Revelatory Moments That I Can’t Remember…

It was a long day, full of microscopes, slow internet, broken slides, irritating realizations, and a meeting after school. It was helped by hanging out with someone for dinner and some quiet time with the animals. The house is cold at night, so they get closer and closer. I can’t say I got a lot done, because I had to send a long union email and manage some other school stuff, plus read the boychild’s highly amusing rough draft for some pre-law class, and write up an independent study contract that the kid won’t do at all. Because when your kid is failing four classes, it makes sense to pull him out of school for an extra week. Because a week at Thanksgiving isn’t enough. Frustrating, but whatever.

I debated applying for a copyediting job and realized I already applied for another one last week and thought THAT sounded crazy. That’s two I’ve debated this week. I really need it to be a side job though and not an all-encompassing Other Job. I’m buried with the job I have. I’m scrambling to get caught up.

So finally on the couch with animals, Midnight decides the cat quilts are hers…despite the pins sticking out all over the place.

She kept rubbing her head on the edge and I’d bop her, waiting for the inevitable Pin in the Eye injury. She eventually got up and moved right next to me (I guess I’m warm) while I stitched the binding on Cat 4…

14 ½” w x 13” h, $160. Contact me if you’re interested.

I actually stopped in the middle on this one to go write that contract for the kid who will be gone all next week and has turned in nothing at all this trimester. Good times! As I said to the administrators, I’m going to work harder on this ISC than he has all year in my class…I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it SHOULD work.

Three more cats and two hearts in hands to go. I’m debating taking them to gaming tonight. The callus is better, but still sore. Maybe if I just bring one tonight. I’ll think about it. Cat 3 did sell…she was my favorite because she looks just like Kitten. But I have the technology if I want to make another one.

Last night I had some revelatory moment about artmaking and living alone and creativity and whatever. I don’t remember what it was this morning, because I’m tired, I didn’t get enough sleep (when DO I?), I haven’t had all my caffeine, I’m prepping the lab in my head for today and revising what I think they can do, and I’m also writing Monday’s assignment in there as well, which could be an issue, plus I just realized I have kids bringing cell projects today, food ones, so I’ll have to grade them during prep so they can eat them at lunch. I seem to bring teacher chaos on myself.

But it was something along the lines of maybe having all the alone time helps me make more art, but I know that having less alone time (after Wednesday ALL DAY almost not talking to anyone) would be better for me in the long run. Some days I don’t even notice and some days the silence just weighs on me. And that’s silence that’s filled with loud music or something on TV or the computer. It’s never really silent here. And there are cats and a dog demanding attention, so it’s not even really that alone. But people constantly ask what it’s like to have the kids gone, and I try to explain, and usually the people who ask either went through it themselves or have absolutely no idea. They think deeply and say that they can see after a day or two of no one being around that they might start to miss it. Then again, yesterday I had both kids texting and emailing me on and off, so it’s a little like being connected in space, even when they’re not in the house. Though girlchild sent this…

With all that, I need to get to school to receive cell model cakes and set up microscopes for swimmy things (I saw some yesterday! Yay!) and cheek cells. Lots of washing slides will be going on today. They never told me about the dishes I would wash for science when I said I wanted to teach it.

Two Headless Mermaids

It’s so weird to have a day off in the middle of the week. My brain is still trying to process another Monday this week, except it’s not Monday; it’s Thursday. Ugh. I’m not sure random holidays are helpful. I did get a few things done around here, mostly moving stuff and cleaning and tossing a lot of paper that just accumulates when I don’t know what to do with it. The fact is that if you wait long enough, that paper will be useless and you can easily recycle it. That’s my theory anyway.

I did put the last binding on…

So now all I have to do is hand sew six of them. My finger is still sore from Tuesday though, so I didn’t do any sewing last night. I also had book club and came back really tired, so mostly I ironed stuff and thought about doing other stuff but then blew it off. Fasting in the morning really threw me off, plus I took the dog for a 3-mile walk, so I was pretty tired.

I found some more stuff in the piles though. This was back when I was entering crazy quilt competitions. They would sell you a package of fabric and then you would make something out of it and enter their contest. I got some awards, but this is one I never finished. The package had a lot of white fabrics in it and I dyed most of them, adding some of my own. You had to use stamps as well, so there are a couple of those.

So yes, two headless mermaids. Because that seems like an appropriate subject for a crazy quilt…

The heads are my grandma’s cousins, Jeannie and Bernice, who used to take us to the beach and ride the waves with us. They were ancient even then (OK, maybe in their 60s) and they would grease themselves up and put on wetsuits and ride the waves with us on these inflatable rafts for just hours. We’d come back with sand in every orifice and rub rash on our bellies from the raft and the salt water, but it was usually an awesome vacation.

They died quite a few years back. I have a bunch of their photos on my computer, so I was going to use these heads on the mermaids…and for once, there was a date on the drawing I did for the applique…

Holy crap. I should finish more stuff. This is for those that despair when they see me finish a lot of stuff. I don’t finish everything.

This one has no date, but is probably a few years later than that. He was cut freehand from fabric that had Wonder Under on it, a la Laura Wasilowski, so after I took a class from her. I think I was still married then, because I didn’t have money for classes after that. This piece though? No date. And it’s not done…

It’s not even all stitched down, and I’d have to wash it because it’s dirty…which could be interesting with the two hand-dyes in there. It’s worth a finish though, I think. Might be fun to embroider all over those lungs.

I mentioned ironing. I have (had) two full laundry baskets of more fabric from Sandi that they found in a closet somewhere. I washed a lot of it, the bigger pieces, and then they sat in those baskets in the hallway, because honestly, they were too wrinkled to just fold up. I was going to need to iron them, and that’s not my favorite thing to do. So I put something good on the computer to watch (I’m watching Extant at the moment, plus The 100), and ironed for an hour or so. Making piles by colors. I’m not even done with the first basket…

There were two old pillowcases, so I cut them up. They can be a backing. There were some beautiful hand dyes in there too, although I think they were in my pile somewhere.

So it was a productive day, even though I did no schoolwork. I refused. Enough of that goes on all the other days. Anyway, I’m hoping I’m awake enough and my finger is healed enough to sew more bindings tonight. Maybe I will take them with me to gaming on Friday…that would be amusing. They’ll get done…somehow. Because I really need to get started on the next big one too. Not enough hours in the day…even when I get a free one.

My Lady Parts…

So it’s a school holiday, just one day, lonely in the middle of the week. Usually Veteran’s Day leans toward one end of the week or the other, so we get a long weekend, but not this year. It’s a nice break between two very frustrating days at school and probably two more frustrating days, unless I can get my mindful mind floating high enough over the stupid shit that it doesn’t drag me down. We’re nearing the end of a unit and there’s just a lot of crazy going on, both with kids and parents, and I don’t have the energy for it, I guess.

Part of that is art-related of course. I finished this amazing piece in September and it didn’t get into that show, and I fully realize there are more shows out there for it, and it’s a challenging piece and I shoot myself in the foot every time I make a challenging piece…unless it gets the recognition I think it deserves, and then it’s all OK. This last year has been hard for that, but I’m still making them, still drawing them, still entering them in shows.

And these cute little cat quilts…see, they’re easy enough to make, but I don’t love them. Well, I love Cat 6, but you can see why. And Cat 3 is sweet, sure, and Cat 7 is kinda cool. But they’re not really fulfilling. They’re a quick snack and I want a full meal. So honestly? I’m trying to finish them all as quickly as possible, which would be easier if I had my binding callus on my middle finger, but I don’t…so it’s sore as hell this morning after doing three of them last night. I will search around for those pads or one of the many thimbles I own, but I know from personal experience that I suck at thimbling…I just automatically switch to an unfettered finger, setting up new holes and sore spots there.

But first I had to go to the doc this morning, another MRI of my “lady parts” as they were called earlier today. That phrase makes me laugh. Because I’m so not a lady. But hopefully after fasting and lying in an incredibly uncomfortable position as magnets yelled at each other through my body, the scan will show my alien beasts (fibroids) reducing, disappearing, leaving me alone to suffer my uterus without them. I suspect one is still there, the big one, the one my kids used to kick during pregnancy. But the hundreds of little ones that populated my uterine muscle, I’m OK if they’ve left the building. I feel a little mean starving them of nutrients, but they were becoming ungrateful house guests who had outstayed their welcome. I was tired of dealing with them and their detritus. So hopefully it’s all good news.

Back to the little quilts. Sizes and prices are listed below. Just let me know if you’re interested in one of them. Shipping is included.

This is Cat 1…

11” w x 10” h, $120.

I do actually calculate prices from time spent and then add average shipping costs in. There are no fancy formulas on these. I’m actually debating giving Cat 1 whiskers…so she may look different tomorrow.

Cat 2…

13 ½” w x 10 ¼” h, $155. Might also need whiskers…hand-embroidered if so…

Cat 3…

13 ½” w x 12 ½” h, $180. Kitten sleeps in this position all the time.

And I rephotographed Owl 2.0 in the daylight…

17” w x 10 ½” h, $235.

So the rest of my day off will be filled with errands and cleaning more of the boychild’s room out, moving it back in here. I’m actually going to move another section of stuff in here out into his room so I can go through it easier as well…because it’s been piled on the floor for so long and I’m tired of it, but there’s no way to force me to get through it in here, so I just don’t. A deadline like a kid moving back for 5 weeks is a lot more motivating.

I love how I can psych myself out. You’d think I would catch on…

While I was cleaning stuff out, I found this body-part crazy quilt I started ages ago (no dates on anything)…I used to do crazy quilts. Still love the idea of them, love the embroidery, but don’t have the time for it. So I drew a series of body parts, maybe 12? on white fabric, and then crazy-pieced the rest of the square around it. You can see some I haven’t pieced yet on the left.

I didn’t do a uterus, but I did do some lady parts. Each part got one main color…that’s a knee, by the way.

A nose…obviously orange.

Eyeballs when you have blue eyes…a predominant number of the eyeballs in my quilts are blue. Some green. Very few brown.

Penis is obviously red…

That’s a strange elbow.

So I think what bamboozled me after that is what color do I do next? Do I do repeats? Obviously I can do green, but after that? I debated gray and black and brown and white, but didn’t like those options. So there are inbetweens, I guess, although I didn’t really censor the colors I used so far, indiscriminately using lights with darks in the color range. Or using colors more than once. Which is probably the best option.

I start these weird projects and my kids will find all of them after I’m dead, including the pile of 50 eyeballs on orange fabric, and they will wonder What the Fuck I was thinking. Sometimes I do too, if that helps.

Anyway, I have one cat left to bind, and then will have 6 to sew by hand, if my finger can handle it later today. If not, maybe I’ll take a break and trace Wonder Under for a while instead. I should probably take advantage of the time and grade something as well, but every time I think about grading, I think about the kid who complained yesterday that I hadn’t graded his warmup from last week yet, because instead, I graded the thing he needed for his study guide, but he didn’t actually turn that IN, so he currently has a zero. He thinks the warmup will save him, but even if he got 100% on the warmup, he’d average out to 50%. Math is not his strong point. It’s often not mine either, but at least I admit it and ask for help.

I really really really want to draw, dammit. Like right this second. Aargh. Set timer. Draw. Then go do cleaning and errands. Days off shouldn’t be wasted…they should be honored with artistic endeavors. And more sleep. And peeing whenever I want (ah, being a teacher often sucks).

Brainpower

Yesterday was more stressful than it needed to be. Dropping 6 new kids into my classes on a Monday when I’m doing a lab is a pain in the ass, and it was entirely avoidable. They could have told me the week before, let me know what their names and schedules were. I could have emailed their current teachers and checked on behavior, especially since the microscope labs seem to bring out the worst in that. I could have had their science folders ready to go, the seating charts adjusted, all without the last-minute scrambling. But no. Instead I got crazy. I didn’t need any of that crazy.

Today should be better (unless they’ve found more new students for me that they haven’t told me about). The lab is mostly set up, I have a plan for dealing with some of the stupid from yesterday, and those poor new kids have now been terrified by my class and will never misbehave. One of them, a sweet little thing, has been saying hi to me for the last three weeks. Apparently she was very excited to come to my class (whatever) and made sure she knew how to pronounce my name. Very impressive. We’ll see how they do.

But after all that drama and stress, I had to go to the gym. I did grade at the gym, using the iPad on the stationary bike, but then I rewarded my weightlifting with reading my book on the elliptical. There was only so much crap I could deal with yesterday. I have one assignment that really needs to be graded quickly. I got through 3 classes yesterday; will get through the other 2 today. Google Classroom won’t let them see an assignment once they turn it in, mostly so they can’t keep editing it before we grade it, so if I want them to use it for say a study guide, then I have to grade and return them. Speed grading…the worst kind of speed dating.

The gym was a smart choice. I came back and dealt with dinner and the boychild trying to renew his license online and one more class of assignments, and then I took myself off to the studio, which is where I wanted to be anyway.

This is Cat 5…the foxlike kitty.

I had to find and bring in the orange fabric drawer for that one. I couldn’t find anything that was dark enough and in the right range. The belly fabric is only tiny pieces, not enough for a binding. But I managed to find some weird thing in there that I think came from Sandi. It was folded weird, and many of her fabrics were folded weird.

Then I did my favorite one…Cat 6…

Seriously, how can you not love this one? It’s weird, it has a cat, there’s eyeballs and a disembodied hand. OK, I know my taste in images runs a little strange.

All that’s left is Cat 7, the brightly colored sister of Cat 5. Hopefully tonight…then I have a bunch of bindings to handsew, and then I’ll be out of the studio for a while (except for cleanup). Wonder Under tracing goes on in the living room. Same with cutting it out and sorting it. Presumably I can get that done before Thanksgiving break and maybe start picking fabrics then (don’t think about the huge number of projects that will be coming in…seriously).

Meanwhile, I’ve been applying for some more editing jobs, even though it feels lately like I would be unable to actually DO any freelance work (in my spare time). I guess I really don’t need to sleep or eat. Right? Whatever. I’m a few thousand short for college, so somehow I need to make up that shortfall. I just don’t have the brainpower to figure that out right now…my brain just wants to draw and play with fabric. It’s kind of a grump at the moment.

Art Before Chaos…

It’s funny. I finished grades around midnight Friday, and then I resolved to do no work all weekend. I mostly held to that, except I had to do a minor bit of prep and send the team email, but otherwise, I refused to sit down and grade last night. Then sometime around 1 AM (yes, I was still awake dammit) I realized the kids would need one of their turned-in assignments in order to get ready for next-week’s test. Dammit. That means it needs to be graded ASAP. So I’m back in school panic mode. Which truly sucks.

The pro is that I moved a good chunk of stuff back into the studio in the last few days and I did get a bit of art stuff done. I made it to two art openings yesterday as well.

But really, I wanted to focus on getting some bindings on so I could move on to the next project, especially after getting another rejection yesterday. Giant sigh. It’s OK. That piece can go somewhere else.

Here’s the first of the two hearts (still traveling in backwards order apparently). I needed a red fabric for this one that didn’t zap too much with the blue, so that’s what made me move half my studio…just to get to the reds.

It worked, because before that, all I had done was this…

Some of the bookshelf put away, the drawers below shoved in (one of them is empty…I don’t even know how that’s possible).

But with moving reds, I had to move all this stuff in…

Because the red drawer goes right next to it. So I did. Yes. All that fabric needs to be put away, except I’m using it at the moment. These are all the fabrics from making the small quilts, and I try to use those fabrics for the bindings when I can. The red…the red, I couldn’t. It was too much.

But for this little guy…

Although that’s not the green of his eyes, it came from the pile I used on one of the other quilts. I finally started going in order with Cat 1. I thought it would be strange to finish Cat 7 before Cat 1.

So this is Cat 2…

Easy enough to pull that gray for the binding. I don’t always have enough to do that, but this one I did. She will be straighter and flatter when I finish the hand sewing.

You can see my model hogging the chair. Every time I sat down to sew again, she’d have to shift around, and sometimes she’d leave, and one time she full-on attacked me.

Such a sweet beast.

Cat 3…

Another gray binding. Calm like the kitty.

Cat 4…

Not so calm. I had three choices for the binding, but I liked the randomness of this one.

So that’s five more bound and ready for hand-sewing. I only finished the one last week, so I have six total. Plus three more cats to bind tonight, if I get to it.

I had other stuff to write about, but my coteacher just texted me that they added 6 kids to my classes, starting today, and I’m doing a lab…and there’s no way I’m prepped for 6 new kids, so I’m kamikazing out of here to school. Pissed off. Because how hard is it to tell us that 6 kids are transferring from the newcomers’ classes to ours? Seriously? I just quickly tossed all of them on Google Classroom. They can learn how to use a virtual microscope before I let them on the real thing.

Welcome to chaos…the teacher world.

Taking Care of Myself…

I would love to report numerous small quilts bound and ready for hand-stitching, since I know Mad Max: Fury Road arrives from Netflix today, but no such luck. I went to a big contemporary art show last night, just a quick runaround to look at mostly big brightly colored crap with some bits and pieces of nice. A group I’m in has a booth there. I could have been in it, but I don’t work particularly small and there were 11 artists there, so not much space…and even then, very expensive.

Then I came home and graded. I had one period of a very nasty assignment. Well, I thought it was a perfectly reasonable assignment, but apparently their brains left the building and they forgot that living things are made of cells and things inside cells must by definition be smaller than cells or they won’t fit. So I spent the last 24 hours bleeding red pen all over these papers, hoping they would get it. Might be a waste of time. It’s been a rough week for our team. Not a lot of work completion. Frustration with trying to get kids to turn in makeup work. Wondering why the parents are so checked out. Dear Politicians: You can’t have any accountability for teachers until you get parents to buy in and be a part of the team. There’s no way I can make a kid give a shit when the parents don’t. Occasionally I’ll get one that rises above it, and I hope more of that happens in high school and college as their brains mature, but 12-year-olds? Not happening. Stop threatening me with accountability if you’ve never been a teacher. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. This is not a job where if I work harder, magic happens and kids produce. Some kids are just checked out. I can work my butt off trying to get them to check in, but sometimes it just won’t work.

So my goal this weekend is not to look at school stuff for as many minutes as possible. I have two art openings tomorrow and some relaxation time scheduled for tonight. I need to do some cleanup in here too, try to move more stuff from the boychild’s room. If I can get the bookshelf restocked with whatever was on it, then I can move the larger furniture/storage pieces out of there. The chaos is bugging me.

I also want to get more of the small quilts done and maybe start tracing Wonder Under on Bathtub 5. Here was the original drawing back in April…

You can see the owl in the top right is like the one I just finished. I added stuff below and in the top right. I also had to add some lines to break up the edge of the bathtub, so I wouldn’t have to find a piece of fabric big enough to go all the way around the bottom, like I did last time. Big white and off-white pieces of fabric for bathtubs…the last one had more bathtub showing. This one doesn’t have much. Not as much water showing either. But these two huge rugs on the side. Gotta wonder what I was thinking.

That’s the key though. When I draw, I’m not thinking about the production or how much of a pain it will be. I’m just drawing.

This is one of those days when I want to pretend that I am not a teacher at all, that I don’t have a frustrating week of microscopes ahead of me (actually, my co-teacher gave me an idea about how to manage the frustration and I’m totally going to use it, because otherwise, some kids will take 5 days to look at a newsprint e under the scope. And that’s just wrong.). I’m going to act like the end of the trimester doesn’t even exist. I’m going to turn off the teacher part and let the artist part just ramble. If I can.

That’s the other part that drives me nuts…when people complain that teachers don’t care about kids and that’s why we won’t (insert crazy-ass comment here about spending more hours than we already do unpaid or something about how THEIR husband doesn’t get paid overtime, which is nuts, because I don’t even get paid what their husband does and I work monster hours at this job). I care way too much about my kids. Even the assholes. And yes, there are assholes. And I tell myself repeatedly that a 12-year-old does not become an asshole without parental (or guardian) involvement or environmental shit, that they are still redeemable, that the parents aren’t doing their jobs. I care even about the assholes. And I spend hours calling home and putting together makeup work and getting in their faces or encouraging them or whatever it takes to get them to stop sitting there and actually DO something. I don’t care? My ass. Fuck you. My job is not a corporate job. I’ve had one of those. I know what that looks like. This job sucks it out of you. And if you let them, they will take even more time. I had about 20 student emails last night, panicked. I had a parent yesterday blaming me for her son’s computer not working, demanding that I fix it, or excuse her son from the assignment they left until the last minute. I just walked away from all of it. I answered one email. I ignored the rest. Most of them didn’t need anything anyway.

Yeah. Today. Going to gym. Straightening things. Putting stuff away. Playing with fabric. Hanging out. Not school. I have to be able to go back on Monday and be in a better mood about it. I just have to. I have to take care of myself…

Numbering Around the Cat Butt…

So first of all, I finished one of the little quilts. This is Owl 2.0, actually the 18th bird I’ve made.

Nov 6 15 003 small

She (he?) is 17″ wide x 10 1/2″ high ($235). These are for sale…would make great holiday presents. They have a sleeve on the back and I deliver them with a dowel with eyebolts for hanging. Shipping costs are included in the price, unless we’re going abroad, in which case, we may have to negotiate.

For some reason, I seem to be completing them in backwards order, which only matters to me because I list them in order of completion, and when it comes to the cats, they’re numbered in opposite order from what I seem to be doing. I probably could fix that though. Maybe. The owl has quite a few pieces in it, so besides Cat 6 (the one with the eyeballs), most of the other small quilts will cost less than Owl. I’ll post them as I finish them…and then put them up on my Recent Work page…or I’ll continue to debate having a page titled Small Work for Sale. Because almost all of my work is for sale…but I guess most of it is not small and relatively affordable.

Anyway, so that was my achievement for yesterday…except for this one. Do you know how hard it is to number a drawing when the cat is sitting on it? And I moved her about five times, then started sliding the drawing around with her on it until she got a clue and moved her furry butt.

I’m actually quite pleased, because it only has 773 pieces in it, and that’s not so bad.

So I just went rock climbing in the boychild’s room (no, I haven’t moved everything back in here yet…I’m trying to go through it and I was too tired to do any of it last night) because I wanted to find the drawing for Bathtub 2 to see how many pieces IT had, because I know how long it took to make (the cats love watching me kamikaze through his room, because apparently everything I really need is on the bed, which means holding onto the dresser to maneuver around the chair and then walking on the back of the bed after climbing up onto it). Well damn. I thought it was 800-some pieces, but it wasn’t. It was only 568 pieces and took about 64 hours. So. Hmn. I think I need a database of my quilts that includes number of pieces and hours to completion and size, and then maybe I can come up with a formula. Ventura was 891 pieces and took 89 hours. So I think I’m looking at about 75 hours total. Before the end of January. But really, earlier than that, because there’s another one I want to get done by the end of February, and it doesn’t even exist yet.

Yeah. There’s some crazy in there. I still need to finish all these little quilts; they each have about 2 hours left in them, maybe. So that’s about 17 hours right there. That’s a lot more than I thought. Sigh. OK. Hunker down. Figure it out. Grades are due. Life doesn’t stop because you feel like you’re hurtling through the days. You just have to take deep breaths and keep working. You can do it. It’s all possible.

Whether It Makes Sense or Not…

Interesting thing happened yesterday. I did grade like a banshee and I made risotto from scratch (high five! by myself! without the girlchild to do all the adding of liquid and stirring!)…in fact I did both of those at the same time for a while (see comments about risotto stirring), but it was taking way too long. And I went through all the books that were in the bookshelf I had to move out with the hot-water heater death, putting away what I wanted to keep and piling up the rejects. There weren’t many because I went through it about 10 years ago and I haven’t bought a lot of books in the last 10 years. Then I moved all those books into the bookshelf. Does the boychild’s room look better yet? Fuck no. And now I can’t quite remember how all the furniture/storage shit fits in that space, so I’m kinda freaking out. I think the stuff I need to go through next is what’s on his bed, and I can’t actually get to it. Minor issue.

So I did pick up the car, give blood for my pre-MRI evaluation, so they know they can inject me full of stuff again without hurting me, and then enlarged the drawing I had decided to do next, one of the Bathtub series…number 5 in fact. I wonder how it feels to be one of the Bathtub rejects. Like I jumped numbers 3 and 4 and went to 5. Are they butthurt? Are they sad? Do they know I might come back and do them? Actually, I will never do 3, because it was a superfast drawing and kinda sloppy, and 5 is a redraw of the idea, so I don’t need to do 3. And I picked 5 over 4 because 4 is really depressing and I like 5 better moodwise. Don’t even ask about 1. It’s currently headless. I did enlarge it, but it needs work.

After all the grading and cooking was done, I only had about an hour and a half til bedtime, so I could have come in here and put binding on at least one, maybe two of the small quilts, but I’m tired of them. They don’t ring my bell. Whatever that means.

So I went back out to the living room and starting cutting the copies and taping them together…

I enlarged the original drawing 250% on 11 x 17 paper. Then I try to fit them together. I hate copiers because it’s never exact enlargement. There’s distortion. But this is the cheapest way to do this…less than $5 for this one. And it works most of the time.

The reason I had held off on this one before is because it didn’t feel finished. It was unbalanced. This top left corner was too empty for one. So I gave it a bird. Birds show up pretty often in my drawings.

I actually penciled him in first because I wasn’t sure how to fit him in the space. I was pretty close the first time. I just didn’t want to fuck it up.

Once I enlarged a drawing and wanted to add a head to the figure in the drawing…it just had the bottom part with the chin and lower lip. I drew the whole new head…and then cut it off. Taped a new piece of paper on there and did it again. Got it right the second time. I really don’t think of my drawings as precious pieces of art…they’re a means to an end.

The other part that bugged me was the bottom. I thought about just cutting it off under the bathtub, but it felt really unbalanced to me. I stared at it for quite a while.

And then I drew some books and embroidery stuff…

Which made sense to me when I looked at the rest of what was on there. So I did the original drawing in April of this year (fast turnaround!), more drawing last night, and now I’m ready to number and trace.

But the most interesting part was how I FELT while I was drawing and afterwards. Wow. Way better than putting a binding on a small quilt that I’m making to sell hopefully, but I really don’t care about. I realized that since the beginning of October, I’ve been working on stuff I don’t really care about, and it’s silly. I mean, I need to do it for financial reasons, but I really would rather mentally be making the art I care about, these big beastly many-numbered pieces that kick my butt while I’m making them, but allow my brain a level of peace. Of balance.

So speaking of balance, I still need to finish the little beasts, and grades for first trimester are due Tuesday, so balance is the name of the game, but I think I’m officially starting the next big quilt. Like as of yesterday. Whether it makes sense or not.

Thunderstorms and Nucleotides

I think I spent most of the night with a terrified Golden Retriever on my feet, hiding her head under a Justin Bieber blanket. Calli doesn’t like thunderstorms, and we had a big one last night, rattling the windows and shaking the house. Please don’t ask me why we have a Bieber blanket. I can’t explain it. There was lots of rain too, which is good, because we always need it. It did make it hard to grade efficiently though, and since my goal is to grade one full assignment a day until grades are turned in, I didn’t get much done while calming a giant dog who wanted to alternately climb into my lap and dig a hole under the couch. Or through it at times.

I did eventually make it in here, the studio, though. It was late and honestly maybe I should have gone to bed. I hate all those articles about how lack of sleep fucks you over every step of the way, but not sleeping is what gives me time to make my art, which makes me mentally a much more stable person. There needs to be an equation for that…some way to show that the balance is in the positive direction, even though it seems illogical. Of course, last night I was trying to figure out if it made more sense to make the God gene (the gene or string of genes that makes someone more likely to believe in a god or gods than us flaming atheists) the dominant trait or a mutation. And yes, I know the God gene is controversial and unproven, but it’s really hard to look around the world and see all the people for whom religion is such a significant part of how they live their lives and try to figure out what in their brains makes that a survival trait or something they need, when my brain is so opposite of that. There has to be a brain part that handles that, a brain part that’s created by a string of nucleotides, and there are variations in the string so you get a range of behaviors related to religion from crazy cultist (which might be a whole ‘nother string of nucleotides…and then there’s environmental factors) to an atheist like me who has never believed and never will, who just can’t see the sense in it at all.

I mean it all comes down to the nucleotides. And the environment in which they exist.

Anyway, you can see how my brain wallows in scientific shit on a regular basis, right? Luckily I know how to Google shit (unlike my students apparently) so I can read about theories and studies and crazy shit instead of sleeping, right? I know. Whatever. There was a lot of shit in the last two sentences.

So anyway, it’s going to take me days to get through all of these at this rate. Here’s the 2nd heart in hands (going backwards now)…

Pinned, ready for handsewing. It’s a dark dark blue, not black. It was actually hard to find something that worked well with this color, which is not a good sign, because half the quilts in there have that color background. Sigh. It’s always so hard to believe that I have all this fabric and still have a hard time picking matching stuff sometimes.

Eight more to go. Plus all the handsewing. I was stuck at school for hours yesterday with detention and tutorial, and two parents showed up, so impromptu parent meetings, and then I had to go to the school board meeting as a rep, because the district doesn’t want to pay us for our work…so today, I’m outta there as soon as I can be, I swear, although I have to get a blood test, pick up the fixed car, copy stuff, and I can’t even remember what else. All the stuff I didn’t do yesterday, right? If I can get more of today’s assignment graded at school, then maybe I can get more quilting done at home tonight. I can always hope. (I say that a lot.)

I think my nucleotides are scrambled.

Stop Making Art and Go to Bed…

Things might be getting under control. Knock on wood. Presumably there’s a dryer arriving soonish, within a matter of days. I have no idea when, though, which should be interesting, because I’m rarely home for deliveries of anything, let alone large appliances that need installation. The car is fixable and should be done today or tomorrow; meanwhile, the kids’ car is done and bouncing around with me in it (needs new shocks, so not bouncing well or happily). I might actually catch up with grading sometime soon, although then I will be promptly behind again, because that’s how it works. One of my coworkers is already done and I might need to kill her. I’m obviously doing it wrong. It rained last night, but I managed to get the dog walk in before it did…it was a nice walk; that monster hill no longer kicks my ass. School does, though, and it’s really because it seems like this year’s batch of kids doesn’t understand turning work in, and their parents don’t care. So some days are significantly frustrating, because work completion means you can’t just stare at a computer screen and wait for magic. You have to go DO it. It’s funny though. We used to have kids take notes from powerpoints and then maybe make or draw something or fill something out, but now we tell them they have to go create their own meaning. You figure it out. I’ve given you guidelines…now go do work. And they don’t. They beg for notetaking because they don’t have to think. All they have to do is copy from the board. So it’s torture for all of us. I haven’t given up yet though. It’s only first trimester.

I planned to finish grading one assignment last night, and it was so long and drawn out, the answers so tortured themselves that I felt like crawling under the couch to escape them. I finished though and then came in here to do whatever I was gonna do. Oh yeah, finish quilting the owl.

All I had to do was the background, so it didn’t take long.

The book on Pandas…it’s the right size for the student lists I use to record grades when I’m grading online. It’s in here because I was grading on the iPad in here on Saturday while I watched something (old Dr Who?) on the computer. I was tired of sitting on the couch. Needed a new vista. That’s when I heard the neighbors’ realtor tell someone they could trim my trees. Hence a flurry of emails. The fuck you can. My trees.

It wasn’t late enough then to go to bed, so I decided to try to at least cut out the binding. And then that turned into sewing it on and making a sleeve and pinning it all down.

All that’s left is the hand-sewing. Almost 1 down, 9 to go. Picking the bindings is difficult…I don’t always have enough of whatever fabrics I used in the quilt to bind it as well, so then I have to find something new. Plus they’re tiny little fuckers. I cut this one a little TOO tiny. So I’ll adjust for next time.

But now, I really need to write a study guide before I leave for school (ugh). I have a board meeting after work where the reps all show up in red and look angry that the school board disrespects our work so much that they can’t offer us more. It means being at work for over 10 hours. Not looking forward to it. I’m already tired. That’s my fault, of course, because I don’t know when to stop making art and go to bed.