Category: Hiking

Trusted the Brain…

There’s a definite weight off the shoulders. There’s still plenty of work to do, but knowing I don’t have to have 17 posts ready for Google Classroom by tomorrow night is a relief. Knowing I don’t have to be on Zoom and watched by parents and brothers and sisters is a relief. I can just sit quietly with myself if I want. Well, when I’m not around all the other people and animals in the house, right? It’s hard to get away from absolutely everybody, and I’m not sure I’d want that. I am alone here right now and it’s dark and I just heard something go over the gate. Or under it. Probably a bunny. But who knows; I’m in here freaking myself out about it. You’d think after living mostly alone for a goodly number of years while the kids were in college I’d be OK with it.

Today’s topic is “on the design wall.” Ah, so many assumptions in that topic…that everyone has or wants a design wall. It’s not how I work at all. I don’t ever pin something up and step back and look at it. Maybe I should, but I don’t have the space or the time, so I mostly always did without…trusted the brain to do the previewing and critiquing before things were all put together. Crazy, really. So yeah, I draw in a sketchbook and sometimes on a big sheet of paper, and then, when I’m ready to iron Wonder Under to fabric, when I’m at the color-choosing stage, that’s the closest I get to a design wall. I hang the drawing up and stare at where each piece is and stare at the fabrics I’ve already picked and stare at the background fabric, and that’s it. My brain does the work.

So there’s the drawing clipped up from when I did that. It will come down when I start ironing together next week, because I use it as the pattern: put the teflon sheet on top of it, so I can get the pieces in the right place.

No design wall. Sorry? Not sorry. It’s just now how I work. I did in the very beginning; I even had this big cubicle wall for a while that I was going to use for that, a leftover from somewhere, but there was never room for it in the house, so it went at some point…probably when we cleaned out the garage a few years back.

Speaking of the most current quilt, I’m almost done trimming all those bits and pieces…I had Calli for a while…

Simba too, but not photographed…and then Kitten…

I cut for almost 3 hours last night, quite happily.

There isn’t much left in the box on the left. Maybe I’ll be done tonight? Sort tomorrow night? We’ll see.

I also started my Winter Break tradition of a drawing a day…while gaming…

I was pretty tired, and I didn’t think very hard about any of it.

Certainly my glass ended up in the drawing…in fact, that’s where I started, with a hand around the glass.

Today’s been pretty quiet…some grading, some Pilates on Zoom with dog assist, plus a 4-mile hike…

Outside is always a good thing.

San Diego is currently full of idiots refusing to stay safe…so we go out here, where most people are sane. We think. It’s certainly not a restaurant full of people.

OK, so finish cutting, do a drawing, watch a movie. It’s supposed to be chilly tonight; maybe a fire in the fireplace, dinner from somewhere, not inside, not around people. Then sleep again, because I haven’t gotten enough of that in a good long time.

Small Hands…

My earliest memory of sewing? I remember trying to embroider (badly), but I don’t remember how old I was. Somewhere in this house are a few pieces of half-done embroidery or cross stitch from that era…definitely younger than middle school. When I was 7 or 8, I used some of my mom’s curtain material, yellow for god’s sake (not a color I ever wear). You cut four rectangles. Two got lace all around the edges. The other two were sewn together on the sides to make a short fat tube, and then gathered at the top, and then somehow you attached the two rectangles to the top of that to make these wing sleeves.

Hell…this might have been the pattern…

My lord, that is ugly. In fact, I have a stash of clothing patterns, also hidden somewhere in this house, which has some pockets of black void that hide an endless number of bizarre things I will never use again. I sewed a lot of my own clothes for a time, even into high school, thus labeling me forever as a strange beast. Nothing has changed since then, except I sew quilts instead of my clothes, preferring to fritter my time away on art rather than making stuff I can wear that costs a ton of money.

I do remember sitting at the Jack and Jill desks my mom had in her weaving/sewing studio that my dad built her, and listening to Muzak versions of the Beatles and The Mamas and the Papas, while I coaxed my mom’s old 1962 Singer (still in my garage even now) up to about 100 miles per hour of straight lines with the occasional zigzag.

Nothing has changed. Well, mom still has the desks, and I sew at my own desk, so there’s that.

I made curtains, I made a couch cover, I’ve made bedding of sorts, lots of clothing, baby quilts, etc. But mostly art quilts. There are over 90 of them here. Storage is an issue.

Anyway. Last night, I finished ironing all the Wonder Under to fabric; it took just over 19 hours.

And 165 different fabrics…

Now I get to cut them all out.

I walked tonight. Made a new friend.

Presumably he doesn’t get out much. Small hands. Stopped at the ex’s house to check out his lights.

Actually, I really needed to pee. Then I put my headlamp on and did the last half mile to home. Cooked dinner, did some grading, tried to finish my book (it’s good!), and now I will start cutting. I might grade something else first. I’m trying to get ahead (you’re never ahead) so I don’t have to work most of break. Ah ha ha ha ha. It’ll never happen. But I’ll try.

Stash

When I was growing up, there was this cardboard box in the cupboard in the hallway between my room and my brother’s and it was full of fabric scraps. I recognized some from things I had in the closet, mostly pajamas, honestly, but some other bits and pieces from dresses and tops. I had some scraps of fabric in college from classes I’d taken; being told that fiber and fabric were not of artistic merit, I ignored the professors and found classes at art centers in weaving and batik and eventually quilting. In the early days, I bought 1/8 yards, because I couldn’t imagine using up that much fabric ever. Eventually I graduated to half yards, which is mostly what I buy these days, except if I need yardage for bindings or backgrounds, or if all that’s available is fat quarters. When people give up quilting (whether temporarily to move to Morocco or permanently because it no longer gives them joy), they call me and I pick up their stashes. When someone dies and no one in the family sews, I pick up their stashes. When people move across country and can’t take it all with them, I pick up their stashes. Sometimes people see a piece of fabric and it speaks my name to them, and I get it in an envelope in the mail. Someone gave me an apron once because they thought I would like it; another person sent me a scarf.

I do love fabric, the patterns, the colors, and the texture, the flow, the hang, the drape, the shine, the touch, the feel of it.

I do probably have too much of it. Every year, I make a goal to use more of it, to piece backings and backgrounds and bindings and the like. Sometimes I am successful and sometimes it’s a shit year full of a pandemic, and although my shopping has been limited, somehow my stash has grown.

Hey, so this is just what’s in here with me. I took the doors off the closet. Each bin is color-coded. This is mostly cottons, although the crazy quilt fabrics are on the left.

So all that was the yellows, purples, whites, and some of the blues, greens, and blacks. I have a plan for redoing all this and reorganizing it…but I spent all the money to do that on fabric. OK, not really…I don’t actually buy a ton of fabric. Sitting at the computer and looking under the ironing board (like you do…damn…this is a small room and it’s impossible to get a photo without the ironing board in it)…these are most of the browns, all the oranges and reds, and a few more whites and pinks. Oh yeah, and one drawer of blue and one of black.

Well…pink isn’t exactly right. It’s my flesh collection. Yes, I wear Crocs in here…they’re bouncy and cushioned against concrete floors with no padding. I stand a lot.

Most of the fleshy pink bits hide under the sewing table, along with one more brown drawer and three black.

I like me some black and white graphic stuff.

This part is mostly a disaster. There’s some crazy quilt stuff in there, some muslin, some other solids, some quilts in progress, a pile of hand-dyed (by me) a bunch of batting, some pieces big enough for backgrounds or backings in the white drawers, plus grays, greens, and the rest of the blues. And behind all that is a small cat tunnel made of batting scraps. Don’t ask.

The cardboard box is where the cat has been hanging out lately. I can’t take it away from her.

It all needs cleaning and/or organizing. Don’t tell me to purge. I’ve tried it multiple times and it doesn’t bring me joy.

There is also fabric under my bed…mostly crazy quilt fabrics and wools and a few things that I don’t know how to get rid of, like velvets and dresses from my grandmother or mother or great aunt or who knows? Fabriholic. Yes I am. I’m OK with that. It’s not like I don’t use it.

Speaking of using it, I got a goodly chunk of the body parts ironed last night, the stuff that makes up the rest of the body besides the flesh…also a bird. But I still have lungs and hair and a baby to iron. Hopefully tonight. Then I’ll be done…

That’s all. That’s a lot of colors…

Then I get to cut stuff out.

Looking forward to it. I relax with scissors. Actually, I also relax on walks. We dared to take the old lady dog out on a longer walk (it was probably a bit too long), but we saw two white-winged kites…first time ever, I think.

Great photo, I know…distance is not a phone camera’s friend. Same with this…

Spot the blurry coyote. Ah well. Reminds me it was there.

The skies have been gorgeous for weeks…probably a sign the world is ending.

We’ll find out later that COVID has infected the sky. Lovely poinsettia from my school friends. Matches the sky.

They also brought me this calendar for 2021, since I will probably be distance teaching for most of it. Shoot me now.

Yeah well. It’s hard not to give a shit and still care about teaching. I don’t know how to turn off the ‘care about’ part, so I just try to keep as chill as possible about it with the rest of the crazy shit swirling around right now.

But in good news, even with the stupid electoral college, we now no longer have a Trump in office. May his fuckery take him down. But we’re watching, y’all. Put it all back where it was. Bring back the environment and get those immigrant families back together and if one of our asshole doctors removed a uterus without permission, then those families need to be compensated, and surely there are numerous people who belong in jail right now, and probably numerous people who ARE in jai and DON’T belong there, and let’s talk about global warming and taking care of people and finding money for businesses and people who are struggling right now. ALL OF THEM. Not just the Democrats, not just the rich people, not just the white people. Sigh. This last year has been such a fucking mess. And today is the 8th anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting. So let’s do something about guns for once. Really.

Also this…

That’s for sure. OK. I have ironing to do. And I need more tea.

Favorite

Maybe it’s the word ‘favorite’ that bugs me. I’m not such a black and white person. The topic for Day 12 is Favorite Color. When? Today? Right now? Purple. Tomorrow morning, when I’m barely awake? Maybe teal or turquoise. Tonight I’m supposed to start ironing the figure in my quilt, so probably heading into the flesh terrain…so those are the pink boxes, which for me are one of the largest parts of my stash…not because I love pink (I don’t), but because I stash all the flesh tones in there, unless they are hiding in brown or purple…which some of them are. For backgrounds? I love a seriously dark blue…not black, which is my favorite (not)color to wear. And draw with. I love using really bright colors in my work, in my quilts, not on my body. But I appreciate a toned-down palette for when that’s what’s needed. So ‘favorite’. Not a thing. All of them. Wait until tomorrow…I’m supposed to talk about ‘least favorite.’ I think because I make figurative quilts, quilts that tell a story, that all the colors are important and useful. I don’t think of one being more or less useful than the others. They all have their place and I don’t dislike any one.

It’s different if I’m wearing them. Then it’s a different story, right? But every color has its place in the palette.

I ran that year of color thing on my Instagram for 2020 (a weird year, yes, but I still post on Insta almost every day)…

They analyze the colors in your photos by how much they appear. Interesting. So many flesh tones and blues.

I barely ironed last night. I worked and gamed and worked some more. I ironed a rocket ship and I think that’s it.

Oh, I laid out all the 800s. Flesh, baby.

This next section is a big commitment, with all the body parts in there. And it’s already almost 10:30 PM.

We hiked this morning, Boden Canyon, the third hike we’ve done in the Coast to Crest Challenge…

It was pretty; fall colors everywhere.

It’s probably pretty hot in summer, but I was freezing at the start.

It started down in the canyon and then climbed out a bit.

The whole Boden Canyon loop is over 14 miles with 2000-foot gain, which we did not do, although we did do 6.7 miles.

Came home, ate, exhausted, then graded for 5 hours, but got progress reports done. Woo hoo! A miracle.

Now I’m trying to wake up enough to start picking flesh fabrics. The man is working on his Santa disguise.

It was a nice hike, mostly flat for the bit we did.

I’m really not sure how this gate is supposed to work.

Intriguing construction. Anyway. Go outside. Do the nature thing. It’s good for you.

Me? I’m going to try to iron for a bit and then collapse into a death-like sleep. Then tomorrow, I’ll try to figure out what my least favorite color is, in between grocery shopping and trying to finish planning for the week. It’ll be good.

Mad Skillz

Today’s blog challenge topic is “skills I wish I had.” Well, y’all are gonna be disappointed because none of them are quilt-, fabric-, or sewing-related. Because all of those I either have or know that I could have if I really wanted them. In fact, it’s the same thing I tell all my students…wanna get better at it? Then practice. Sure, I’d love to be able to pick up a guitar and strum away, singing along, but I’d need to practice to be able to do that, and I just don’t want to that much.

I need skills in installing sprinklers, doing electrical work, maybe some plumbing…now THAT would be freakin’ useful to me. I guess I need to hire experts for that.

But let’s get back to sewing etc…I sewed my first clothing on a machine at age 8 or so, and I know I was doing handwork before that. There was a time when I wanted to know how to quilt, how to hand-applique, how to embroider, how to paint on fabric. So I took classes and messed around and practiced, and now I know how to do those things. Occasionally I wish I could knit or crochet (I do know how, just not well), but then that bug leaves me and I go back down the fabric rabbit hole. With YouTube and online classes, you probably don’t even need to leave your house to learn how to do something new these days. So really, need skills? Need the willpower to try and practice it until you have them.

It’s been a long day of teaching. I straight up don’t have a lot of patience right now. Sorry.

I keep ironing though…

I found a bigger box for the ironed pieces, because I’m about to start ironing the sky, and it’s a lot of bigger pieces. More tonight. More tomorrow night. More until I’m done.

The skies lately have been lovely…this was the morning…

Then on my walk this evening…

I missed the sunset part…I was on the wrong side of the hill for that. I saw it from far away, and then it was gone.

Ah, old lady…you are lasting well. Calli is a good girl.

They said 6-8 months and we just hit month 6. I hope it’s easy for her, because it won’t be easy for any of us.

The neighbors have a vineyard. Like you do.

Gonna go grade a bunch of stuff. Try to figure out how to deal with the new attendance system, which I really don’t understand. Trying not to stress too hard over the next week or so of school…or even the next unit. Trying not to stress too hard over anything, but I’m not sleeping and that’s not helping. Keep exercising, keep making art, keep trying.

Oldest What?

OK, the 6th day of this blog challenge is one of those topics that I feel like is more about project people than art people (and there’s some serious overlap there, y’all…art people sometimes just make projects, like me and the baby quilts, and project people sometimes make their own art)…Oldest UFO. I seriously don’t care if I have UFOs. Some of them will get done eventually, some of them will end up in another piece, and some were just so I could figure out how to do something (or how NOT to do something), and its existence in my current stash is really just because I hate to throw things out.

I know that somewhere in this house is an old cross stitch or embroidery from when I was a kid that I haven’t (and probably never will) finished. I’m OK with that. Also, some early quilts from when I was learning how to do things…that I will never finish…like this one.

There was some painting and some fusing and there must be some piecing that I don’t remember (I think there are directions somewhere, yo Susan, I think this was one of yours?)…

That is SOME cloud there. I don’t know that I will ever finish this, and I’m totally OK with that. I took a lot of classes when I started learning how to quilt and I have a bunch of unfinished stuff from it. This was when I learned how to do hand applique.

I did a lot of it for a few years. I think every single one of those quilts is unfinished. Sewing things together is not my forte, unless it’s one of my art quilts. There are only two unfinished art quilts, no three; the first two probably don’t need to be finished. They were experiments in a style that didn’t really work. The other one is hand applique and will eventually be finished. It takes so long to make an art quilt in my style by hand.

I also did a lot of crazy quilting for a while…

These are still in process. I think there are 20 of them…and they are all just hanging around, waiting to be stitched on. And maybe they will be finished in the future…

But like I said, the art quilts get done. I have a drive to finish them that beats all the projects I do as hobbies. I guess every drawing I make could be considered a UFO, since less than half of them become quilts. Some years I draw a lot and some a little (this is a little year…which sucks, but I can’t get my head out from under the day job and carve out more time and energy).

So the oldest UFO? Those are all old. Some older than others. I don’t really care about that. They will either get finished or not. I even have other people’s UFOs…unfinished quilts and blocks. UFOs come to me to live an unjudged life. I will love them, unfinished or not.

No art has happened in two days. I’ve been really tired and working a lot. I am making walking and exercising a priority, best I can, so Saturday afternoon was a long walk/hike thing outside. This is the Walker Preserve Trail in Santee…

It’s pretty flat…

Not very strenuous. Might have been all I could deal with. There was a line of painted rocks at one end of it.

A rock snake, as it were…

Interesting idea…I do like these signs…

I think lots of people need to see that sign.

Maybe not that one.

We did a little over 3 1/2 miles. Probably could have done more, but the man’s back started acting up. My next walk is hopefully Tuesday. Too many meetings this week. Too many things I have to do. I’m fairly sure I’ve forgotten some of them. I’m holding space in my head, a bubble, where I can feel OK with the world. I can’t stay in there for long, but it helps. Many things are hard right now. More walking, more art. Speaking of which, getting off this machine and onto the ironing board (not ME on the ironing board…the fabric y’all).

Sewing Space

OK, those words together are something that I never call this room…or for that matter, my house, because I can honestly tell you that there are maybe three rooms in this house that don’t have sewing or art supplies in them, and only two of those are bathrooms.

This is my studio. Except when it’s my office. Because I’ve always had other jobs plus that school day job, and office-y type stuff needed to happen somewhere, so there’s a computer and a printer and a bunch of files (I tossed a lot of them) PLUS all the stuff I use to make art quilts. No, that’s a lie. I have stuff to make art quilts in a LOT of other rooms in the house. This might be the most concentrated area of stuff for making art quilts. Maybe. Not sure. Under the bed runs a close second.

So yeah, computer, printer, usually 2 chairs, but one went to my online teaching of middle-school kids space out in the living room, so only one chair, plus two desks and a table and three bookshelves and twenty billion fabrics. Maybe. And usually a cat. Tonight? A dog. It’s an 8×10′ room that has a sliding glass door that is rarely opened (because there’s a desk in front of it) and a view of the slope (best place to see a hawk eviscerating a mouse on the tree branch out there). The ironing board moves around to wherever it needs to be used.

I would love a larger studio. It’s not happening. Have I told you about the light table that lives in the living room? It’s 3×4′ and is currently also being used to stage tsunami demonstrations for middle-school science and a stuffed-animal drawing for middle-school art. Yeah.

I’ve been an artist forever and a fiber artist for almost that long. I’ve always worked in multiple rooms while living with cats, dogs, and kids, and that hasn’t changed. The entryway floor is great for pinbasting quilts (you can square a quilt up using the grout between the tiles), and the laundry room stores a bunch of dyeing supplies. Same with the kids’ bathroom.

So “Sewing Space” means the house, I guess. Oh shit. The garage. Um. I probably have sewing stuff in there too.

In other blog news, this quilt is in progress…

That was dirt and volcano day. Followed by grassy hill day.

Which came with wine in a sippy cup.

I don’t know how much is done at this point. I have some 300s and 400s that still need ironing, and almost all of the 500s, so maybe close to halfway? But probably not. Perhaps tonight.

This is part of a drawing for my Patreon.

It started with a cough.

I walked last night…

People have started decorating for the next holiday.

I’m still chasing sunset when I walk…too early.

So that’s MY Christmas tree…it lives on the deck during the year.

I think it grew about 2 feet this last year, maybe more.

I finished stitching this down during a district meeting that didn’t solve anything.

It needs more, but everything is at least basically attached.

Sigh. The words still suck. But at least I have topics now. Just follow the topics.

Put That on the Calendar…

Whoa Nellie. Or is it Nelly? I hate how vacation weeks go so fast. Tuesday is almost over. I’m close to the halfway point, where I officially start to panic that I have nothing done. I may already be panicking. I may have never stopped panicking. Hard to say. I know I did no schoolwork until Sunday night. I know! Almost 48 hours without schoolwork! It was amazing. Not really. There’s been other stressful things going on that sucked up my brain and spat it out. But Sunday night, I realized I needed to get my act in gear in order to reach my goal of having everything that is possible to be done…DONE…by the time we start school again on the 30th. So I started grading. I did two assignments Sunday night, then three yesterday. I’m a third of the way through number 6 today so far, and when I’m done writing this, I’ll go finish that one. It’s one of the hard, thinky ones. I have one more of those to do for three classes, and then two hard, thinky, ARTY ones (this does not make it easier, let me tell you, I hate grading art assignments, IDK whether I’m being mean or too easy or WTF is going on) after that. Then some minor stuff and 17 thousand late assignments handed in by kids because I emailed their parents and told them they’d done NOTHING for weeks (my own fault. I should have kept my mouth shut and let them live with it, but no, I was a responsible teacher and tattled on them). Those will hurt. But OK. I’ll do it. Then planning is almost done for science for next week and (shhh, don’t tell anyone) not even started for art. Fuck me. I need an assist on that one. IT’S OK. I’LL FIGURE IT OUT.

So there we are. I’m working. My day job. That I currently am on vacation from. (From which that I am currently on vacation. Or something.) I have no choice. This is how we roll, 2020 school year, with a Fuck You here and a Fuck That there.

I have been dealing with Wonder Under. Sunday night, I finished tracing Wonder Under…

So technically, I think that’s 5 1/2 yards of Wonder Under. From what I can see. It took almost 17 hours to trace all that.

I was kinda slow. Oh well. Then I started cutting it out on Sunday night as well…

Kitten does not help. She just gets irritated that the boxes are in her way. Calli also does not help.

She wanted to be on the couch. Sometimes I let her, but Kitten was already there, so it just wasn’t going to go well. Monday night, she was on the other side.

I’ve only cut out a yard and a half, I think.

It doesn’t look like much.

More tonight. And the next night. And probably a few more nights. I need to clean the office/studio too, so when I’m ready to iron, I can. Because if I wait and try to do that once school is back in session, it won’t happen as quickly as I need it to.

The man and I are doing the Coast to Crest Challenge for 2020…we were going to do one of the longer hikes today, but we both needed to be in cell-phone range, so we chose the Lake Hodges section instead.

Neither of us had ever been here.

In general, this piece of the trail is pretty easy.

It would be really hot in summer though. There’s the dam…

And there were a lot of mountain bikers, which is annoying.

We only hiked about 4.5 miles…not bad for a Tuesday morning. Here’s the official photo so we can get the patch at the end of all this.

The man tested out his new hiking shirt. We both need better hiking hats. There was a cool telescope thing at the end. (Note, point it at the big yellow letters in the surrounding landscape.)

Not the most exciting hike in the world, but it was nice to be by water and see all the birds.

Three more to go. We will probably try to do another one on Friday? Maybe? Not sure.

Lots of work to do. School. Art: gonna finish trimming Wonder Under. Got some Thanksgiving cooking to do. Some yardwork. Housework. Cleaning. Fun stuff. I would like to do some drawing? I’ve got a few in my head. Put that on the calendar.