The Cutting of the Wonder Under

Mothers Day: the only day of the year children will try to feed you and clean up for you. Well, apparently the girlchild last did those two tasks at Christmas, but I’m fairly sure I helped. She did good. Food was wonderful…we will miss her when she leaves. I just don’t pay close enough attention when I cook to do it well. I’m always trying to escape the kitchen to my studio.

I did a couple of drawings this weekend while watching the end of True Detective, which was good. At some point, I couldn’t draw because I was concentrating too hard on the show…always an issue.

But before that, there was this…

Which I actually want to do over…and this…

Which might be OK.

And the other 15 drawings are still roaming around in my head, creating havoc with my ability to remember how or when to do anything (or maybe that’s menopause…hard to say).

And then at night, after dinner and cleanup and exercise, I finally got around to this…

The very titillating Cutting of the Wonder Under.

Stay tuned for many pictures of piles of paper cut out with fusible web on one side. Très exciting.

State testing starts today, so I have to be at school early, because I have duty and I have to get my room set up and all my stuff located. I’m completely unprepared, unfortunately. My brain? Mush. Dammit.

This Mood

So many things achieved. I hate when my mood doesn’t reflect what I’ve gotten done…some of that is moody hormones, unfortunately, but some of it is getting bogged down by other crap that just won’t leave me alone. The little stuff is really getting to me at the moment. Need to dump that mentality. Must be getting to the end of the school year.

My two quilts are going to the photographer today…I dehaired and ironed them this morning, got up a little early to make sure I had enough time. Probably won’t finish writing this before I have to go, but that’s OK. I graded papers last night too. Girlchild and I were going to go to this art and music thing, but it was canceled for the rain (yes. we had rain. a miracle.), so she went off to dinner with friends, while I watched the series finale of Sons of Anarchy. Sheesh. Well, it’s done anyway. I think it’s hard to end a series well (Sopranos for example, not as an example of ending well). At least they got to make a decision about how to end it, instead of just not being renewed.

So I finished tracing the Wonder Under on Bathtub 2 last night…

And no, Kitten wasn’t helping. She mostly sat around on the papers I needed and then rolled around presenting her belly for petting. Then attacked. It’s nice when she comes out though.

It took almost 8 hours to trace this quilt, which is more than I would have guessed, but there are some whopping big and complicated pieces in the bathtub and water that took more than a minute or two to trace. I usually figure about 100 pieces an hour. Tracing big pieces takes longer than small.

The next step is to cut them all out and then move on to the ironing. I need to clean up the studio first though. There’s some stuff in there that’s been there so long, I don’t know what it is. Time to get it out of the way. Summer cleaning is how teachers think. We don’t Spring Clean. There’s no time. Summer is when our brains like to get rid of stuff and reorganize and move stuff around.

So that’s on the list. Even starting now, I think. I can’t iron fabrics for the next quilt without some major cleaning in here.

I’ve had some conversations about smaller quilts I can make for sale this summer. I don’t want to do all cats, but I will do some. I’m thinking of a different owl and maybe a raven…and possibly one like the cancer donation quilt I did with the hands and the heart, but simpler. So I’m finalizing all that in my head and figuring out how to fit in at least three major quilts between now and the end of September. Ha! Wow. Crazy much?

Honestly, though, I’m kind of looking forward to putting some sort of plan together for summer work on quilts. It helps school feel less crazy. It helps quiet nights at home seem less lonely. It helps with the frustration of my job. It helps temper the teenaged mutant attitudinal beast who is currently on my couch, bitching about everything I say or do (walking away, my sweet. I love you, but I’m not in the mood). I’m crying at the drop of a hat these days, stupid hormones. Fuck. Going to draw today. Seriously. They’re whirring about in my head, causing strife and stress and nausea (oh wait, those are the hormones, right?). My photographer gave me some really positive comments about the quilts I dropped off…not that I didn’t like them, but I keep having this discussion about pretty versus significant. I prefer the latter. Most people like the former. I have to find the happy place between them for the stuff that sells easily and then keep making the big stinky stuff to keep me sane. Like sanity is my strong point! Whatever.

This mood. Sheeit. Dammit brain, I finished all this stuff. Would you back off for a bit? Sigh. We can engineer bridges, put humans in space for months on end, we know how to replace a lens in an eyeball without stitches, but we can’t find an acceptable treatment for menopausal crap? This world we live in. Don’t tell me it’s equal. It’s not.

A Thousand Drawings in My Head

OK, so I had a picture sent to me via one of those Facebook friends I’ve never met (which is fine…I’ll meet her someday, and we have quilt art in common) of this painting by an Australian woman, Del Kathryn Barton. And it’s hard to see up close, but here’s the link…and it’s the center panel my friend was pointing out to me (did my brain explode with ideas? Fuck yes, it did.).

So I went searching out on the Interwebs and found this video, where she talks about her process…

And Oh Holey Moley. You thought I had an issue with detail. There we are. Her stuff is amazing. And crazy.

It’s very hard to persuade myself to go to work right now, because (1) it’s hard and (2) I’d rather stay home and draw. Is that an option? (No, it’s not)

I was a good girl last night and graded for about 2 hours before doing art stuff. I spent about another hour prepping for the rest of this week. I only traced for about an hour. It was mostly large pieces of bathtub rim and side…

Very exciting. Actually kind of a pain in the butt to fit on the Wonder Under. I had to cut one in half. It was too big…which makes me wonder if I will have to shop for bathtub fabric this weekend. Hopefully not.

I’ve spent a little over three and a half hours tracing at this point…

It doesn’t feel that way though…I’m only at piece 280-something. Slow. But I guess I’m halfway done, or close to that. I might finish by the weekend.

I don’t feel totally into this quilt yet. Maybe it’s because of all the other stress hanging over me. Too much on my plate. Can’t keep track of all of it. Really would just rather sit here and watch more art videos and do some drawing and sleep longer.

Sounds like summer vacation? Except it never works out like that. The to-do list over the summer is even worse, because I know I have huge chunks of time to get the stuff done that I didn’t get done all year. Ugh. Even cooking sounds like hard work. I think this is stupid hormones again. I think there’s a drawing in that too. Sigh. I don’t have near enough time in the day to get done all the art stuff I want, let alone to try to fit it in amongst all the other drivel. Work, groceries, clean, yardwork, errands, manage kid stuff. SLEEP? Whatever. I need a staff. Not a wooden one…one which will do my bidding.

Wah. OK, going to work. The head is full of tiny details that want to manifest into a thousand drawings. Such is the life of a modern-day, semi-responsible artist.

Making Time

Grades are due on Tuesday, just progress reports. Really, in the old days, I would have started working on them Friday night and finished them Saturday, never leaving them until Monday night. Eh. Whatever. They’re mostly done. I did get some grading done yesterday, documented some stuff in the gradebook that I keep track of, more to force them to do it then because it’s super-important to understanding science…teaching kids good habits, those that will pay attention. But I’m not done. And sometime around 10 PM last night, I quit being a teacher and started being an artist.

OK, realistically, I never stop being an artist. My brain is always working on art stuff, even when I’m stuck in a 2-hour staff meeting on a Monday afternoon (ugh…today is Monday). It’s one of the things that keeps me going. Car drive, art in head. Waiting in line at the grocery store, art in head. Waiting for the X-ray technician, art in head. They did X-ray my foot on Friday to see if the pain I’ve been feeling is an unlucky broken or fractured tiny bone instead of just a sprain. I vote for a sprain.

So at this point in my life, I just have to make time for art…I don’t have to stand around, pushing fabric around my office, waiting for the muse to appear. She’s always there, waiting. I know I’m lucky for that. But it’s really not luck. It’s making sure that I’m doing something artistic almost every single day. Do that, and she will stay…at least most of the time. Significant depression or illness can drive her away, but if you’re lucky, she’ll stick around.

I went back and looked at the long skinny drawing to see if it needed more. I drew three different cats in pencil around the existing drawing, wanting to fit one in, but not sure if I should. One of them stayed…

Then I proclaimed it done, because honestly, I could keep adding stuff, but it would take longer to finish it, which will be an issue as it is, and I think it would actually detract from what I’m trying to say. So I stopped.

And then I started numbering it…

It actually had more pieces than I thought it would…partially because I drew it to size instead of enlarging it, so I kept drawing these stupid tiny pieces. And then while I was numbering it, I thought about adding some more cracks around, but I stopped myself…for now. Looking at that photo above makes me want to add more though. It currently has 543 pieces. Who knows what it will have at the end. I have some time to think about it, though, because it is not the next one on the list…it’s the one AFTER the next one.

So I started tracing Bathtub 2, which is the next one on the list…

I can’t remember how many pieces it has…hang on…this is partially why I have a blog: to document my own shit because I can’t remember it. (Kathy scrolls back through the blog)…595 pieces. Oh. Hey. Not bad.

Anyway. I traced for an hour, and now my right hand is sore…

Which is kind of pitiful really. Although I did use the same hand for numbering. I didn’t even get 75 pieces done. See the big long skinny tree pieces? Pain in the butt. And yet I keep drawing them. You’d think I’d learn. But no. This one is going to have some big bathtub pieces too.

I’m using the new Wonder Under. It’s very plasticky. It sticks to the paper when I trace, which helps in that the paper doesn’t move as much as it used to, but then it doesn’t let go of the paper either. Kind of different…but the paper’s not releasing from the fusible either, so that’s a good thing. I’ll probably be tracing all week. I’ve got a bunch of stuff on at night this week, so I won’t get a lot of art time, I think…although I do try every night. It doesn’t have to be more than 30 minutes though. Last night, while tracing, I got a thunderstorm running through town…thunder, lightning scared the animals, and then it rained heavily for a while. We need it. Plus it’s kinda cool to be awake really late and see the light flashing and hear and feel the boom…then waiting as the quiet pitter patter turns into waves of rain pounding down.

This morning, though, there are no such natural phenomena…today is just overcast and a bit humid, with sounds of hairdryers and water heaters in the near distance. And a job that calls me, kind of rudely, reminding me how I pay the bills.

She Got Legs…

Yeah so I finished the quilt. No final pictures to be posted until something…um…I think we’re supposed to wait a week or so. Plus it hasn’t been officially photographed. But it took me a few hours last night (ok, almost 3, because I was really slow apparently) to finish the binding and sleeves. I debated putting only one sleeve on it, because it’s not huge, but figured it would still hang better with two, and it’s easier to put it on now than later. All these practical things that flutter through my head.

When I was done, I wanted to draw. Probably (based on how I’m feeling this morning) should have gone to bed, but I’m not sure the brain would have shut down last night. School was a stress ball, not because of kids (well, a little because of kids), but now it’s done and I really don’t want to think about it. It’s my job and it sucks up too much energy. So I headed for the drawing in progress…

Which was being inhabited by a very black, hard-to-photograph cat. Hi Midnight. She’s the same cat that was trying to lie on the quilt earlier (if you’re on my Instagram, you would have seen her). Basically, she wants to be all over my stuff. Like cats do. Clean clothes, the papers I’m grading, the quilt under the machine, the book I’d like to read. Yup. You know if you have them what evil beasts they are, and they love someone who works with fabric and paper. This is not a light table…it’s a cat staging area.

Anyway, I pulled the drawing out from under and she stayed there and I drew around her.

And this is where the shitty day went back to OK, because dammit, I rocked those legs. I did exactly what I wanted to. I am incredibly happy with the damn legs…

Can you tell? And then I stopped, because…well, I could stop there and be done. But that’s unlike me. I want to add stuff to it, like cats and cups of tea and trees growing out of weird places. But I don’t know if it needs it (and she already has stuff coming out of her head). Maybe it’s OK to just stop there and make that quilt.

I don’t know though. So until I do, it’s still in progress. Which is fine, because I think I have to do grades tonight anyway. UGH. OK wait. You keep having these epiphanies about Art Good and Work Semi-Bad, certainly don’t let it take your sanity…so maybe grades yes, because progress reports are due, but maybe also something else. Maybe I’ll pull out the big drawing and work on it tonight. I seem to be on a roll with that.

I’m also considering a new batch of smaller quilts, a la the birds of last year, except maybe cats? I don’t know. I’m also looking around for a summer job, part time, one that doesn’t suck up my brain too badly. Ha. So not teaching. Sigh.

With all that cheeriness in mind (fuck! no! You drew awesome legs last night!), I need to go to work. It’s Friday. I can survive that.

That Place to Stop

Stayed up too late. Ugh. But the quilting! And I was almost done! And it won’t take much longer…just this little bit…don’t look at the clock, just finish. Not the best decision in the world. Oh well.

I had about a third of the outline quilting left to do when I abandoned this a week or so ago.

I pull out my trusty phone that has my trusty app on it where I keep track of my art time…oh holy crap. It’s been two weeks since I touched this. I wonder why? Just didn’t feel like quilting, I guess. What have I been doing? Sewing bindings…drawing. That’s about it, right? Not a whole lot, really.

This is not a huge quilt, so I figured I could make a serious dent in the quilting last night. I wasn’t starting as late as the night before, so that had to be a good thing. When I finished the outlining, I had to make a decision about the background, which has 70 trillion colors in it and goes from dark to light all over the place. So I picked a variegated thread that goes from orange through green through purple…

Which is kinda crazy if you think about it. My background does have purple, but more of a blue purple than this one. It has browns that verge on orange. There’s like no green at all.

I usually pick a thread that fades into the background color. I don’t like the background to compete with the image, but this one already does, so by using an allover stipple with a variegated thread, I was hoping to tone that down a bit…

Up close, it’s still a little crazy.

But I like it. And from a distance, it’s not obvious…just tones down the lights a bit…

I think it works. I’m really happy with this.

I finished all the quilting last night. I shouldn’t have. I really should have stopped somewhere on the right side of the quilt, given up on finishing it last night, and gone to bed. Deceptively not small quilt. I quilted for almost 4 hours last night. I’m officially crazy. And tired this morning. I know I survived on much less sleep than this last year, but I don’t know how I did it. Proof that there was something really truly wrong, I guess.

Tonight, I’ll (SLEEP!!!) um yeah that AND trim this and bind it hopefully. I probably should do some grades too, because progress report grades are due next Tuesday. Eh.

I do not know how I am going to choose a binding color for this thing. At my fiber art meeting on Sunday, I presented new work and so did another woman who used to quilt, but now makes things that hang on the walls that could be quilts, but she’s trying to move away from that to art (I did not take offense at that…mine are obviously both, and I don’t mind using all the trappings of quilting to make my art). She doesn’t use a batting, doesn’t quilt, and doesn’t bind the edges, but her work is abstract and rooted in traditional quilting in some ways, more contemporary calm and focused on simple shapes and movement across the piece. I like the binding on mine as a frame to the piece, especially when it’s hanging on the wall. It gives the eye a place to rest, points it back inside the piece. Like stop here, and bounce back into the image. So I will need a binding. And I’m going to have to rummage through my stash for all those binding pieces Mariah gave me and see if some of them work. I don’t think it would be strange to piece a binding for this quilt from multiple fabrics. But I still want that finished edge, that place to stop.

Maybe I will finish this one in April too.

No, I didn’t draw last night. Still working the legs out in my head.

All right. Need to take my exhausted self to work, where the kids are all flabbergasted that I have a Facebook page. Oh kids, kids…I’ve been on Facebook since before you started SCHOOL. Really? The world is such a strange place when you deal with middle school all day. My current students were born after 9/11. They don’t know a world without cable TV and cell phones and tablets, and yet they barely know how to use all that.

Shit. Another drawing popped into my head. Bloody hell. The drawing part of my brain is on a roll…BALANCE! Can’t get there.

Late Start

I didn’t start making art last night until 11:20 PM. I didn’t mean to start that late. I got home late anyway, because of errands after school, and I was tired. Like sit on the couch and read your book tired. It’s hard to be motivated to do anything when you’re that tired. But at some point, the girlchild mentioned the gym, and that got us out of here and over to the gym. Late. And we worked out and it was good. I really do enjoy exercise, plus I was trying to finish my book…not because I liked it, but because I wanted to know what was going to happen. If that makes sense.

We got home, had dinner around 9:30, and then I finished the book and cleaned the kitchen, and after ALL that, headed for the drawing from the night before.

The plus is that it went easier last night. I’m not sure what the issue was Sunday night, but it was just like hard work. And I did consider that I should just go to bed (and this morning’s headache is probably proof that I should have gone to bed, but I didn’t…and I’m glad).

I got most of the torso of the front figure done (I think the back figure will be mostly hidden)…

And added the back figure’s arm. I’m still debating whether there will be anything on the sides…there’s room, but it would be OK if there wasn’t anything there, I think. I don’t have a ton of time on this piece or the other two I should be working on, so I have to keep that in mind.

The stuff below will all be new, not using an existing drawing as a jumping-off point like I’ve been doing with this.

So I have four legs and I have to decide how to handle them. I had the front figure’s legs in pencil, drew one in, and then decided to wrap one of the back figure’s legs around the front. I’ll draw that tonight maybe. I wasn’t happy with the foot, so I stopped. Plus it was midnight 30. And that’s late and I needed to go to bed.

And I felt really calm and mellow afterwards (which might have been the hour and a half at the gym maybe)…and fell asleep quickly…and didn’t sleep all that well in the long run. Ugh. Hormones. Messing with my sleep. Stop it.

I have quilt class on Thursday and I don’t know what I’m taking with me to work on there. Nothing is at the right stage. I’m not drawing there. Everything is already numbered. I won’t trace Wonder Under elsewhere any more unless it’s small, and nothing I’m working on is small. I haven’t gotten any Wonder Under traced, because I decided to finish the two drawings first. The quilt under the machine won’t take long to finish. I guess I could try to get it quilted and put a binding on it, so I could stitch that down. Ugh. Not sure I can do that in the next two days. We’ll see.

Inertia. I’m not good at it. Really, that’s the key. Don’t sit down. Just keep moving. It doesn’t matter that there’s only 30 minutes before you should go to sleep. Grab a pen/pencil and draw. Take a few stitches. Trace a few pieces. It’s better than none and you’ll feel better the next day, even if you can’t keep your eyes open (probably should go to bed earlier than me).

Redraw…

Sunday Night: Drawings are in my head, crying to be let out, much like the Golden Retriever who then stands at the doorway, staring at me as if I have asked her to sacrifice her dinner. “I don’t really want to go out, mom. I just want attention.” I carry my sketchbooks around, two of them, for two days straight, thinking that will help me, but I can’t draw around people. The drawings are shy; they don’t want attention like that. Just mine, like needy two-year-olds, clinging to mom. Fuckers.

I had an art meeting yesterday afternoon, so I didn’t have a chance to work on art stuff all day Saturday or Sunday until about 9:30 PM. And then this happened.

And I’m negotiating with a cat. Look, Midnight, it’s bad enough that I have to have Friends on while I’m trying to do this, when I really need something dark and evil like Orphan Black or Helix, but when you repeatedly claw at the paper when I’m trying to get it out from under you? More attention-seekers.

I finally got everything out from under the cat and pulled this drawing from a few months back…

Which was a redraw of this drawing…

and which I liked, but…ran out of paper. Whoops. And wasn’t sure about the tree. Or the drumstick. (The top drawing, which is the second one. The first one? Has some things going for it…but…I don’t know.) So I have a deadline coming up with this idea of oasis, and I’m sure some people go straight to palm trees or a pool of water, a place where we go to escape. So I’m working with that, but the place is mental. Because when I get my brain all tied up in knots, that is what I need…a method to get away from that crazy.

I’m working with a prescribed size though. And it doesn’t work with how the drawing was in my brain on this, the third iteration…but I thought I could start by drawing the top and then I could figure it out from there…

And oh my god, that was a clusterfuck. OK, not completely. But I needed more liquid paper than I really like to use, because I’m drawing this one to size, not enlarging it, so when I’m tracing from the back, I will still be able to see the lines I covered up, and it gets really confusing. Plus I was just fucking it up all over the place, so I walked the fuck away from it. Because the lines weren’t going where I wanted them to. The pen was fighting me.

Because if I can’t draw. Bloody hell. I thought about doing some quilting or just going to bed, but I really wanted to make this work. I didn’t want to let the drawing win. So I cut another piece of paper, measured the appropriate size, and laid it on top…

Because some parts were OK. The eyes were fucked up. The right hand was a bloody mess. I don’t even know what was going on with the neckline, but the man’s head was good. And things were in generally the right place. Do over.

You can see on the right what I thought was OK enough to copy. Then the sketchbook is what I’m drawing from…well, sort of. And then under the sketchbook was the rejected drawing.

At that point, it was 11:30 PM. I could stop. Maybe I should stop.

Fuck that. I kept going…got the face done…

And the hand that bugged me before, and the outline of the torso. Much better. Deep sigh. So I guess this is really version number 4. Fighting this one out, seriously. It’s just messing with me. I think some of that is that I’m used to drawing smaller, in a sketchbook I can hold on my lap, sitting on the couch, and this is standing at the light table and it’s big and I’m trying to reach across AND make sure the pieces aren’t too small. So I needed to persuade my hand it could do all of that.

And now, when I’d really rather stay home and draw this, I need to go to work. Sigh. Deep sigh. Art brain goes off to sulk in the corner.

Finished these yesterday at the art meeting…

They were almost done at soccer last weekend. But that’s July. Now on to August. Don’t ask what year.

Note to self: We have enough conditioner until the end of time. Don’t buy more.

Mood is better. Body is in revolution. Uterus is conducting volcanic studies. Tired. Iron depletion? Ugh.

She Be Done

I finished it.

Last night. Actually early this morning. After midnight. Almost 90 hours since the end of January. But it’s done almost a month earlier than I was hoping. I need to finish the other little one so I can call the photographer. Because y’all probably want to see nice pictures of it, instead of all I can get, which is this…

Because it’s kinda big and I don’t have anywhere I can lay it out right now, without cleaning a floor, and I really don’t feel like cleaning fucking anything at the moment.

How do I feel about this quilt? It’s nice. It’s pretty. Sigh. And people like it. Maybe that’s all I have to know. I hope it gets into the show for which I made it, because that would be really annoying if it didn’t. I only have one quilt I can enter in that one, because of the silly restrictions. The reality is I might need to make more of these pretty quilts, although probably much smaller if I want them to sell, because this thing ain’t cheap…you can’t put 90 hours into something and sell it for a couple hundred dollars. I mean, you CAN, but it’s fucking stupid.

But I’m telling you, the next three quilts all have fucking uteri in them, so I will feel much better about them. You have to understand that I am currently being ruled by my uterus. It hurts, it bleeds, it is a crazy mess, and all the hormones it and my ovaries are producing so haphazardly are running my emotions all over the map, fucking with my sleep, my brain, everything. Really, I should do…oh shit, I just had some amazing ideas for uterus quilts. Huh.

Crap. I have so much stuff to do right now, and about 25 ideas for drawings just popped into my head. Which makes me want to cry, because my job…the one that pays the bills…it’s really sucking up some major time at the moment and I’m trying not to think about what that might look like next year. Because I’m trying not to assume the worst. I’m trying to just step back and say, yeah whatever. Just tell me what you want me to teach. I’ll come to school every day and maybe I’ll just suck at it. Because I don’t want to spend another 10 hours a week working at a job that really just would take everything if it could. I want those extra hours for art. I might need those extra hours for another job. And it needs to be a job that I don’t take home with me, because I can’t take on anything else at the moment. The emotional crap with having both kids gone and being alone here in this house is bad enough without letting me make art in that time. I need that time in my head for peace. I really do. As I get older, it seems to get worse. I think I spent so many years pushing all that away and doing mom stuff and job stuff and managing everything that after the Big Depression of 2013 (that is still going on some level), I really can’t go back to that. I can’t be that person any more. And honestly? I have a 19-year-old and an almost 18-year-old. I shouldn’t have to be mom at that level any more. And I have enough years into teaching that I shouldn’t have to be working like a first-year teacher. Ha! As we add technology, which I am doing like a crazy person, and change standards. OK. So there is still a major learning curve. But I don’t get excited when you ask me what else do I want to be teaching…I DON’T want to be teaching anything else.

Fuck. I’m a mess. Maybe I should just blow everything off and draw.

Sigh. No, one of those things is financial aid for the boychild. Need that. Another is food and meds for the animals. I need to take care of them. They take care of me. And food for the week. Can’t really blow that off.

Fucking responsible adult brain. I wonder about Picasso. Did he blow off everything else? Probably.

Last night…

I’m watching DS9 on the righthand computer, the cat is sitting on my lap demanding pets, the school laptop is behind her, where I’m grading assignments on Google Classroom, and three teenaged girls are eating all the pizza in the world in the living room. I don’t even use that TV any more…let alone the VCR. If I ever remodel this room…probably there will be another computer monitor up there. I did get one assignment completely graded though. I’m getting better at doing these. It’s hard in the classroom though, because often the free time I have is when kids are responding to something on my computer, so I can’t grade at the same time…and the app for tablets fucking sucks at the moment. The tablet the school gave me won’t even respond at all, and the iPad, if you click on a student, nothing happens. Same with the phone (not shocking, probably the same app). So I just stand there, trying to figure out what to do with my “free” time. I mean, really, it’s about 10 minutes per period, but yes, I’m that fucking efficient. I can grade 6 or 7 warmups in that time period. I can get through 5 assignments on Classroom. Every 5 counts. So I’ve been bringing my school computer home every weekend instead and trying to make sure I get through an assignment a weekend. SUCKS.

I saw this fabric online somewhere and it poked at me for about three days before I decided I couldn’t live without it.

Apr 25 15 001 small

Plus I want to draw some more stuff like that, right? Tula Pink. Interesting. So then I tried to find it and found it on sale, and that’s when this happened…

I can’t really explain it. But there’s Adventure Time and Walking Dead and wooden rulers? I don’t know. Don’t ask. It’ll end up somewhere. I cannot explain my fabric stash. They were all on sale.

By the way, Earth Stories (or most of it) just opened on Thursday at the Kennedy Museum of Art, University of Ohio, Athens. It will be there through early September. So if you want to see my piece and you’re at Quilt National (where my work will NOT be…can I get a high 5?), then head over there in a free moment.

Because not only do you get a uterus, but it has a fetal skelly in it. That sucker was a bitch to make.

OK. I’m getting some shit crossed off my to-do list right now.

Misnumbering…

I had a plan for last night. I was going to finish up that small recycled quilt, finish the quilting anyway, and maybe pick a binding for it. I realized (shhh, don’t tell the show organizer) that I put all of Mariah’s fabrics away in my stash, and so the binding might have to be whatever I can find…which is amusing, because she actually had bindings already cut out. Duh.

So I was finishing up grades, because I needed to determine whether two kids could play basketball tomorrow, and I had the music on, because that damn Smiths song (when a doubledecker bus crashes into us) would not get the fuck out of my head, and I was trying to chase it out, and so I was playing some music to do that, when the girlchild texted me from her bedroom (this is a common occurrence) that she was trying to go to sleep and could I please “turn the beats down.” Huh. She clarified that it was easier to fall asleep to my sewing machine, because it was more rhythmic or something. White noise. But she’s having a hard time with school and I basically say the wrong thing all the time (like “I love you.” and “I know you can do it.” and “How can I help you?”. Those are all the wrong things. Honestly I don’t know what the right things are. The Parenting Manual doesn’t cover this situation.), and I felt like as her mom, I probably shouldn’t be negatively affecting her sleep. And I can sew tonight or Friday or Saturday or just about any day. So I didn’t.

I have other stuff to do. So I started numbering. And this is so very exciting to watch. Really. And photograph. And I make mistakes all the time. I posted a picture to Instagram and there’s a double number right there. Space cadet.

I try to be logical about how I number stuff. All the body parts together. Start at the bottom. On the two bathtub drawings I did, I numbered all the stuff outside the bathtub counterclockwise (I don’t know why…it made sense last night). Then I numbered the bathtub clockwise (OK, I’m fucking nuts…it makes no sense) and anything hanging on the bathtub. Then I did the water. All of it. Then things floating in the water. Then flesh. I don’t know if I will be swearing at myself when I go to iron it all out or not.

But I did Bathtub 4 first…

Because it was on top. It’s not really upside down. It has about 650 pieces. Not so bad. Although some of them are annoying. I realized how convoluted the bathtub water pieces are gonna be. And the bathtub pieces…I’m gonna need some big pieces of fabric. I might need to go shopping. So sad. Probably because I imagine a white bathtub and blue water. At least I do right now.

I misnumber stuff all the time. Sometimes I double number like 50 pieces or I leave out 50 numbers. It’s because I’m keeping the numbers in my head and my head fucks stuff up. I realized last night that I would be thinking “648” and my hand would either write it backwards (846) or start in the wrong place (486). So that’s not crazy or fucked up or anything. OK, it could be argued that I was tired and it was late at night, but…sometimes I wonder about menopause brain. Because it’s a fuzzy emotional mess sometimes. And how does that help with survival of the species? Makes it easier for predators to find me, because now I am no longer useful to the species’ survival…so I might as well feed someone else. Cheery thought.

I looked at the clock before I started numbering Bathtub 2…

…which really does have an upside-down head in it. I always look at the clock, but it doesn’t necessarily stop me from continuing. It took me just under an hour to number 4…and it was a little after 11 PM. So it seemed reasonable to keep going. I was tired, but not so tired that I would fall immediately to sleep, and thems my rulez. No going to bed until you know you can fall asleep, so there will be less tossing and turning and crying into the pillow (ah, moodiness, you slay me).

It took less time to number this one, because it only has 595 pieces. I think I am going to do it first too. Although its bathtub pieces are even bigger. Pristine white bathtubs (things that do not exist in my house…our one bathtub is that putrid 70s salmon color and clearly not pristine) and water…water is one of those interesting things to color. In real life, it is rarely so blue as we picture it, except apparently in the Caribbean, where I’ve never been (and probably never will be either). Yet I continue to sparkle it blue. Pretty blue. I realize I need to let these two color themselves in my brain for a while. That is how I color them. I don’t do it on paper…it’s all in my head. It’s OK. I need to trace and cut out Wonder Under before I’ll be ready to iron to fabric. That’s a significant number of hours that my brain can spend coloring to its heart’s delight.

I gave up after that and went to bed. I could’ve sewed more binding down. I could’ve drawn the rest of that big drawing or the other long skinny one that’s sorta in my head and needs to be done too. Eh. But it was already after midnight, and although I could picture myself continuing to work, I could also picture how I would have felt this morning (which was hard enough, thank you very much). So I did the mature and responsible thing. Shocking. I do try to balance the crazy with the mature…not necessarily successfully. So there’s some chance of my surviving today. Probably a good thing.