An Attempt at Control…

Trying to buy stuff online that I normally buy in a store. On the one hand, I’m grateful I can even do that; on the other hand, it’s not always the right thing or easy to find or possible to get it relatively quickly, whereas if I went to the store, I’d have it, but I’d also have COVID-19 if I did that all the time, and then we’d overrun the hospitals and it would suck for everyone. So I try to think about “do I really need it?” and “can this be put off for a while?” and sometimes that helps, and sometimes it’s just annoying. Much like all of this. We’re grateful we’re not sick and/or dying and that we can be at home and still have money coming in (not looking at the future with that right now, because my salary is paid by taxes and those will be an issue in the future with so many losing their jobs), so we can buy things and decide not to buy things. Each time we venture out for buying (usually food…groceries obviously, and then the occasional take-out to keep restaurants going), we are amazed by what people are not doing…not wearing masks, not keeping their distance…and it makes us wonder what people think about all this. And when people are protesting “their rights” about the virus, when it isn’t just their rights…it’s our rights as well. I guess that hasn’t changed at all…just the focus has…their right to go out vs my right to determine the state of my female body.

It is the state of the world right now…crazy. With an attempt at control. I’m managing small bits of control. I think I have a plan for teaching…for Monday. I’m not sure it will last after Monday, but maybe I have a plan for the week? Who knows.

Friday was just a bit of chaos. I did manage to finish drawing the big one…

The key really was waiting until the baby kittens (who are 7 months old now) are both asleep. Well. They aren’t always asleep at the same times or for the same amount of time, just like real live human children, so to finish the last bit of this…

I had to lock Luna in the bedroom for a bit. Because she wanted to play. With the paper. In a destructive manner.

In doing so, I was able to finish fairly quickly. Well. It took over 13 hours to draw this. I do know a lot of that time was staring off into space, but that’s the thinking part of the drawing and it has to happen. An awful lot of it happens while I’m doing other things (like sleeping), but also when the paper is there in front of me.

For some reason, I thought this was in the 50″-square range. Oh no. It’s way bigger than that.

71″ square. All right then. So then comes the numbering. Also needs to be done when kittens are napping. I did some Friday night…then it was too late and I was tired, so I finished Saturday morning…1541 pieces.

Well. That’s equivalent to last year’s big piece. I’m good with that.

I need something with a large focus right now. So the next step is to trace all the Wonder Under, another task that kittens are highly interested in. Luckily they napped for a good long time yesterday, long enough for me to trace most of the background land…

So that’s a lot of big pieces. I’m expecting to be tracing this all week, hopefully with kittens asleep at useful intervals. Since I’m starting school tomorrow, I don’t have as much flexibility with my time as I used to. So it will be a bit more difficult.

Here are the sweet babies awake and alert.

They have been in high-destruction mode lately. I had to cover this so Nova would stop tearing bits off the top of it…

Here it is before the destruction, with all three cats hanging out in my maker space.

OK, it’s true that large portions of the house are my maker space, and there are many things the cats would like to play with in all of those spaces. I do my best to keep them out of stuff. And then they want to be all cute and cuddly and lovey.

Sigh. Evil beasts. “Oh. You’re on the computer? I’M on the computer too.”

They are sweet, adorable, and monstrous.

In a year’s time, we will miss all the kitten shenanigans. Well, Luna I think has shenanigan as a middle name, so maybe not, and Nova eats paper and plastic now and will probably never stop.

The stitching continues with the snowflake dot.

Easy. Nice to have an easy one. Some are really time consuming.

Like Saturday night’s dot…

The one to the right of the blue thread ball. It looks simple, but it took a lot of time.

I also finished all the official bits on this, and now am just adding lots and lots of grass.

Everywhere. I’ll be here for days. Or until I run out of thread. Whichever comes first.

I’ve been trying to fill the greenery trash cans every week. It’s Spring, so there’s lot that needs cleaning up and trimming and weeding. My partner in yard work has been missing though. I did see some of these…

Which is nice…

I still think someone eats them before they become chrysalises. Sadly.

And the lime from a friend that we planted is growing and flowering…

The boychild did make it out to help me make a decision about a bush we had that the tree guys pushed down by accident. It wasn’t growing in the right direction, so we trimmed it way way way back and we’ll see if it will come back. It has the weirdest seed pods…

So bright! We don’t know what it is though…here’s the leaves and the pods before they dry out.

I have a trashcan and a half full right now…another half to go before tomorrow.

Yesterday brought a long walk…

Same walk as always…

This is where the construction on the path was…they spread a bunch of dirt out and there were just a few footprints…

I think maybe they didn’t want us on there, but whatever.

That’s Cowles Mountain in the distance. Not allowed to go there.

But I can go here…mustard…

And there’s the fam.

We passed each other going opposite ways…

See, it IS Spring…and there are hawks…

OK, there are always hawks…

They left Calli behind because she was limping again. Old lady.

She was very upset at being left behind.

OK. The plan: groceries and tracing Wonder Under and not panicking about school tomorrow. All good. It’s Sunday. I say that to remind myself. I don’t care if you don’t want to know what day it is. I need to.

Not Feeling Super Magical

I’m overwhelmed. It’s funny, because I’m not even going to work. We haven’t even started online teaching yet. I just went to two Zoom trainings yesterday and sat through explanations and zoned out, because that’s what a lot of random talking does to me…meanwhile my brain is like, “Well, how is THAT supposed to work?” “How am I going to do THAT?” “What is THAT going to look like?” Much like everyone now is doing about whatever it is they did before and now are doing differently.

Here’s how I Zoom train…

Seriously though, if I have problems concentrating in these things where people natter on for an hour plus and it’s useless, it makes me look seriously at what I might do with my kids. I don’t do a lot of direct instruction in science…because they zone out. But this is a different world. And I’m not just teaching science. I’m barely teaching science. I’m teaching a bunch of other stuff, some of which I think is really lame. Sigh. OK.

So I didn’t get to draw on Monday at all. There was a lot going on during the day and then the kids required family time. Well, the girlchild did…the boychild showed up as well, but he never really requires it. At least not verbally. So I stitched instead. The plus is that I finished the damn road on Folk Tails…

So I need to embellish a monkey and a hut, do some guinea hen legs, and then add a ton of grass and flowers. And I’m not allowed to make fun of the characters in Pride and Prejudice…though how can you NOT?

Maybe then I will learn to quilt wool, because this will be the third one of these that I will be finishing. Not any time soon…it also has borders…pretty simple borders, honestly, but they do exist. The other two are pinbasted and ready to go.

Yoga/exercise is difficult in this house without the animals being involved.

We’re lying down. They’re lying down. Monday night also meant doing the top middle dot.

I think the new threads I ordered are coming soon. I hope.

Last night’s was the trellis stitch one…it was so nice before I added the stuff on top that I wanted to document it.

And all the cat/dog hair that this piece attracts. It still looks nice with the stuff on top…

And here’s all 16 so far…

On Tuesday nights, the kids leave for their dad’s house, and the man doesn’t get home until late, because he’s working crazy shifts…so I went for a walk by myself…

It was finally warm today…

I know I’ll complain about it later, but it felt good yesterday.

Here’s where part of the flume trail fell down the slope with all the rain last week.

I got to climb past some major equipment to get here. I did get my three miles in though. Felt good.

Then I started dinner…some potatoes needed using up, so they needed to boil. While that was happening, I did this…

The start of a COVID-19 Earth Daughter. Turning out well. Plus I played some music and tried to ignore the screaming children outside. They eventually went in to bed. Plus it was ‘cold’. I heard them yelling about that. When it’s nice and warm, I should do this more. It’s peaceful. It helped me NOT think about school and how to do things and what kids need and how to get them that. I’m not feeling super magical at the moment.

I did finally get to the big drawing around 11 PM. It’s quieter then. The cats are down or playing elsewhere. The adults are mostly gone to bed/room.

So progress on torso of one and head of the other. Her tattoo says Flatten the curve. I’m still debating the background.

He’s not debating anything.

Except whether the pets and loving make up for us wanting to comb out all his tangles.

Yesterday, after the first Zoom training, which was way too early, and yes, I stayed up way too late the night before, I tried to take a short nap…first one of the quarantine, but then this happened.

He’s on my chest y’all.

Kitten interacting with my sock…

Yes, pajamas. I did not take them off yesterday. I did shower. And put them back on. Whatever. I changed my shirt. And my underwear. Don’t judge.

Our sourdough starter is finally starting.

It’s hard when you don’t pay attention to it.

The mom of one of the girlchild’s friends is a food blogger, and apparently thought we needed these. We will appreciate them, that’s for sure.

She must like my kid a lot.

I found this while doing yardwork on Sunday…

Definitely a hummingbird nest.

So. Things are happening. As with all of you. We are healthy and fed. Some of us are cranky at times. We are all trying to coexist. I’m not sure what this will continue to look like, but for now, this is what it is. I’m distributing lunches again today and then doing a stitching Zoom, although I’m not sure what I’m actually going to work on for that. Or where. That’s the hardest part in this house is WHERE to Zoom. This room has iffy internet, but the other one has people who make noise and/or want to watch movies that yell FUCK all the time, and there’s going to be some issues next week I think. But we’ll figure it out.

Hopefully today I’ll get closer to done on the drawing, get another walk in, and I don’t know what else. That’s all I can commit to at the moment.

Mostly I’ve Been Drawing…

Mostly I’ve been drawing. I’ve also been stitching on wool. And currently I’m watching a hawk in the tree outside my window, because that’s more scientific than some of the stuff I’m supposed to be teaching starting next week. It’s OK. We’ll fix it. It’ll give us something to do. I’m thinking during my online office hours, I can offer short draw-a-longs instead of science…or video of the hawk outside my window. Or the hummingbird nest I found while doing yardwork yesterday. Tomorrow I have two trainings on some of the online stuff we’ll be doing for school. I need a plan. I might have a plan. I certainly made a video for my students yesterday about my plan…which is funny. Because I don’t think I have a plan.

Anyway. Life moves on. We seem to be staying healthy, San Diego is not hard hit (yet?) by this disease, and the grocery stores are getting closer to normal. Not normal, but closer. Still can’t buy flour. We managed toilet paper though for the first time in a month. It’s OK…we had a lot. Cat litter will be the next issue. Although I think I can order that online. It just won’t come for a while.

The weekend was quiet…I did go for a walk on Saturday…

It was a nice day out…there’s that plant that makes the dog smell like maple syrup.

This part of the path had turned into a small stream…

Luckily, mud doesn’t hurt hiking boots. I saw bunches of people out on the street, but on this section, there was no one. Nicer that way. Easier than negotiating what side of the road you’re walking on.

Before I walked, girlchild was smart and sat out and enjoyed the sun.

Hopefully there’ll be more of that this week. The dogs like it too. Although yesterday, the neighbors violated stay-at-home orders and had another family (I suspect cousins) and grandparents there, screaming for hours. Ah, Easter. When God wants you to infect your family. My mom stopped by to drop off handmade Easter cards…but she opened the door and dropped them in (where we disinfected them…not really) and then briefly talked to me from the deck/driveway conduit. Which is much more than 6 feet away. I’m afraid we’ll get them sick…we have two essential workers in constant contact here. I don’t want to be the viral conductor. And today, I’m going back to school to distribute lunches…now with a mask and gloves.

So drawing…I spent over 8 hours ‘drawing’. Because a lot of it is just staring at the paper and trying to decide what goes where next…not actually putting pen or pencil to paper. I am still sketching it out in pencil before I do the ink.

At some point on Sunday, the cats started trying to eat the paper. Because that makes sense…

So I have a bunch of taped bits now. Thanks to this sweet biatch…

She is a sweetheart. Really. Except with paper. Her sister is more predictably evil…

So we have a big piece of paper that looks a lot like a kitten playground.

Mostly fixable. I kept drawing Sunday…

Not my first bat…actually did a lot more on Sunday…

The thought process is slow…but it’s moving.

The top half is done…at least as far as I know, it is. Now I’m in the bottom half.

At some point, the drawing starts to talk to me, and this becomes easier. It’s talking now. I’m thinking another couple of days of drawing and I should be done. Tracing Wonder Under with these cats will be interesting. I do a lot of it when the kittens are asleep. It’s easier than fighting them over the excitement of the big paper. Speaking of excitement…

Well, there’s Calli. She’s old. Toys are exciting though.

Two more dots…the snail on the bottom right…

That cat is so helpful…

Every night, I clear a space for her to sit in all the stitchery madness. Here’s last night’s dot…

Top right, basket of flowers.

And I also worked on the road on Saturday night…

Got a good chunk done while watching True Detective. I just need to connect the bits now, then put some feet on that bird, embellish a monkey and a hut, and then add ten tons of grass and flowers. No worries.

OK, so today I distribute lunches, plus draw some more and make a mask for a desperate friend. Then exercise in some way and stitch some more and tomorrow get my ass out of bed early for some school training. Woo hoo!

After the Rain…

I once again meant to write yesterday. But I have no real schedule at the moment, so everything is just hard to fit in apparently. And it rained all day, nonstop, gray and dropping water from the sky, mostly a lot for us. We don’t need 2″ of rain in a day…let’s spread it out. Some years, that’s all we get. We’re over 19″ for the year. Today is lovely and sunny with big fluffy clouds, though, so I’d better be taking a walk at some point. Remember that thing. Walk. Hopefully that’s the last of the really bad rain. A little rain once in a while would be nice, but yesterday was just cold and wet and damp and never-ending. Well. Until it ended.

Speaking of, we walked on Wednesday…I remember that. Here’s where the kids are blaspheming against my taking pictures of them…

I think today I will be walking by myself. Which is OK. Although a local hiking area I’m often in had a guy with a gun threaten a young female runner. Because now that we’re all wearing masks, rape is OK? Or easier? There are still assholes out there. Always. I’m not actually hiking there now because we’re not supposed to drive places and then hike there. We’re supposed to stay in our neighborhoods. Yes, I’m tired of my neighborhood, but so be it.

I’m still stitching dots…one a day…like an apple but more fun. Wednesday on the right, top.

I finally caved yesterday afternoon and ordered some threads, so I can stop stealing from all the other unfinished kits. Thursday night top right, with cat butt.

She wouldn’t move. And then my favorite this week, Friday night’s on the top right…

That’s 12 done…78 to go. Ha! Makes tears come to my eyes. Someone asked about purchasing this. I don’t think that’s happening. Sue Spargo says it’s 30-45 minutes per dot, and some are, but some are much longer than that. So let’s just say 50+ hours of work. Yeah. At my normal rate, completely unaffordable. I’m OK with that…I’m just doing it to occupy time and my brain and give me a focus each day. And hopefully, when it’s done, 90 days from now, we won’t be quite so socially distant? Maybe? Sigh. That shit scares me. Send the teachers back to school, without testing to see who’s had it and who hasn’t? Nah. But they probably will.

In other news, I started the new drawing. I just randomly cut and taped paper to get this size. It’s a little big for moving around, but I wanted big. I want something in your face. I started drawing in pencil on this one. Couldn’t get my head around it in pen to start.

I usually start with a smaller drawing and enlarge it, and then add around it. But with no access to the copiers, this is what I’m doing. You can see bits and pieces of it have started to appear in ink (there is pencil on there as well). I spend most of the drawing time just staring at it…

Or yesterday, just staring out the window at the rain. So this drawing will take a while. Also, the kittens like to play with the paper, so I try to draw when they are asleep…it’s just easier. Nova already took a bite out of the middle. Art in the time of kittens. So expect to see me drawing this for at least a few more days.

I also continued working on this little quilt and the video of making it.

I think there’s about 20 videos I have to put together and then timelapse or something. I’m not actually sure. I do know it’s at least 2 hours of video…so something has to happen to it.

I did finish it yesterday, so now I can move on to something else. Or keep making little quilts. I don’t know.

All my socializing seems to end up in the end of the week…here was Thursday night’s stitching group…I was working on the road for Folk Tails, which needs a flat space.

I’m in the middle of the big piece right now, which is kind of a pain in the butt.

Then while gaming last night, I did one of the Spargo dots and stitched all these pieces down.

It’s brainless, so that’s easy. There were lots of pieces though. And now I can do embroidery or do more brainless stitchdown. Hard to say which is better for me right now.

This is what gaming looks like at the moment…

Puppy likes girlchild love…

At least he seems to…

Kitten follows me wherever I go. And plops down near me.

Girlchild finally made a dessert/bread without chocolate in it so I can eat it. It’s very good.

There’s been a lot of Bon Appetit in the house in the last few weeks.

OK, well, it’s Saturday. In my future is a walk, some video creation, some drawing, probably some more dot sewing. Tomorrow, we attempt the purchasing of toilet paper…we’ve made it this long without buying more, but now we need it. Hopefully it will not be an issue. Ha! Next week includes a bunch of school stuff in preparation for going online for realz on the 20th. That’ll be different. A schedule might be a good thing for me. We’ll see. Oh yeah, and my credit card had a fraudulent charge on it last night. Fun times. Remember what I said about people still being assholes? Yeah. And no, it wasn’t a grocery store…I’d have some sympathy for that. Anyway, it’s handled. Hope you all are staying well, getting exercise, making some stuff, whether fiber or food, and not stealing people’s credit card numbers. That would be wrong.

The Day Ran Away…

Totally writing this at the wrong time of day for me. I meant to start it much much earlier and then the day ran away from me. Don’t you hate that? It just gets up off the couch and books it down the driveway, and then all of a sudden it’s 8 PM and I don’t know what happened.

Neither does he, if that makes anyone feel better.

So yesterday, I started this video of how I make a quilt from start to finish, using this small spacecat design that was in the last finished quilt. It’s been on my list for a while. I’m going to make a long version for my Patreon followers and a timelapse version for the rest of the world. I get asked a lot how I make stuff, and it’s all over the blog, but I’m going to attempt it in one go. I say that and I’m like 40 videos in and still not done, so WTF am I on about? ONE spliced disaster of a video. Because.

So there’s the drawing I did from the original drawing from some months ago, and there’s the pile of trimmed Wonder Under as well…

This is small, about 10″ square, with only 24 pieces in it. Here are the 13 fabrics I used in it…

And here’s the pile of trimmed pieces…

Oh wait. Those are not trimmed. Whoops. Missed a photo. Oh well. It’s in the video.

And here it is, ironed down to a background.

I stitched it down this morning and then sandwiched it and pinbasted it and all I need to do now is quilt it, trim it, and bind it. And then splice 3,000 videos together. Twice. Unless I can figure out how to timelapse it using the program I use to splice. We’ll see.

I finally started feeling well enough on Monday to exercise again…I started with cat yoga.

It’s not really cat yoga. It’s yoga where my cats stare at me and try to figure out WTF I’m doing. Same, cats…same. I also rode the stationary bike yesterday, and then graduated to a hike today. Exciting stuff.

I got two more days done on these…this is the star-shaped one.

And last night’s total pain in the bullion knot ass…

The lower one, not the upper one.

I haven’t done tonight’s yet. That’s next.

I also finished stitching everything down on this…

My official photographer will get this eventually.

For now, notice Simba in the left corner, and my daughter’s expert fingers, plus Calli in the lower right. It doesn’t have a name yet. I’m working on it.

My SIL sent me a bunch of fabric and I washed all of it and then had to re-iron a ton of it because the dryer folded it all up.

Ironing can be very meditative.

More fabric for the stash…

And then on a stitchy Zoom this afternoon, I was sewing all these pieces down…

And I actually finished…

So now I can embroider on it if I so wish. This is Applique Stories fabrics by Anna Maria Horner and her bimonthly challenge of sorts. Wherein I take some wacky fabrics and use them to make a nude. Like you do. (Most people make flower bouquets. I am somewhat strange in my fabric application.)

I also panicked all over the place about school and being an online teacher and just life in general. So there’s that. I have showered and changed my clothes though, so I feel like I’m doing OK for now.

What’s up next? I’m starting the next quilt. I’ve spent two days now procrastinating about Just Picking a Size of Paper to start drawing on, so there’s that. I can’t do a smaller drawing and enlarge it without going out into the world like I normally do. I did go into the world today. I delivered a mask to my dad so he won’t get arrested driving up to the mountains without one, and then I put gas in the car. That’s all I did. Well, we walked. There were a lot of people (and dogs) out there. I don’t blame them…it wasn’t raining and it was OK out and we all needed to get out. OUT. Yeah. Out.

That’ll Do…

Hi. How are you all doing? I’m on day 6 of not feeling right. No fever, no cough, just a fun conglomerate of other symptoms that might be something and might not. So I’m just drinking a lot of fluids and hoping whatever it is goes away soon. I suspect a bunch of you feel the same way at the moment. Or not…

I spent yesterday’s school Zoom meeting lying in bed with a cat and the computer…there’s a quilt meeting today, but I don’t know these people, so I don’t feel like I can do the same thing, although my head’s a little slippy/slidey at the moment. Spacy. Headachey. All good.

I have moments of feeling fine, like Thursday night, when I walked almost three miles without any dogs for once…

It’s not because I didn’t want to walk with the dogs…they had gone over to the other house and I still wanted a walk…which is good, because yesterday, I so incredibly did NOT have the energy for walking, and today isn’t looking much better…hello Hawk.

I even finished my book.

Sitting in the sun…with Christmas socks on. Good choice.

My school team got our twinsies shirts on for the school social media…

And I did a bunch of stitching to get caught up on the dot embellishment…Dot 1…

Dot 2…

I’m just using whatever thread I can find at the moment…not always the right stuff.

Dot 3…

And Dot 4…

Then Friday brought spacey head and lots of digestive issues, continued over for Day 3 of Digestion Bingo at that point…now on the All White Food diet, trying to stay hydrated…plus during gaming last night, I did Dot 5, horribly over flashed, but there nonetheless…

She says each one will take 30 minutes. That last one took more than 30 minutes.

I’m caught up. For now.

I finished the outline quilting on this quilt…

I’d like to finish the background quilting today as well, but I’m not sure of energy and I’m supposed to do a Zoom in about 15 minutes. Ugh.

With rumors of San Diego going into mask requirement, I started trying to find materials in my office. Fabric is not the issue, but the ties…but I have a weird stash of truly old stuff…

I made the first mask from some pattern (please don’t ask me which one…they’re all over the internet and I only have half my brain functioning at the moment)…

I used batiks because they are a nice tight weave, but straight up…

I can’t wear this. I get claustrophobic in it and can’t breathe. Everyone else says it’s fine. So I guess this one is for the girlchild.

I then tried a basic surgical mask…much easier to breathe, but this is only one layer. Not very protective…

So I did a second one yesterday with two layers…not perfect…it only stays on if I have my hair in a bun or ponytail.

But I can breathe through it. Boychild doesn’t like the ties. I haven’t offered one to the man yet, because now that I think I might be sick, I’ve breathed into these and need to wash them before anyone else uses them. Sigh.

No, I can’t make masks for you. I can barely handle making these at the moment. Straight up, sitting up for long periods of time in an actual chair makes me dizzy. So I love all of you…go make your own please or go on Etsy, and if you’re making them for hospitals and medical workers, I love you more; please respect that I cannot. Sometimes we can only do what we can do. As I chug more Gatorade and wonder why it has such an awful aftertaste.

Have a cute cat picture…

And another one….

Plus this wide-awake one…

And lastly, this dog, NOT helping me review curriculum that decidedly does NOT cover photosynthesis.

Ah. School. You still drive me nuts.

I drew for a while last night. It was hard because I was pretty spaced out.

Yes, I am drinking chicken broth. All I really want right now is some really good chicken soup. I will probably settle for mashed potatoes and canned chicken again.

Usually I put my goals for the day(s) in this last paragraph. I’m tired. I don’t like food right now. I want to feel better. I want to finish quilting. That’ll do.

Easy and Brainless…

So. It’s good that we have a house with enough space for everyone to shelter in place without being on top of each other. We’re lucky to have two paychecks coming in to feed four people. And hallelujah for internet, or we might go bonkers. I mean, we might BE bonkers in a way, but we’re healthy for now and have what we need, which includes The Great Pottery Throw Down (why is that not one word instead of two?), although more exercise and less anxiety would be lovely.

Thanks also to all of you who are making masks for medical personnel. I wish I could do that. My brain is not in the mood. I feel my anxiety ramping up with the news and sometimes reading stuff and hearing stuff and when I think about making masks, just trying to figure out which pattern and what materials makes me breathe heavily, so I stop. Thinking about it. I might get there eventually. I’m sure I’m capable.

“Let’s take a minute to think about our current reality.” Huh. I’m on a work Zoom meeting. I’m stressed, but will survive. Well, we say that and then wonder if we will be one of the 2 million who doesn’t. Because we have to think about what this world will look like 6 months from now or even a year from now. My current reality…I’m doing what I need to do, which is NOT cleaning closets and organizing the kitchen. I applaud all of you who are doing that. Really. I do. I wish I could be more efficient and get more shit done, but I can’t. Seeing as how I think we’ll be doing this for the next (oh shit, count them…) 10 weeks (?), I think I might get some closets clean eventually. Last night, the boychild and I made a kamikaze and clearly essential ride to my parents’ house to dump some crap from my driveway into their dumpster. So we left the girlchild on the phone with the olds, so we could sneak in and dump. It’s all good.

I wrote all that before the school meeting, which was over an hour long, and then spent the next two hours setting up a new class online, prepping a form, and sending an email to all the kids in my new advisory class, plus their parents, if I could. Next step is to start calling them; I’ll do that tomorrow…see how many I can get with the email instead. My head is reeling a bit from the work meeting…too much to process in one go. I’ve got a headache, my neck is a mess from no chiropractor, and I’m in freakout mode. So there’s that. Hello new world!

So the last two days…time is weird, isn’t it? We had everyone home; still waiting on test results to see if the kids can go to their dad’s house or not. It’s all a crapshoot, isn’t it? Yes it is.

This is the truth…although the Stephen King book is really good (The Institute), horror and dystopian novels seem a little nuts right now.

We watched Contagion that night as a family too.

On Saturday, we walked the dogs. Hopefully that will happen today as well, because I’m going bonkers. We stopped at my ex’s house and stole lemons.

Calli loves the little bit of this walk that’s off leash…

She gets downright perky. She’ll be 11 some time in April.

These ferns are delicate and the flowers are oh so tiny.

It’s a nice walk, not quite long enough, but with a punishing hill in it. Although most of it is pretty chill.

We’ve seen these weird pods hanging from a tree and I always wanted to know what was inside them. Now I know.

Fluff. Fluff is what’s inside them.

No, I’m not willing to pick this up. But this is like life right now.

So this was about 2 1/2 miles. We can’t really do the hikes we like to do right now. The county has closed everything down. Which sucks, but we get why.

I was quilting earlier…I missed the stitch down on that one section of the building, so I stuck a pin in it until the end of that bobbin thread.

And then switched threads to stitch it down with the polyester stuff. Every time I do this, I miss something. More quilting!

I’m honestly not getting much done each day. Time is kind of a mess. Although I quilted yesterday too…

I have all the of the body done except for the top arm…and then the Earth and the stuff above that, and then I can quilt the background. It’s slow, but it’s happening. An hour a day is about what I’d be doing if I were at school every day, so I don’t feel bad.

This was during Contagion…working on the houses from Sue Spargo’s Homegrown block of the month…they’re easy and brainless to stitch down. I’m doing a lot of easy and brainless.

I thought I was done with it…turns out there’s a bird. So I’m not. Here’s the other two, still in progress.

I’m all over the map in what I’m working on. And then, Sue Spargo set out an invite for a daily stitch thing, for 90 days, called the Toned Down Sampler…she’s done these circle samplers before and I’m always fascinated by them. Each circle has a different stitch combo. I didn’t like the colors on the kit, but I have tons of leftover wool from everything I’ve done with her, so I bought a background and started cutting out circles on Saturday night.

Her kit is very logical…9 circles each of 10 colors…or maybe it’s vice versa. I don’t have more than 3 circles of any color, and some I only have one circle of that color. And I wanted brighter colors.

I have access to a punch for these, but it’s at mom’s, so that wasn’t happening. Still staying away from them. It didn’t actually take that long to cut them out. So yesterday, I pinned them all down.

Hers are in this perfect 9×10 grid. Each circle is 1/2″ away from every other. Yeah. Um. So no. I was thinking differently. I know you’re shocked by that. I had a river (of blues) in the middle, then greens on either side, then the flowers on the outside.

I actually adjusted again after this. Then pinned them all down. Stabby beast.

And last night, started stitching them down. This is the hard part, eh?

You can see how many I had stitched down as of bedtime. I did a few more today during the meeting. It calms me to stab through wool with a sharp needle. They’re whipstitched down with a similar-colored wool thread. Then the embellishment will happen…she’s posted the first one today. I’ll have to use different colors, but it should be fine.

This was last night’s dinner. I think we’ve just handed all the cooking over to the girlchild at this point.

Chili and cornbread muffin. Tasty stuff. She does a lot of puppy cuddling at night.

He doesn’t seem to mind.

Kitten eventually came out to hang with us.

This was right before bed…

We were all tired. Today has been chaotic…I want cookies (not a good choice). I should do yoga (good choice) and walk the dogs (also good) and who knows what else. We still have a lot of stuff up in the air for school, but working for my paycheck is a good idea. Whatever that looks like. Plus more easy and brainless stitching in between reading and exercising, and the occasional bit of art.

The Missing Hand…

Yeah. I skipped a day of writing. I don’t know what day it was though, so that’s OK. Been watching NYC weather this pandemic shit and it’s scary. Sending good thoughts to the whole city and everywhere else it looks like that. Certainly, many of us are questioning any sore throat or dry cough or now, digestive issue (dammit, stop eating beans then!), wondering Was that it? Is this the start of it? I think here in San Diego, we haven’t really gotten the full brunt of the virus yet. Give it two weeks. With that, I’m leaving in a few minutes to go distribute lunches to my kids. We’re down to only two people at a time, so we can socially distance.

Tuesday, we walked the dogs…we’re gonna do it again today. My parents are up to twice a day with theirs, which would be fine by me, but the old lady dog can’t do it. She wants to, but it’s too much for her.

We have places we can walk locally…this is just out the front door and sort of through a neighbor’s yard, although they’ve never complained…but now the house has sold, so who knows. We just go quickly and quietly.

There are no actual grapevines here any more.

But I still like the signs.

Mostly empty. We didn’t see any people.

And a lot of plant material. It’s pretty green this year…we’re over 13 inches of rain, which is a lot for us. There’s more coming tonight apparently. But then I think we might be done for a while. It’s cold and windy today…next week, we’re supposed to hit the high 80s. It will be harder to keep people inside.

I got an email today from an exhibit I usually enter, warning us that there are just a few more days to the deadline. It’s weird thinking about future art shows when it seems like the world is about to burn down in a plague. But I guess that’s hope for the future…hope that the venue will still be viable, hope that we will still be able to have art shows. Hope that we’ll all still be here to send work and hang work and see work.

Here was Tuesday’s drawing. I didn’t draw yesterday. I did other stuff.

Maybe I will draw today. So Tuesday night, the man went to bed early, because he’s working these awful long shifts that basically leave time to sleep and eat and little else, so I finished the lettuces on the last of the October Folk Tails blocks.

Although this was the 2015 block of the month, I didn’t start working on it until March of 2016…so I’ve officially been working on it (on and off) for four years. Yeah. You read that right. A lot of times, I just worked on it once a month at my stitching meeting, and then last year, because I was doing the embroidery patterns, I barely worked on it at all.

Anyway, as I finished that grasshopper block (well, it’s missing a road and flowers), I realized it was time to stitch all of it together. Holy moley. I had some larger bits sewn together, but pinned some more parts…

Sewed them until I had two long strips…

There’s still plenty to do…that hen has no feet, for example.

I feel like I’m going to have to go back through all the instructions to fill in everything I’m missing. Plus it needs ten tons of grass sewn everywhere…

And the road needs to be continued down through the bottom three rows…

I stopped there, because I realized I needed to sew over onto the other blocks and they weren’t sewn together yet. Plus apparently a hut is supposed to go there. Uh huh. Barely fits.

And there’s a spare monkey too.

So there’s still plenty to work on. It’ll be another year. Plus borders! But it was exciting to get it to this stage.

Girlchild is still cooking up a storm…and posting artistic photos.

The result of that photo was cheddar scallion English muffin bread. Very good.

So yesterday, I did quilt for a while…although the machine was being cranky…

As always…

Luna was being a pain…kept trying to hide in the quilt and climb everything in the studio while I was on a video call with stitchy friends…

Trying to get the light right, so the computer has to be in a specific place. Interesting commentary for how I’m going to do this when we start for school. There are a limited number of places that are lit right, have seating, and stay quiet even when people are here. And there are a few people here. Four adults take up room. I’m lucky to have a variety of spaces for people to hang out in.

And cats. Cats can hang out too.

While I was on that call, I cleaned up the huge pile of papers and crap on my desk. Well. I cleaned up most of it. I’m not sure what to do with the other part of it.

Wait for another day. Although the word from on high is that I need to start grading things. All right. I’ll do that.

Then last night, I wanted to start the second one of the Applique Stories blocks…Anna Maria Horner sends 8 fabrics and no instructions basically, and then you make a block out of them. Of course, most people make this flowery bouquet-type things, and I make naked women. But I like this…the one on the right is from January’s fabrics and then on the left, you can see what she sent for March.

I picked the backgrounds…which was hard in itself, let me tell you. Trying to find a color that won’t overwhelm the given fabrics, or clash with them either…it’s difficult. The blocks are about 19×20″, a totally random size that I can’t explain. They could be finished together, but it probably makes more sense to finish them separately. I’m not fusing anything…just cutting pieces and then stitching them in place…and then doing some embroidery. Slow work.

That one fabric just damn well set itself up to be breasts…seriously. How could I NOT?

These are a challenge. I would never put these together. I like a challenge.

I wouldn’t even BUY half these fabrics. That’s what I love about this. Really. It’s fun.

I probably did this for 2 or 3 hours last night…walked away, walked back…added a bird. No starting drawing.

No nothing. No more fabrics than those 8. Honestly, those 8 are the challenge.

She was off balance, so I added the hand…here they both are…oh wait, the hand is still missing.

Must have added that later. Oh well. I can keep adding if I want. Tonight I have a Zoom stitching meeting, and my plan is to stitch stuff down during the meeting. The actual stitch down is easier to do while it’s flat, rather than trying to hoop it. The pieces are really only held in place by a few pins.

Anyway. So that was the last two days. I’m coping. I’m not sick (yet?), but question every cough and sore throat tickle. I know people who are sick. I hope everyone is OK. I know the world will be a different place when this is done. I’m sad about that…like all of you. And sitting and waiting is not my superpower…I’m glad I have the art to keep my brain occupied. Maybe tomorrow I’ll show you the missing hand…but I’m thinking she needs fingernails first…

Normally, Right Now…

Normally, right now, I’d be staring at a pile of grading…actually, no, I’d be at the chiropractor, and she’d be adjusting me, and I would have just finished tutoring, because Tuesdays (it is Tuesday, right?) are LOOONNNGGG, and then I might decide not to do any work tonight because I’d done so much of it before. This week, we’d be starting our ecosystem part of the unit, which we were in the middle of trying to rewrite, because standards-based grading has changed how we assess kids. When we got told we weren’t coming back until April 20, we proactively picked up and moved everything on the calendar for that three-week time period, realizing we were going to lose most of the second-to-last unit. At this point, I suspect we may not come back this year in person, which brings up the question of what CAN we do remotely, and how in the hell are we going to teach sex ed this year? Or are we? It’s just unclear. And overwhelming at the moment. Worry about getting sick, about family members getting sick, already seeing friends getting sick, pile that on top of worry for students, worry about our jobs (if they figure out we can do this on a computer, will they just get rid of some of us? Will our kids even log in? OK. So let’s not dwell on that.). Let’s focus on the present. My head likes to dwell on the future What Ifs, which doesn’t really help.

What did I do today? I recorded three chapters of City of Ember for my students. I attempted 50 minutes of pilates with no equipment and a crazy woman who bends better than I ever did. I swore at the computer. I walked the kids and dogs for 2.35 miles. I avoided the cops. Apparently that’s a thing in the town right next to where I live, where they might pull you over and ask you why you’re out and about. I avoided humans, except for the three I live with. One has been at work for hours. I barely saw him last night. He has one more day of a hellish shift and then four days off. I potentially have four Zoom or Discord meetings in the next week. Wait. Five. I think. I refuse to wear a bra to any of them.

The series continues.

Managing anxiety is not easy without a pandemic. What helps in a pandemic? Blue skies and beautiful fluffy white clouds. Puppies. Kittens. Stitching. Reading. Drawing.

See? Much better. Making art, of course.

Yesterday, I pieced a backing for the quilt out of some light-damaged fabric I got from my SIL ages ago. I think that’s where it came from. I’m not sure if it came damaged or if that happened here, but it doesn’t matter if it’s on the back.

Yup. Those are some hippos on lime green. Great backing. I managed to pinbaste the whole thing last night…

I realize as I get older that this kneeling on the ground thing will get harder to do, but it still works for now. Keeping kittens off it took some assistance from the man.

This is funny. Luna’s like, “Hey Dad, WTF is she doing and WHY CAN’T WE PLAY WITH IT?”

Well yeah. You can’t. Every cat I’ve ever lived with at some point has skidded across the room into a quilt laid out on the floor and destroyed what I was trying to do.

In the middle of pinning it…every time I do this, I end up throwing one or two pins out because they’re too dull or they won’t close right any more. I never seem to run out.

I don’t know how that works. They must be breeding.

At this point, they can smell the edges. It’s all pinned. Can’t hurt it now.

So it’s ready for quilting. It’s a good thing I ordered batting before all this shut down…I didn’t have anything big enough in the house.

I’ve been lax with the two social-media things I’m doing this month, but #igquiltfest yesterday was Favorite Fabric. I’m like, yes, all of them. This is such a small subset of what I have…

It’s my palette. I have lots. I love all of it. Seriously, I tried to get rid of some once because I was like, there’s stuff I never use, so I was going through the drawers and only found like one fabric I thought I could get rid of. Now I just figure those will end up on the back of something some day. I haven’t bought fabric for backings in other two years. I just use what I have. Sometimes I piece it. Sometimes it’s something someone sent me. I don’t care. It’s on the wall. Who’s gonna see it?

Girlchild has been cooking up a storm…it’s been tasty.

I have to cook for myself tonight. I will survive. Somehow I persuaded her to prep the scones I like too…I think so she would have photos for Insta.

Because when I do it, they’re never lined up that nicely. Remember that for when I post MY photo. It’ll be like a jumbled mess.

She likes to cook. I don’t mind it, but I’d rather be doing other things. I stitched a little today, just wooly bits, because my head was being mean. Shut up, head.

OK. Well I haven’t done all the things on my list for today, but I did do about two hours of exercise. Still haven’t hit 10,000 steps for the day. During a normal school day, that’s easy. It’s a beautiful day. Spring is here. Weeds need pulling. I have sunflower seeds I could plant. I have a quilt to work on. There’s a bunch of food in the fridge, although we’re running low on eggs. I have nowhere to be tonight or all day tomorrow. Everyone I know and love is still healthy or managing their illness, as far as I know. I’m still OK. Not normal, just OK.

Nature Has No Idea…

Hey. It’s Saturday, right? I’m currently watching a webinar on the SAQA virtual conference that was supposed to be in Toronto…the opportunity to hear and see the speakers is nice, although I missed a lot of yesterday. They were recorded though, so I can watch later. I’ve never been able to actually attend a real conference, so this is nice, plus maybe it helps SAQA cover some of their conference costs from canceling. It’s really important that we try to give back to some of these groups and companies that are hard hit by the community and state shutdowns. As much as we can, anyway. I’m lucky to still be paid under contract, but the future is making me a bit nervous for all of us, in terms of health and money.

Yesterday was a strange day, highs and lows…trying to ignore the lows because they don’t deserve my energy right now.

The boychild and I went for a 6 1/2-mile hike locally, at Sycamore Canyon/Goodan Ranch. It’s not as busy as some of the other locations in the area (just down the road from Iron Mountain), which is better for social distancing.

There were about 4 or 5 other groups we saw over the whole hike, but otherwise it was pretty isolated.

This is obviously a yucca pre-bloom, but it looks different than what I’m used to seeing…

The weather was perfect…not too warm, not too cold, no rain, although it was cloudy for much of it.

Trying to get enough exercise to sleep well and push some of the anxiety away has been difficult. My next step is to try and bookmark some of the videos from the gym and pilates studio and get my butt in gear.

We were really looking forward to our Spring Break trip of California National Parks, but with a cancellation of one of our Airbnbs and yesterday, the parks themselves are closing campgrounds, it seems that we are not going anywhere.

And we’re not sure when that will change, unfortunately. Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later, but certainly watching the numbers on COVID-19 is not promising. Although California is supposed to be shut down, there are still lots of people going out and doing things…100 kids out in our mountains hanging out together yesterday…because kids think they are immortal, yeah? That’s what they think. Sigh.

For this hike, we go along a ridge and then down into that valley…then through that valley and back up and out. Like twice. It was a bunch of up and down, but nothing undoable.

My legs feel better today. Although this sign makes me laugh every time (it’s for bikes, not humans).

Pretty sure I never hit the 5 MPH mark. And I jogged a little bit (it’s easier to jog going downhill sometimes than walking, although my brain kept saying ‘Now is not the time to break your damn leg, woman!’).

A bunch of fungus among us…

These are fascinating…

This area burned in a wildfire 17 or so years ago…this is a burned log keeping a whole host of fungus alive.

There are signs all over, but this warns me that the next up is that piece…Cardiac Hill.

It’s actually not horrible. I stopped a few times. It’s up. Boychild often ditches me in these situations…

He waits for me at junctions. Lots of flowers around…

Spring is coming…and signs of deer!

Although we didn’t see one in person. Wrong time of day.

We got to the top and found we were victims of assholes…

Apparently this parking lot has an issue with break-ins. It’s pretty isolated. In all my years of hiking, this is the first time we’ve had this happen. There was nothing of value in the car…they just rifled through the glove box and the console. Unhappy with my about-to-expire National Park Pass, my sunscreen, and my umbrella. They got nothing. Stupid. Pain in my butt.

Oh well. I believe in karma.

Seriously. Even when we are locked down in a pandemic, people will be assholes. Hence the lack of toilet paper in our stores. Still. So today, a guy is coming to my driveway and installing a new window (apparently that is an essential business) and I will hand him a check and then disinfect the glass? This is so difficult. Could I live without a window? Sure…

Whatever.

We came home, we tested a Discord server for gaming next week, and the girlchild came home…

It looks like she’s reading to the dog, but she’s not. She was laid off by her company and we suspect trying to get a job is somewhat impossible right now. She’s trying. She’ll try applying for unemployment. And yeah, we flew her on a plane with like 8 other people (JetBlue is starting to ground flights soon, so that might have been one of the last flights that didn’t get canceled). We’re keeping her away from the older people in the family, but we still have two going to work between the two households (mine and my ex’s, and the kids go back and forth until someone gets sick), because they are also apparently essential. I’m lucky to not have any requirements right now beyond checking email, although that may change in the future. She’s not here forever. Just until we figure shit out. By WE I mean HER. Meanwhile, she gets doggy love.

My lemon tree has new leaves…

Nature has no idea. And that’s OK. This bird was bathing in the water in the tray under our Christmas tree, which lives outside on the deck for most of the year.

Now I need a birdbath.

These arrived yesterday, the newest shipment in the Anna Maria Horner Applique Stories. I’m going to make another woman block…and then embroider it.

The fabrics are a challenge. The solid peach is the easy skin color, so I won’t be using it for her flesh. I stared at the fabrics for at least a week last time before deciding what to do. I can use one as a background, although last time, I decided to use something very bland and calm from my stash (maybe that’s what the peach is for?), because the rest of it was so out there. Anyway…expect something to happen with these in the next few days. Because I can. I really like most of them…solids are not my favorites and the lavender roses are Eh, but that’s the best part of this…the olive fabric is such a stretch…I love it.

Maybe this virus lets me just make what I want. OK, I’m still having a hard time with that.

Although I stitched wool for a bit last night (sorry, forgot about a photo…try tomorrow)…I eventually got up off the couch with my post-hike tired self and came in here and started the stitch down…

So meditative. So relaxing. So hard to stop.

Hopefully I can finish today and then sandwich today or tomorrow. The floors need cleaning first. I vacuumed everything even though it’s not my month. I’m sure someone will cover me at some point when I am busy (cough cough).

So yeah, I stitch down all the pieces, because no fusible lasts forever. I’m not halfway done, but I got a good chunk done. I spent the first 20 minutes fighting with the machine to get it to stitch correctly.

Kitten action…

They play any way they can…

There was some play before this.

I was up early this morning because I thought I’d have to take my car in to get the window replaced, but then he called and said he’d be here later…probably safer for both of us than having me sit in a lobby of some repair place (I was going to bring a chair and sit outside).

Nature doesn’t see this morning as any different than any other morning.

Tonight there is a Netflix DVD here, plus we will be supporting some small food business, and hopefully there is stitching and maybe a hike/walk as well. Plus more webinars. And trying to finish my book before it gets returned electronically to the library. Hope you are all healthy and well, and if you are on the front lines in some way, we appreciate you and send you lots of love.