Remember the book Caps for Sale with all the monkeys? Love that book.
So I have a slowly dying computer that needs replacing. Don’t need a monitor or keyboard, just the part that runs everything, and this is the worst time of year for me to find extra cash lying around, so I remembered that I still have three unsold birds. So I’m putting them out there, just in case someone wants to give them as a Christmas prezzie or something.
The two smaller ones fit in a flat padded envelope, but the larger one has to go in a tube. The larger one is bound normally and has a sleeve; the other two are satin-stitched around the edges and hang off of two plastic rings in each corner (the rings don’t show). Prices are based on hours to make them…it’s quicker NOT to do the binding and sleeve, plus that one’s bigger anyway.
This is Purple Bird (Bird 8)…measuring 18.25“ w x 14.5“ h. It is straight…when it’s not sitting flat (hangs from a dowel). Priced at $205.
This is Dove 2 (Bird 11), measuring 10″w x 8″h. No binding, no sleeve, hangs from rings. Priced at an easy $100.
This is Diving Bird2 (Bird 13), measuring 10″w x 8″h. No binding, no sleeve, hangs from rings. Also priced at an easy $100.
Payment by cash, check, or Paypal. Shipping once payment is received. Let me know if you’re interested. My version of a Cyber Monday?
December is this weird month full of holiday parties and caloric-rich foods and inappropriate drunken behavior at work parties and white elephants and secret Santas and too many things you have to get done and Christmas tree lights twinkling in the dark and weather that can’t decide what to be (that might just be Southern California). Strangely, for me, it’s also full of cold feet and grinding teeth. Not a relaxing time of year for the first few weeks. School kicks my butt, and so does the rest of it. In fact, December regularly kicks my butt. I don’t enjoy this month, except I really like Christmas lights and the smell of the tree, but that’s about it. Oh, and spiced cider is good. And the three weeks of Winter Break. You can keep the rest: the crazy drivers, the overly full malls, the crappy long lines, the constant emails of cookie recipes I don’t have time to make, the number of holiday gatherings that require me to make and bring food, the lack of time to get to the gym. Kicks my Butt.
But I managed this…
After an 8-mile hike and only a 20-minute nap, I cut stuff out for four hours yesterday. I really couldn’t do anything else. My brain had completely shut down. I thought I might grade papers, but no…my brain explained that it was an impossible task, that it simply didn’t have the necessary neurons to complete that.
I wanted to be done, though, with the cutting out…and today, Sunday, also kicked my butt. Sigh. I’m looking at the time right now and realizing I need to go to sleep, and I did nothing art-related today at all. I cleaned and went to the store and shopped for Christmas stuff and returned things that were broken that I had had shipped to me precisely so I wouldn’t have to go to the store at all (shipping was free), but NO. Sigh. I used up giftcards and took the girlchild out to dinner at the mall, because we were already there and yeah. But a lot of the shopping is now done. So that’s good. That’s the one thing? I guess?
And tomorrow night, I canceled book club (second one in two weeks I’ve canceled), and I will grade papers and cut the rest of those out and sort them into bins and maybe start ironing Tuesday. Although my life is…um…morphing I guess? Yes, I’m giving birth to alien pods. That’s it. Naw, it’s not, but shit is changing and hopefully for the better and who knows what all that means, but since I’ve spent most of my adult life adapting to new crap, this is nothing really truly new. I will adjust. In time. Or not. Whatever. I roll with the changes…well, once the Humvee stops bouncing over my broken bones. THEN I roll.
Kicking my butt.
Awkward family videos (you’ll notice they’re all animals)…
Why all my writing utensils are always on the floor…
I got one picture for last night. Because I didn’t do much but cut little pieces out and write sci fi. This is how far I got by the end of the night…
Top left is trash (kept until I figure out if I threw any tiny pieces in there by accident. I do it all the time, unfortunately.). Top right is what I’ve actually achieved (which yes, doesn’t look like shit at the moment; thank you for reminding me.). Bottom is what I still have left to do. Two pairs of scissors, the phone, wine, TV remote, and pajamas. Really, it was not a bad night, except it started with a soccer parent meeting (aargh. asshole coach. stupid people. grrr.) and I didn’t get to go to the gym and I was really really tired. I’m hiking tomorrow morning, so I’d really better put myself to bed early. If I’m smart. And we’ve already proved I’m not, at least when it comes to sleep.
I did cut more tonight at my stitching meeting. Nice conversation. Those things keep me sane. School? Not so much. I was supposed to enter some art shows this week, and only managed one. So little free time. So little time for anything. People wonder how I get anything done. I wonder too. I do crazy stuff like listen to lectures while I’m writing, write while I’m exercising, grade while I’m watching. I rarely do Just One Thing at a Time. Except for the art. The art is big enough and strong enough to fill up the whole mind, to make sure the bits that wander off into depressoid land don’t have a chance. They can’t get out. All the exits are blocked by artmaking activities. It’s all art.
Sometimes I wonder why I got bit so hard by the art bug. I have two kids who are creatively minded, one who draws/paints really well, but doesn’t get obsessed by it. I don’t remember being her age and making art. I know I did, but I don’t remember what it felt like. I know what it feels like now. I remember what it felt like when the kids were little and I didn’t have time. It felt like grinding your teeth. It felt like that migraine caused by the Santa Ana winds blowing dry and hot in the fall. It felt like fingernails on a chalkboard. It was just wrong. But I don’t remember when it got like that. I had this conversation with the boychild, who is leaning towards a major (I didn’t even ask…because it doesn’t matter), and I explained how I wasn’t allowed to just major in art when I went to college, that I had to have another major. That it was assumed that art would not sustain. And I guess it’s true that financially it does not sustain, but it is the One Thing that I have done most of my life consistently and purely and truly. It is the core of who I am. How I am. I could not stop, as I have seen some friends and acquaintances do, and just go to work and come home and watch TV and sleep in on Sundays and go to the park. I would rather be in a fluorescently lit room with bad wallpaper and containers of fabric: tracing, drawing, cutting, sewing. That is where I need to be. I’m scared of getting old and not having that. I’ve seen that. The old artists who aren’t well enough to draw or paint any more. Maybe they don’t even remember how. I don’t want to be like that. I can’t imagine being that empty.
So art. Yes. Fills.
I had this quote sitting around for a while: “Don’t go into art for fame or fortune. Do it because you cannot not do it. Being an artist is a combination of talent and obsession.” John Baldessari
And Neil Gaiman’s speech…
about Make Good Art. Love Gaiman. Do not love this book though…
Really. You should look at it…until it gives you a headache. Because it will. It’s the speech…but the design is torturous.
Anyway. Make art. Hopefully it will get good. (Make Art was the title of my original blog, started 10 years ago.)
First of all, I am behind on everything. EVERYTHING. It’s December? When the fuck did THAT happen? Second of all, failing at sleep. Complete utter failure. EPIC fail. I went to bed so late on Tuesday night, it was well into Wednesday morning. And then I got up and taught. I don’t even know how. And this post should have been written like Wednesday morning, but that got destroyed by, well, life, and then last night was soccer in the rain outside on the bleachers (at least it wasn’t cold) and it started late, so I didn’t get home until after 9:30, so that’s when we ate dinner, and I almost fell asleep right then and there, but managed to rally. So then I was going to write this morning, and I don’t even KNOW what happened this morning, Godzilla stopped by and sucked my brains out my left ear, and by the time I made it through a whole day of kids going “What? What did you say? What page is that? I don’t have that. Can I have another copy?” and my impersonation of a fire-breathing dragon, eyes popping veins, well…there just isn’t much left. I don’t know what day it is. I’m tired. I’m not on top of anything (except this chair, and that’s questionable). Well, except grades are done. I’m totally caught up (until tomorrow). And the cat just skidded down the back of the chair and slammed into my back. So now all I have is the edge of the damn chair.
I need a Christmas tree. I need a list. I need a new computer. I need a new stove. (I need a new life. Swear.)
So I stayed up late Tuesday night because I was doing this…
I finished ironing all the War pieces down. There are 80 different fabrics in this quilt. Notice how many browns and flesh colors there are. I’m not sure why there’s so much red. Not a lot of color otherwise…
Here’s the pile of pieces to be cut out.
My brain was in overdrive Tuesday night after finishing the ironing, so I tried to calm it down by finishing the episode of Star Trek I was watching, while starting to cut stuff out.
I don’t usually cut stuff out in the computer chair (see note about cat and chair and edges), because it’s not particularly comfortable, but the episode had already started here, and I don’t have the same Netflix account on the TV as the computer (don’t even ask. It’s not worth the time it would take to explain it). It was probably a mistake, because my brain got into it and wouldn’t shut down…this is what I got done last night.
I got a little more done last night. Got smart and went to bed before 1 AM, dontcha know.
I did sew at the soccer game…in the rain…under an umbrella.
Lots of green variegated bullion knots. It’s gonna take me a million years to finish these birds.
So when did I say I’d be done cutting pieces out? Sunday? Oh yeah. That’s funny. I’m going to try, I guess, but sheesh. First I have to go sit through a stupid parent meeting and pay a shitload of money (more than it would cost to replace my stove), and then I don’t have time to go to the gym because they scheduled the meeting at such a stupid time, and I’m cranky as hell from school and hormones, and I really just want to curl up in bed and sleep for three days, but the sleep of the dead…the sleep that is not interrupted by rain storms and raccoons on the roof and monstrous hot flashes and nightmares involving Big Foot and that thing that is in that Christmas TV show from a million years ago…
HIM. The Abominable Snowman (NOT the Abdominal Snowman). Dreamed about him last night. He was scary. Except he looked more like this…
So my original plan of getting all the fabric picked for the Women at War quilt did not happen. That whole watching-soccer and planning-for-school thing just kicked my butt. Plus digging holes and trimming dead branches off trees. And maybe sleeping. But only a little. Sleep is still not my friend.
But I’m not giving up. I set these goals to keep me on track. Like writing…I am still trying to do some every day; I’m just not worried about hitting a word limit every day any more.
This is what my NaNoWriMo graph looked like…
I was pretty consistent. I’m happy with what I did.
Then Saturday night, after late-afternoon soccer, I started ironing again…here’s the 4 different flesh piles I had…
Because this quilt has more bodies in it than I think I’ve ever done. Well, maybe not. I have some with tiny bodies…but these are big…and there are about 9 of them. I think. Hard to tell, honestly, down in the pile. By the end of Saturday, this is what I had in the bin to cut out…
And these are the other fabrics I’d used besides the flesh tones.
And here’s the pie I had in the middle of all that…
So the last two nights, I kept ironing, trying to stay on top of it…
This is Sunday night…and honestly, I wanted to be done Sunday, and I wasn’t…
Here’s all the fabrics I’d used by then…not very colorful.
Lots of browns and a ton of flesh colors (which aren’t even in that pile). Here’s the box of pieces to be cut out (guess what I’ll be doing next?)…
Monday night, I laid them all out so I could see them…again, this is still without the flesh colors…when you realize the red, yellow, blue, and green pieces are little tiny pieces in the big picture, it really is a mostly brown and flesh-colored quilt.
I finally got to the main figure last night. Usually, I number so that the main figure gets cut out first. I don’t know why I did it differently this time. I only had this much of the lightest fabric…
I had to fussy iron the pieces on there…but I really wanted to use it. So I made it work.
As of last night, this is what’s left to iron.
Here’s the pile of fabrics I used for the main figure. That tiny pile on top is what’s left of that light fabric. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it…
Make a really tiny flesh thing. So it was after midnight when I finished cutting out all the flesh of the main figure. This is what was left…
The bones, hair, nipples, lungs, heart, bandolier, and bullets. Oh. And a gun. Fun stuff. I was too tired to deal with that many choices, so I left it for tonight. And it’s only Tuesday, so I’m two days late. Not so bad. I should set another goal now. I plan to have all the pieces cut out by (Kathryn, think this through…you have gym and a soccer game in the rain and a meeting and a hike)…let’s say Sunday night. Then I can iron it together next week and (holy crap, I was looking at my calendar and freaking out about how much time was left, and then I realized it was still on November. Damn.) start stitching down the following week, and get it quilted Christmas week. Right? Sure. No problem. We’ll see what that looks like in real life.
Saturday’s soccer…
was playing against the team whose coach is the same for my daughter’s high-school team. We’ve never liked him, so it was awesome when girlchild made the first goal against them…
And I think we went on to make 4 more…
I was grading papers. I also wrote some of the novel. It was not particularly warm.
Yes, we had soccer yet another day…
Girlchild is playing well, no back problems at all. She starts the high-school season this week.
So I’m going to be spending a lot of time freezing and/or wet on metal bleachers.
But it’s the last year of that, which is kind of weird. Guess that’s part of why I’m an emotional mess all the time. Oh yeah, well, and there’s other stuff. But whatever. I’m getting lots of art made. And entering more shows. And reading a lot. It could be worse. I could be holed up in bed and never taking a shower. You’re thankful I’m not like that. Hell, I’m thankful I’m not like that. I wish I could say that making all this art makes me feel better, but all I can say is in the moment, while I’m picking fabrics or drawing or stitching, in the moment, there is peace and some level of forgetfulness of all the shit, and that is a good thing.
So I never do these. But Virginia is a good person and has done a ton of work for cancer and for SAQA and she asked nicely. I am excited to be an invited artist for “The 100,” to be held Wednesday, February 4, 2015. The goal for this fiber fundraiser for the American Cancer Society is to raise $10,000 in one day. My job is to make one piece of art and to persuade at least one of you to donate $100 on February 4. You will get an original piece of art (randomly assigned) from one of The 100 (100 artists who agreed to be a part of this).
I am sure you want to be one of the exclusive 100 patrons who will receive an artwork from one of the 100 extraordinary international fiber artists. Hell, I want to be a patron (hmmm…send kid to college? Or buy more art. It’s a tough one.).
Fiberart for a Cause has already raised $240,000 through the generosity of fiber artists and patrons.
I will be showing you what I’m making here on the website (as soon as I finish the one that has to be done by January 1). You’ve seen me do the birds in the last year; that’s about the size we’re looking at…at least 8×10 (and I can’t work that small). My internal debate, which is yet to be resolved, is whether to do a nude or not? Because I know that not all of the 100 patrons will be pro-nudity, but then again, it’s what I’m known for. I’m not sure how many of y’all want a uterus hanging on the wall, though. So yeah. My brain is leaning towards a nice, cute, furry or feathery animal.
But then the rebel-bitch in me wants to do a giant boob.
So there we are. Click on through, check out the artists, consider how cancer has affected you, and decide whether it’s worth the crazy risk to get a cool piece of art that you didn’t get to choose yourself. It’s kinda cool.
So yeah, I’m back. I’ve actually been here all along, but as I’m sure you realize, that whole holiday-with-family thing kind of eats up your free time. So I sleep even less. And at 1:30 AM, I’m not willing to START writing a blogpost. And mornings have been fraught. So here’s what happened.
On Wednesday, I spent a lot of time cutting out Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is for a theme of Women at War, with interpretation pretty open as to what that meant. I’ve felt like other people have been coming after my uterus and everything within and around for quite a while, despite some nice-guy misogynists telling me I was imagining it. I mean, what the fuck do you know as a privileged rich white man? Best thing you can do as a man? Admit that you mostly don’t have a fucking clue what it’s like to be a woman. You might have an inkling, but otherwise: Not inside, biologically, with periods and pregnancy and mood swings and menopause; not outside, trying to walk somewhere in public, dating, safety, being perceived as an object, wearing the wrong thing, whether you’re showing stuff off or not, it’s always wrong. Not breastfeeding, not being the mom, not with society’s expectations. I’m not saying being a man doesn’t have similar issues; I just think there are more “acceptable” options for men (in terms of what society believes). And I full-on admit I don’t understand what it’s like to be a man. Some men have some of a clue, but mostly it seems not. The better men are understanding even when they don’t understand.
So the drawing was full of all these stereotypes and yet she stands tall on a pile of men. Because every man came from a woman, y’all.
Anyway, my rampant feminism aside, I need to get the quilt done in the next…um…5 weeks. Yup. So speedy mode. Midnight? Not helping…
Licking my elbow does not help me. This might even have been the night before. It looks awfully dark. It is! It’s Tuesday night. I sit on the couch and watch all the stuff I have saved on Tivo…
If girlchild is still awake, I have to watch her stuff. Some of her stuff is also my stuff…top box is pieces, bottom box is trash…in case I drop pieces in it (which I often do).
In the late afternoon (because I had to run a thousand errands), I managed to finish cutting and sort them all into bins by 100s. This is a smaller quilt, so there’s only 8 bins! A miracle.
Of course, I also did the two birds that need to be done in December, so that was two more bins.
And then because this time of year isn’t crazy enough, girlchild and I hiked Iron Mountain in the dark with the group I often hike with.
She wanted to show she had conquered the mountain.
That night, I realized I would need to clean the office up a bit to be able to cut fabrics out. I hadn’t put everything away from last time (and honestly, it’s a disaster area in here anyway, because all my school stuff lives in here too). So I had drawers open that cats had slept in and fabric piled everywhere…
I like a fresh start. Plus I need that table cleared off because that’s where I put the Wonder Under pieces.
And one section of the floor, I think the cats had knocked a bunch of stuff down (they get a bit rambunctious sometimes), so I needed to clean that up. Finding floor space in here has been a priority this last month. Two feet at a time, people. Two square feet is all I ask.
I had a ton of fabric to put away, both from the last quilt and from Houston, so I started by stacking by color, because everything in here is stored by color, except for the ones where I can’t figure out what color it is.
That was about halfway through. There were some issues with storage. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I use…it is not enough.
And I found this from a million years ago, from an Ellen Anne Eddy class.
Hand-dyed silk velvet plus thread-painted fetus. You know, like you do. That may still be in here when I die.
So at that point, it was Thursday, and although girlchild does most of the cooking, that means I get stuck with the cleaning (and then she complains that she can’t find anything because I moved it…from the couch to her bedroom), and I also cook a few things and I constantly try to clean up in the kitchen, which drives her nuts, but I can’t stand having to do it all at once.
So this picture is about 10 minutes before dinner is served. She’s making gravy. The fire extinguisher is out because she spilled turkey juices on the stovetop and it got in the box where the controller things are (technical term) and short-circuited something, and for a few minutes, we had loud popping noises and big sparks and electrical fire smoke. So yeah. A typical Thanksgiving…
The wine? Well. Obvious. See fire extinguisher. Especially after loud pops and sparks. And no, it’s not fixed yet. It’s actually not top on my list at the moment. The rest of it works, I got everything cleared off of there because of the fire danger, and I have other things that are more pressing. No really, the sink is completely clogged and getting fixed this afternoon, so I can finally do all the dishes. THEN I will deal with the stove.
Thanksgiving was small this year…just my parents, me, the girlchild, and the ex…
Guess he has decided Brits can celebrate that holiday…food was good, of course…
She makes a mess in the kitchen, tries to set the house on fire, but it always tastes good.
And yes, we’re still eating it. Ex came over last night and took away two platefuls of food. Sent a bunch home with my parents as well. And then we realized girlchild wouldn’t be around next year to cook.
Shit. I think we’re going out. I do cook. I just don’t want to spend that much time cooking for so few people.
Or dogs. I don’t feed dogs people food. Dogs LIKE people food.
Oh yeah. Pie and pi. All good.
Once the food was all eaten and I had cleaned up as much as I could with a nonworking sink, I finished cleaning up the studio (ah, much better)…
Hung the new drawing where I could see it, assumed the background fabric I had would work, and started the next fabric-picking adventure…
I don’t know what YOU do when chock full of tryptophan. I told you I was a bit crazy.
I picked all the stuff on the bottom…
And then started thinking about the fleshy issues…a pile of 7 or 8 bodies that I need to be able to distinguish from each other? Need at least two sets of flesh runs…
Luckily, they’re pretty simple bodies, so I don’t need the usual run of 7 fabrics or so. Although on the right, that’s the run for the main female figure, I think. The stuff on the left was the first of the male bodies.
Friday morning dawned nice and clear, and soccer was first on the agenda…of course.
Girlchild decided to play for another team, because hers didn’t get into the tournament they wanted. Luckily, it’s local, because we have a game a day.
I graded papers (ah, back to reality) and watched her run around and score one goal…
They beat an Alaskan team 5-1. I’m sure that team was a little hampered by the over-80-degree weather. Then I came home and helped dad do some yard things and went and bought two trees with him to block off that big open space that has been there since April? March? Don’t even remember how long. I need to go out there today and dig holes and trim off dead stuff and be a responsible homeowner (my neighbors will be thrilled). And I went to the gym. See, this is where time goes. But at the gym, I wrote…yes, I’m still writing. The story’s still not done. And I finished my book (the one I was reading). And these were good things. And then I traced some more Wonder Under for another piece, a small one that’s been lying around for a good long while…
Of course, technically it has nudity in it, so it can’t go into any of the shows coming up that need smaller pieces. I’m tired of making things FOR something, though, even though I don’t mind the themes that I’ve been in…sometimes you just have to make the stuff you WANT to make. I’m getting a wave of that feeling coming on…strong. I traced this also because I was watching something on Netflix that I couldn’t watch in my studio and I wanted to finish the episode.
Anyway, then back to the studio…where I kept going on the pile of flesh…
Which is taking significantly more time than I usually take, mostly because it’s complicated to figure out what is overlapping where, and to make sure I have all the pieces for that body, and that the fabrics don’t overlap in the wrong way.
After 4 hours of ironing, I am barely in the 200s. The plus is I should finish the pile of bodies today, so it will go faster after that. I think. I hope. Because remember how I said I wanted to be done with the ironing by the time school starts again? And there are two more soccer games? Plus I have to plan for school, because hey, we do have to go back there, despite the scary adrenaline rush I get when I think about it? I calculated grades yesterday from the stuff I had graded so far after break. It’s possible I should just quit teaching right now. I’m an absolute failure.
Sigh. So. And on top of all this, I slammed my finger in the door and I keep reopening the wound (bandaids forever!), a Golden Retriever is currently trying to play ball with me, my kitchen looks like a hurricane hit it, and the fish at school has probably died because I keep forgetting to go over there and feed it. Girlchild has applied to her first college, boychild got food poisoning on Thanksgiving from something (he did not have turkey dinner), and I’ve been living on deviled eggs for three days (I’m not sure that’s a bad thing).
This time of year just kicks my ass. So I’m going to kick it back by making lots of art. Yup. You can’t stop me.
Here’s Aug(de)mented Reality 2…for some post-turkey amusement…
I hear the wind blowing. It’s blowing quite heavily at the moment. I considered sweeping leaves up in the driveway this afternoon, because trash pickup is tomorrow and I never finished from last time (weeks ago). Ran out of room in the green recycling bin. But then I thought, what’s the point? I had seen the wind advisory. I knew I’d have a million more leaves by the morning. Better to wait and do it later this week. I don’t like to waste energy on things that need to be done more than once in a short period of time. I don’t have much time.
I don’t know how to feel about today. I don’t know how to feel about most days. Those questions “How are you?” or “How’s [insert name of current project] coming along?” or “How was the hike?”…I don’t know how to answer those. The hike was good, because I was outside and the rocks were really cool, but the last two miles kicked my mental butt, and yet I kept moving, but I’m debating that 14-miler I signed up for, because I’m not sure I can hike that far. Is that what you wanted to hear? Or did you just want to hear “Fine. It was fine.” I can’t answer the “How are you?” at all. I don’t have the words. I could draw it, but we’d be here for a while and you’d be frustrated by my answer. The projects? They’re moving along. There’s nothing I really want to talk about in depth about any of them at the moment. I’m just progressing, moving forward, continuing the process. I don’t know.
NaNoWriMo, for example: I totally forgot to write yesterday. I wrote for a short period while waiting for something, I don’t even remember when, but I only did like 400 words. I’ve haven’t done that few words a day all month. But I was busy yesterday and I got into art-brain mode and I just plain forgot. So this morning, I wrote 2500+ to make up for it. I have a little over 4000 words to go to hit 50,000. And I figured out how to kill off one of the characters. While I was watching David Attenborough’s show Life in the Undergrowth (fascinating, by the way, and kinda creepy), he talked about how ants use formic acid to attack plants and predators, and I had a lightning bolt hit my brain. It’s gonna be SO COOL. OK. I know. This book, it’s just plain weird how it’s inhabited this part of my brain. It’s writing itself. It really is. By Thursday, I will have hit 50,000 words this month, which I think means the book will be at 75,000 words. And I’m in the rising climax part of the book or whatever it is when all the good stuff happens that makes your heart race. I know the book itself won’t be done on Thursday. My goal is the end of the year. Then edit its ass. Then start the next one by next November.
Meanwhile, a car had a brake issue, so it went to the mechanic, my body went to the doctor and we tried to diagnose all my frailties (elbow brace, toenail collection, weird exercises with soup cans and hammers, more blood, changing meds. Holy moly.). I picked up my quilt and the photos. Warned him there was another one coming in December. Heard the story of his dog and cats.
The hardest part…parts…it’s been parts…about this vacation have been my mood swings (down, down, down) and the girlchild’s moods. So moods. The theme for Thanksgiving this year is MOODS. And none of them particularly good. I say everything wrong. I do everything wrong. I get irritated by having to stand in line at the post office to sign for a shirt she ordered (my name on the package, so I have to sign for it, plus she’s not 18), and then she’s out to lunch and at a friend’s for hours, so she doesn’t clean, and because we’re down to one car, she’s texting me to hurry up while I’m in Target trying to do all my errands in one place (I failed at that, by the way). Big Fucking Sigh. This is not fun. I have been on the verge of tears (or just outright crying, let’s be honest) more times in the last few days than in the last month. OK. That might be a lie. It’s been an emotional month. Blame hormones. Blame my thyroid. Blame the fucking moon. I mean, how could they ever have looked at the moon and NOT seen that it was a sphere? I just don’t understand. It so obviously has the sun reflecting off of it in crescent stage. It’s such a beautifully awesome thing. And yet it’s obviously fucking with me.
See. This is how my mind works. It’s on a crazy train.
I guess the good thing is that I worked. I finished tracing all the Wonder Under, despite almost needing to walk out of the living room twice due to girlchild’s intolerance for ANYTHING or ANYONE. (I do live here. I do. I have rights. Inalienable rights.)
It took almost 10 hours to trace this beast. Only 768 pieces, so you know the pile of men really did slow me down. It should have been 8 hours. Julie says I should copy the pile and color code the bodies. She may be right, but I feel like it’s time I don’t have. On the other hand, then I’ll waste the time trying to figure out what piece goes with what body. GAARHHH. Cannot Decide.
I also traced two more birds that were on order…
I’m hoping to finish them by the end of the year as well. By the way, there are three birds that have not sold. I should put them in their own post. I’ll try to do that tomorrow.
And then I sat down and started cutting Wonder Under out.
I only did it for an hour, because it was getting late. And some of it is releasing from the paper, which is always annoying. And I need to buy background fabric or decide if what I have in house will work, because inevitably, I will be ready to iron on Thursday and nothing will be open. Must Plan Ahead. And I have to clean house and straighten up my studio so I can tear it apart again, and now I have a window screen AND a screen door with issues, and for every one thing I solve or resolve, two more pop up in its place.
And dammit. I’m still depressed. That’s the only thing to call this blob in my head that keeps raining on my parade. That keeps dragging me into the mud. That keeps eating at my peace of mind. That won’t shut the fuck up and leave me alone.
Knowing that this is not how you want to be? It doesn’t really help make it stop. This war quilt I’m doing, women at war: it’s women at war with their own bodies, with failing uteri and thyroid glands, with fluctuating hormones and clogged ducts and irritated tendons and pus-filled pores; at war with their children and their parents, with people trying to push them into holes, into slots, into places they think you should fit, telling you what to do, how you’re doing it wrong, constantly getting at you; at war with men, the misguided, the nice-guy misogynists (so many of those), the crazies, the assholes, the arrogant, the self-centered, the clueless; at war with society, which is trying to control my parts, my mind, my place in the world. Nature vs nurture. There’s outliers and I guess I’m way the fuck out there. Like in outer space outlier. I’ve never wanted to be easily categorized or explained, but that makes it harder…to just be, honestly. Sometimes it just makes it harder to exist. I’m here because I want to be. I’m here because that’s where I belong. I never meant to be here by myself though. And it’s hard. It’s hard to deal with the girlchild’s drama without any support. I often just want to crawl into bed and never ever come out. Just put the pillow over my head and ignore all of it. Never fucking come out.
I don’t know how many times I have to scream “This is not where I want to be!” before someone hears me.
That’s why I keep these guys around, the furry ones, even though all they did today was sleep, bat at me with claws out, and vomit. I swear I cleaned up more vomit today than I did anything else. It’s just not right.
So this looks like a picture of the girlchild messing with her hair, but look closely.
What is that in the back, in the corner of the couch?
I do not know how to explain the dog.
Then this evening, the scary bitchy cat ventured out again, and this is the closest I’ve ever seen her to any living thing that was not human without her trying to kill it.
It’s not even that cold tonight.
But I had both of them for a while…
It’s hard to cut out Wonder Under with her on your lap, but again…she’s old and I feel sorry for her, so I tolerate a lot. Besides, she didn’t vomit today, so she’s on my good side.
Tomorrow I finish cutting out Wonder Under and hopefully start ironing to fabric. Dammit. That means I need a background. Aargh.
And the song the post title comes from…one of my favorite bands…
So. I’m officially on vacation. I traced Wonder Under Friday night for a little while, but I was exhausted and went to bed early, because I had a long hike early Saturday morning. I get up earlier for hikes than I do for school. It’s a little crazy. But it was a good hike (post later) and we went out to eat afterwards, which I almost never do, because you lose the whole day. But I could afford to lose the whole day because I have a whole week of them off. Anyway. It was good. And I came home and tried to function, but the body and brain were old and tired. Eventually, after the second or third cup of tea and some reading of the book club selection that I had to be done with by today (there’s nothing like leaving it until the last minute), I got up and started tracing Wonder Under again…
The fun part (wait, put “fun” in quotes) about tracing this section is that it’s a pile of bodies that are all overlapping, and although I might have tried to be logical about numbering them in the first place, that logic has now left the building, and I am often staring at the pile, trying to find the next piece in number order. Piece 225 took like 10 minutes to find. I don’t know what I was thinking. So the almost-200 pieces in the pile took forever to trace. But I wasn’t going to give up. I wanted it done, so that when I came back to tracing today, it would be straightforward and relatively easy.
The thing is, that pile is gonna kick my ass when I have to pick fabrics out, because overlapping and random behind spaces and I don’t even know what parts go with what body in half of it. Yeah. Way to fuck with yourself, Kathryn. I guess I like a good challenge.
So I’m 4 hours into the tracing and only at piece 287 or so. Like I said, it was a bitch. I have about 5 hours left, I’m guessing, and I’d like to be done today. No really. I would. That might not be realistic though because I still have to go grocery shopping and to book club and to dinner at my parents’ house. Hmn. Are there 5 hours LEFT after all that? So much for vacations, right? That’s why you’re supposed to GO somewhere, so you can relax and stop doing all that other stuff. Then again, I don’t really do anything else right…why start with doing vacations right? It’s a stay-at-home vacation because I can’t afford anything else. I would have loved to have taken the girlchild to NYC, met the boychild there, hung out, got an AirBnB apartment, checked out the city. It would have been cool. It would have been $1500 I don’t have right now. Especially with college apps coming up again.
So we’re here in lovely San Diego, soccer tournament, practices, a couple of hikes, dinner with the close family on Tday. And lots of artmaking. So my plan is to have all the Wonder Under ironed to fabric in a week. Because then school starts back up again and that 3-week stretch notoriously kicks my butt. And then I have vacation again, but only about a week and a half before this next quilt has to be done. So yeah. I need to work hard. Like usual. Like what the fuck is new about that? This is my life. It’s a continuous hard-work endeavor. I’m not always entirely sure what I get out of that. People tell me the art is cool, amazing, etc., but then I just make more of it. I don’t know if there’s a reason for it, except that I’m incredibly unhappy when I don’t make it. And there’s enough of that feeling in my life…I don’t need to make more of it. There must be a better balance though.
I did take time out to finish the book for book club. It must have been cold last night because (1) I was wearing polar fleece in the house (lots of windows behind the light table) and (2) the bitchy old-lady cat was in the living room, curled up tight next to me.
Which was fine. Notice the pile of dirty clothes on the floor? Girlchild has some cleaning to do. I’m tired of the slob factor. That’s one goal for this vacation…get the mess under control, at least enough to get me through December.
I wanted to show you where I normally write…
Yup. The computer. The computer desk is a mess. The chair has been scratched all to hell by bitchy cat, who often is sitting on the chair (you can see the top of her head in the picture). Right now, she’s not, but that’s because morning winter sun is over THERE on the table, so she’s curled up over there. Thank god. I can actually sit properly. I’m over 42,000 words on the novel, and I will easily hit 50,000 by Thanksgiving. I’m hoping to keep the momentum going and get to the end, whatever that is, by the end of the year or earlier. I’ve already decided no sequel. So I’m writing it that way. I guess I always knew I would. I do have another book started in my head though. Different story, different characters, different location. Still sci-fi though. Not sure what’s up with that.
Here’s Luana Rubin’s review of the two SAQA exhibits at Houston this year…she mentions my piece.
Someday I’ll meet her in person and tell her how to pronounce my name. Or maybe you could do that for me.
Some kind of crazy happened yesterday. I mean, there’s the regular crazy of my job, but then I came home right after work and sat down with a cup of tea and finished the drawing (it took 13 minutes to finish it, by the way, but probably 6 hours to decide how to finish it in 13 minutes). My car tire was having inflation issues again, so I knew I needed to get it some air, but I went to the copy place first and enlarged the drawing, then filled the car with air and gas, then went home and started taping the drawing together. I realized it needed more space below as well as above (I knew about above…there were some leaf-fitting issues…nothing major), so I taped more paper above and below. Girlchild came home and left with the dog. I seriously only see her (girlchild) for like 10-minute sessions, and then she’s gone again. Or I’m gone. Or we’re both gone. And I sort of realized that if I was going to get to quilt class on time, I wasn’t going to be able to finish drawing at the house. So I packed up all the stuff to trace Wonder Under, and I even dropped off my library book on the way there, and I got there and drew the bottom, which I didn’t even know was going to happen until it happened. This is how life is when you let the creative brain have free rein (or is that reign? I could argue both at the moment)…it just does stuff and doesn’t tell you about it. Wow. Just like my relationships. Ha!
Anyway. On track, Kathryn. So then I started numbering, and because of the bizarre penis pileup I have going on in the bottom, it took for-freakin-ever to number that section…
(OK, it’s just a pile of men, not penises) I was trying to be logical about it, but it turns out, you can’t be particularly logical about chaos. I had about 280 pieces numbered when I finished the pile, so I asked the other quilters at my meeting to hazard a guess as to my total pieces. Susan came in at 1500, Jean at 957, Mary at 1267, and Barbara at 850 (mostly because I kept saying it better NOT be over a thousand, but by then, she could see I was up to 400 and something and she was estimating beyond that. So maybe she had insider information by sitting next to me).
So I ended up getting to 749 (oh thank god…I might actually be able to finish it in time)…
But then when I got home (because it took me two hours to finish drawing and then number the piece, speaking of not being particularly efficient), I realized I hadn’t numbered the bullet thingie on her chest, which surely has a real name. Let me ask The Google. Holy crap! It IS a bandolier. I thought it was, and then I thought NOOO. That’s like something fancier than that, like something you wear when you dance or something. Yeah. Anyway. I numbered that and got to 768. Totally doable (crazy ass bitch. Are you NUTS?).
Meanwhile, I did write once I got back. I really wanted to start tracing Wonder Under, but I’m being really good about writing every day, so I did that first. I’m over 38,000 words. I will finish Thanksgiving Day (with the 50,000…probably not with the book) at this rate, which is kinda cool. It’s nice to know I can do it if I have to. I got stymied by some DNA testing terminology, so I just flagged it for future research. Googling stuff like “What’s that thing called when the DNA gets spread out and makes pretty pictures” is not particularly useful when you’re already tired. And it’s not worth spending hours trying to figure out right now.
Then finally…finally I was allowed to go back to the drawing…
Which turned out being bigger than I had planned…as usual. But I think it’ll be OK. It’s longer, but not wider, and wide is the issue in a small gallery. It’s 27″ wide by 45″ high, which is smaller than anything I’ve done for a while. Which is good. Because I only have 6 weeks. I think. Don’t think about it.
Those flying hearts showed up again…
I like them. At the moment. Don’t know why. A metaphor for where I’m at? Who knows. And DNA hand is back.
I didn’t trace a lot or for super long, because it was getting late, but I’m starting! So I think I’m ahead of where I planned to be. Or maybe I’m right where I planned to be. Hard to say.
Kathy Nida 