced between now and the weekend…and I should be able to start cutting it out as well. So hopefully I’ll be ironing to fabric by next week. That’s the current plan anyway. You know how those change.

*The Fray, How to Save a Life

I’m Unusually Hard to Hold On to*

I’m thinking this was a very good weekend. It helps to have an extra day, doesn’t it? Especially for teachers, who usually lose a half to whole day of their weekend to planning and grades. I spent a significant chunk of time on school stuff, only because I had to organize the parent email for Sunday, but it wasn’t too bad. I know it will get worse, so I’m enjoying this weekend, when I had some time to laze around with a book or just NOT do something, which is really hard for me.

So we went to a couple of local wineries on Saturday afternoon…this one was nice, because of the view.

It was a great day for grapes as well…

And they had alpacas.

We came home after and had some dinner, and I started trying to finish this drawing…

And then decided I should stitch these to their boxes…these and four quilts need to be delivered next weekend for the Soka University show that opens on September 20.

I’m going to have to figure out when I can go see it…since it’s only open Monday-Friday.

I’m still working on these…I have 5 pink balls left to embellish, and then all the dark orange ones…

And then I’ll have TWO wool quilts that need quilting.

Puppy sleep…

Ah yes, on Sunday, I finished the drawing. It’s good, although I’m still debating something in the top right.

And then I numbered it…

High 500s, I think. Not bad. Not huge. Not too complicated.

Then we planned a hike to Hollenbeck Canyon this morning…need to get in one good long hike each month. Today was the day.

It was shady and cool at the start…

Those weird gourds…I’ve never seen the yellow flowers before though.

And these spiky things are pretty cool…

It’s definitely summer to fall here…

Old oaks, mostly dry grass…this is near the top of the hellish hill…we hiked up from the dark green in the middle right. Boychild took a different (aka longer) route…

You can’t see him, but he’s waving from the crotch between the two hills. He eventually caught up with us. Long legs and youth…I never had the first and I barely remember the latter.

The path down into the back valley…

There’s a coyote in this picture. Wave if you find him.

Dead snake…probably got hit by the bike that went by earlier.

And the long view out toward the south and the Jamul mountain range.

Boychild for the win. It was a little over 5 1/2 miles. Not bad. Home before lunch!

There’s all the parent emails I input and/or checked on Saturday. Kitten’s got this under control, yeah?

OK, so on the schedule for today: enter one more show (I’m up to 6 or 7 I think), drop sewing machine at mom’s so she can take it in to the shop for me and they can figure out the tension/feed dog thing, make my lunches for the week, start tracing Wonder Under, pack up the 4 quilts that need to be delivered next weekend, put a label on one of those quilts, maybe read my book. Not a bad ending to a 3-day weekend.

*Sara Bareilles, Love Song

Tell by the Way That You Switch and Walk*

I’m posting a little late today, because honestly, I didn’t do anything last night except try to finish my book because it’s overdue (I didn’t finish it yet, and now two more are at the library to pick up…the horror!) and cook dinner and import a bunch of email addresses for school and try to make sense of what my students typed in the form in the first place. Oh my. I’m not done with that mess. Although it was better than typing them all in myself.

But after a decent night’s sleep, I was ready to do some art stuff. Although then I remembered the hand stitching that I was going to do on the quilt I dropped off at the photographer’s last night. Whoops. Oh well.

Actually, here’s what I did in class yesterday…the first unit cover page for the new year.

How to alternately scare and fascinate your students in one go! Yeah!

Then I worked on this again. More embellishment of balls. Remember how I was going to do 3 a night and be done at the end of July? Yeah I remember that too.

Laughing hysterically at that one. I was also going to quilt that wool quilt…and honestly, I need to take my machine in. In fact, I should call about that right now. Hmmm.

OK, I called. She’s going in this week. The feed dogs refusing to stay dropped is what persuaded him. Cool.

Meanwhile, I enlarged a drawing that I originally thought needed redrawing, but now I think it just needs more. Then I taped it together this morning…

Looked at the size, since there are limits…

And added some to the bottom and the left (needed room for the tree’s leaves)…

Then debated, and added some more to the top. I’ve got some drawing to do now.

So I started.

It needs to percolate in my head more. My nature friend Julie is currently wracking her brain for what animal I just drew. Who knows? It’s fuzzy or spiky and has naked legs and a naked tail and a pointy little nose. And it likes cherries. Who doesn’t like cherries? Well…half my household, that’s who. Or some of them only like maraschino cherries, which make me gag. So there’s that. But y’all know I totally made up that animal.

OK, the plan for today involves wineries. So that’s good. It may or may not be conducive to drawing. Hard to say. But this quilt is gonna get a significant start this long weekend, that’s for sure. I also need to clean up and pack 4 quilts and 2 boxes for the Soka show that will open in September. Yikes. That’s work. Plus deal with all those emails. Sigh.

*Violent Femmes, Gone Daddy Gone

Nobody’s Right if Everybody’s Wrong*

It’s Friday. You may have noticed. I had this long conversation with my brother’s family last night and he kept asking, so what are your plans for the weekend, and I’m like, survive until it happens? Sleep in? Send a parent email? Get 300 email addresses input from the spreadsheet that hopefully the students have filled in properly? Did I mention sleep? I suggested a hike to my household and my one reluctant co-hiker was like, what? Really? And I’m like there’s three days off…seems like a hike could inhabit one. Really? There was a lot of disbelief there. And the other co-hiker will probably want to do 17 miles (not happening). In full sun. So we’ll see. But I did just finish a quilt and the next one is around…sort of…but not quite ready for starting, I think. Maybe. And I have no grading to do yet, because we have a wondrous teacher’s aide this year who is highly efficient and even writes positive comments to the kids. The best I do is smiley faces and the occasional Very Nice or Awesome. She finished the one assignment we had this week. Woo hoo! So that’s three days with a lot of stuff I don’t have to deal with yet. I know I’ll have packed, stressful weekends with a ton of work involved. This isn’t one of them. Revel in that. Somehow. Imagine me dancing around!

So the first thing I did when I got home yesterday is do these blood-type tests. Girlchild keeps telling us she’s O-neg and that’s why the Red Cross harasses her to come in and donate all the time. I had this vague memory of being A-something, but wasn’t sure. I didn’t know the boychild at all. So we did these tests.

Boychild is O-pos and I’m A-pos. So we did some Punnett squares in our heads and read up on it…it’s like doing science labs at home. He was convinced she couldn’t be O-neg. I wasn’t sure either. Surely it would help if we knew what their dad was. Now we know he’s a lot of things, but probably O-pos.

Puppy on my lap…I’m still in that state where I come home from school and half-collapse on the couch.

He doesn’t mind.

After everyone ditched me for the night, except for the cats, here’s Satchemo harassing a baby gecko on the screen…the same one that was there last night.

Might be a really stupid gecko.

Then I entered an art exhibit that took a really long time because I had to write art statements for two quilts that I finished a while ago, and my brain was not in the right place for that. I think I wrote coherent things. It’s hard to know. I still have three more to do this weekend, but I need photos for two of them.

Then I ironed these two quilts, removed as much cat hair as I could, and rolled them up for the photographer. So I have duty before and after school today, and then after that, I’m driving to the photographer’s, so I can meet two deadlines. Cool stuff.

I should have rolled them up on the light table, because it’s nice and big, but I prefer to torture myself with trying to roll up a really large quilt on the ironing board, all the while trying to keep the parts from hitting the floor and getting covered in hair again. It’s a challenge. Really, who needs to go to the gym when that’s how you’re spending your afternoon.

I didn’t eat dinner. It’s a good thing I didn’t feel like eating dinner, because my dinner plan had already been eaten by the boychild. I just didn’t know it. I guess I could’ve cobbled something together, but I was tired and that is not the best mindframe for cobbling stuff together.

So then I settled down to draw. I had no real plan in mind, except I was supposed to be drawing for the poem exhibit I’m going to be in. I had drawn for it a few weeks ago, but then rejected it for some reason. Except now when I look back at the drawing, I think it’s fine. It needs more, sure, but I think it’ll work. So I’m going to enlarge it today, tape it together, and see how I want it to go from there. So after photographer, I need to go to the copy place. And then I need more milk, so that’s a grocery store on a Friday night. That’s probably a mistake. Expect more collapsing on the couch when I get done with all of that. Everyone is helping cook tonight. It’s not just gonna be me.

But I’m sitting there last night with my sketchbook open. And tiredness all throughout me. So then, I’m like, what other shows am I considering? I picked one and read the requirements and thought about it a little bit and drew a little bit. I did actually sketch in pencil first (I don’t always do that), because the parts needed to look a certain way.

Not a bad start. I’m not sure this will be anything in the long run, but if it is, this is a good way to begin.

Although it’s not what I meant to draw at all. So there’s that. And it’s not done, if I’m going to keep going with this one…there’s a whole bunch of stuff that should go on behind her. Anyway. We’ll see. I’m not sold on it yet.

So this weekend? Sleep. That stupid email with all the crap that goes with it. Some sort of thing outside with my hiking boots on. Hopefully with one or another persons or maybe dogs or who knows, I’m on my own with the coyotes. Probably some food. Maybe some music or art or a movie or I don’t know. Something that sets my head up for the month of September, always a joyous month of holy crap is that my to-do list when it comes to school. Laughing. Really. And maybe some more random drawing.

*Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth