Still no sewing machine. And still buried in grading. I’m getting there, but I’m not there yet. I’m also not feeling well and not getting enough sleep, so all that is building up. I’ve left the hardest project to grade until the last. I just couldn’t get my head around it until now. I’m hoping my rubric is strong and helps me through it.
With very little mental and physical energy after grading, I’ve been sitting down with my sketchbook for a while every night. Honestly, I mostly stare at the empty spaces and consider how to fill them, but it’s a thing. I’m doing it.
The swallowing heads has been a thing for me when I’m feeling lots of anxiety. I’m surprised there haven’t been more of those in drawings this year, but I honestly haven’t been drawing very much. All the increased schoolwork is taking a toll on my art output and time for that. I really like this swallowing head though.
And drawing in itself relieves anxiety. I’ve been having breathing and heart racing issues for a while now, and the doc is doing tests. This drawing is all about those feels. There’s my first COVID vaccine…
The arm licking…it’s weird, yeah? Yeah. It is. I don’t feel right. This drawing is about that.
Anyway. The health stuff will get worked out. Somehow. And I’ll get my sewing machine back. Worst part is that I can’t do any strenuous exercise for now, at least for a couple of weeks, and that’s a big stress releaser for me. I can walk, but I can’t hike. So walk I will. See me rolling my eyes? Ah well. It’s movement.
Here’s why I can’t really start another big quilt right now, at least until Spring Break. This is my light table. This week, we had matter demos…
Next week is full on chemistry, signs of chemical reactions, following week is flame tests and IDK what else. And I don’t even have art stuff on here yet for my art classes. That will be next week. It’s just easier not to have to take this all off, use the light table, and put it all back. At least for a while. I said I might do another smaller quilt. And I might. I don’t like starting new ones while others are still in process. My brain stays with the one piece and focuses on it, and I don’t like mixing those in my brain. Weird? I don’t know. It’s how I work. One at a time.
OK, well, school today, a challenge, but doable. Weekend? Lots of school work. Next week? I turn 54. Divisible by 3 and 9. Good numbers. Not as good as prime numbers, but it will do. Numbers do weird things in my head. They seem to have meaning. I don’t know why. More drawing tonight? Most definitely. I’ve missed it.
It’s supposed to start raining here in the next 3 hours and I see no evidence of it. Strange. Normally the clouds would start to pile up and all that, but the house faces mostly north and east, and apparently this storm is coming from the west, over the hill and you can’t see it from here. It’s got wind advisories and a goodly amount of rain in a fairly short time, and it’s lurking over there somewhere; you can only see it on radar from here. But it’s coming.
I’m exhausted this morning. Some sort of weird body thing last night kept me up too late. Sometimes my body is not my friend. So I’m fuzzy-brained and nauseated this morning. A good start. Tomorrow I go to the doctor with a list of weird body things with the hope that she can figure it out. Diabetes gone whack? Something else? I don’t know, but I’m hoping there’s a solution. Most days, I feel fine, but when I don’t, ugh.
The sewing machine is still at the shop and I am still flailing here, also still buried in schoolwork. Grades are due a week from yesterday for report cards. I’ve made it through a little more than 2/3s of the major science assignment, haven’t touched the two major art assignments, and I still have 50 late-work emails to deal with. Plus planning for next week and grading this week’s stuff, but right now, I’ll just continue to panic about the stuff that has to be graded and input by next Tuesday.
I’ve been doing little bits and pieces of sewing things in the evenings, reading my book. Not motivated by anything really. I did draw last night, while half asleep.
Her arm just started rooting itself. I don’t know how that happened.
I did walk yesterday…
There’s a large hawk in that tree. Bottom right V, on the left side. Staring at me.
Fascinating seed pods.
Standing at the top of the hill I’m about to go down…
It’s Spring here. Things are starting to bloom.
The slope that collapsed last year is finally fixed? Maybe?
We’ll see what it looks like after today’s rain.
Puppy love. Not last night but Monday night.
He is a sweetheart, when he’s not barking his ass off during class. Sigh.
Teaching. Exhausted. Grading. Hopefully tonight will be better sleep. Maybe I’ll keep working on that drawing. Maybe I’ll do something more…whatever? I have other stuff to work on. I’m just not in the mood.
Somehow, the month of February whizzed by my head without fully whacking me unconscious, so here we are. In March. Four weeks closer to Spring Break. Another paycheck closer to Summer Break. And no paychecks. Love summer for that. Such a challenge. Every year. That said, it’s getting Spring-like, and that’s nice…new growth on plants, flowers popping up, weeds taking over the yard. All the things!
Well the biggest news, besides my sewing machine being in the shop because it wasn’t dropping the free-motion foot (it dropped feet when straight stitching, but not zigzag; talk about fussy), is that I got my first vaccine. I am a teacher, in case you didn’t know that, and the school I teach for (not AT at the moment, because I can’t go back without these shots) is in a high-infection area (which means that, yes, I live in a high-infection area), so we were first on the list. Got my email on Friday while my science kids were finishing their work; got an appointment for Saturday morning…with a few hundred other people. Seriously, this was the most people I’ve been around since before COVID. And in an enclosed space. Freaked me out.
Plus a shot. Finally getting closer to being safe. Hopefully. I forgot to take a picture when the doc injected me, and he forgot to give me a sticker. Ah well, my co-teacher came to the rescue and met me outside after they monitored me for 30 minutes due to my weirdo reactions to shots.
I’ve been fine, just a sore arm and maybe a headache and fatigue. Hard to say if those aren’t things that I would have felt anyway. Probably! On to the next shot in a few weeks. Exciting stuff.
Our weekly gaming with friends seems to have moved to Sunday night, but that leaves open a night to game in person at home with the two men…we had a new Settlers of Catan expansion, so we read all the instructions 17 times and played a couple rounds.
I almost won one without even noticing. I’m not that good at games. I like to play; I don’t need to win.
Saturday, we did a little hike after taking the sewing machine in.
It’s definitely Springlike.
But the weather is still cool and breezy, so hikes are nice.
We tried a new trail in a place we hike all the time. It had a little up in it.
But it was good. Only 3.5 miles though. No time for a longer hike…left too late.
Then because the sewing machine was being cranky, I did some hand-sewing for a while on Saturday night.
Just sewing things down.
There might be a time when I come back to these and add more stitching.
I enjoy it, but don’t usually make time for it.
I also started this drawing at dinner on Saturday night.
And then finished it last night. It’s small. This is actually a printout of it larger than it is in real life. I joke that now I have the nanites in me, so everything will be fine. Honestly, I’d be OK with the nanites. Fix me, you little machines. Fix me.
Otherwise, I’ve been buried in schoolwork. Posting things, redoing things, making videos of things, grading things, answering too many panicked emails and ignoring others. School is frustrating in the best of times. These are not the best of times. These guys don’t care. They just want pets.
So we pet them. Although Nova, the sweetheart on the right, caught my finger and ripped it open Saturday? Friday? when I was petting her and tried to stop. So it’s a little painful. Otherwise, they’re all good.
This plant finally flowered. I’ve never seen it flower.
I repotted it and it is obviously much happier. Interesting take on the world there. Maybe we all need repotting.
School all day, hopefully some exercise, hopefully some art. A lot of grading. Every day until I’m done.
My sewing machine is having issues. At least I think it’s the machine. It might be the foot I’m using, because the regular straight-stitch foot is working fine, but the spring-loaded free-motion foot won’t go all the way down to the fabric. It’s hovering about 1/2 an inch above and won’t go down. I’m frustrated. I turned off the machine a few days ago and walked away from it, and then came back and sewed stripes because it can do that, hoping it would forget whatever was making it do that crazy shit. But no. I tried again last night, because I have one little thing to quilt and a slightly larger thing to stitch down, and it won’t do it. I tried the floating free-motion foot and I’m not a fan. While quilting, it would randomly decide it would put pressure down or not, and the inconsistency seemed to cause the thread to knot up on the back horrendously. Sigh. So I will call my machine guy (Jimmy. His name is Jimmy, so I will call him that, but also I will ask him to fix this beast or just tell me what button to push to make it work). But it means I’m kind of stalled on those two projects, and because school is such a whiny-ass bitch right now, I can’t focus enough to decide what else to work on. So I sewed more stripes…mirror stripe this time…
It’s too big, I think…too wide. But I will make another one smaller to make up for it. Maybe. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Nothing new. I have many in-process projects I could be working on. Sewing sort-of straight lines won last night at 11 PM when I was trying to decide what to do with my brain.
I also watched this talk by Ben Venom yesterday…
which eventually had me yelling at the iPad. I actually enjoyed the first part, and thought Ben himself, when he wasn’t answering stupid questions, to be quite knowledgeable. I enjoyed that part. His work is interesting and unique in its own way. Honestly, the Juxtapoz interviewer was more than a little ignorant of the quilt art world. No offense, Ben, but I don’t think your work is rebellious…but I’m not your standard quilter. You make skulls and birds and cool things out of recycled fabrics. Even though there’s a lot of heavy metal imagery, you’re cutting most of it up and using the fabric to make your shapes. And you’re a young white male, so I’m not sure what they think you’re rebelling against? You’re using what you like to make a pretty standard art quilt. They’re cool, don’t get me wrong, but you’re not rebelling…except that young white males generally don’t quilt. So there’s that. Anyway, ignore the silly questions about do you know what the Modern Quilt Guild is (who CARES???). I enjoyed what you had to say before all that. Work on!
I stitched with friends on Zoom, but I can’t show you that, because it’s not published yet. It’s not my pattern. But it’s relaxing.
The night before, I had book club. I also had a bug in my head about drawing, so I did that during book club.
I’m not sure I like it or that it was going the way I wanted it too, but it’s there. I might do more on it. It’s definitely not finished. I miss drawing and should do more of it. But it requires more brain power than I have most nights at the moment. I’ve been grading late work every night until 10:30 or so, and I still can’t catch up. Last night, after yelling at my computer repeatedly about a kid who was emailing me about why her grade was dropping because she turned her work in, I finally emailed her parents (and copied her), because she was turning in things blank and/or barely done. I’m pretty sure the other kid who was turning in stuff at midnight, 5 assignments in 2 minutes flat, she’s doing it so I won’t make her stay in class today to finish up. Except I’m in a mood now, so I’ll probably open all 5 of those assignments and see if they’re blank and then make her do them. Because they probably are blank. Or barely started. This is where distance learning is hard. OK, it’s not the only place…but it’s one of them.
School just sucks right now. And this is so true right now.
That’s part of my frustration. I am working harder than a lot of them. And then they get upset because “I turned everything in; why don’t I have an A?” Sigh. I will wake up Monday and feel differently, maybe. Because today is the deadline for all the late work. But also this…
Oh yeah, I hit cancel. And got a flash drive. And walked it to the other computer. It took much less than 764 hours.
I was teaching yesterday and a hawk landed in the tree in front of the window, ON the nest that is there.
Great photo, eh? Not so much. Luckily, no baby birds in that nest. Pretty sure it’s been empty for a while. But cool to see the hawk so close, even if I couldn’t manage a decent photo.
And yesterday morning’s weird fog in the valleys.
Very cool. I miss driving to school (which is in the valley), going from sunny up here, driving a whopping 2.5 miles to school, and being socked in by fog. Speaking of school, ours is on the list for the first official teacher vaccines in the county, so after being canceled out of the other vaccines we thought we were eligible for, we actually might get them in the next week. Finally. I’m glad for my teachers in the classroom, but also glad they didn’t leave me off the list. The only way I get to go back is with a vaccine. I’m so tired of teaching this way. I want to be able to go back in August.
OK, lots of things to manage today, and hopefully I’ll find a way to get my machine fixed too. Incredibly thankful to the people who are offering to pick up artwork at a variety of shows for me. I just don’t have the time to get to those pickups (and some are during school hours), so I appreciate their help. You know me, I like to be fully independent, but that’s not realistic right now. I’ll do some art tonight…whatever it will be…maybe some gaming with the fam as well. It can’t be All Grading All the Time. It just can’t.
February is such a weird month. So short. So full of 3-day weekends (which I fully appreciate). You try to use that extra day wisely, make sure you have some free time, time off from school stuff, time to just relax. Sundays just disappear into school and groceries for me, and now gaming has moved to Sundays for now, totally confuzzles my brain. So I need today, the extra day, mostly to catch up with whatever I didn’t get to on Saturday, because my brain just stopped working. Not really. I did grade things. In fact, I’ve graded every day, and before you tell me I should take a break today and not grade anything, I’ve already considered it and rejected it because of the number of things I have piled up. The reality is that we’re getting to the end of a trimester, and the art stuff and science stuff make it harder to grade, because I have to full on change my mindset to pop from one to another; same with going from the 6th-grade art class to the upper-level art class.
Anyway, after grading Saturday morning (while the man watched the impeachment), we hiked the Highland Valley Trail, part of the Coast to Crest challenge from 2019/2020. This is a pretty one, although you never really get away from houses and the road.
It looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere…
But in reality, above those deer is a house…
They don’t seem to mind.
And below us is a road…
It’s a pretty trail though. We could have gone further.
But it was getting late.
Just under 4 miles.
WordPress seems to be having font size issues today. Hmm. We’ll see how it posts. Right now, it looks tiny.
Friday night, I did a little ironing on the Desert Bunny quilt. Yeah, that’s what I’m calling it right now.
I’m sure it will change. I quit when it was flesh time…until last night at midnight. Because that seemed like a good time to pick fabrics for a big chunk of the quilt. I tried to pick fabrics I hadn’t used before or often. Success! At least two of them had never been used.
Coolio.
This is such a tiny quilt. I’m almost done ironing it to fabric. Then I get to trim it. I also finished the sleeves and binding on the Spargo quilt on Friday night, but I need someone to hold it up for me for photography. Maybe later today.
Where Kitten sits while I’m teaching…
So she can see me but not be in class.
I keep trying to relax…pajamas, pets…
Furry love.
I miss treats at school.
I can’t be bothered to get in the car before school starts and go buy a donut. Silly what you miss.
Still doing the bullet journal after IDK how many years. It helps focus my brain. I like to try new fonts. My favorites are the ones that are a pain in the ass to draw…
I mean, my favorites are the ones that are totally different for each letter.
Last week’s, I gave up trying to draw…because it was all plumbing. YES. A PLUMBING FONT. Who knew? A pain in the ass to do.
OK, I need to go pick up art from a show that closed. I entered one show last night and started entering another, which turned out to be another pain in the ass. I don’t have a lot of “family friendly” art…at least, I suspect what most people would call family friendly. Oh well. Everything I have for that show is OOOLLLDDD. So be it. Then more grading, prepping food for my mom’s 80th birthday. I missed my dad’s 80th due to a COVID exposure. So I’m bringing food, especially cake. And hopefully some art. Plus grading. Not hopefully on that. That has to happen. And then no more 3-day weekends for a long while. Spring Break is in 39 days though. That sounds almost doable. We have a short camping and hiking trip planned for break, and then the Man leaves to hike the PCT. For possibly 5-6 months. It’s a weird year, y’all. A weird year.
I am currently completely and totally procrastinating answering all the parent and kid school emails from this weekend. Some don’t need an answer; they were an appropriate acknowledgment to the weekly notifications I send about hey, y’all aren’t turning shit in. Unfortunately, some weren’t. I saw the first one roll in Friday night. I could say I ignored them, but I didn’t. I just didn’t answer them. So they’ve been sitting in my gut all weekend. Maybe that’s why I answer right away…so that doesn’t happen. Sure, I could be like some people and not have my email come to my phone…or my home computer…and I could never open my school computer during the weekend…HA HA HA…oh wait, that’s bullshit, because I can’t even come close to getting all my school work done in the 5 days of the week I’m paid to do it, who the fuck am I kidding? Anyway, it is my constant goal to manage this better, acknowledge my failure to do so, and move on. Those emails will get answered today; no one will like the answers, but oh well. The really annoying one from last weekend, the mom never emailed back and said, oh hey, I’m sorry for bitching you out for something you don’t even do, don’t have any control over, and tried to fix for me. No thanks, no sorry, no acknowledgment at all. Noted. Fully noted.
This job. Is. So. Hard. This. Year.
Luckily, when I went in to school on Friday, my co-teacher was still there and helped me (and my overwhelmed fuzzy brain) gather all the science-y stuff together for this week’s demos. Chemistry for all! It’s hard to make art around the job sometimes…literally, right now, I need the light table, and I have all this school stuff on it, so I’m trying to work around it. Or through it. Hard to say which.
Friday, I dropped my quilt at the photographer (pictures tomorrow!), then went to school, then to enlarge some drawings from December 2019-February 2020. You know, pre-COVID shit hitting the fan.
I only copied three drawings. They’re out of a 9×12″ sketchbook and I enlarged them 200%. I figured that was a good size for right now, when I don’t have much room on the light table or in my brain.
I think this was one of my Patreon drawings…maybe? Can’t remember.
This was one of the December drawings a day from 2019…because I didn’t even come close to doing that in 2020.
And this was from our Joshua Tree trip from February last year…
I sometimes go back and read previous year’s blogs for the same month as now, just to remind myself of the mindset at the time. It helps when I think things are out of control. I saw these drawings and thought they’d make good smaller quilts. I posted all three on Insta/FB, and there were a few votes for this one.
But I’d already picked the Joshua Tree one for the first quilt. I started tracing it last night and forgot to take any photos. I forgot a lot of things yesterday. I also stayed up way too late on Friday night trying to manage some of the stress in my head…stitching things down.
It didn’t really help. I haven’t been sleeping well. I’ll figure it out.
I wanted to hike Saturday, but with all the rain on Friday (we got over an inch in 24 hours, which is a lot for us), we didn’t want to stomp through a muddy trail and destroy it, so we picked an urban hike, the Seven Bridges Trail. I’ve done it a couple of times, but the Man hadn’t. It starts in Balboa Park, where there were lots of people…
Bridge number 1…
It’s not a difficult hike…fairly flat…bridge number 2…
Interesting views though…bridge number 3…
And some intriguingly bouncy bridges…OK, only one bouncy one…bridge number 4…
Came through Hillcrest, which is constantly evolving, and got off the official trail down a back alley of murals…
Which is probably how we got over the 6-mile mark…
It’s a little weird waiting for signals during a hike…
Bridge number 5…did I miss one??? Maybe.
Yeah, I didn’t photograph one. I don’t know which one. Bridge number 6…no wait, I did it right…
Some people will argue this is not a hike, because it’s not ‘out in nature’. Except there was nature all around. Hence the urban word. Not my preferred type of hike, but we still walked the whole time, didn’t stop and get ice cream (although it would have been OK if we had)…
Bridge number 7…
And I’ve never been able to figure out why it’s the Seven Bridge Walk, if there are eight bridges…
Another side trip adding to our mileage…
Through the cactus garden at Balboa Park…
Bridge number 8…
Like I said, over 6 miles. Tired. But good. Outside. Too peoply. Next weekend, we’ll do a hike on dirt with fewer people around.
Saturday night, I ironed all the fabrics for the tiny owl quilt I’m making…
And then cut them out…
After doing the January Patreon drawing…
And numbering the third of the smaller quilt drawings…
Plenty of art happening. Plenty of work happening. It’s February now. I have 17 emails to answer before school.
I mean, my school district actually has kids in physical school too, but I have kids in school, every freakin’ school day, and yeah. Working my ass off. Stressed out. Overwhelmed. Buried. Don’t tell me I’m not working.
I’m a little slow on documenting stuff these days. I honestly keep losing days. How is it dark already? I remember getting up. What freaking day is it anyway?
I have one week of Winter Break left. I know I am lucky, because many teachers go back tomorrow, and I’d be really not ready to do that. I’m two weeks in to this ‘vacation’ and I’m still grinding my teeth. I think I stopped for two days, but that’s it. My to-do list is heinous. Then I get distracted, like today, obviously, and trim a bunch of plants that have been bugging me for two months, instead of crossing things OFF the to-do list. I mean, the plants didn’t even make it ON the list. Sigh. I think I focus better when I’m totally overwhelmed with teaching, simply because I have no choice. I have to do that…for survival’s sake.
So back to the 48 hours where we ditched the world. We got up the next morning, opened the front door of our Airbnb, and saw the chicken. The man says I have to call him a rooster, because it’s a definite sound difference, but I will argue that he is still a chicken. He kept trying to come in…
Finally shooed him out and figured out he wanted breakfast. I hope he liked it.
The place we stayed was definitely not the Ritz, but it was fun…this was in the bathroom…
And this was embedded in the floor…
What it lacked in niceties (a fireplace, working oven, consistent Wifi), it had in character in spades. After breakfast, we headed out to the Mecca Hills Recreation Area for some hiking. We’d hoped to go to one section, but my car wasn’t keen on the 9 miles of dirt (sand? ruts?) road out to it, so we headed for the Slot Canyon hikes on All Trails. The parking lot was definitely sand, but just off the road and pretty solid.
Again, hiking in washes…although we started in a really big one…
Signs of 4WD vehicles and shotgun shells for a while, but no people…
Eventually we turned into some smaller canyons where only people could go.
It was cold and windy most of the time, and kind of a trudge. Lots of sand and rocks and a slight uphill…
Very little wildlife to be seen, not even birds, and not a lot of living plants.
I like a good hike though. We got to a point where the canyon we were in would require climbing, and that was enough…I spent most of my brain power trying to figure out how to escape the water if it started raining (it wasn’t going to start raining, but I am the paranoid type)…
Weird cactus. So it was about 5.7 miles. Not bad. You have to like sparse desert landscapes and rocks for a hike like this.
We came back and wandered around Bombay Beach for a while to see the sights we’d missed the night before…the balls light up at night…it’s quite pretty…
It’s also an Airbnb. Same owner as ours, across the street. I like ours better because the yard was fenced. Lots of people wandering through the zigzag yard.
Not fancy. Quirky.
The trailers and sheds had art in them too. Interesting place.
Wall of TVS…turn right at the TVs to get to our place.
Down the road from there, is this wondrous beast…
Pretty sure it’s related to the one we saw in Joshua Tree back in February. Oh yeah, it is…Randy Polumbo did both. This is Lodestar; the other was Angel Queen. Fun stuff.
From there, we headed back to the beach, further down from where we were yesterday…
I enjoy random metal and concrete sculpture personally…
And a good sense of humor…
And some good colorful grafitti…
The museum was not open, unfortunately…
And pigeons lived here…
I’d seen photos of this online and was glad to find it…
The hardest part of all these installations is finding artist info to go with them…
All I can tell you is that it is in the Bombay Estates.
Back home for dinner, reading, and drawing, because no TV…fine by me.
Very 70s. That night’s drawing…
And morning chicken…
We stopped by the drive-in on the way out…
And then kamikazed back home after talking to almost no one.
Meanwhile, back here…after New Year’s, I proceeded to make 17 more mistakes on this…had to rip out an entire tree, because it was half a stitch off and that won’t work.
Nope. Wasn’t drinking. Promise.
I’ve been ironing…it feels like this quilt is taking forever. Because it is. I got this leg done so I could insert it into the landscape…
And then worked on building the stuff up on the other side…a cat and a quilt of a cat…
Ironed her separately and put her in the landscape as well.
Here’s some bits and pieces I had left to do…mostly snake and bird, I think.
Progress as of Friday…
Leg in place. It’s just a really detailed piece is all.
Then Saturday, I kept going…
Pain. In. The. Ass. Yeah well. I’ve done the 600s and the 800s and barely started the 700s, plus I think a few of the 900s are done as well. So I have about 300 pieces to go? Or 400? I don’t know.
Great Horned Owl…
Which brings me to one of my Xmas presents, now installed and ready for inhabitants…
My very own owl box. I’m happy. And it’s on a system that can be lowered for cleaning, hopefully not when owls are in it. Awkward maybe. We’ll see.
Other things that happened. This cake made a spaceship on top.
It was the boychild’s 25th birthday yesterday…
His cake request was intriguing. No, I was not smart enough to take a picture of the final product. Apparently it’s better warmed up. IDK. I’m allergic to chocolate.
Coyote print from the front yard. They are here, y’all…right here.
Couple photo from the Salton Sea, stolen from the man.
My eyes might be closed.
So back in March, I asked for paint pens for my birthday…or maybe Xmas last year? I can’t remember. And then when everything shut down, I ordered gessoed canvas. I had see some posts Judy Coates-Perez put on Instagram (it’s a guide on there; can’t remember how to find it, wait, no, go here to her Instagram and then click on highlights and you can get to it there.) for how she paints and then uses the pens to decorate her paintings, and I wanted to try it. It took forever to get the canvas, and then school sucked and summer came and stressed me out with all its We Don’t Know What School Will Look Like shit and then Real School happened and kicked my ass, although at some point, I cut up some of the canvas into smaller pieces with some ideas to make some different stuff. Well, y’all, it’s been on my to-do list since fucking April, and I’m finally doing things with all the paint and pens. OK…just the paint so far, but I’m hoping to get the complicated stuff that requires plastic and water done so I can draw in peace over the next month or so.
Luna inspecting the biggest one. I drew a faint outline of a human figure in pencil on this one…
And on the others. I prepped four of them.
I wanted to just block in some color shapes to start…
I’m not really a painter, but it’s OK, because I’m going to draw all over this, Nida style. I think. We’ll see. Because I usually only draw in black and white and these are colors.
Obviously, right? I’ve got some more painting to do first. But I think this will be a nice change for me. We’ll see how it goes.
Also still baking sourdough, y’all, although the girlchild gifted me a lame, so I can stop using the box cutter to score the bread, and this nice glass starter container, so I can stop using the crappy plastic container.
My starter is still super happy to be alive. So that’s a plus.
From the book I’m reading, Gods of Jade and Shadow…
A good thing to remember for the new year. Well, like I said, I have a week before I go back, and now I need to actually do schoolwork (again) this week. I have one ungraded assignment, a few late assignments that kids have turned in, and a bunch of prep to do for all three classes. Science is mostly planned, but there’s details to get done. Art is a clusterfuck. Don’t even ask me, because I don’t know. Plus I’m dealing with the car, my teeth, and who knows what else this week. Making 23 videos about the elements (periodic table elements, not the other kind). And hopefully finishing the ironing of this quilt and the painting of those backgrounds, and somehow steeling myself for the next 6 months of teaching. UGH. I’m so not ready. Luckily I don’t have to be. Yet.
Hello 2021. Nice to see you, all bright blue skies and sunny (well, here in San Diego, anyway). Probably should have started the new year without the hangover, but whatever. Shit happens. I also think the Man made me watch motocross videos, so that should never happen again. 2020 feels like it lasted forever and yet went by quickly. I didn’t finish as many quilts as I normally would have, because my job got harder and more time-consuming than it’s ever been (oh holy hell, if you think teachers aren’t working their asses off right now…maybe some aren’t, but everyone I know is). Normally, I get 6 exhibit-sized quilts done in a year…this year, I only got 4 done, and then 2 smaller ones.
It is what it is. It’s a new year now and I can make more. I have one that should be finished this month, and then I’ll work on some more. Hopefully the job will be easier this year. Ha! Well, it could be…we went back to our regular curriculum, which is a known entity and I don’t have to redo the world to use it…just some of the world, plus we actually have two months planned ahead at the moment. A miracle. I haven’t been planned more than a few days ahead since March 2020, when everything shut down.
The last prompt for the 31-day challenge was my 2021 sewing goals…I guess that’s it. More than in 2020. It’s a reasonable goal.
Continuing documentation of our trip, after we went to Salvation Mountain, we checked into our Airbnb in Bombay Beach, changed clothes, and headed to the Bat Caves! It’s a hike. No Batman involved. I think it’s the first time I’ve crossed a railroad on foot. This was in the Salton Sea Recreation Area.
A little frightening. Except you could see a train coming for miles, because the Salton Sea area is pretty damn flat.
There was no trail, really. There was the “trail” that we followed (and eventually ditched) on All Trails. Mostly there were washes…
And we walked in them until they got really deep and we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to get out of them, and then we tried to walk on top and around them, and that was funny, because then we’d have to find ways around them, all while trying to follow this trail someone else had recorded on All Trails.
It’s OK. We found the caves eventually.
We never figured out how to get up on top of the ridge, and we didn’t see any bats, although we saw and smelled guano, plus evidence of people leaving their trash and carving up the rocks. Humans suck.
It wasn’t a super long hike.
Also off-road vehicles were around…
We are not fans. We are fans of nature, though, and there was plenty of that, if you like rocks and sand. Which we do. To get back to the car, we ignored the AllTrails map and headed for that tower you can see way out there in the middle.
We also avoided the washes this time. It’s not ideal, trampling over the landscape (which was mostly dirt, yes, but also some plants), but it worked.
When we got back to Bombay Beach, it was close to sunset, and we’d been told the beach was a nice place to go then, so we headed out. Here’s the front yard of where we were staying…
I read that someone called the art installations at Bombay Beach ‘trash porn’. It’s eclectic.
The beach has some installations…
The history of the Salton Sea is also interesting. It’s sort of an oops that never went away.
The birds really like it and apparently so do tilapia.
Apparently it’s not so good for humans. It used to be a resort of sorts, back in the 50s and 60s, and then there were environmental issues.
The guy whose Airbnb we stayed in is one of three people who set up an art biennale in 2016. Some of what we saw was remnants of previous biennale exhibitions.
Lots of people were walking around and driving around, looking at stuff, considering this place is in the middle of nowhere. More on that in a later post.
We eventually managed to cook food (propane was out, minor issue), and then the wifi was problematic, so we read and then I drew…
The place we were in has art (mostly nudes) all over the walls, and one was a woman holding a prickly cactus. That’s where this came from. We went to bed early (long day) and we knew we wanted to do a longer hike the next day, so the plan was to rest up. With no TV or internet, it seems we go to sleep at a reasonable hour. Interesting, that. More on the next day in later posts.
Wednesday night, I ironed for a little bit…
Got a leg and more landscape in there. We have the beginnings of a dry river bed being dug…
I think more of it might happen today. It’s been cold at night…this dog is very catlike.
Whereas the cat was busy cleaning herself…
Yesterday, I cooked lots of things, plus went on a walk…
Came back to the house and cooked a NYE dinner with the man…IDK how the cat gets into these positions…
We watched some TV and drank a little too much (it’s been a year, y’all…it’s been a year) and went to bed like normal people. I think the girlchild did the same in her part of the country…
Although she dressed up and I was in sweats…
I also stitched a little on this thing that I meant to do over the summer and then meant to do as a Christmas gift and obviously that didn’t happen, but I finally finished the edges of the fabric so they wouldn’t unravel to holy bits and started it. It’s been a million years since I’ve done any cross stitch…
Today, I’ve cooked some more things and will probably put the Xmas stuff away and decide where to put the Xmas tree (it needs to be planted out this year…it’s getting too big to lug around and bring indoors) and maybe even take a shower. Dinner is in the crockpot and will be ready later; I have some art things I’d like to do and maybe I’ll even do them. Or not. Hard to say. Maybe I’ll just read my book, because it’s due in 7 days and 4 people are waiting on it, so I should finish it before then.
Happy New Year, all…may it bring peace and hope or at least not be like 2020.
I did NOT drop off the face of the earth. Seriously. Proof on Instagram. We walked a lot. Yes, we left the county. No, we didn’t talk to anyone or go in anywhere or do anything but buy gas. Pretty much. I was going bonkers. Now I am possibly less bonkers. Who knows?
But first, holy moley, I missed three days on the blog-a-day thing. Whoops. I did take my computer, but the wifi was horrendous. Well, it was horrible the first night and then improved, but by then, I was used to just sitting and drawing or reading or stitching, instead of being on the interwebz, and that was a good thing. So I flailed.
Monday the 28th, the topic was a skill I want to improve: Eh. If I think of something, I’ll tell you. You know how you improve? You do more of it. I do a lot of the things I like to do at the moment. I’m not sure I feel like I need to improve beyond the “Do More of It” stage. You do you, though…go for it! Improve yourselves! OK, so right now, I want to improve my arm and core strength…not really stitching related, but something I’m working on. Good?
Tuesday the 29th, the topic was My Latest Project: Well, it’s the one that’s still on the ironing board. Here’s where I last was on it on Sunday night, the last time I worked on it…
It’s still fussy as shit; half those leaves aren’t ironed down to anything, because there’s a leg that needs to go in there first. Maybe tonight.
Today’s topic, for December 30, is My First 2021 Project: Hang on, y’all…my first 2021 project is still my current project, because there’s no way in hell this thing will be done by tomorrow at midnight. So that was easy. After that? Well, I just entered a show and realized I need more quilts for shows and quickly, so probably I should get on that. I haven’t picked anything yet, though, because I have this crazy idea that I should finish the one I’m on before I pick (or even start) a new one. So I’m going to do that.
One more day…you’re gonna love the last topic. OK, probably not. Who knows? I’m not really very good at these, am I. Oh well.
Sunday night, I drew…in fact, I’ve drawn the last three nights, but am blowing the run tonight by not drawing. Oh well. My brain wandered. Odds are I will draw tomorrow night. It’s Drawing a Day…Mostly. Sort of. It goes along with the rest of 2020, wherein we try to do shit and sometimes succeed but sometimes just give up because it’s all too much and we have to give ourselves a break.
Speaking of, here was my break, my socially distanced, don’t even fucking come near me, break. Honestly, the original plan was a cabin in Julian or near Mount Laguna, but I didn’t want to be in a trailer park of tiny houses, and that’s what was left…so I headed for the Salton Sea. I can’t even tell you why, except that I’ve been trying to get the Man to go here with me for a good many years, and he’s always refused.
Right, you say, why the freak does an atheist want to go to Salvation Mountain? Because it’s weird and funky and bizarre, and that was the theme of this trip, for sure.
You know what? I thought it would be bigger.
I still liked it. I wish we could have climbed around on it, but apparently it’s being repaired.
Seriously, hand me some paint and I’ll go up and repair it myself…in fact, I’m trying to figure out how to really annoy my neighbors and add this to my front yard somehow, except the ones I really want to annoy are below me and will never see it. Oh well.
And Love IS Universal. Can’t argue with that. Here’s a video of Leonard Knight, the artist, taking you on a tour of the place.
I had a smile on my face the whole time, and usually, that’s not how I feel about religion.
Hmmm. Construction equipment in the name of God. Interesting.
There’s some interesting texture on the vehicles.
We could just walk around the outside of things, because, you know, COVID. I might be able to get the man to come back here some day, just because we couldn’t go to East Jesus, and there’s a garden there I wanted to see, but probably we’ll have to be on our way to or from somewhere else, and I might need to buy him some really nice beer or a steak for him to agree to it.
I enjoyed it.
But I’m possibly a little deranged at the moment from my job and being at home all the time, except home is work and work is home and the two are never separated any more. All the things they tell you NOT to do when you are trying to balance work and the rest of your life. 2020 is not the year of balance, and 2021 isn’t looking like it will be either.
The pro is that Salvation Mountain was on my bucket list and now I can cross it off. And build some adobe structure around my mailbox. I’ve actually been talking about that for years.
Leaving San Diego, we drove through rain and then snow, to Salvation Mountain. Makes sense.
We drove around Slab City a bit…I’m not and never will be an RVer, so it makes no sense to me, but it’s interesting to see how others live.
East Jesus claims an art vibe, but again, it was closed.
I drew Sunday night. I can’t explain it. I started with the right arm.
As we were getting ready to leave on Monday morning, the rain had started, and you know what that is in the pool of water in the driveway?
Pretty sure it’s a peregrine falcon. We’ve seen them a few times around here. It was just standing in the water. Not bathing, not drinking, just soaking its feet. Like you do.
I’ll continue tomorrow with more eclectic art and some hiking, because there were both those things in spades. I just can’t handle 196 photos in one post. Suffice it to say that we are back, looking forward to sleeping in a bed that doesn’t have a rooster a foot from our heads, and ready to quarantine our stay-at-home asses for another holy crap how many months? Yikes. I just realized this afternoon that tomorrow is the last day of 2020. Weird year, y’all, weird year. I’m not convinced that 2021 won’t bring its own version of weird to the table…in fact, I may not trust a year ever again. But for the rest of the evening, I’m going to attempt to iron shit together (fabric, really, not shit), suppress the feeling that I need to buy more fabric (I don’t; I have a lot of it), and hope that maybe the eye twitch of 2020 will stay gone for more than 24 hours…knock on wood.
Happy Holidays all! If Christmas is your thang, that too. Hope it is all happy and healthy and safe. It’s quiet and weird this year, but relatively safe. We are just doing one shorter gathering outside later today to do all the food and presents, and our other gathering was on Zoom last night.
I missed the prompt for yesterday, so again, I’m pushing two into a day. The State of My Work Table. Um. I don’t have just one work table…in fact, I don’t really have anything I consider a work table? I use the light table for some of the art process, although it’s currently being used for school as well. I sit on the couch for some parts, the drawing and cutting. I sit at a sewing machine that is on a desk used for other things as well. I have a rolling table I use for some other parts of the process…you can see that here with the ironing board and the sewing desk.
Everything is kind of jimmy-rigged together, no fancy work table or setup. I’d say I’m obviously doing it wrong, but it works for me. Sure, I’d love a giant sewing room with a big table in the middle, but that’s not in the cards right now. I have what I have and I make it work. I have to clean up between each project because otherwise there isn’t room to do the next one. That’s probably a good thing. If I had more space (this is an 8×10′ room and the computer is in here too), I’d fill it and have to clean a larger space. It works.
Today’s prompt is Show Us Your Scraps. Um. Again. I don’t separate my fabric by size of piece…color is a much more useful separation for me. So they’re all in bins of different sizes…
And the smaller bits are shoved in there too, as you can see in the bottom right corner…
If I need black and white, odds are I don’t need a huge piece, so this is what I pull from. Most of what I do doesn’t use huge pieces.
Christmas Eve Eve was spent watching bad television with the girlchild while grading science. She managed to decorate some cookies in between drama on the TV…
Simba worked hard…
Oh yeah. Wish I were that dog.
I took pictures of my pitiful tree…I managed 5 ornaments this year and that was it. Oh well.
It was a good thing I took that picture, because when we got back from our hike, all the presents were gone to the ex’s house, where Xmas will happen. Outside. On a deck. In the sun.
The man and I decided to spend Xmas Eve on the 4th hike of the Coast 2 Crest Challenge, San Pasqual Valley to Raptor Ridge.
It claims to be 5 miles. It’s not. It was 4.4 miles.
The first part is very flat and runs next to the road and then wanders off across probably old fields. I don’t think these are native. They were planted in very straight rows. But they’re pretty.
We didn’t see many people on the trail. Or the Not a Trail.
It’s an easy hike even with the short bit of UP to get you out of the valley.
It would be really hot on a summer’s day.
Very little shade. So interestingly, a few years back (wait…searches blog…February 2014, to be specific), I hiked from the other direction, near the mall in Escondido, past Mule Hill, out to this tree. Yes, this tree. I remember it. It was an 11.8-mile hike that day…much longer than today’s.
So it was interesting to link up to that hike 6 1/2 years later.
A view of the valley that looks similar to one I took that day. We took the required selfie (we get a patch when we finish all five)…
It was cloudy and gloomy, but still a little warm. Started to rain when we got back to the car…
It might be prettier in Spring…wildlife!
He kept poking his head out to see if we’d left. We hadn’t.
We came back and I read for a bit, then Zoomed with the man’s family for Christmas Eve, then graded while watching a movie by the fire. The sky was impressive.
Yes, I graded on Christmas Eve. Y’all, I just want it done and out of my hair. I don’t want it hanging over me. And I don’t want to deal with it in January, which often happens.
Sleepy Kitten.
All the cats were pretty chill, because the dogs were with the kids at their dad’s house. Until a moth showed up.
And then there was excitement all around…
Christmas presents for cats are so easy…just find them a bug.
Eventually the man caught the moth and we released it outside, but sure, Luna had her paw on it twice and then fumbled it. So much excitement.
Oh yeah, I drew after I finished grading.
I finished science anyway. Still have 5 large art assignments. Honestly, yes, on Christmas Day, I am going to try to bang through one of those. I NEED THEM DONE. But here’s last night’s drawing for you.
And no, I haven’t been able to work on the current quilt for the last two nights…too much other stuff going on. But later today, the family will meet and social distance and eat and gift. And then tomorrow, the girlchild wings back to Boston and another COVID test and quarantine, while we keep on keeping on here. Yeah, having her home was a bit of a risk, but the family health issues have had her and the rest of us pretty worried and anxious, so hopefully this will help. Hope your holidays are whatever you need them to be. I guess mine need to be quiet yet productive and apparently full of sugar. Could be worse. It’s a beautiful day and I don’t have to Zoom. Oh wait, I’ll be FaceTiming later, won’t I? Ah well.
Kathy Nida 