I always appreciate it when nature makes it nice to get up early in the morning. I have a morning meeting and no car, so I’m hitching an early ride, but it’s pajama day! Oh yay! Yes, I showered and changed into clean pajamas. I am not a heathen. Besides, I don’t actually wear pajamas to bed…they’re too hot.
Yesterday was the first release of my embroidery patterns…here’s one of them…
They should be available as patterns only early next week, and as kits in late April some time. I still need to stitch my prototypes, which means I need to go find fabric, which is hard to do without a car. I guess there’s the internet. I like to patronize my local quilt store though. I want her to stay in business. The patterns and kits will be available through Global Artisans…this is an experiment for me…I don’t know if it’s a viable way to earn money, but it’s something.
I had quilt class last night, so I ended up getting about 2 3/4 hours of cutting in, and I’m almost done (I did grade too, of course, thus eating into my cutting time). Trash in the top right, the big box has what’s left, and the cut pieces on the bottom right.
I couldn’t stay up late. I need to be functional today. And it’s more than it looks…probably a couple hours there. So tonight, I’ll grade and I’ll finish cutting these, and if I have time, sort for ironing. We’re hiking tomorrow, so I won’t get much done tomorrow, except you know, health and stuff. But I should be ironing things together this weekend, which is good, because I’m running out of time. As always. What’s new? OK, I need to leave with my ride soon, so this is all I got. Good Friday people.
You know how exercise is supposed to help you sleep? Hmm. Me too. I know that. I don’t always have that experience, but I know it’s supposed to. Last night. Sheesh. No rest. I don’t know if my brain was the issue or my body (my neck really needs the chiropractor, which is tonight, unless I forget again, which is what got me in trouble in the first place)…the dog needed to pee at around 4:30 AM; that was fun. I just don’t know anything but that I was awake a lot for such a short period of time of sleep. I went to bed too late because I was ironing the flesh colors down and I like doing that in one fell swoop, but then I had to be up early for a meeting (ugh). You might have noticed that I don’t like early. I don’t. And I was really tired yesterday after the dog walk…it took me a long while to rally.
The plus is that the kids were much better at labs yesterday, thus saving me from sacrificing one (or ten) of them to the science teacher goddess. Let’s hope that continues. The staff meeting was short and sweet. Also a blessing. Well, not sweet, but certainly not as onerous as some of them are.
Mondays are for dog walks…when I don’t have 2-hour meetings and no daylight. We haven’t been here for a while, maybe a month…the first part of the trail is still underwater…
No biggie…we go around. Although there were ducks swimming in it…and tadpoles growing in it (OK, they’re really hard to see in here, but they’re gray-ish and pretty large).
Is this a quilt blog? Well, sort of. Quilters should go on walks and get inspired.
Still green and bloomy…although not superbloomy here…the dogs still like it…
I just like to get out and exercise…
The wildflowers make it good too though…
It’s like this annual fascination with Spring…
Every year I’m like OMG, look! There’s flowers!
Some sort of renewal in the brain brought on by the weather. Honestly, these flowers are easier to think about than job stress, weight loss, the shooting in Christchurch, the flooding in Mozambique, the idiocy of my elected officials.
Yup. Flowers. And a good long walk after work.
For some reason, the puppy doesn’t like this hike as much as the others. He fights it until we turn back toward the car, and then he’s fine…
Although we took another side trip up to see the vernal pool…which was huge!
And had those other big fat tadpoles, but also these tiny ones…
Makes me wonder where all the frogs are most of the time…
There’s glass up there…that’s why he’s carrying the pup. So he doesn’t get glass in his toes from the dumbasses who break their beer bottles up there. It’s nature, but the town is right there. And people are stupid.
They kept following me around when we got home…although I think this was following someone else around.
After the walk, I did some photo editing for work, some scanning for embroidery designs, some business paperwork, some email…picked colors for this one…
I have a really hard time seeing what they will look like without stitching them out. That’s soon, I guess.
After some flailing time, some braindead time, I finally persuaded my old tired body into the studio for this…picking flesh.
It’s really much easier to do all the fleshy bits in one go, so I did. It was pieces from the 100s through the 800s, so I have no idea how much I actually did…at least 100 pieces, I suspect. I have one piece of the cheek that I couldn’t find, so I’ll need to retrace that tonight.
Fitting pieces together. I don’t like to waste fabric.
Somewhat obsessive about that. Here’s where I’m at so far…
Not a whole lot of color yet. Wait until I do all the other stuff…bugs and sky and heart and hair…it’ll have lots of color then. I fell asleep to imagining the hair all the colors of nature. Which is good, because that’s what this quilt is about…my need to be outside for a little bit every day, for longer when I can. This week will be a mishmash of finding that space, for sure…too many meetings. So I’m glad I got yesterday’s walk in.
OK…meeting, school (last day of labs hallelujah), tutoring, chiropractor (oh holy moley my back and neck will be so happy), and then whatever else I can handle before I iron again. It’s a good plan.
Kathy Nida 