Cutting through the Noise

I think this is the noisiest summer ever. Or maybe I don’t usually notice it. We have relatively new neighbors above us, and they’re doing work on the yard (the jackhammering), and then at the bottom of our road, they’re building a new behemoth on a small piece of property that’s been empty there for years. When I was still married, we joked about annexing it for my art studio. I could just wander down there and work. Yeah well, I’m actually much better off having it all in the house, now that the kids are grown and I usually live here by myself (well…as By Myself as I can get with all these furry beasts). So hammering and banging and sawing and big trucks backing up have all been part of my summer as well. I guess I can’t expect them all to be on my sleep schedule. But then puppy has been a barker the last few nights, keeping all three of us up. We’re not sure what the issue is (marauding mountain lions, ninja hordes about to break into the house, or a possum on the roof), but it’s certainly almost impossible to sleep through. And no, that damn mockingbird has not left the area. He’s still there and he has friends. So I sleep with a pillow on my head, what little I sleep.

But sleep is why I didn’t get as far as I wanted to last night. I’m still really having issues getting artwork done during the day too, so that’s not helping. I blew off copyediting yesterday (I don’t have a deadline for the chapter I have, and it’s short…don’t panic. I’m working on it today), but mostly ran errands and cleaned under the boychild’s direction. He likes things to be put away and not cluttered, so his sister and I drive him nuts. Oh well. The entryway is now spotless. Well, except for the three piles that need to go to specific people, plus two new bags for the thrift store. That was not on my list, but I went along with it.

I did eventually get around to cutting things out, with pure determination to finish yesterday. And I did! I know, it’s a miracle. There’s all of it…24 hours worth of trimming pieces.

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And the last bit of trimming trash. That little bit that was left the night before? It took two hours to cut out.

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I do bag up all the trash until the quilt is done, because I often lose small pieces, and it’s easier to cut new ones from this stash than to pull from the bins. Although I don’t put anything away until the quilt is completely ironed down for that reason. Just in case.

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It was still early (well it was 11 PM anyway), so I found 19 bins…no, 20 bins…and laid them out for sorting…and I started.

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I gave up around 12:30 though, because I was tired…and this was how much was left to be sorted. It may not look like much, but those tiny pieces take forever.

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So I’ll do that later today or tonight. I had to stack up all the bins, though, because Midnight likes to sleep in them. As you can see…

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She was already lurking around them this morning, ready to deposit black fur everywhere and stick little pieces of fabric to her butt. Foiled her!

Kitten got her stitches out (happily!) yesterday. It was quick and apparently painless, and she has been joyously cleaning herself since them.

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Seriously. Like nonstop.

OK, I need to do some copyediting, and I will be at the Oceanside Museum of Art tonight, assuming I can handle the traffic. And then I can finish sorting after that and see if I have the energy for ironing. But progress! Based on the last big one, I’ll be ironing down for 27 hours or so. Seems about right. Especially with all those tiny pieces.

We Need the Good Crazy

I think the cutting may never end. I really really really wanted to be done last night, and surely it is partially my fault, because I didn’t start earlier, and instead I drew for about two hours. However, based on how my hand feels this morning, I don’t think I had two more hours of cutting IN me, and I don’t even know if it would have been enough.

Let’s start with the drawing though. Actually, let’s go Way Back. OK. Not Way Back. Only a little over two years ago, when I got an email from another quilter I’d never met (there are a bunch of those, and I’m OK with that) talking about my process and the size of the work I make etc. and I answered her…no, I don’t remember what I said, but probably something along the lines of yes, I’m crazy, but you can be crazy too. Start small. And she answered back, and WordPress always gives me their email address, but if they have a blog, it gives me that address, and I usually go read their About page and maybe one of their posts, and I have to be honest, I don’t keep reading most blogs. I already have over 800 blogs on Feedly, and I don’t keep up with those well at all, but occasionally I find someone who writes about stuff I think is interesting. And this quilter was interesting. Her name was Lisa and she was missing a kidney due to kidney cancer (her blog is here). She was a little younger than me and so were her kids, and although she was a fairly basic quilter, she loved color and wrote well, and those are pluses in my mind. So I followed her blog. And then she found me on Instagram and Facebook, and we were sort of online acquaintances. I have lots of those.

Time goes on. She writes about her illness, her family, fabric…and she’s very real about the illness…about cancer…fuck cancer (well yeah, wouldn’t we all like to be able to do that?), but I’m impressed by her persistence, her downright stubbornness, her will to continue to live her life even as her body was giving up. And last Saturday, she died.

I never met her (although I was in the same area as her once), and I feel for her family, especially her kids and her husband. And for some reason her death is particularly disturbing…maybe it’s because I’ve been hearing her voice in my head for so long as I read her posts, saw her photos, saw her on Facebook, but I drew. Because that’s what I do when stuff bugs me. I draw. And the thing is, I was already in a bad place because of all the gun violence and racism and just stupid things that spout out of people’s mouths these days, and that sure did show up in the drawing. That yeah, Lisa had died, but at least she didn’t see all that stupidity happening any more. And fighting her own body’s weaknesses, well that was over. There was no happy ending, because for a while with people with cancer, there is a chance, sometimes quite a good one, that they will fight it and be successful, and many people do. For some reason, having kids still in school when they die, well that makes it worse. In my head. I don’t know why.

Lisa had such a great attitude. The planet needed her.

And it’s funny, people want to give me condolences, but I don’t really feel like I deserve them. Or necessarily need them. I was once upset by a friend’s miscarriage. I didn’t need support; I just felt enough pain for her that I needed to draw, so I did. Some of my quilts aren’t about me.

So on the right, is the smaller drawing I did Saturday night, which showed up on Instagram and Facebook…because she was floating above all the shit and didn’t have to deal with any of it any more.

And then Sunday, I thought…you know? I want to develop this a bit further (because I don’t have 17 thousand deadlines here that have nothing to do with this right now)…so I started a larger redraw in the bigger sketchbook on the left.

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I’m not done, but it’s more carefully drawn than the other. And I will finish it, maybe today.

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It’s sad that to escape the crazy in this world, we either have to die or be completely ignorant. I don’t want to do either. On the other hand, I can visualize worse shit in the future if this election goes badly.

I wish the best for Lisa’s family. I wish I could make it easier, but I can’t. They should just know that her attitude was inspiring.

Sigh. So while I was drawing, someone was very tired and wanted to sleep right next to me.

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He is a sweet baby, even if he can be an asshole on a regular basis.

So I really wanted to be done cutting. I think I said that. I was sure I WOULD be done cutting, but NOOOO. Fuck me. I cut for over 3 1/2 hours last night…

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And I still have these fuckers to go. I wish I could say, hey! That looks like about 2 hours of cutting, but that’s what I thought when I started cutting last night, and I was obviously completely out of my head wrong.

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Here’s the pile of trash. I’m over 22 hours in. And not fucking done.

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ALMOST THERE. Sigh. At some point, we were all waiting for the girlchild to come back from a social thang. Dogs everywhere. Calli jealous that Simba fits on laps and she doesn’t.

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Actually, before the boychild came in, this is what it looked like. Me cutting, and all three of the furry beasts asleep nearby.

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And when I went to bed, there was number 4…Kitten with her floppy cone.

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She gets her stitches out today. I’m sure she’ll be quite pleased to finally get her tongue on that incision.

So to sum up, I’ll be working on that drawing soon, probably today. My tribute to Lisa. My way to work out the crap in my head. And hopefully I’ll finish cutting those damn pieces out as well. Plus a trip to the vet. And maybe a little less crazy in the world. The bad crazy. I think we need the good crazy.

I Need to Know the Why

Well I worked a good chunk of yesterday, but the world is still a mess today. You’d think if enough people yelled Stop It that someone might hear. I don’t understand why they don’t. I need to know why.

I am closer to done on the cutting…even though I didn’t get much of a chance to work on it yesterday…I cut out lots of crane feathers while watching videos about atoms and electrons.

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I’m still taking two chemistry classes online, even though it’s been hard to find the time. I have to say that it helps to have two different types of teachers explaining the stuff, but Rice University’s course is currently easier for me to understand. He actually explained where we came up with all the ideas we have about the atom and its structure. I like to know the why. I always need to know the why. Don’t just tell me This is the way it is. Explain to me how we got there. What we still don’t know. What we did to figure it out.

Here’s the current pile of stuff that is cut out…

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And only this is left. I might work on that today, although there are other things I need to do as well. But I want to be done with this stage so I can move on to the ironing-stuff-together part, which is always more fun for me, and probably for my readers. Days and days of pictures of piles of pieces…ugh. Although at least these are color and pattern, unlike the days and days of Wonder Under cutting.

I know many people ask me why I make quilts like this. Some even try to tell me how to do it differently, but this is what works for me. I came up with this crazy process over a long period of experimentation…to get to a place where I could make what I saw in my head. So yeah…it’s time-consuming. But the product is good. So shake your head at my crazy, but it works for me. I’m OK with being the crazy one.

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Kitten is fine, recovering well. Some people asked. Every morning, when I wake up to her trying to clean herself through the cone (which she kinda wears as a collar), I tell her how many more days of wearing it, and we check out her stitches. They’re healing well. She’s acting pretty normal now…the first few days were a little rough, but she’s definitely herself now.

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Apparently though it will take 4-6 months for the hair to grow back, so I kinda feel sorry for her, but they are the hottest months of the year, so maybe it will feel nice. Hard to say, since she can’t use words to tell me. She does boisterously clean me, though, especially when I scratch all the parts she can’t reach right now. That said, I just came back in here and she had managed to push the cone out of the way enough to reach the bottom stitches. Sigh. While sitting in the chair I only barely vacated. And is now beating me with her tail in retribution. So yeah. She’s back to normal, despite the Frankenscar on her belly.

I keep saying I’m going to draw and then I don’t. And this week is kind of a bitch for getting stuff done. Lots of stuff at night. Which reminds me, I’ll be doing the artist talk at the Oceanside Museum of Art on Tuesday, from 6:30-8. I can put people on a guest list so you can get in free; otherwise, I think it’s $10. I don’t know what I’m going to say yet, but I’m supposed to practice it so it’s not more than 5 minutes. I’m a teacher. We talk fast. And I guess in true Kathy brain-style, I will tell why I made the quilt. I need to know the why. Ironically, I can’t always explain the why in my own work. But this one I can.

This Is Not My Beautiful World…

I am so disheartened by the country I live in at the moment. Although having lived elsewhere, I know that it probably doesn’t matter where you live…there will be things that humans do that I will just be entirely incapable of understanding. I hear anger toward other…but as a teacher, I have often had students who are other (insert group name here), and I know from experience and years of teaching biology that we are all the same, just a tiny tweak of DNA. It just makes me want to weep to think of one of my kids, my students (because they ARE our kids for some short period of time, and we always continue to think of them and wonder if they are OK), being hurt or killed because of this crazy stupidity we call Protection, Right to Bear Arms, Vengeance. Whatever. It’s anger. It’s fear. And it’s not necessary. We are no longer in a predator/prey relationship, trying to survive against nature. Now we apparently have to survive against ourselves, because other humans are out to kill us, harm us. Stop trying to find a scapegoat. If you have anger toward another group or people or gender or whatever, then it is you.

And I know that most who read my blog are not. And I don’t know how to get this idea across to the angermongers. I can’t even imagine if one of them is President. How that will roll. Art is supposed to help with this, but I know none of them will all of a sudden look at a piece of art and arrive at a revelation.

This world we live in. I just don’t get it. Why people think it’s OK to act that way. I just don’t get it.

I have to work this morning. I’m trying to find the right mindset. I object to having to push all this…sadness…away into a corner of my brain so I can continue to copyedit. But I have to…to survive. At least to pay the bills. And continue to ponder how to get across to the increasingly crazy killers that they need to stop. That it would be a better world if they did. David Byrne’s song…Once in a Lifetime (OK, it’s Talking Heads…not just David)…this is not my beautiful house…this is not the world I want to live in. Not my beautiful world. I hate not being able to visualize a solution…besides get rid of the damn guns. I wish we could just do that. A start. See where that takes us. Because this is just crazy.

Back to my regular blogpost…but know all that is still in my head…running circles around any attempts I make to live a normal life.

I had my monthly stitching meeting last night, and Julie brought a thread (OK, she brought bags of thread) that she thought might work for the flower stitching…

Because here’s what 13 of them look like on the left (OK, I didn’t really count, damn you)…half of them are that magenta color, and half are purple. Half have the silk velvet center and half have a cotton center that is a similar color. And I think there are two different colors in the body of the flower. But I had no more of the pink thread. As it was, I had to pick a near color for the flower and the center…so in the whole quilt? I don’t think anyone will notice…

And if they do, it was on purpose…to let the evil spirits out…right? Fact is I finished stitching everything and there was an empty space that bugged me. So I filled it.

Now I can back it and quilt it and bind it (well, except I have no working sewing machine, unless I go pull the old one out). And no time to quilt it. Minor issue. It’s still done. Ish.

Then I was working on the other birds, the last three, at the meeting…

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I had already finished all the background stitches in the beige/gray color, so I added feet and stitched around the eyeballs. I just found all the eye buttons when I was cleaning off the couch the other day. Who knows how long they’ve been there. Years. So all the decorative bird embroidery is left.

Meanwhile, I am still…STILL…cutting stuff out. I’m almost done, if by almost, I mean less than 10 hours. Because I did 3 hours last night, and there’s still a chunk left to do (14 hours in so far). Here’s the trash pile…a huge amount of fleshy bits.

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See…this is what’s left. Of course, you can’t see how big any of the pieces are that need cutting when they’re upside down…I do know that top two are all crane feathers, so not huge, but not tiny.

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This is everything that’s cut out…the box fills…slowly.

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Side by side…the to-be-cut on the left, the already-cut-out on the right…you can see progress.

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So yeah. I have to work. And run some errands. Stuff that guarantees my paycheck. And let the part of my brain that is always trying to solve problems wander around up there and attempt to find peace. For all of us. Wish I could see that.

Head above Water

Yesterday. Was good. Although a little frustrating in the first half. Jackhammering continued (none this morning!), starting too early for me…and then, because editing was going so EASILY…the document turned into a Frankenbeast of formatting headaches. I made one change, moving something into a list that needed to be there, and it literally screwed up the formatting in the entire document. And I didn’t notice until I’d made another 50 corrections or so, so I couldn’t just undo without losing all of that. Aargh. I searched for ways to deal with bulleted lists, and got nothing relevant…probably because I didn’t know exactly what words to use. Formatting can be such a bitch. So I had to redo a chunk of it, which lost me time and money. Sigh. It happens.

After that, I managed to finish a book, hike 7.34 miles with the kids, make dinner from scratch, and cut stuff out. Yup. This is how I relax. Seriously. Look under the definition for workaholic and you find me.

OK. I never really relax like this…

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That puppy is spoiled.

So the hike…we did over 7 miles of Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve, leaving from the Black Mountain trailhead and hiking out to the waterfall in a roundabout way, trying to avoid trails with bikes on them (although the bikes appear to just ignore the signs that say stay off, because they’re assholes? Or illiterate? Or special? I’ve never understood that.). There was poison oak everywhere…the wonders of a high-water winter and spring in Southern California. This is cactus overrun by poison oak…which you can only find here.

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The weather was much better than last week, and honestly, this isn’t a hard hike. There’s no up and down…just long.

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We made it to the waterfall and hung out briefly.

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But we had to be out of the parking lot by 8, because they lock it, so we were motivated to keep moving.

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There’s a few river crossings…I think we did this one twice.

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And the oak groves are always my favorite.

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A grave of a former ranch cook…

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And this sign amused us…because really? The trail to the right was pretty poison-oaked as it was…

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But whatever. We just didn’t touch the stuff.

After dinner, I managed to cut for another couple of hours…wait, make that three hours. So I think I’m over 11 hours in right now.

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There were lots of little pieces last night…some I didn’t even try to cut out (you can see a few on the bottom left), because they’re too small and I’ll just lose them. I’ll cut them out as I iron.

This is all that’s left…

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It doesn’t look like much, until you see how many of the pieces are small. It took me about 30 minutes last night just to cut out the giraffe’s spots. All curvy and weird.

This was my scrap pile from last night…

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You can see the color changes below…four different scrap piles from four different nights.

I’m getting there…slowly. Too slowly, I think sometimes. But I’ll get there. I do have to copyedit again today…and tomorrow. But I’m hoping to leave the weekend free. That would be a plus. It’s hard knowing that what would really help me relax and be ready for the upcoming (stressful) school year is not having to work NOW…but also needing to work NOW because of college and cat payments etc.

A friend sent me a link to a gallery in New Orleans where she saw stuff she knew I’d like (and I did)…and I’ve been thinking of trying to do an actual vacation trip in the next 12 months, but the money is nonexistent, and then girlchild tried to guilt trip me about coming to visit my kids instead. Ah. OK. That was discussed at one point. So we’ll see. Price it out. Work some more hours. And I have a quilt going to Houston, but I won’t be there…which sucks, but again…money kicks me upside the head. Keep making art. Keep working. Head above water…

The book I finished (and I will be reading the next one, once I get through the three I have checked out from the library) was The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch…very good, although in George R. R. Martin style, he likes to kill my favorite characters.

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I should make time to draw today I think. I believe I need to do that. I keep saying it and not doing it.

All the Things

Although the jackhammering started early, to my night-owl brain, it seems to maybe be done? I eavesdropped on the guy in charge, and it certainly seems like today is the last day. AND I am currently enjoying my new keyboard with keys that actually have LETTERS on them. I know, right? What a luxury item.

I did work most of yesterday. Copyediting. I’ll be doing it again most of today and tomorrow. It’s OK. I need the money.

Meanwhile, I do toss in some artmaking, mostly at night, when I probably couldn’t continue to work anyway. I’m a little over 8 hours into the trimming, and this is where it gets slow. The pile doesn’t change much over time once I get the big pieces cut out. Because then I run into pieces like this…

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Daisies…that was all of them in one of the three colors I ironed them onto…so imagine about 30 minutes spent cutting them out.

Midnight helped…

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At the end of the evening, well, night…because it was well after midnight. The time, not the cat. The top box is all cut out. There’s still quite a bit in the lower box.

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Simba finally settled down for a nap after I threw two balls consecutively for about 15 minutes, nonstop.

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I need to be focused today. We’re hiking this afternoon too. So yeah. Trying to do ALL the things. It’s just not possible. Plus I need to know ALL the stuff too. So I don’t have a lot of words today. Brain is fuzz.

Turning the Music Up…

Oh my. The jackhammer is back. Of course. I took 4 days off working (not art…although I did take a bit of a break on that too) because I NEEDED it. I was hitting that braindead stage where I just get irritable and don’t want to do anything but sleep, and I suck at that. So I ignored copyediting for four days. Today was my planned return to the Sitting-in-Front-of-the Computer crazy. But there’s jackhammering. Sigh. So I turn the music up loud. But it doesn’t make me feel particularly friendly toward this neighbor, I must say. He’s also the one who wants to trim my trees so he can “reclaim his view.” The view you never had, dude. (Kathy goes to buy new trees to plant…seriously…so I don’t have to see or hear you.)

Yeah. I’m in a mood. Whatever. I did relax a bit…but you know, one of the things I do to relax is read, and my book took a particularly dark dive last night while I was reading (in the dark, on a blanket, waiting for the fireworks to start). I’m sad about that too. So maybe I just need to work my brain into the hole and then climb out again.

I’m still cutting out tiny pieces of fabric. No change there. I just didn’t do as much as I’d planned over the weekend. Oh well.

I was trying to organize the wool projects I do for “fun” (no really, they are pretty fun to stitch on), because during the school year, things got out of control. So I pulled everything out and tried to figure out what the hell I’d been doing.

First of all, this one has been almost done for ages…

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It’s Sue Spargo’s Earth & Twig. I decided it was missing a flower, so I had started sewing it down and never finished…

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So I stitched it down and found a center, but not the thread that I used on the others (probably because there isn’t any more). I thought about buying another skein of it, but shipping is almost as much as the skein. So I’m still considering a solution to that. I did wash the backing and binding that she had sent as well, so I could get to that stage. Maybe.

It’s a fun little quilt…

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Then I found all the Bird Dance blocks (I’ve been calling this Bird Crazy since I started it).

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I’m working on the last three right now. Well. Not right this second. But anywhere I have to wait. But then I realized the borders are a bitch and a half. So yeah. Not gonna be done with that for a while.

I then tried to organize the rest of it. Went through and labeled boxes and consolidated stuff so there were only two places I could find any block: in a master box for that project or in a travel box for working on stuff. OK. Three places, because the ones I’m doing embroidery on are in these zip bags I got from the Container Store.

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I also cleared off most of the piano and the chair, trying to get stuff organized for when school starts, and then organized the stuff that lives on and near the couch. And continued cleaning off the table (desk?) in the office. I really want to achieve organization. REALLY.

Then we hiked…

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It was a little warm, but not too bad, compared to last week. The dogs can’t do more than 3 miles really, so that was it…beautiful day for it though.

Saw this…mostly everything else is dead and dried out by now. But this wasn’t.

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The dogs even ran for a bit. So did we. Possibly a mistake. But it felt good.

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The family hike is set for Wednesday. That means I need to copyedit today and tomorrow before the hike. Ugh. I will still cut stuff out, but I probably won’t get done. It’s OK. Stuff gets done when I can deal with it. Honestly, trying to concentrate with the jackhammer is challenging enough. Turning the music up even louder.

The Plan…

So the sewing machine is having issues…it’ll go in for service in two weeks (they’re booked that far out). It froze up on me twice the other afternoon. I had decided to take a break from Earth Mother 2016 and do a quick quilt job on the other smaller piece I’ve had hanging around for a million years…

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Mostly so I could take three small pieces to the photographer at once, instead of one at a time (more expensive). I got through most of the outlining before it froze. I cleaned out the bobbin area, because that’s usually an issue, and started up again, but 15 minutes later, it did it again. This time, I pulled the whole bobbin case out and found a wealth of tied-up fluff crap.

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It was wrapped around the case…and I pulled all this out…

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Cool. Then tried sewing again yesterday, got about 15 minutes in, and it froze again. Shit. Anyway. Already have a cleaning appointment. Guess I’m not sewing until then, unless I pull out the old trusty maroon Viking. Which I could do, if I were desperate. It’s scary when you call your repair guy and he asks about your old machine (because he took it apart and put it back together again enough times).

We had dinner last night at the parentals…three dogs in one picture.

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And then I tried to get stuff done…been clearing up the table in the studio (currently it’s in piles on the floor instead)…and then came out and forced myself to watch cooking shows with the girlchild (some of them really annoy me, but she didn’t want to be alone) while cutting stuff out…Midnight was so helpful.

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Puppy eventually settled down and stopped trying to attack me as I was cutting…

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And I cut for two hours…only 4 hours and 40 minutes in total. Box on the left is cut out…doesn’t look like much. But neither does the box on the right. Hard to believe there’s possibly another 16 hours of cutting hiding in there.

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Here’s all the bits and pieces. I do save them.

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Not forever…just until I have the quilt ironed down, because I might need just a small piece of one color. Usually, it’s the small pieces that disappear the easiest. And then I don’t have to pull out the big pieces. I do throw them out after I’m done ironing. I had a quilt artist friend who used to ask me for them, but she’s moved on. And none of them are really big enough for anything useful.

And here’s a blogpost I did for the California Fibers’ show Eclectic Threads (which I’ve been calling Eclectic Fibers for months)…it’s at the Oceanside Museum of Art through October 9. I have photos from two of the other exhibits in there, which are pretty cool. I’ll try to remember to post them this week.

I’m gonna have to start copyediting again soon. Two more chapters are sitting here and I don’t want to look at them next weekend either. So maybe I’ll do some today. We have a dog walk on the list and burgers of course and then fireworks with the hordes. But not a lot else. Isn’t Independence Day about lying around and doing nothing but eat and watch stuff?

As far as planning quilt stuff out, I know I have no working sewing machine until the 20th at the earliest, but there’s got to be another 16 hours of cutting (although it doesn’t look that way), and then another 20 hours plus of ironing. So potentially I would be ready to stitch down earlier than that date…so I need to think about the next steps for whatever’s next on the list. Drawing then. Maybe that’s something I try to do today. In between cleaning and cooking and all the other crap. And working! So I can have a full-size drawing for the next big piece ready to go. I can also pick fabrics for the little owl. I’ve put that off because I want to see what this one that I’ve already picked looks like once I’ve ironed it. Then it’s easier for me to adjust. There are plenty of things I can work on…seriously. And there’s no real deadline for this piece…just a plan. I always have a plan. It’s not always a good one. Or sane. But it’s a plan.

Brainpower

So I don’t know what my problem was on this quilt. Picking fabrics usually takes me about an hour per 100 fabrics, sometimes a few hours more than that. So this one has 1952 pieces, so I’d put it at 20-22 hours. Nope. Almost 33 hours. Sheesh. Either I was spacey and couldn’t decide on stuff, or there was just a lot of stuff, or stuff. There are 164 fabrics in this quilt. Yeah, I said 169 on Instagram, but I was wrong. I couldn’t even read my own writing. So that’s a lot. So maybe the two of those go together. Lots of fabrics = Lots of hours.

I’m glad to be done with the standing portion, for sure. I always forget how tiring standing for hours is…like during the summer, when I don’t do it, and then I go back to school, and my body reminds me. Painfully.

Now I have about 20 hours of cutting out to do. Although, I was wrong about the fabric-picking part. The time for it. So maybe I’ll be wrong again. I only have about 2 1/2 hours in.

This is yesterday, when I made a concerted effort to finish off the ironing part by blowing off work (it’s OK…it’s not due for a while. I don’t actually know WHEN it’s due, but I know it’s not next week. OK. Wait. I don’t know that. I know it’s not Wednesday. That’s ALL I know.). Kitten is rocking the cone. And often just sits on the chair and stares at me, like she knows I could take the cone off (and I do, when she needs to use the litter tray, because otherwise it’s ugly, like a blind little old lady trying to find the toilet.). So I must hate her if I make her wear it the rest of the time. Except I left her in the litter tray area and went off to deal with a doggie thing, and I came back and she was trying to lick the stitches out. So THAT bitch is why you have to keep it on. Because you won’t follow instructions.

Ironing the sun below…

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At the end of the day, you can see the mess I’ve been piling up. LOTS of fabrics.

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And that thing I always do, where I semi-organize them (I gave up on the greens) and pack them up in boxes, partially so I can see the range for that quilt, but also in case I lose a piece and need to find that fabric, because otherwise it might take me hours to find it in my stash. There’s 164. I counted.

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Puppy finally got ran around enough to stop biting and trying to sit on my lap, and settled down for his nighttime nap. Right next to me.

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Midnight occupied the other side of the couch. With a pile of stuff. And my bra. Nice. So the left tub is what I cut out last night, mostly big pieces from the bottom of the quilt. I flipped all the pieces into a larger bin, the one on the right, because it was getting too crowded in the smaller bin. So I still have to cut out everything on the right.

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I keep a lid in my lap for all the trash.

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That’s one evening’s worth. Well, not even the whole evening, because I didn’t start until late. And now there’s competition on the couch and for TV again. Ugh. Because I don’t want to watch the Gilmore Girls. Again. I didn’t really like it the first time around. I could watch and cut in here…not as comfortable, and for some reason, my Netflix in here cuts off the whole world from the wifi on this side of the house. I might not care. I do pay all the bills. I could just start watching.

Boychild also just made a very good-smelling breakfast. My body responds with hunger. Bastard.

I should make a plan or seventeen for today, but I just don’t have the brainpower. Ugh. I’m so much more efficient when I’m working full time.

Conehead

Well so this is morning. Apparently. After being up after 1:30 AM, trying to settle cone-wearing Frankenstein cat (now baby, that’s a scar…), then a 4 AM wakeup for meds (for the cat) plus something puking, and the dog going ballistic before 9…I feel semi-drugged, definitely not rested, just half awake, if that. Ugh. Reminds me of the baby years.

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The poodle trimming of her legs is also nice. Especially since they told me to take off the bandage when I got home, and then there was blood everywhere. I wanna see you hold a pissed-off and drugged cat with a cone and blood oozing and try to one-handedly get a bandage on that. The kids had left, of course. Sigh. I’m really quite amazing in a hard place.

Last night, she was decidedly more pissed off about the cone and surgery in general (the photo above is this morning. She hid in the fabric drawer hole for a good long time.

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Yesterday, the girlchild got her hair done in a pinkish manner. I don’t have a final picture…

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I’ll have to get one.

I’ve been stuck in places where sewing on these is all I could do…so I finished these.

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I only have three left to embroider, and then I can sew them together. It’s very relaxing. Funny though…a year ago, I had nine left to embroider…so I’m really slow. I guess that’s why I’m years behind. Whatever. It’s not a race. I always tag this as Bird Crazy, but I realized its real name is Bird Dance. This is a Sue Spargo BOM from a few years back. I like her stuff…it’s got depth and fun stitching and it’s relatively easy to do. She’s released this one as a book now. In fact, she’s released all the ones I have except this year’s, so I can post about all of them now (there were issues with people copying her stuff before). Seriously though, her instructions are so amazingly good that you’re an idiot (and a jerk for stealing her ideas) if you don’t buy the book/pattern/whatever the heck it is. Plus she’s going through cancer treatments at the moment and deserves all your money. The one she just released, the Folk Tails quilt, is absolutely amazing. I can’t wait to get done with this one for real so I can start the embroidery on that one.

I did iron finally last night…I had to finish copyediting in the morning, then check out the girl’s hair, then do counseling, and pick up Kitten, and cook her shit she wouldn’t eat, and cook myself shit I would eat, and THEN…then I could iron.

I’m 26 hours in…LONG time picking stuff. This is the tiger on one breast…

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I also did the cat (aka Kitten) and flower vine on the other breast, the lungs, and the heart. So I did a lot…I’m in the 1500s now, the high 1500s I think. I have all of the torso done…just the head and an arm left to do.

I do have two more chapters to copyedit, but they’re not due for a while, so I’m taking a break. I want to get this fully ironed today…I probably only have about 300 pieces left, so that’s 3-4 hours. Then I can sit and cut pieces out for another 20 hours. While syringing water into the cat’s mouth, because I haven’t seen her drink anything yet. Plus I need a break. It’s been a lot of work lately, and that’s good, because it means I might be able to pay for the cat’s surgery AND college (ha. Well. Maybe.), but I also need to draw and sleep and relax and read books. Like a normal person does on vacation.