Nobody’s Right if Everybody’s Wrong*

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

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

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

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

He doesn’t mind.

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

Might be a really stupid gecko.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth

Instead I Pour the Milk*

Still no sleep. It doesn’t help that I don’t think about solutions to not sleeping until 1:23 AM. Honestly, I should have just gotten back out of bed and gone and meditated and then come back. Worst case it wouldn’t have shut the brain up and I still would’ve been awake around 3. It’s only around 3 that I remember all the things that help. If I’d done them earlier. So hiking 3 miles at 3 AM is not a plan. Although it would be cooler out.

No. I’m not done ironing. What happened? Ugh. The day happened.

I’m so freakin’ close! Actually should have just stayed up last night and ironed until I was done…except I was tired. Not good to choose fabrics when you’re tired.

So one thing I did yesterday was this flyer…

I’m doing GISH again, the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt. My whole team is not in San Diego…and only one of them is not a newbie. We will not win. I don’t care. I drew the flyer, posted it on Insta (which is why I think it’s OK to post it here…I can’t post the other stuff until the thing is fully judged, which is ages away). It’s basically a week of doing weird things. My goal is one a day. I drew this two days ago, and then posted it in a nearby Starbucks, and then went and found 3 other flyers and pulled tabs to prove I’d completed the task. Then last night, I drew my Mind Palace. Piece of cake. You’ll have to wait to see it.

I did other things, including cooking, but then I finally ironed a bit. Not a lot. The heat is hard. This is the last female figure though…the darks are not up against the background, but I realized her hair will have to be. So I’m considering another cloud to make that work.

Last-minute clouds.

Kitten slept through the whole mess.

So at 12:30 AM, this is what was left. It doesn’t look like much (it’s not), but mentally it was more than I could handle. Lungs, heart, hair, cat, dick pic.

I have this pile of stuff I’ve been using…

Plus all these…

And here’s the box, oh so full. I should be cutting out sometime today.

Really, there’s so few pieces left. Oh damn…another set of leaves…forgot about them.

I’m at 25 hours, so I wasn’t that far off in my estimate. I have no jury duty today, but I have to call again tonight. Sigh.

Before I can iron, I need to go to the chiropractor (ah yes) and get my blood tested. Pretty sure it’s too early in the new diabetes medicine for anything to have changed. So she’s gonna wanna see me again relatively soon. Sigh. Everything has taken so long this summer, and tomorrow is when I start worrying about school officially. Although we did a lot of it already. I just need to rework my warmup process. That’s a big thing. Plus I really need to copyedit this thing I’ve got. And trim the damn bougainvillea. Boychild and I have a plan for that, but it can only happen in the late afternoon. I can’t deal with the heat. Stupid Northern Euro biology. Heat kills us.

Progress though. It’s all about progress.

*Suzanne Vega, Tom’s Diner

It’s No Better to Be Safe Than Sorry*

This summer, the heat is really getting to me. I don’t have a lot of extra money in general…even less so during the summer…but I’m sort of currently obsessed with installing A/C in my office for NEXT summer…and maybe the bedroom as well. Although I think my lack of sleep is more about noise (of the ceiling fan) and my brain not shutting down properly than about temperature…so A/C in there won’t help. It’s hard to say. I’m currently fighting heat rash on the inside of my elbows from ironing…I think if I could get my sliding glass door to open in here, that would help at night. I’m ironing more at night because (in general) it’s cooler. It’s at least dark. Sometimes there’s a breeze. So today, my plan is to get the sliding door to open and to finish the ironing. Then I go on to cutting things out…and YES, I’m a good three days behind where I wanted to be, but that’s reality, so you just suck it up and move on. I have no jury duty today, but there’s no guarantees on the rest of the week, and after this week, things get hinky. Sigh.

Anyway, I did manage just about 7 hours of ironing over the weekend…not great, but progress. My total is currently almost 22 hours, so maybe I will finish at about 25 hours. Hard to say at this point.

So let’s walk through the weekend. I entered another show on Saturday morning and did some techy stuff to help with that group. Kitten helped.

Calli also helped. She’s especially helpful when I’m trying to walk across this small room to get to the drawers of blue fabrics. Usually she leaves after I do that a few times.

More sleepy Kitten. She’ll be 10 in two weeks.

So the first thing I needed to do was pick the fabrics for the hill behind everything. I did finally decide on greens (no florals though)…and I dumped the last one…the lightest one…because it was too busy. I found another interim one and bumped the second-to-last one down.

I really like that fabric, but busy isn’t good for backgrounds…usually.

This is a lot of fabrics for what was two tiny figures on the hill.

I’m having to pull a different flesh run for every body…in this case, only a hand. It means I’m using a lot more fabrics than usual.

This was the pile before we left on Saturday for the man’s show…

And this is the to-be-cut pile. Growing growing growing.

Interesting wall near the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach. I really like this wall…wish I could afford to put one in my yard.

So we had to be up there early so the band could set up, but I wasn’t allowed in (no problem)…so I found a coffee shop and drew. I have a piece that needs to be done by the end of October.

This drawing is pretty close actually. There’s some things I would change.

I ate and read my book and then walked back to the show…this wall was on the way.

No doubt about that.

Announcement board…

Here’s that drawing so far. Tree needs stuff. I think the whole thing needs more space. Not sure about the bottom leg.

In the Belly Up, we had an hour wait for the opening act…so I drew some more.

And another one…

The show was great…they did well. Hopefully it will turn into more shows for them. I don’t get to see all of the shows…the next two are high school reunions, so those are harder for me to get into (I do crash some things). I guess that means more artmaking time. On a Saturday night. Ugh. I do like to make myself get out of the house and do stuff, but sometimes, making art is easier.

So I started ironing late on Sunday. Got up late, did a bunch of stuff, groceries and all. This is the run for the next human…a light one.

I had to move 3 of the now 5 boxes of fabrics being used in this quilt so I had enough room on the ironing board…it’s the three smaller boxes on top of the grays. I’m still pulling from those boxes.

One of the fabrics I picked had a piece ironed to it…from I DON’T KNOW WHAT. Seriously. I obviously forgot about it, and probably had to cut it from something, but it’s a very low number. Strange. Maybe that small quilt with the hand?

Kitten is still holding down the fort. She likes to be near me, but isn’t keen on being out in the living room. This feels safer for her.

At some point, I looked at the clock and went Huh. OK. Well past bedtime. Wide awake, brain racing along, but I knew I’d have to pee both dogs and I’d be woken up at 6 AM and you’d think I could fall asleep that late, but no…my brain was going overtime on the next figure and how to make it stand out from the background. Sigh. I need to get the brain under control before school starts.

So the pile grows.

More today. I think I’m in the 1400s at the moment. I lied. I’m in the 1500s…about halfway through, but a huge chunk of that is leaves, so they’re all chunked together and will get ironed in one fell swoop. So I have about 350 pieces left. Easy peasy.

I did some Palestrina knots on the hippo last night at the parentals…

Almost done. OK, need a shower, some food, finish ironing, do some GISH stuff (google it), wash a sleeping bag, try to clean a tent that was immersed in Madagascar mud (yup, it’s been a while), and maybe check some other stuff off the to-do list. Running out of days. I start looking at school stuff August 1. I need to put my classroom back together too. Ugh. Don’t wanna.

*a-ha, Take on Me

Heads on a Science Apart*

I haven’t really been paying attention to the total hours on this thing. I’ve just been head down, tracing. I did another 5 hours yesterday…not as many as I wanted, but I did some other stuff too, so I’m OK with it. I’m in the low 1400s, so I have just under 500 pieces to go…probably about 5 hours. I might get that done today? Maybe? Maybe not? It’s harder to trace in the morning because the sun hits that side of the house and it’s hot. Nighttime is best.

I have 2 1/2 yards cut out. I filled another 2 yards and set them aside for cutting, and then I think there are 3 more yards in process. The big pieces take up a lot of space but are quick to cut out usually. I’ve been trying to lump together like pieces as much as possible, like all the bricks in the walls, because that also makes it faster to iron and cut out.

Musical interlude by boychild and dogs. Seriously, the Golden sings and the Pom barks.

Sometimes I wonder how crazy my designs are…see those tiny pieces? Yeah. Birth control pills. Fucking insane.

I feel like I’ve been tracing for DAYS. Well. OK, it has been a few days.

Only half a gecko. Not even half.

The other night, I just left the room lights off and had the TV and the light table on. I made it through a couple of series of TV shows: Crossing Lines was OK and Secret City was interesting for the insight into Aussie/China viewpoints. World politics from another place in the world. Anyway, I don’t do a good job of paying attention to shows when I’m tracing, so it’s OK that they were just OK.

I just have two main figures (and about 17 thousand leaves) to trace. Easy peasy. I should get started on that.

Satchemo loving the Madagascar iguana the girlchild brought me…

Great colors. Anyway, gonna go do some more tracing. Oh yeah! I’m at 17 hours and 45 minutes. I was hoping for about 20 hours…think I’m going well over that. Probably 23 hours. That’s my guess anyway. Then cut them out and start ironing. I have no jury duty next week, so I’m planning a vet visit for the UTI dog, call the tree guy back and see if he can do it in the next two weeks, get the Honda serviced and the back window cleaned up…but otherwise, hoping to get to the fabric ironing earlier in the week (it’s supposed to be a million degrees here next week…that will not help). The foot still hurts. No, I didn’t try the pickle juice. I did apply heat and I stretched and I wore shoes while tracing (ugh…too hot). Maybe it helped. It hurt when I went to bed last night, I think because I naturally point my toes when I sleep instead of keeping the foot perpendicular. I do have a night splint, but it’s hot and uncomfortable. Then again, everything is hot and uncomfortable this summer.

Art! Go make art.

*Coldplay, The Scientist

Escutcheon

I need to go buy more Wonder Under this morning, because I used about 5 yards of it yesterday and I’m going to run out. Some days, I find it hard to make any art during the day. It’s too hot. There’s too many errands or other distractions. Need to shower, need to eat, need to go to work…but during the summer, I don’t seem to be any better at it. It often takes me until mid-July to hit my stride. It’s like my brain doesn’t really believe it’s vacation until someone says, oh hey, there’s only four weeks left. Aack. There’s all this shit still on my to-do list dammit. And I’m still on call for jury duty. Damn them. But the panic started…the one where I realize how many days I definitely won’t be able to make art due to people visiting, being gone, or pure exhaustion from school shit. So if I want this quilt to be done, I need to get my act in gear.

So I traced Wonder Under for almost 9 hours yesterday. Seriously. And I was antsy about it. I often am. I made myself go for an hour before I was allowed to take a break. For anything. Because I’m the queen of making excuses to wander off. And eventually, I kept coming back…because I set a daily goal (one I probably won’t meet today…exigent circumstances). I wanted to get a third of the way through, so about 600 pieces. And I did that.

It’s not a small drawing. It’s draped over the light table and the couch (note puppy asleep on the couch back, just under the window).

I was trying to keep this thing simple (ha!), so there are a lot of big pieces that don’t necessarily save space on the Wonder Under.

So they take longer to trace (longer pencil line) than the small pieces. Hence 663 pieces in almost 9 hours. I usually average about 100 pieces an hour. Not so much yesterday.

I have lots of animal interactions…

When I’m taking a break, it’s really just to refocus my eyes and sit down for a bit, because I trace standing up and it’s hard to focus on that stuff for a long time without a break. So I walk around and sit for a while and go pee and make some more tea or eat something if it’s time to do that or go walk down the driveway to get the mail.

Or watch the puppy sleep.

During one of the breaks, I straightened up my desk. It was a disaster. It still kind of is. I need something to put the scissors in and the pens and pencils I’m using right now. I have another container, but it’s already full. I’m not good at getting rid of marking implements. I don’t think that box is best for that. You can see one of the traced yards there…don’t think I can fit any more on it.

I don’t know why I keep those scissors. They’ve been gnawed on. It hurts to use them. I think it hurts more to throw them away.

More Wonder Under piled up on the drawing…

I started around 11 AM and finished after midnight the next day. I’ve got about 5 yards in process of being traced. A lot of big pieces means having to start a new yard before the other one is full.

Anyway, more of that today, although I’ve got two errands to run this morning and a quilt meeting this afternoon. This thing is way too big to bring with me, so I’ll probably bring some Wonder Under to cut up and maybe some wool stuff. Then I’d really like to go to the gym tonight or tomorrow. There’s other stuff I need to do, but I often get into this artmaking mode and then I can’t do anything.

More distractions…puppy in a box.

There’s this too. This is one of my favorite tops for work (for winter) and I accidentally got bleach on it (dumb move). So I don’t want to dye it. Too hard to match. Then there’s pens…but again, it’s a weird color (Sharpies are useful for black though). So I’m considering embroidery. Except what? And how? It would have to be more all over or viney stuff. So there’s that. I’ve got some time to deal with that.

But for now, off to buy stuff. And eat stuff. And maybe trace stuff (well, no matter what, eventually I will trace stuff).

The blog title is one of the things I need to buy. I didn’t even know that’s what it was called. You learn something new every day.

Art for the Win

Well the best thing I did yesterday was to get kicked off two juries. I didn’t even do anything that I know of to get kicked off (ah, profiling)…but I’m OK with that. I had to be there most of the day, unfortunately…two trials and not enough jurors. I finished a book, which is pretty good, considering how much time I spent staring at ceilings, listening to other people try to answer the questions. The plus is that there shouldn’t be any more trials this week, and although I’m still on call for the rest of the month, they have a new batch of numbers they’re calling in next week, so hopefully that was it. Knock on wood…wait, the woodpecker outside my office window is doing that for me. Nature loves me.

Anyway, so that made it hard to do anything else yesterday. I was mostly braindead and pretty tired…although I did finish numbering the beast. I don’t think I’ve put this many people in a quilt ever (trying to confirm that in my head…three has happened…wait, I can think of one with four people…). This one has eight people. Ah. Eight different runs of flesh tones. That will be a challenge. So will the background, so the people will show up. Will have to consider all of that.

Simba watching me number…it’s pretty exciting. Not. Not exciting at all.

So I thought it had 1854 pieces, but then realized I’d forgotten to number the cat, so 1880 it is. I was really hoping for like 1200, but it was not to be. Oh yeah, and there’s a penis in it. I like to point that out these days because people keep hallucinating those things. And no, it’s not in there because I need attention. This quilt is about women and the things we do to them, like send them dick pics or use the penis as a weapon. It’s also about that whole (if you were an art or art history major, you know about this) male gaze turned on itself. What about the female gaze? How we see the world? It would be nice to have some of the world interpreted equally. It never seems to be.

Anyway, I had hoped to start tracing last night, but I was exhausted…fell asleep on the couch at some point. Did not get enough sleep and spent most of the day sitting around and doing nothing. So today? I’m going to bingewatch bad television and trace Wonder Under…because there’s about 20 hours of tracing to do and I’d like it done by the weekend…and I have nothing else to do today. I do have to call tonight and check that I’m not on jury duty again tomorrow (aack no). But then I can trace more tomorrow.

I still need to finish this weaving of my story. As I weave, I kind of think to myself, “so what happened next?” and I weave what I think that might look like. I have a limited amount of yarn, so that makes it more difficult (not a lot of colors), but I’m OK with that.

Satchemo likes it too…

Expand the view, and you can see how Simba feels about it.

I’m finally more than halfway…which is good. It needs to be done by Sunday.

I got rejected for the last copyediting job, with a really snotty comment about my fees. Well I knew those would be an issue for her, so I had addressed it in the offer. Sure, you can find someone who will copyedit your 80,000 words at $15/hour. And they might even be awesome at it…but if they are, they are totally underselling their abilities and making it harder for the rest of us. You should be paying them more. And if they aren’t awesome, which is more likely, then you get what you pay for. Honestly, I’m not going to undersell my skills. I’d rather be making art, and at the moment, I can afford to make that choice. There is, however, no need to be snotty about it. That just leaves a bad taste in everybody’s mouth. Welcome to our America, eh? It spills over into everything.

OK. So I’m up. I got some sleep, hallelujah. I’m going to go trace stuff. I am NOT going to talk to people for a long time (I will talk to animals though). Art for the win.

Gonna Read for a While

In case you’re wondering why I’m writing so early (because this is early for Kathy on break), it’s because I’m sitting in a dead silent jury room, half (or more) asleep, after fighting my way through motorcycle accident traffic. Honestly I have zero brain power right now, and I tried going to bed early (for me), but I was still the first one up. Hoping for no jury, but you can’t predict that shit. I have had so much anxiety about this process…I hate being forced to sit like this.

Anyway. Onward and upward. Trying not to read too many political things. Our country…what a disaster. Even the quilt world is full of it. I start so many responses in my head…such a difficult world we are in.

Kitten held hands with me yesterday. She feels me.

So yesterday, I did manage to get my butt in gear eventually and quilted the two little quilts.

They’re so tiny, it doesn’t take long.

Fully quilted, ready to trim…

I didn’t put a real binding on these…just trimmed them to size and zigzagged the edges with a heavier thread underneath. There’s probably a technical term for that.

Now I just need to decide how to label them, hang them (after this exhibit), and attach them to the boxes. No problem. I have until Sunday.

Then I hung out on the boychild’s bed with the dogs…long enough to decide to walk those beasts. Might be my last chance this week.

Lucky dogs. We went hunting for the vernal pool. Very little evidence of it in summer.

But sharp eyes (not mine) spotted two baby California horned lizards…we must have disturbed their hanging out together…

Hard to see…

But very cool. I’ve only seen 3 or 4 of them while hiking, and never so small…not even an inch long.

Then dinner and more weaving (whoops, no picture)…and then I really wanted to finish drawing last night. The last woman went in. And I think that’s it. Ten hours to trace the stuff that was on the other drawing and then do the rest.

It doesn’t sound like much.

I did start numbering, but I knew it was a big job, so I quit at 488 pieces. I’ll finish the rest tonight and then start tracing.

That 488 got all the waves and everything in them, including the Earth Mermaid, numbered. So maybe a third? Hard to say.

Gonna read for a while.

Then You Really Might Know What It’s Like*

I’ve been up for a while, fed all the animals except the human ones, balanced some money stuff out, paid the Visa (oh crap) and then the girlchild’s fall semester (oh holy crap), and read some stuff, but haven’t really got the goop outta my eyes or the even the full cup of tea down my gullet. This is NOT the Summer of Sleep. Totally not. Perhaps I should go to bed earlier, but I really do find the late-night hours are the most useful to me, especially if it’s warm. It’s not too bad (yet) today, so that’s nice. Maybe I can use that to my advantage. One more day without jury duty. That’s good. I swear, this regular uncertainty just fucks with me.

I wasn’t very efficient yesterday until later…I was tired and had a brunch thing I had to do, so then you eat the the brunch foods and they make you tired and it’s Sunday so you’re already tired even if you didn’t work all week. Yeah. That. I did bid on a copyediting job last week or maybe the week before? I didn’t hear anything, so I’m betting I didn’t get it. I bid on one this morning, but she’s already said money might be an issue…I think people don’t have any idea how many hours copyediting 80,000 words takes. We don’t just read it once…but at least three times, looking for a variety of stuff. And her sample wasn’t great. So I’m assuming I won’t get that one either. Oh well. Not sure I’d have time to do it anyway. It would really suck to get a job and then get stuck with jury duty…double hours. Ugh.

Anyway, each day I don’t have to sit in a courtroom is a good one.

Kitten is a freak…very needy at the moment.

We had dinner with the parentals…so Calli wanted the ball thrown 700 times. Grandpa obliged…until we decided she was tired. She won’t ever stop unless we make her.

I worked on the sun…all I got done was chain stitch around the whole thing and a little bit of backstitch. Then I have to go find the hippo instructions from March or something.

I tried to get all three dogs in one picture…semi-successful. They don’t follow instructions well.

Calli is a good girl. Simba is on a leash because he gets up the slope in the bushes and no one can get him down. We let him loose at one point, but he was tired and behaved. Katie was a pain because of food.

Then we came home and I sewed the binding on the other quilt. This is Satchemo supervising the pinning. He really wanted to sit on it, but I wouldn’t let him.

Pile of quilt. I won’t be working on this really soon. Or maybe while I’m watching the telly. Who knows. It’s a nice break from standing.

It’s hard to get up off the couch when the headless wonder is all draped over you. I feel bad getting up and leaving him there. He obviously wants the loves. He was licking my leg (ick).

But eventually he left, and my brain strangely went to graffiti walls. You can blame whatever I was watching on TV. It had a graffiti wall that said BOOM. And that was it. I was down a rabbit hole. Suddenly it made sense to have a graffiti wall in here.

Continued it on the other side, added a viewpoint, finished the hill behind.

There isn’t much left…just the sky to the left. Then numbering it (I’m a little scared of that).

It’s time to get this one rolling. The deadline on the other one is a ways out, so I can slowly hand-stitch the binding and wait a bit on photography. I do need to finish those two little ones too, but since I finished the binding on the other one, I can use the machine for that today. So finish the two little ones, finish the drawing, number, start tracing onto Wonder Under. Hope for no jury duty.

*Everlast, What’s It Like

Purple Hair, Tea, and a List

Friday the 13th! My favorite day, besides maybe Halloween (as long as it’s Halloween when I’m not at school so I don’t have to deal with the candy and the kids). It’s supposed to be bad luck, but really it’s just a number and a day and a really bad series of movies. My favorite! I only just realized what day it was…I keep having to look at calendars to remind myself that it is a day or another day and WTF am I supposed to be doing today (meeting at my district print shop with my co-teacher to print all the crap we need for the beginning of the year, instead of waiting until the week before school starts, for the first time EVAH.).

So I started writing that a million hours ago and then she texted that she was there and we hung out in the foyer at the print shop for over an hour, because it’s the only place besides school where we can be on the district server and actually send stuff to the print shop. Annoying…but air conditioned. So that’s done…the entire first unit is in for copying and we will start the year out organized! Maybe. Well. There’s the disasters of a classroom we have to come back to, after shoving everything in cupboards at the last minute because of the district use of our rooms. Sigh. I’m not thinking about that…or when I might be able to deal with that.

So we took about 8 hours to plan the first unit and beginning of the year stuff, and that was just the time we were together doing that…not all the time we spent doing shit on our own for that. Unpaid. Oh well. It’s my sanity. It’s not like anyone was going to pay me for that prep time anyway.

Then I came home and realized I needed to go to the store for milk, shampoo, and beer. One for each of us! The milk is mine, by the way. Need tea. Should have bought the other kind of milk too, for drinking, but oh well. Yes. I require two kinds of milk.

Still need to clean floors, mopping and vacuuming…with the boychild’s assistance. But before that, finish this, AND dye my hair purple. Because what else do you do on Friday the 13th? Hopefully it won’t fry all my hair, although then I could just shave it all off and be annoyed by it even more than I already am. Seriously, when you’re hot (because of weather AND hot flashes), hair seems like a useless accessory. Then again, so does a bra…so there’s that. So I’m sitting here cooking my hair off and writing this, trying to make my plan for the day when it’s already 2:30 PM, where the fuck did the day go? I just don’t know.

That’s what happened yesterday also. I dropped my car off to get the damn window motor fixed (oh holy crap, those are expensive, but if I have to crawl out of my car one more time to deal with a ticket booth in a parking structure, I’m gonna scream.). So that. It won’t be done until probably Monday. Slightly problematic if I have jury duty on Monday, but whatever. Then off to pick up a quilt from a show that ended…it’ll get shipped out to Arizona in October, so it’s staying in the box. Then to the fabric store for binding fabrics…still haven’t dealt with trimming those two quilts. That would be good to do this afternoon. OK. Make list:

Trim two quilts
Sew binding on two quilts

So then I went to quilt “class” (aka hangout) and trimmed the fabrics for the two little quilts. The more complicated one is on the left…

And here’s the easier one. Yes, I am using a sandwich tupperware to store those pieces. The other one is a lunch container, I think. They work.

When I made all the bird and cat quilts, they were all in tupperware for a while. Easier to keep parts separated but organized that way.

Then I worked on the coral-colored flowers at quilt hangout…finished all of them. Also finished the second block for June? July? I don’t know. And started the third one, the one with the sun in it.

But that was at my nighttime stitching meeting. Lots of that going on yesterday.

Progress! No worries…it will be 2019 before I finish this one. I only work on it at meetings and gaming. I also worked on sewing wool on this one…but I didn’t have the thread to sew the blue circle on and then the leopard is supposed to have spots, and I have the fabric for it and the hole punch, but it’s this huge piece of fabric and so I start reading the instructions, because there must be something else that’s supposed to be made from that fabric, and yessiree, it’s a monkey. Damn. Which monkey?

So I’ve been doing Sue Spargo patterns since I think 2012, with Earth and Twig (maybe earlier?), and she sends the pattern but she also emails a newsletter. And I just realized this year that maybe those were important, that they had information that wasn’t in the patterns. I always saw the corrections and would go hand write them in the instructions, because I knew I would be way behind in making these (this one, which is called Folk Tails, is from 2015.). But you know what? I didn’t save all of them. So I had to go back to my old email address archives and find all of them and load them onto my computer so I would be able to find them when I finally got around to making the quilt…and sure enough, that’s where I found out about the monkey. So that wool is not done. I needed to find the monkey and trace him onto freezer paper and cut that out and iron it onto the brown wool, and then, ONLY THEN, can I use what’s left for the leopard’s damn spots.

Well we are 27 minutes (nope, now it’s 47 minutes…I went down an internet rabbit hole about stitching patterns, because I don’t have enough of those stashed in my house to keep me going into my 3rd or 4th life) into cooking my hair and nothing is stinging or burning. Also good. My allergies have ramped up since being a disastrous 20-something, so you never know. Sure, I could have tested it in my inner elbow like they always tell you, but fuck that shit. I need the purple to wash out before school starts (OK, maybe my principal needs that), and I don’t have 48 hours to fuck around waiting. Plus Sunday is looking quite busy. So not then.

So if I’m at urgent care later or downing Benadryl, just say nothing. I’ll know it was a stupid decision. I don’t need you to tell me.

Then back to the drawing at 11:20 PM or so…woman on the left, a skeleton, although looking at this, I need a bone pile in there somewhere, and then the volcano. I’m down to just a bit of land and sky…maybe tonight? Damn. Wait. The list.

Trim two quilts
Sew binding on two quilts
Iron small quilts together
Stitch small quilts down
Finish drawing

Probably those are out of order and more than I will get done today, but it at least reminds me of what I should be thinking about working on, once the hair and the floors are done.

Speaking of hair, those who are around me may have noticed I had one side shaved when I got most of my hairs chopped off. So I have to decide whether to maintain that or not, and I guess I decided that today.

Tiny little hairs. So tempting to just get rid of all of it in this heat. It’s not even that hot right now. Anyway. I have a list. I can ignore the list. I can get some of the shit on the list done. I can (not) get it all done. But it’s a list. Yeah. Need more tea. Here’s why I bought the milk. Tea. Purple hair. List.

I Can’t Feel a Thing from My Head Down to My Toes*

I keep thinking I’ll get so much done, but then reality kicks me in the head. I did quilt. I did draw. I even walked dogs. All good things. I also drove 2 hours to pick up a quilt and went to the chiropractor. And made dinner from scratch. Still all good things. I did not finish the quilting. I didn’t even finish the outlining. That’s OK. I’m going to do more today. There’s progress…

Although, even though I checked the back for missed stitchdown areas, sure enough, there were three I fixed yesterday…the octopus tentacle was just one of them.

Where the pin is. It’s OK. It happens most times.

Then quilting the rest of the legs, above the knees…

Then the dogs earned a walk…and it was cooler (although still humid) yesterday, so we dragged them out to our regular place. I’ve seen the stinky melons on this vine, but don’t remember the spiky balls. So many plants around here have spiky balls for protection…

And I don’t think I’ve seen these out there ever. It’s weird, because I was just there maybe a week and a half ago…so maybe the bushes were there, and the extreme heat made them flower?

Lovely cloudy skies…cuts down on the temperatures. Not so today.

And wild roses…not sure I’ve ever seen them blooming here. But they were beautiful.

I made dinner…it was lovely. No seriously, it was. I’ll be eating leftovers tonight before book club…for a book I read over a year ago and don’t remember (I just wanna hang out with my book-club mates before school comes back and screws up my schedule). Then I finished all the orange balls (fly stitches) and started on the pink balls (bullion knots).

Second to last set of balls.

Then back to quilting, up into the torso, which was a bit complicated.

Uterus done (it’s not a vajayjay, people). Stomach, liver, intestines (it’s not pornography…it’s parts).

Full view of that section. I have the upper torso, arms, and things floating around. Not a small amount left, but not hard.

OK, quilting is never really HARD…it’s just time consuming and I’ve got a hard time sitting still sometimes. Like now. Hence the walk in the middle of quilting.

When it’s late and my co-housemates all go to bed, they prefer it if I’m not quilting. Apparently the WHOP WHOP WHOP noise of the machine with my music loud enough to cover that is disruptive to sleep. Who knew? Luckily, I have another project in process, so I moved into the living room to work on the drawing. I seriously haven’t started drawing before 11 PM on this thing most nights. It’s too hot in that room. I need to buy another fan. I used to have it in a certain place and it was easy to unplug and move. Now I share it (what!) and it’s not so easy to move. So a new fan would be smart.

Anyway, I had decided that the mermaid sea mother needed a viewpoint, but I had already drawn in that space. So I could use liquid paper, but then when I trace, there are multiple lines that show up with the light and it’s confusing. Usually that’s what I do, but this was a fairly straightforward cutout. So I did it.

Then inserted paper behind and drew the earth.

I added a few more things to the plastic trash.

And then broke up all the water spaces. It looks really complicated, but I just needed smaller pieces of fabric for easier ironing. Lots of dead fish. But I think the ocean section is done. Although looking at this, the space under her arm looks empty. I need to visualize a sand fabric back there…it will be fine.

Then while I was driving to Oceanside yesterday to pick up my quilt, I had some ideas for the last figures…definitely a breastfeeding woman. Faceless though…standing for many women? I guess. There’s another one on one of the other waves that I didn’t ink last night…she’s just in pencil.

Here’s the whole drawing (ish…the top is falling off the back of the light table). As you can see, I’m getting there. Also penciled in is a volcanic area, and I need to put a skeleton in. And then maybe a bird or angel or something? Still considering that. Cherubim? Yeah. Maybe.

This will be a fun one to explain. It started out as one thing and morphed into 17 other things and I think all I can do to explain it is to call it my brain on politics right now. It feels really bad. Although the Thai soccer players are out! That’s good! Distract me from judges and laws and stupid policies and tweets and everything else. We can’t look away…we don’t dare. But Shee-it. So this quilt is that. All that.

I spent about an hour this morning going through upcoming shows and deadlines and organizing for them. I don’t know if I’ll be able to enter everything I want to, just because I have a finite number of pieces available. But at least I have an outline and some organization for that. I do need to iron fabrics for the two little ones though, because they’re supposed to be done in 11 days. OK, stop hyperventilating. It will be fine. They’re small. You could finish both of them in about 2 or 3 hours if you wanted to. Shush.

What I need right now though is breakfast. And then once I finish the legal stuff I have to do today, then I can quilt all afternoon. It’s warm, but there’s a breeze…and two fans in here. One day at a time. (don’t think about the school stuff you have to organize before Friday. Shush.)

*Genesis, That’s All (so I had this significant other who used to give me shit for some of the music I listen to, and this is one of the bands he shamed me for, even though Pandora picked it this time. But I like Phil Collins…and his bald head…and his earnest voice. So I guess it’s a good thing that SO is out of the picture.)