I was supposed to grade this big pile of stuff I brought home, but I decided not to. I did another smaller, easier assignment. I’m OK with that. It was a long day, lots of climbing on counters (just don’t even ask…it’s for science) and meetings and then walking the dogs…wait, I liked that part…
It was raining on my way home, but stopped in time for this. I don’t mind walking in a bit of rain anyway, but the dogs were muddy enough as it was. I’m trying to break my new hiking boots in before our trip…think I’m going to have to take both pairs.
This is what grading looks like sometimes. Sleepy puppy on the left, bitey asshole trying to break into my grading bag on the right.
She likes to tear papers and bite them and eat plastic bags. All very annoying. They are kittens. They do annoying kitten things when they’re not sweetly sleeping with each other.
After all that, I just wanted to cut stuff out. For 3 1/2 hours…
So I did. No, I’m still not done. I still have the stuff in the top right box to cut out.
Maybe I will be better tonight about grading? Or not. It’s not like I didn’t grade. I just chose a simpler, quicker assignment that I didn’t actually finish because my printer is out of ink and I needed a printout to finish it. A printout I already made but left at school. Uh huh. Not on purpose. Grades are due today. I should check them and make sure they’re done. I think they are.
Anyway, a little left to do and then I can iron this beast together…but I will be gone this weekend, so that will make it a little difficult to get a lot done. It’s OK. It’s for a good cause. Me. I’m the good cause.
I’m getting into some shows…Fantastic Fibers yesterday, but also Contingent Upon at Southwestern College…
I have two pieces in this show…it’s only open Mon-Thurs, 10:30 AM-2:30 PM. The opening reception is 3/12 at 11 AM and the artists’ talk is 3/12 at noon. I won’t be at any of it, unfortunately, due to my day job. It’s up through 4/14, and I won’t even be around for my Spring Break enough to go see it. Oh well.
I also got into a book show at the downtown library. The opening is Saturday, March 14, from noon-2 PM. I will be at that one at some point, not sure when.
OK, but today it is photosynthesis day, so I am grateful for the blue skies and sun that are out today (and weren’t yesterday)…to make this lab easier. I’m wondering about next week’s sun-related lab though, since there’s rain in the forecast. We might have to adjust slightly. I remember it raining when we did it last year too, but not a lot. Just a sprinkling. No biggie. A little water won’t hurt them. The kids. Or the lab. We’ll see. First I’m going to work to find that printout. Make some attempt to be efficient.
It was a hard day yesterday, lots of driving, lots of memories of my cousin. She was only 57 and really, honestly, the sweetest (yet still sarcastic and stubborn) of all of us. Church doesn’t do much for me (some of them are beautiful and all), but the priest did a good job despite all that, and spending time with family I hadn’t seen in years afterwards was a good thing. The drive was long, but being a holiday, it could have been much longer. I walked back in the door at home at about 3:30, and walked out 10 minutes later for MY church, the outdoors…
Although to be clear, I don’t do gods either. So really all those Mother Nature/Earth Mother quilts I do? Those are what’s in my head. She’s harsh, she’s beautiful, she’s uncontrollable, and we’re killing her. Or she’ll overcome all our stupidity and let the cockroaches rule next time. But the priest said one thing that’s true…my cousin will live on in our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts. We debated some of the other stuff said on the way home, just the wording. They’ve changed the Lord’s Prayer again and I don’t know it any more. That’s probably OK. Anyway, may we all remember Jennifer wherever it works best for us.
For me, it’s out here.
With these sweet dumbasses.
We finally found the plant that makes the dogs smell like maple syrup…
California cudweed…it’s everywhere. And now we need pancakes. I don’t actually like maple syrup. At all.
The pond is back…there’s been enough rain for it to exist…
We don’t feel like we’ve had enough rain this year…I think it was all too early. We need more.
Anyway, so then I made dinner and graded a bunch of stuff, and slowly realized the tired spacey feeling I had was actual illness. I changed out of my pajamas and drove to the pharmacy for “the real stuff,” as the guy said, because I’m not going to make it through this week without medication if that’s the case. I know I sat by someone with a cold somewhere in the last 4 days (besides my students), so apparently being exhausted and stressed out let my immune system fall short. It happens a couple of times a year, unfortunately. So I didn’t make any art last night…I went to bed two hours early to try to make up for getting up too early yesterday and to hopefully give my body some rest to overcome this thing.
Hopefully tonight I’ll rally a bit, finish the book project, maybe do something else. I’m so behind on everything. I can’t focus. I want to be ironing fabrics, so maybe, if I have the energy, I’ll work on that. And more grading. Fun stuff.
Gotta love Vday for the weird kid interactions. And the weird kid love. But three of the core teachers were giving a test, so that was sort of bad planning (or WAS it) on our parts. It was a hard day. I got home as quickly as I could and booked it outta there to walk the dogs. I needed it…
There’s a hawk in this picture…staring right at me…
It’s getting light later. Good stuff.
Nice side-eye Simba. The dogs had already been on one walk…but I didn’t care…new growth!
Came home, entered a show, graded an assignment, tried not to fall asleep while doing it. Cute kittens…
Did a little more drawing on the third page, glued it together, realized I’m not a paper artist…
Thought about how to attach them, decided it was bedtime…
More cats doing dorky stuff…
Currently sitting in a parking lot, waiting for it to be closer to the time I’m supposed to be at this dye workshop. Traffic north is always a crapshoot. I try to be early. Tonight is some show, but hopefully some grading and/or art before that. Maybe figure out how these book pages go together. That would be good. My eyes (and brain) are so tired…
I’m baaack. Not awake. Not caffeinated. Not ready. Nothing new! Woo hoo!
We were in Joshua Tree for the long weekend. Got a house. Hiked some. Arted some. Ate some. Drove a bunch. It was warm. And then it was cold. There’s a lot of photos. I’ll deal with them a little at a time.
We stayed in an Airbnb that advertised a funky retro style, which they definitely had…
It was small, but fine for the two of us…
We never did use that fireplace, although we bought firewood. It was a long drive up Friday night, but I had some drawing time before bed.
We knew the next day was the best weather day, so we had planned a hike from North View to the Maze Loop to Window Loop.
It was a tough hike…not because of gain or anything particularly difficult about it. I think we were both tired and it was a little warm and dry and stark as hell and it was maybe a mile too long.
The rocks are fascinating though…
I couldn’t do this in summer at all.
I’ve been to Joshua Tree a few times, although only twice that I can remember as an adult. This is the longest hike I’ve done there at 7.4 miles.
I was hoping to do some shorter hikes, rambles, on Sunday, but that didn’t happen. For one, it was really cold. Second, I don’t think we had the energy for it.
The whole first part of the hike had no Joshua Trees in it, ironically.
Ah, there we are.
It was only about 70 degrees, but there’s no shade and it’s at a higher elevation than we’re used to…which might have been part of the issue. I know my legs felt like logs most of the hike.
It really was a beautiful day though. I was a little disappointed in the trail. The North View part was nice, but we missed out the Maze part because we were only on the outer edges…and the Window section was lame, because you got a better view of the window from the Maze loop than the Window loop. And we had no energy to wander back to do the inner parts of the Maze…it would have added another 3 or 4 miles. Not happening.
We got back to the car, found some food, ate, went back to the house, showered, and tried to chill out a little. Easier for some than others? Hard to say.
That night, we went to see a bunch of art and ate a good dinner. I’ll continue later…gotta go to school and teach kids things. About rocks.
Boychild planted the other two fruit trees…now we have a lime, a lemon, and an avocado.
It’ll be a while before we have fruit, but there they are.
OK, I’ve got food in me and a little caffeine. It’s possible that I might be able to function. Tomorrow, I’ll post about the art we saw…at least some of it, because there was a lot.
We’ve doing a lot of moving and covering of things around here. Kittens are playful but also in everything…from knocking stuff off bookshelves to crawling under paper drawings (UNDER, because that’s fun) to trying to sit in boxes of Wonder Under (I had a cat who would do that, and then I didn’t), to trying to eat fabric and pins and thread. I’ve been zipping things, piling things, heavy things so they can’t move them, picking up and saying no…gotta get them trained to NOT walk on the Wonder Under/fabric stuff. One cat used to knock the ironing board down by leaping off of it (it’s not a great ironing board in terms of balance…I haven’t been able to find a good one, so I’m using my grandmother’s…vintage and ancient, but not the most stable thing in the world.).
Here’s Luna after I moved my drawing (folded up), but I’m still trying to keep the pinned piece from Sunday night so she can’t get at the pins…this is right before she tried to whack the phone.
IN the box that is ON the paper that is covering the pinned piece. I don’t really have a studio where I can close the door, since it’s Kitten’s hiding spot and she needs access. They will get trained. Certainly it takes patience.
I kamikazed home yesterday after the staff meeting so we’d have most of an hour before sunset.
We were the only ones out there for a while, until three bikers showed up.
It was chilly out…weird cold front here in San Diego.
It was 85 degrees two days ago…today is 20 degrees colder.
The pro of hiking so close to coyote hour is the sky…
And the light. Anyway. Good to have exercise. They’re putting in a new parking lot in the next few months…should hopefully solve some of the issues we have parking here, although honestly, when the lot is full, it means there are a lot of stupid people out there doing stupid shit, so avoidance seems appropriate. We’ll see.
Last night, I spent some time working with art entries…I have some work that’s being considered for a show here in San Diego, although it will be open during times I can’t go, I think. Then two entries coming up that I need to figure out. I did get photos back from the most recent quilt. I’ll post them later, maybe tomorrow. They need resizing. The name of it just popped into my head after months of calling it something lame. Love that.
As always, I graded for a while…insert cute picture of kittens…
NOT rampaging through my shit. And a tired Simba after a walk.
His short little legs did 3.26 miles. Pretty exhausting. We like to tire him out because he’s a barky asshole otherwise.
Kitten’s catnip toy has seen better days…
They use a loose weave fabric so the catnip smell comes out, but then they don’t last. This one has done better than some. She loves this toy. She throws it up in the air and bats it around and rubs her head all over it.
Around 10, I made it into the now clean (ish) office, ready to start ironing the new quilt. We’re going to Joshua Tree this weekend, and I want stuff to cut out.
Plus now that I have all these looming deadlines, I need to get some work done.
I didn’t get very far…in the 70s?
But it’s a start. This part is fun. It’s the creative bit where I get to touch all the fabric. I can’t ignore the appeal of the tactile quality of fabric. Plus all the colors and patterns. Anyway. This is a good thing. An every night thing.
Last night, approaching midnight, boychild and I are on my phone, playing owl calls, trying to figure out what has moved into one of our trees. We assumed barn owl, and sure, there’s one nearby…I’ve heard it. But this isn’t that. It’s a Great Western Horned owl. The typical hoot-hoot-hoot instead of the screech. Yes, I stand outside in the dark and listen to owls. Why do you ask?
Busy weekend; how about you? It’s just busy until sometime in late February, I think, maybe later, depending on how things roll. We did grocery shopping early and then walked the dogs.
We tried one of our normal hikes, but someone was throwing another wedding there or something (heart-shaped balloons and a million cars), so we headed to Mt. McGinty…realizing we weren’t gonna do the whole 4.5 miles with the dogs.
Way too much climbing (our car is way the freak down there and we’re not even at the top of the first hill)…there is a an old mine at the top of the first hill…no, not going in there.
Check out Calli’s tongue. She was tired.
We went out about a mile and a half and came back. It was getting toward dusk, and coyotes are always an issue.
The fog was creeping around too, so it was pretty. And there were only a few other people out there when we started…not the crowded chaos that is sometimes the other trail. People with dogs off leash and racing around on bikes. Assholes really. But this was peaceful. My quads are still complaining, but that could have been the new Pilates class as well. Because both in one day…
It was nice. I need hikes. I need outdoors.
After dinner, I made a pattern finally for the book box thing I’m thinking of for an upcoming exhibit. I don’t really make artist books, and this is more of an artist sculpture that is book like than anything else.
Once I had the pattern, I made and cut out three of them. That’s the plan. Draw three. I might stop with two though.
Drawing tonight? We’ll see. I’m drawing flat and then putting them together.
Sunday was an art meeting up north, so it took a good chunk of the day. I came back and graded stuff, then cooked dinner, then graded more stuff, and got some Luna love.
She’s sweet when she wants to be. Especially asleep. They’ve really grown lately…here’s Nova looking slightly cross-eyed. She’s definitely the smaller cat still…
Luna tries to push Nova off her food so she can have it.
Then there’s Kitten…she’s missing a bunch of teeth, like 11. She has a weird genetic issue that attacks her teeth.
Makes for some goofy faces.
At this point, I was cutting out Wonder Under. I didn’t photograph any of that. I honestly didn’t get that much done. It was late, owls were out.
I wanted to pop this in here…wait, need to find the link. Here it is…
I’m troubled by all of it. You feel badly for family for the loss of a father and a child. It’s a horrible tragedy, for the other families involved as well. But there was that rape thing…and we shouldn’t shove that under a rug.
OK, off to school and National Park week…I’m wearing my Bryce Canyon Got Oxygen? shirt…which reminds me…I need some earthquake/volcano shirts for the next unit. I know, weird teachers, yeah? Absolutely weird.
Well that’s a lot more rain than I think we were expecting last night. I always laugh when I hear people say that the rain helps them sleep, those nice, soft, rhythmic sounds. Oh yeah. That shit wakes me up. So do coyotes howling. So does Simba’s pissed-off response to coyotes on his property. Random boofing a full 30 minutes after they left does not keep them away, dude. Trust me. I’m a little rough this morning. Sleep is not my friend. Well, I think we COULD be friends, but only if it hung around and stop staring at its phone when it was with me.
So I was wrong about yesterday…I thought I was only in the 300s on the tracing, but I was in the 400s…and magically, now I am in the 500s.
OK, not so magically. I actually spent time tracing…because I finally finished grading that makeup assignment from hell. Totally revising how I do this next time. A. No one can turn anything back in without filling out something that proves they did further research. B. Give them a sheet to mark for what they fixed. I can’t expect 7th graders to write that in an email. Only 4 of them did it appropriately and they were all girls. Thank you, X chromosomes!
Kitten watched me trace yesterday.
Oh yeah, we planted the lime tree we got from a friend’s house finally. We were waiting for the trees to be trimmed and then for the local utilities to mark, because we hit some weird pipe that apparently does nothing.
Big hole…
Easier to do now, when the dirt is mostly wet…
Seriously rootbound…it was in a pot for about 5 years, we think, based on the label still on the tree. The spider plants aren’t helping with that.
The pot shattered when the boychild tried to pull it out.
Pieces of the random pipe we found in the hole…plus the tree root we thought was a wire…
It was wirelike.
Boychild pulled the spider plants off and put them aside to plant out on the slope or in pots, and then slashed the roots to try to help this tree grow here.
And then she went in the ground…the plan is for two more in this area…a lemon and an avocado.
All this used to be lawn. Not a fan. When the kids were little, it made sense. Not so much any more. Sure it’s possible someone with a family might move in here when I leave/die, but that’ll be a long way out, so I’m doing what I want now.
I have way too many cute pictures of sleeping kittens from yesterday…
Well, those aren’t sleeping. They’re cleaning each other.
There was a lot of sleeping yesterday.
They are adorable. Until they rip a hole in your finger or try to eat your backpack or pull your work bag onto the floor.
We also walked the dogs (and me. I like to walk). Coyote noise near the end…and a couple of loose dogs.
That shit drives me crazy. Not a dog park.
OK, the old lady dog is sad because I didn’t feed her. She doesn’t know she is having a tooth pulled this morning so she can’t have breakfast. So I get sad face. I need to go to school for a meeting and then I’ll be listening to presentations all day. It’s been fun watching the kids try to post the assignment and/or share it with me. It’s good that they care. It’s a group grade, though, and I got one email from a kid saying another kid on her team had wrong info and she was telling me so it wouldn’t affect her grade. Um. No. Go talk to your co-worker. Before you have me. This is fixable y’all. Then I have tutoring after school, plus a run to Home Depot for some food for that poor lime tree. It will be fine…it was a good time to get it in the ground. Then more tracing tonight! Yay. I probably won’t finish, based on the rate I’m going, but it’s all a step forward. Looking forward to the fabric part, and that’s a ways out. UGH. Sleep, you are mean.
I’m late writing today. I had a thing this morning, and then the boychild and I took the dogs on the last long hike of Winter Break…although next weekend is a 3-day weekend, so we’ll probably do another one. Hopefully by then, the daylight will last long enough that we can hike after school some afternoons, but we’ll see…it needs to be light late enough that we can avoid coyotes…as much as you CAN avoid coyotes while in wild spaces.
This is Crestridge, and it was cool enough to do this midday. We’ll come back on that trail way over there. We usually go UP that and come back this way or another, but this time we did it backwards.
A portrait of two dogs who refuse to look at ME, and look at the boychild instead.
Not very photogenic.
Lots of fungus…
Anyway. That was today. Last night, I hung out with one of my stitching groups…Julie is crocheting next year’s Christmas ornaments, which is very organized of her…
Many of her annual ornaments hang on my tree. When I remember to decorate it, which is often on Christmas Eve.
And Kathy is working on another Sue Spargo, Homegrown…which I own and will enjoy stitching if I ever finish the 2015 block-of-the-month, Folk Tails.
I finished the three September blocks with that flamingo, and she is working on Block 8 of a million. Or so. Yes. 2015. You read that right. I haven’t gotten much done on it this year…too many other embroidery projects on my plate.
Honestly, the process is more fun than the finish on these.
There was lots of kitten playtime last night…here they’re watching Simba, who’s watching things far away that he needs to bark at. The kittens don’t know why.
Honestly, none of us know why he barks so much or what he’s barking at. After the dogs left, we had all three cats playing with one purple ribbon…
Fun for everyone…especially if Nova grabs one end and tries to run with it.
I did finally cut a piece of paper to start drawing the next quilt. I guess I gave up on a drawing a day, because now I’m drawing the quilt instead. Nova came up to see and decided the remote was a dangerous beast that needed attacking.
She seriously pounced on it. Kitten is still the biggest…but there was some racing around the house by all three…
Back to drawing…I started with the drawing from a few nights ago. I’m not sure where else it will lead, but it’s a start.
It’s nice to have somewhere for Art Brain to land.
Tomorrow, I’m driving a million miles to take a class, and then driving back again. All good. Oh yeah, I got into another show…Artist as Quiltmaker XIX. Heart-Shaped Box will be at FAVA in Oberlin, Ohio, from May 16-July 26. Cool news…
Yesterday was awesome and stressful and exhausting, not all at the same time. Awesome hike and time spent in nature. Stressful incident with one of my quilts that ended well because some people are awesome, even if they don’t know you. Exhausting because of the hike and then exercise in the afternoon (not best planned) with emotional stress from the quilt thing. I ended up not getting much done, certainly not what I had planned to get done. It’s OK. There’s time. It was frustrating. I had plans. My brain intervened. So today, I’m feeling overwhelmed with to-do stuff, even though I still have a week of break left. It’s never enough.
I like chronology. The day started with a hike up Volcan Mountain, my first time…it has a great trailhead…
It was a bit chilly going up, but not too bad. More of the trailhead art…
We had read that the trail had ice, snow, and mud, so we brought poles this time…
It was a beautiful day…it’s a mountain, though, so there is a lot of up.
Up can be hard. There was some snow, ice, and mud, but it wasn’t too bad, and we avoided this section on the way down by taking the alternate Five Oaks trail down (I wouldn’t want to take that one UP, but down was nice).
My solution after last week’s UP hike (it wasn’t a mountain, so the up was parceled out throughout the entire hike) was to suggest my hiking partner pick the hike this time. Years of raising children and teaching middle school has taught me that ownership moderates the complaining. I was right. And we were rewarded with beautiful trees…
A million acorns underfoot…
And eventually an awesome view from the top…
More mud, not anywhere near as bad as last week’s.
Actually, there were multiple viewpoints…
And the plus is, it was down for the second half.
There are pros and cons to mountains. Our first hike of 2020 in the books.
See, we’re smiling! Because we know it’s downhill from here? Perhaps. May there be many more hikes as the year unfolds.
Although I could do without the snow.
This isn’t bad at all, actually. There’s Cuyamaca, Middle, and Stonewall peaks out there…
They had more snow, I think.
I’m still in love with manzanita, by the way.
Gonna plant some here. One bush. Far away from the house, since they are a fire danger.
Finished the hike with a drink and a burger. That was a seriously healthy wine pour. Santa still hanging out here in the mountains.
We came back and showered and I was going to start grading when I got a phone call from someone I didn’t know asking me if I meant to throw out my art.
Um. No? Serious stomach flutters on that call. She found it in a trashcan in front of San Diego Gymnastics in Liberty Station here in San Diego. She pulled it out because it was beautiful and then (this is why all your contact info goes on your label, people) she called me to see if I had meant to throw it away. She didn’t leave it in the trash. She didn’t keep it without contacting me. She did the right thing. This piece, Portrait of a Young Woman As an Artist, has been hanging in Liberty Station in a show since early November. Here’s where it was hanging…
The asshole(s?) who pulled it down and trashed it pulled hard enough to unbolt it from the wall on the one side. It was pretty high up on the wall too…so they had to work at it. I’m surprised they didn’t damage the piece. I’m so glad this woman called me. I drove out there and handed her cash and she tried to say I didn’t have to, and I’m like, I’m rewarding good people. I had some cash lying around from a friend who is paying installments on one of my quilts, and this pays that goodness forward.
By the way, the asshole(s) who pulled it down? There are cameras. We had an issue with another piece, they tracked the offender down and threatened them with the police. They returned the piece. This one? Well it would have been in the trash and discarded if this woman hadn’t done such a good deed. I was so stressed and freaked out that I didn’t even get her name. Duh. Oh well. It’s done. It’s saved. All is good. I did not go rehang it though. The show comes down next weekend. I’m good. The rest of the pieces in the show are all still there, undamaged, so that’s just another piece of humanity I have to wonder about. The good versus the bad? I hate to think of people as being bad…their behavior is bad. I’d love an explanation, I guess. I probably won’t get one.
After all that, I went to my already scheduled (couldn’t reschedule it, dammit) Pilates class and exercised my already tired body. I came back and was unable to focus on anything. I ate dinner. I finished my book. And then I drew…
I was watching more Craft in America episodes. Interesting stuff.
I couldn’t manage to sew a binding on or grade anything. My brain was overwhelmed with WHY and HOW and WTF and Australia on fire and war on Iran or WWIII or the draft (I have kids…I worry) and even this wouldn’t shut it up…
Although boychild and I shopped online for houses in the Julian area and mentally purchased a 20-acre horse ranch with stables and arena and hot tub. We’ll be doing something out there…as soon as we win the lottery and have 2.5 million dollars to spare. I guess that was my brain trying NOT to stress out.
I should be like the furries.
Just play and sleep and don’t worry about it. I am unfortunately a worrisome human, so that’s harder for me.
Today is busy and all over the place and I don’t even know if I’ll have time to do anything on the to-do list, and in fact, I just made the to-do list longer with all the crap that needs cleaning and organizing because it’s stressing me out. So there’s that.
Quilt is back, safe and sound. My body is strong and can kick a mountain’s ass. Do mountains have asses? And I still have a week to manage all the shit that’s piled up around me, literally and figuratively. Let’s hope for rain in Australia and a quick solution to the warmongering stupidity and many more good people who do the right thing.
It was a good New Year’s Day…I never got out of my pajamas…the only thing better would have been a hike, and we have that planned for tomorrow.
Today is the boychild’s birthday…
Wow. That hair. He’s much taller now, hair is longer. Pretty sure he started those bangs the girlchild has…after some revisions by mom. He makes better decisions now. Or at least asks first. He’ll spend some time with dogs and maybe kittens, relaxing. May 2020 be awesome for him, whatever that means.
We hiked with the dogs on Tuesday (yes, I am losing track of days). Simba needed a carry assist at some point…we thought he might have something in his paw, but it might have just been a pulled muscle.
We took them out 4 miles to try to tire the boy out…the boy dog, that is. He’s been in bark mode. Plus we think he misses the girlchild. It was a gorgeous day for a hike…
I love the outside. Plus there was lots of water to look at and stomp through…
Check out that tongue. We definitely tired her out…almost enough to ignore the fireworks on NYE.
I quilted a little bit every day…like one person’s worth…
It was a goal I could handle. Finish one person. Then you get a break.
It stayed that way, one a day, until yesterday…
Yesterday, I finished the requisite person and then had the background staring at me…
I stopped for dinner and then finished quilting the whole thing…
It only took 3 1/2 hours…
So Kitten/kitten play has been happening…a little…
Mostly around corners and under quilts…
There was no hissing here…just play bopping. And this was after Nova went after Kitten’s tail, which was swishing around quite temptingly.
I did my daily drawings…this one from NYE was a little strange…
Here’s the first drawing of 2020…
I always feel like this is such a good practice, drawing every day, but the reality of my days during school are less conducive to this. Unfortunately. I’ve tried instituting a drawing a week, like Friday night, but time is so limited when I’m teaching that I sacrifice the drawing time to actual artmaking instead.
Nova on my sketchbooks…
Not the best footing.
OK, I have two quilts to deliver, a binding fabric to buy (no, I don’t have enough of anything to use for binding), and pilates class…plus grading. I did one period of the UGH assignments (it’s really two assignments put together) yesterday. It took about 2 1/2 hours, but I wasn’t really paying attention well and I will get faster. Or not. I don’t know. Four more periods of those to go…really need to do one a day. Plus decide what art I’m making next. Oh yeah, recap of 2019…only 6 quilts, but 1 was huge…
All of them have been or are going to be in shows, which is cool. Two are traveling for at least a year. One won an award. All good. I feel like making work from my head is a good place right now. Although 4 of these were made for specific themes. My favorite, Swallow Me Whole, was not though. It was a thing in my head that needed to get out. So start 2020 with one of those, one I choose, no theme, just Nida.
Plus I did these last year…
These were a new thing…not sure how successful it was, but it was an interesting experience. I would stitch more of my drawings, but they take so much time, it’s hard to make it a profitable thing. Not that I make art for that…but maybe I’ll design a few for traveling/camping. They were good for that. You can find patterns and kits for these at Global Artisans…
2020…may it be full of art and time for that shit.
Kathy Nida 