Well happy New Years Eve, all. Or for some, you’re already in 2019 and that’s just weird. Time is weird though, so what’s new. Yesterday I didn’t write because I was hiking, which was cool. Today the kids leave for Lake Arrowhead…I will follow them tomorrow, when the wind gusts will kick up to 45 mph, so that will be a fun drive. Plus really cold up there for people who don’t own puffy coats. I have fleece. That’s it. Fleece and Uggs. Prepare to freeze.
It will be fine. I’m looking forward to some artmaking time today, but also to a diabetes educator appointment. My insulin isn’t working right. Or I’m not working right, which is more likely. So I got a last-minute appointment to go in. Apparently no one wants to go to the nurse on NYE, but me…I’m OK with that. I’d rather deal with it now than try to fit it in during school. It’s so difficult to get appointments of any kind around my job. Frustrating. So maybe we can figure out WTF is going on with my body as part of the new year.
But yesterday, we hiked to Eagle Rock, which is on part of the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail). I’ve been there a few times, and it’s a relatively easy hike, but not super short…I think we did 6 1/2 miles.
First we drove way the freak out to Warner Springs…
It was chilly at first, but exercise warmed us up enough to shed the outer layers, even in the shade of the oaks…
It was a beautiful clear day, no wind, just a bit of a breeze…welcome as we got out into the flat areas…
I call this hike mostly flat. My hiking partner did not agree. I think I just forget about the hills after I hike them.
Mostly flat.
There were a lot of people out there, but not too many. Most of them had dogs.
Ah! There’s the eagle in Eagle Rock…and my partner, glad to be halfway. When we started dating, he had written that he liked to hike…
I’m not sure he and I agree on what hiking is…but he’s a good sport about it. Here’s the view of the valley from the rock formation.
The hard rocks that survived erosion over the years…
Proof I was there!
The last time I hiked this was May 2014…more flowers then. More water too, strangely.
There’s this place in Ramona that looks like a total dive from the outside, but is pretty hip on the inside, so we stopped for some food and a drink before driving all the way home.
Came back to lounging tiredly around post-hike, with puppy, who did no hike at all…
He ran around a lot in the morning.
I took a long time to draw this…just tired, I guess.
Yes, that’s T. rex as a spirit animal.
Girlchild eventually showed up again.
Puppy likes her. Although I think he slept on everybody. I haven’t seen the kid much…friends in town.
I finally started cutting out, but late…
It was an Avengers night…but it doesn’t look like I got much done.
Seriously, that’s three hours of cutting. Sheesh.
This is what’s left. A lot.
I’ll do some of that tonight. I’m not a fan of big NYE partying. We have errands to do today and I have that collaboration piece I need to get done by next Sunday, so I should get going on that today. I’ll go to Arrowhead tomorrow with all my crap that needs doing, hang out with the kids etc. for a few days, and head back to face the fact that I’m going back to work. Stressful. Oh well. I had time off…I still have almost a week. Use it wisely.
The new year is creeping up on us. I like to look back at what I made in the year past and think about what I might make in the year future. I already have one quilt in progress that will be done in January (knock on wood), plus two in line behind it that don’t exist even in my head yet…well, the second one does, but only by the seat of its pants. I finished 11 quilts in 2018…one of which was a commission and two of which are tiny, so they don’t really count. Five of the 11 have been in exhibits, which isn’t bad, and I hope the rest will make it out into the world this year. Seven of them were made for specific exhibits in mind, and three of those got into the show they were supposed to be for, which is fine…I’m counting the one or two a year I make for Quilt National and Visions, and I never worry about their not getting in…they will get in somewhere. It’s really just about making a deadline to create a large and meaningful piece.
The one I’m working on now is meant for an exhibit, but can show anywhere. It wanders away from the large and political issues I’ve been working with this last year and goes into my head. Not necessarily a pretty place to be, but that’s what this piece is about and it’s why it had to be made.
The good news on that is that I’ve finished ironing all the pieces to fabric as of about 11:30 PM last night.
There’s a lot of cutting in my future. I’m going to guess about 17 hours of cutting. Realistically, could I be done before I go to Arrowhead next week? Probably not. I have a hike shoved in there and other stuff I need to work on as well. But I’ll get a good chunk of it done, finish it at the cabin, and come back January 3, ready to iron it together. Because then I go back to school and all hell breaks loose and I don’t have as much time to make art again. Ugh. So not ready. One week left. I saved up some of my work to do at the cabin, so no, I haven’t graded anything at all for two days, and barely touched an assignment the two days prior. Oh well. It happens to the best, most motivated of us.
I worked really hard to use as many different fabrics in this quilt as I could. Each head deserved their own vein and heart fabrics. Plus I got to go rooting through bins looking for different stuff. That was fun. Time-consuming, but fun. So this is the most I’ve ever used in a quilt, I think, because normally I try to reuse fabrics throughout the piece to unify it. I don’t need that for this quilt though. No unification needed.
Here’s what 230 fabrics looks like…
The box on the bottom right has all five runs of flesh, one for each figure. They’re all me. I range from pale to pink to purple. Legit. I left out the red I burn in the summer.
I binge-watched the tail end of Fearless and then Seven Seconds, which was troubling and hard to watch, but good. I think I’m going back to The Shield for the cutting stage. Different access to channels in the living room than in my office. I briefly toyed with Derry Girls last night too, which made me laugh. Might be a good plan to watch more of that.
Before I got to do any artmaking last night, I had about 17 errands. I keep saying 17, but of course it was fewer than that. It took 5 hours though, maybe more. This was JoAnns hell. I hate coming here, but there were sales on Wonder Under and batting, and I needed a lot of both. So I waited. And waited.
On all the people who can’t figure out what they need before they get up to the cutting tables, even though they’ve had at least 30 minutes to calculate their shit, plus that one woman who hung out there the whole time, even though her number was well after mine (not in the way or anything). And then the checkout line, with the two old ladies behind me bitching because I wouldn’t let them butt in front of me, because they only had two items (I only had four, and two of them were on the same ticket, so suck me folks.).
That was one of the places I forced myself to go yesterday, and probably the worst, followed by Michaels. Not surprising. But I managed to cross a huge chunk of to-do stuff off the list yesterday (and get nothing else done during the day).
I also washed the quilt that sold over a year ago but was traveling…the future owner is allergic to cats, so I wash at my parents’ house (cat-free) to get rid of the dander (or most of it anyway) and then dry it there, iron it, dehair it as needed, and pack it up there. Seems to work.
I’ll go back in a few days and do all that other stuff so I can ship it off to her. I came back to a sleepy puppy…
He can be a real sweetheart…
When he’s not barking at the zombie apocalypse.
Yesterday’s drawing…more of the spirit animal stuff.
Got my head in that spot, apparently.
Back to the couch around midnight after ironing…communing with three out of the four furry beasts (the other one rarely comes out of my office)…
I didn’t start cutting. I was tired. I went to bed. I feel good that I got all those errands out of the way. There are more of them, I’m sure; there always are, but it was a cathartic moment of crossing things off the list. I finished a bunch of online stuff too, paying for this or that, finding this thing online that I needed. All good. Clearing the way for the new year. May it be full of time for artmaking. Whatever that means.
Someone said it was the last Friday of 2018…thus reminding me of what day it was. Good one. Last night, I sat down with my list of errands that I blew off yesterday in order to walk the dogs and iron for over 5 hours…and I made a special post-it note for today of all the things I need to drive around in my car and do today. When I’m teaching, errands get shoved into the few hours before or after school when I can drop by this place or that, or they get shuffled into the weekend. On break, I could go out and do one or two things a day, but then whatever art I’m working on sucks up my brain and I don’t leave the house for days unless forced by others. Yesterday was the oil change…so I had to leave the house TWICE. I know. Crazy. And I did walk out of here with the dogs and come back an hour later. But that’s different. Today I will need to go to a multitude of places and do all the things, because next week is messy and I won’t be able to do that.
The first stop, though, will be the post office to mail off the drawing from 12/26 that sold, so that’s cool. I don’t really think of the drawings as art in their own space…more a means to an end. And the ones I’m doing now definitely aren’t probably maybe going to be quilts, so it’s OK to draw things I would never try to reproduce in fabric. Like this rug…
I’m pretty sure the concentric not-circles don’t line up and if I tried to make it, my brain would explode. But I might redraw it for a quilt, if I wanted to. I really am considering these brain exercises. I’m enjoying it though. I tried to institute a Friday-night drawing plan a few years ago, since I was usually braindead from school and couldn’t function to grade, but honestly, I was too tired to draw a lot of the time too…OR I would want to get right to whatever artmaking I had postponed all week, if I did have any energy. So maybe drawing one night a week is a thing? I do have two drawings I’m supposed to be working on, maybe technically three, and so I should get going on those.
Art takes time. I fight to make sure I have it pushed into my schedule. That’s how I get so behind on school and grading and errands and cleaning house and gardening.
So yesterday, I was hoping to get a big chunk of ironing done…and I did. Here’s the sun…
I like suns. And moons. And stars. They show up a lot.
I’ve had this yellow fabric for a long time. I had a half yard of it, because that’s normally what I buy when I’m filling the stash. This is all that’s left.
It gets hard to fold up into a logical square at this point. But I love this fabric.
Finally Figure 5…so I’ve used a different run of 5-7 fabrics for each. I find that if I don’t challenge myself to use new fabrics, I’ll use the same ones over and over again (like that yellow). So this is a very pink/purple person. Two of the fabrics below had never been cut into…
Challenge accepted.
And there they all are, laid out, ready for ironing.
Now I’m down to the last bits and pieces…
Heart, wings, lungs, grassy chin (you read that right), a bee, and a beetle. That’s it! I’m almost done. Today, surely…
I didn’t clean up much last night, because I did a bit halfway through the day. It was getting all chaotic and confused. I couldn’t find anything.
I’ll organize one more time, into color runs, before the end. I like to see how much of each color I used.
So besides running a bunch of errands and finishing a multitude of little tasks (move the table, bring the plate, pay the bills, put that envelope in the mailbox, return that frame, buy another one, buy this, return that, find those…)…I will be ironing at some point today.
Girlchild and Simba watching some TV show together.
Not sure how much WATCHING the puppy is doing. But he seems happy.
As was Kitten this morning…curled up with me.
I did not want to get up. The other cat made me. He wanted food.
Well, at least I have a plan. (Just don’t ask me how I’m doing on grading right now.) I couldn’t resist this post title. Politics makes my head hurt. Stupid people scared of unreal stuff make my head hurt. There’s so many things that make more sense than a wall…but that’s the problem with government and law…it’s not about sense.
The dogs are perturbed. The kids just left for a hike without them, leaving them with me, the boring old lady who irons all day. I do actually have a hike planned for next week, and I was going to walk the dogs today, but I’m down a car and don’t want to go to the wildlife area (with coyotes) by myself with the dogs. But I can walk them locally…a little later maybe. I’m not quite awake yet. Fuzzy brain caused by lack of sleep. They did get left alone for a chunk of yesterday…while we cooked pasta from scratch.
This was around the corner from where we cooked…a nice, colorful mural.
We actually were at Hipcooks, next door. The man’s family is large and extended, and we were invited to cook with them…
Wherein he showed a skill for beating eggs that has been previously invisible…
Good to know.
Boychild in charge of a pasta filling…
Pretty sure the girlchild was in charge of mushrooms…but I don’t have a picture of that. Oh wait, I do. She’s texting and cooking at the same time.
Obligatory food picture, first course…
The second course required the pasta attachments…
Mostly we let the kids do that, because they really liked it…but so did this guy. I didn’t take any pictures of the second course. But it was good…and we had a good time. Not rocket science, but an enjoyable afternoon.
We came back home, and predictably, I ironed. This is Figure 4…
I did that before dinnermaking…
At some point, the girlchild came in here to book a flight to Portugal. Of course. Her computer is still on my floor in here.
She brought a dog.
After dinner, I drew this. The birds came from the show I was watching, Seven Seconds.
I don’t know where the rest of it came from. I’m just exercising my drawing brain at the moment…letting it wander aimlessly.
I ironed for about 3 hours yesterday…got into the 1000s…about 2/3rds done.
I started stressing about school and life yesterday. I graded a little, but not a lot. It hurts my head.
I took a break to hang out, and then it got late…so I never put all this away. I just left it piled up.
I’m still ironing all the bits that go with Figure 4. I’m just about to start the snakes that make up her hair. Complicated stuff.
Right now, I’m listening to her snore…
She hides back there and sleeps on piles of batting. Sweet kitty.
Yeah, school stress is keeping me awake at night. Life stress. All the stress. Yes, I’m on break. That’s why I need a walk today. Or something. First I need to find the money for girlchild’s rent and college, and then maybe iron a bit. Then the dogs. Then more ironing. I want to be done with the ironing. Not sure that’s an option today…seems like a lot more hours will be needed. I’m guessing 7. We’ll see.
Happy Boxing Day! Seriously, if you’ve survived the holidays so far, you’re doing great…just a few more things to get out of the way, right? The year is almost ready to end, there’s still some family stuff to do, there’s post-holiday cleanup, there’s trying to use up all the gift cards and certificates before you forget about them. You have a bunch of books to read, if you’re from my family. I have a lot more fuzzy socks than I did before, which is good, because a bunch of mine had holes in them. It’s all good. Well, just don’t think about deadlines or going back to work or finishing grades, and everything will be fine. I think I’m officially halfway through my Winter Break, and my phone map thinks I need to go back to school. Because it’s Wednesday and I’m not at work yet. Eleven days until back to school? That’s less than half left. Or exactly half. Something like that. So many things to get done before then! I tried to grade yesterday and mostly failed at it. Granted, it was Christmas Day, but in between this and that, I thought I could be efficient. Not so much.
First of all, back to Christmas Eve…I ironed in between the morning event and the evening event, trying to finish up all the bits that belonged to Figure number 2, like this bird.
Meanwhile, Kitten is watching real birds outside.
And in the evening, I drew my requisite, geez, aren’t they getting weirder and weirder, drawing…
There is a second figure bending over on the right. It has to do with how I drew the arm. She didn’t fit with the arm any more.
And then I laid out all the pieces for Figure 3…
I’ve been using a different run of flesh fabrics for each person, but honestly have not paid much attention to what might happen when they overlap, which is really just where the arms are. There’s always ink and thread for that issue.
So Christmas Eve, when I gave up and went to bed, this is all I had used. I have tried to keep the fleshy bits for each figure in a separate box, just so I can see them.
There’s lots of fabric in this one. And here’s all the Wonder Under bits that are not flesh but still part of Figure 3.
I didn’t get to those until Christmas Day…because in the years past, I have managed to stay out of the cooking/food prep part of Christmas evening (mostly) and so I can do art stuff in the hours in between. I would have walked dogs too, but it rained most of the day, so I opted out of outside.
Rushing ahead though. Here’s the pile of stuff to be cut out from Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day is opening presents and cuddling animals…
Animals with chew toys.
Animals who resemble presents…
That tile is from Spain. Or Portugal. Now I can’t remember.
All the animals…
Well, until he’s ready to guard us from the rain. It really did pour for a while.
We got over half an inch. Which reminds me…I need to go turn the sprinklers off again.
Kitten did a damn good job of guarding the bed…
I brought her a catnip toy to entertain her. She’s kind of antisocial.
Rainy driveway.
Today of course is beautiful and sunny. But we have an afternoon thing that will keep me from enjoying it. Oh well.
I did fabric stuff for about an hour in the afternoon, and then we headed off for Christmas dinner, which is a mix of stuff to keep everyone sort of happy.
Girlchild is a good cook. Which is nice.
I worked on the zebra for a bit.
No, he’s still not done. They’re never done.
And then I mostly drew this in the dark. Which might explain my spelling issue.
It might explain a lot of things. This would be a hellish quilt to make. But it was relaxing to draw.
Back to the ironing. While I’m actually picking fabrics, this is what the fabric pile looks like.
It’s a little chaotic. When it gets really bad, I clean up…here’s everything used so far…
I got through Figure 3 and all the attached bits…like this snake…
I’m ready for Figure 4, which has snakes for hair. Complicated overlapping snakes for hair. Yup. What am I, nuts? Don’t answer that.
I’m 12 1/2 hours into the ironing, and barely over the halfway point for pieces…about halfway through the 800s, I think.
The box gets more and more full.
My hours per week are up in the last 7 days, but still not where they need to be. I need to be fully ironed to fabric before I leave for the cabin, and honestly, I’d like to be done well before that and cutting the pieces out already. Done with that by the time I get back, and then ironing down, because then I go back to school. Yikes. No time for that. The next figure is also on fire. I really am trying to use totally different fabrics in each figure, even the reds for the hearts, although the last one had a gray heart. I want to cut into fabrics that have never felt scissor love. I want to use up things that I have large pieces of and that don’t need to be quite so large in the stash. Kitten just tried to turn on toggle sound on the computer. She’s using the keyboard as a pillow. Nice one, cat.
OK, but for now, I need to get ready for the last official family event, which means breakfast and a shower. And then maybe iron a bit before we leave. Figure 4 for tonight then. Some more grading at some point. Ugh. Some exercise some time. Tomorrow probably. Scissor love though. Gotta love me some fabric.
Merry Christmas Eve. May yours NOT involve the grocery store, the liquor store, the pet store, anywhere with a parking lot, or anyone under the age of…um…well…I’m honestly kind of at a point of no people right now. Furry beasts only. Cocktails definitely. And pajamas would be my preference. A roaring fire. Except we’re in Southern California and it’s currently too warm for that. Sigh. A good book! I’ve got one of those. But unfortunately, most of the rest was on my list for today, and there’s more coming. So there we are. We all decide on how to do our holidays and it often involves those of the human persuasion.
Furry beast number 1…happily terrorizing the other cat in the house and trying to eat all the people’s foods.
Furry beast number 2…who mostly has been hiding from all of us and kneading the batting.
She’s come out to say hi to me. That’s it. Gone again.
Furry beast number 3…happily chewing Katie’s bone at the grandparents’ house last night for dinner.
Girlchild cooked. I stitched. Puppy didn’t make it into the photos yesterday. Oh wait. He did. There he is…with the girlchild.
She enjoys the furries.
Last night’s drawing, after I shut myself in my office for like 3 hours.
If the head doesn’t fit, bend it. OK, I actually drew the head first I think. Repeating imagery. Only so many things to draw in the world.
I ironed for about 2 hours last night. I finished all the parts of Figure 2 that weren’t flesh…so lungs, hair, heart, etc.
I’m ready to start Figure 3, but first I have a bird, a nest, and a vine that are all attached to Figure 2. And I have a Christmas Eve thing to which I must go, so who knows if I’ll get any of that done. It’s my plan to do some now.
Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far. Much more colorful than some others…
I’m trying to make sure I use different fabric ranges in each person. They are all different people.
I did some of the flower bits. I didn’t do two of them because the instructions for them are at home. Here. Not at my parents’ house.
I started the zebra. I obviously haven’t started the official plan for 2019, wherein I work on something different each night. This is easy for traveling to people’s houses. Easier than many things. Stitching is relaxing. I need to do more of it. Right now. Like RIGHT NOW.
Or I could iron. Also on the list. Hope your Christmas Eve includes some calm and mellow times, if that’s what you crave. Or not.
OK I’m writing on a Sunday because I didn’t realize it was a Sunday because I’ve finally reached the part of my Winter Break when I have no idea what day it is until someone tells me. And this clears my brain and lets me set goals for the day or even the week, although right now, let’s just focus on one day at a time, because more than that makes me panic about deadlines and stuff like that, and that’s not a good place to be right now. Right now should be all cookies and kittens, people. Maybe some puppies or bunnies too, and a cute little sloth or hedgehog would also be appreciated. Plus clean floors. Still don’t have those.
So with that, I spent a lot of time yesterday ironing…for good, not evil, no worries. No clothing was harmed in the process. And I’m totally OK with having all that time to iron. I wanted it. I did not leave the house. And it was fine.
Before I did that, I cut some background blocks for the moons I bought from Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth…I’m planning some of my typical fusing on each block and then a bunch of hand embroidery.
It’s not something for a show…it’s just something for me. What a concept! Trying something new anyway. That’s always a good thing. This is the project that will occupy me on Sundays, so I needed to get it up and running. Fusing next.
Then I hung the drawing for the new piece…twice, because it does have a top, but sometimes I get confused by where that is.
Goddess forbid I label the damn thing with TOP. It’s big…more horizontal than usual. More horizontal than vertical.
There’s a lot of flesh in this. Five heads means five different flesh runs. This is the first and the smallest of the figures. Kitten is fascinated.
Geez. So there it was after I found all the pieces for that person…I think it’s the only one that has a torso down into the legs. They all have arms though.
Some of the biggest pieces in here are arm parts.
For once, I numbered intelligently. I numbered everything in each figure and then everything that touches it that’s not another figure. So logical. This is the third fabric in the flesh run. Fitting all the pieces together. I am giving a talk at my local quilt guild in January and I need process pictures.
I don’t really like puzzles, but I also don’t like wasting fabric. So I’m very thoughtful about how I iron.
Then I started picking fabrics for Figure 2…bigger pieces, but still only a run of 5 fabrics for the main fleshy bits. I have to worry a bit about having enough of each fabric to actually cut out the pieces…the second one was a bit tight.
Or maybe it was the first one. Can’t remember. It’s OK. I want to use up fabric and have them be in quilts. I don’t want them to languish away in drawers, lonely and bereft of admiration.
I did take a few hours of a break and finished grading that big assignment (yay! Yes, there are 6 more, but they’re all smaller, hallelujah) and then drew this crazy thing while watching a movie with the sick man.
I can’t explain it. I just didn’t know what to do with the legs. They were too far apart to put a body on them, and besides, the paper wasn’t long enough for that, and it was really about being underground anyway, and someone was making me watch the news at some point, and that’s never a good thing.
When the sick guy went to bed (hope he’s better soon…he’s miserable), I went back and ironed down the last of the fleshy bits on Figure 2. Here’s everything ironed down so far.
I still have to do all the non-flesh bits of Figure 2, like the heart, lungs, and eyeballs. I ironed for almost 5 hours yesterday. Perfect! Hoping for a repeat today, but…well…we’ll see. More stuff going on today. I’m not sure where I am in the pieces…I pulled from the 200s and the 300s, but didn’t iron all of them down, so I probably have at least 300 pieces ironed. I’m guessing it will take about 20 hours to iron all of this…so it’ll be sometime this week. I think. I do have other stuff to do, lots of family stuff, which is good, but eats into my artmaking time. That sounds cranky, but I am in serious hermit mode right now and didn’t leave the house yesterday. I won’t be able to pull that off today. I will have to fight holiday grocery store crowds and be nice about it. Ugh. And I should grade something and I will definitely draw again. Hopefully something less psychotic, but honestly, it doesn’t matter, because I’m just drawing to draw…and I finished that sketchbook last night (from 2014), and found another one that I started in 2014 (why? Why two in the same year? I cannot say.), so now I’ll try to fill that one.
But for now, I’m waiting on the children, so I can go to the grocery store and get that over with. Woo! Love it! Yeah! Then ironing. Please.
Another no-art day. Ah Christmas. You eat up my spare time with your neediness. Today will be different. I feel it. Christmas morning will be here at the house, so cleaning, plus we have to deal with grocery shopping for the festivities, but that’s not much…just some dusting, some floor cleaning, and an hour at the store, maybe more. Today I personally have no plans, although there is still a to-do list. I don’t have to do anything on it though…except my daily Winter Break drawing.
Yesterday. Yesterday was a lot of cleaning and cooking and then we walked the dogs to really tire them out…oh wait, but before that, I finished the present wrapping and there’s Kitten, guarding the tree.
She hasn’t gacked up any pine needles yet, but it’s not for wont of trying.
We took the dogs out to Crestridge Ecological Reserve…I keep forgetting about this one, because it’s a longer drive to get there.
It has a beautiful grove of old oak trees though. Obvious rain damage to the trail from the two batches of rain we got a few weeks ago.
We were trying to do 4 miles, but were just short. The weather was perfect…a little chilly even.
The last time I was here, it was too hot.
We wandered around a trail for a bit…
The dogs like to forage. Mostly. Here boychild went to explore a pile of stuff in the brush, and Simba refused to go with him. So we waited.
This is coyote country, so I do pay attention to Simba’s instincts. Although he’s also a rampant barker…but not on leash.
Even in winter, we get flowers…
Although not many. More of that rain damage.
Makes for interesting patterns on the ground. Remember that for the next drawing.
Anyway, then I bathed the big dog. She has skin issues and needed her special soap. Dinner. Picked up girlchild from the airport, which was hellish. Too many people. Three introverts in a car looking for the one extrovert. Then they dropped me at the music venue where my guy was playing last night.
And I upped my daily step count yet again. It was a nice way to end the day…short set, not too late, got a good view up front. Wine was horrendously expensive, so I gave up on that.
I did draw while waiting for the band to come out, though. Got some weird looks and some comments. I was there by myself, so I was OK with it.
This is one of the smallest sketchbooks. It fits in my purse. I did most of the drawing in the 20 minutes before the band came out (shitty lighting), and then finished it while waiting for the man to pack up his equipment. This is 6×9″ I think. I don’t like the bird, but the rest is fine. Filling spaces. Like I said, I enjoy the freedom of drawing without a purpose. One woman wanted to know why I didn’t do it earlier in the day, since I knew I was coming here. I was like, “I didn’t have time. Plus I knew I’d be standing here.” I think the idea of going somewhere by yourself was confusing to her. Maybe if I’d explained that I was with the band? She was all talking about how she had friends in both bands. OK. Well. I go to a lot of these and there’s a lot of waiting around and I like to have my brain busy. So I read or draw. I also danced for an hour, so I’m OK with that.
Meanwhile…did I get anything done on that quilt in progress? Fuck no, I did not. Nothing at all. That will change today. The kids are Christmas shopping and then they will go to their dad’s. The man is sick, so I’m suspecting dinner here or out and that’s it, and I’m OK with that. I’d like to start ironing this quilt to fabric today. I would like to get a big chunk of that done, like 4 or 5 hours. I’d like to do the same tomorrow, but tomorrow gets more complicated. I’d like this shingles vaccine rash to go away (I finally took Benadryl last night…it helped a little.). I’d like more sleep. All these things are possible. I want to finish grading the last of the science units. I got about a third of the way through the last period yesterday. I even did a few at 11 PM after the show, but I didn’t finish. Today I would like to finish, so I can pack that pile up and just deal with the computer stuff. I might change out of pajamas…but I might not. That’s a decision I can make later.
There’s something about the three breaks I get a year as a teacher…work takes up so much mental space that it’s hard to do anything beyond the necessary errands and short, quick self-care, like hikes and art exhibits and music and dinners out with loved ones. Then I get three weeks off, albeit three weeks with the girlchild home and a bunch of holiday requirements, you must be here and there and bring stuff that has to be organized, blah blah blah. That’s not my favorite part of any holiday. And then because I’m a teacher, I have to balance my desire to completely blow off my job for 3 weeks (some manage this…I don’t know how) with the hope that if I work hard enough, I could start teaching again in January with very little backlog. It’s never NO backlog. That’s a joke. But get the big nasty stuff out of the way, for sure. Especially since grades are due when we get back.
But January 1, the new year, is always mentally a place where we evaluate life, love, and the pursuit of happiness, right? OK, teachers do that over the summer too. Plus cleaning…it’s all about cleaning and finishing things, right? I used to always start new projects around Thanksgiving, because I’d have time then to do that, and then with Winter Break I could finish something large. It’s funny…I actually spent more hours making art the last week of school, that crazy-ass week with night-time meetings every day after school, then this week, which has kind of sucked for that, except for the drawings, which honestly are taking around 30 minutes, except that one night I was sick. That took longer. I’m hoping next week has more art time built in, but who knows? Certainly there was no art made yesterday besides the daily draw.
That said, I needed to get a lot of things done…and today will be the same. The bougainvillea got trimmed and the steps swept from when the boychild tossed everything on the roof down. Boychild started working on the disastrous wood pile. I got a bunch of stuff out of the entryway in preparation for Christmas morning here. I put a few more ornaments on my tree. I cleaned the girlchild’s room, which meant putting a bunch of quilts away. I cleaned the studio, so now it’s ready for ironing today, if I get to it. And I sorted through a bunch of started-but-never-finished projects. I like to finish those. I’ve been trying to take on a few each break. I have a binding that’s still not done from summer though! Because that’s hard? No. It’s really not. Just not motivated to finish it.
So I identified 7 projects I wanted to get finished in 2019. Some of them are barely started, one isn’t even anything but a pile of stuff, and on the other extreme, some are very close to being finished. I tried to pick things that could be done while sitting on the couch, in that post-dinner TV-watching time. It’s maybe 30-45 minutes an evening…although sometimes, I don’t do the TV part. And sometimes I grade instead. But in 2017, I made an effort to hand stitch a little every night before grading or other stuff, and if it helps me get these piles of unfinished things done, I’m looking forward to that. So I spent time yesterday finding parts of things that went with all these projects…I’m still missing about 9 blocks of a wool quilt from a million years ago. I know they’re somewhere…I just don’t know where somewhere is. But I have the four borders to work on until I find them.
Now I found this…I think from the trip we took to Oregon? Or maybe this was Sweden? I can’t remember. I wanted handwork…but didn’t get very far. This is not in the Pile of 7.
Obviously still needs a face and at least one nipple.
This is block 10 of 12…yes, hand applique. I do enjoy it. This looks really weird at the moment. But with three blocks left…really? I should totally finish this.
Seriously, half the quilt is sewn together. So that’s one of the projects for this year. The Sue Spargo Folk Tails quilt I’ve been working on for a couple of years is also one of them.
This house is 6 of 9…big and colorful and obnoxious use of interesting fabrics (not that you can tell here, because it’s all covered with freezer paper…you’ll just have to trust me). Easy peasy and fun.
So block 7 is already cut out too…so little left to do.
This is an art quilt. I keep finding it and putting it somewhere so I’ll work on it. This is the year to get it done. It’s so close. Really close.
And weird. It’s definitely weird. From probably the early 2000s. I think. I really don’t know. There’s no date on the drawing. But I gave up on hand-appliqueing quilts really early on. And it’s pre-blog. I’ve been blogging for a long time, but not long enough to document this.
What else? A body quilt that needs a lot of hand embroidery that has been sitting around for months. A pile of moons I like but want to make my own. That wool quilt where I can’t find the majority of the blocks. Anyway, I assigned one to each day of the week. Because I was finding it hard to finish things, so if I change it up, maybe I will be more motivated…and obviously, sometimes I won’t work on anything that night, but I figure with 52 weeks in the year, that’s 26 hours or so that might go into that piece. And some of them would be done with just 5 or 6 hours of work. Or at least the handwork would be done and they could go into the machine-work pile. It’s not like I don’t have 4 things already on the list to take their place on the hand-work pile. It’s a plan anyway. Sometimes I’m good at these types of New Year’s resolutions and sometimes I suck.
Simba is looking forward to laptime while I sew.
He’s not a fan of the chair.
Another thing I’m going to try to do is use up more of the larger pieces of fabric I have stashed away for backings. I can piece. I hate it but I can do it. I need to clear space out in my drawers for new stuff…like these.
You’d think I use up a lot of fabric, but I buy more than I use up in a year, I think. OK, I know. But it’s my palette. I don’t use very much of any one fabric in a quilt. Sigh. So going into the drawers and grabbing all the yard pieces of fish fabrics (why so many? I don’t know.) and piecing them into a backing…that’s a thing for 2019. I already have been trying to do that with the bigger fabrics in 2018…all the weird bits I’ve picked up over the years when people clean out and/or die. I’ve been using them. Christmas fabrics too. Good place for them.
A friend of mine grabbed this poster from Mesa College…they were cleaning up. That’s my (sold) quilt on the poster! I love it!
Nice decoration for the door.
So I had all these leeks to use up (still have one giant one left)…and I have this risotto I make that I love, but it takes forever to make. Because risotto. So I always do something at the same time…
And that something is often grading…I’m really happy to say I only have one more class of these to grade.
(And then 6 more assignments, but none of them is as big and hefty as this one.). Stir in broth, grade one kid’s science unit, stir in more broth, grade the next one. Tasted great.
Then I did my 6th drawing in a row…it was late though. Because I was still trying to clean up too.
The days just fly by on break. I try to be efficient. I think I’m efficient. There’s just so many things to get done.
It was midnight when I started cleaning up in here. I was wired by then. Not sleeping. And I wanted it clean in here. So I did that.
Found homes for all of it, straightened up all the Christmas and birthday stuff that was everywhere. Wrapped some of it. Moved some of it. Wasted some time with calendar stuff for the year. I needed to get my head straight over some things. You should stay up until 2 in the morning at least once in a while to remind yourself how quiet and peaceful the middle of the night is. Ignore the morning headache you will inevitably have because you can’t sleep in due to daylight and hungry cats. You will survive.
Girlchild is on her way to the airport! She’ll be here tonight. I’ll be at a show though. I’ll see her at the airport first though, before they drop me at the venue. And tomorrow we’ll start the holiday grocery list.
So I didn’t iron anything yesterday. I didn’t make any progress on the quilt at all, unless you count cleaning the studio. Which I don’t. I mean, it had to happen, but it’s not making art. It’s work. But I’m ready to iron now. I need to grab the drawing and pin it up and sort the first 100 pieces of Wonder Under, and then I can iron. But first? Ha ha ha. Yeah, that to-do list is kicking my ass. Today? Yeah. Maybe some of the things will shift over to next week. We will be walking dogs and hopefully cleaning floors. Some of them anyway. Although it might be better to wait until cooking has happened. Hmmm. Don’t want to do things twice if I don’t have to.
Shingles vaccine is down to just the rash…which is unfortunately worse this morning than this last night…
It’s complicated by some allergic reaction I had to something that bit me last week. But the top two red bits are now connected and growing. Hot and painful to the touch. Fun stuff. No fever or fatigue after the first 24 hours though, so I’m counting myself lucky.
Oh yeah, and I took Christmas cards and a letter off my plate for this year. I can’t deal. I might write something here instead. It’s not a task that anyone helps with, so I’m too overwhelmed this year to deal with it. There’s other stuff that has a higher priority. Sorry. Not sorry. You can read my parents’ letter instead. Oh wait. I kinda got left out of the letter. I have a bunch of people that show up places, but that’s my only mention…Kathy’s bunch. My contingent. We might need to print a revision…the Seattle crew and I have already discussed how to rewrite. I’m sure Dad will be pleased that we critique his version of the State of the Nida Conglomerate.
OK, with that, I’m going to eat something and shower, and then figure out what’s next on the list. I think I need to go to the store. Since I didn’t leave the house at all yesterday, it means I will have to put on real clothes and maybe a bra (I really think those should be optional). May your holiday prep proceed in a timely fashion. And involve cookies. Definitely cookies.
Awesome news! This time around, the shingles vaccine is NOT kicking my butt like last time. I felt like crap the first night. I still have a rash on my arm. I’ve had a few bouts of fatigue and chills and headache like last time, but it’s the 2nd day after the shot and I’m not conked out on the couch. Last time, I was sick for 5 days straight and almost ended up in Urgent Care (knock on wood). This is good! You know what’s bad though? It’s only good for 5 years. I didn’t know that. That sucks. It means I have to do this again in 5 years. Ugh. That’s annoying. I guess it makes sense though. I do the flu shot every year (and I don’t get the flu…which when you teach in a middle school is kind of amazing). Honestly, I don’t even get colds very often. I had pneumonia about 4 years ago…that kicked my butt. You’d think with the small amount of sleep I get and the stress from school that I’d be sick all the time…but I’m lucky that way. Immune system kicks ass, even though it’s “compromised” by diabetes. Whatever.
So my arm is painful and itchy, but I can stand up and do stuff! I’ll take it. It’s a good thing, really, because I remembered yesterday that I need to clean the girlchild’s room before she shows up tomorrow. I store my quilts on her bed while she’s gone…it’s easier than pulling them out of storage 10 times a year. So I’m going to deal with putting them all away today. I also need to clean the studio up, because it’s time for ironing! Yay! One of my favorite parts of quiltmaking…when I get to pick the fabrics. I’m totally going to enjoy that for the next 5 days or so.
So I finished cutting stuff out in the early evening. I did some in the morning, while the windshield guy replaced my windshield. It’s a good thing he didn’t replace anything else, because obviously he’s the windshield guy. I shipped stuff to Seattle for Christmas, I went to the quilt store and got background fabric that I think I’ve used in another quilt. I really tried to get something that wasn’t dark blue, but my brain wasn’t having it. I got some other stuff too, including this one fabric with eyeballs on it that the nice woman cutting my fabric said looked like something I would use. Um. Wait. So you know who I am? Apparently yes. Weird. And then I got my hair cut shorter, hallelujah, because it was bugging me. All THAT! And some other stuff. Big pile of pieces on the left, trash on the right…wait, that’s not even the done box…because there’s still a yard of uncut Wonder Under underneath it.
That must have been before I went for the haircut etc.
So then I came back and the dogs were all needy and shit…
Because they like people and all. So then I cut out the last yard…and here’s the two official last pictures of that endeavor…a little over 10 hours of cutting. It didn’t feel that long.
So that was around 5:30 or so. Then I graded another class of that huge assignment. Three down, two to go…the two smallest, honestly. That’s a good thing.
Dear WordPress, when I add a picture, you do not need to pop yourself back to the top of the post. That is fucking annoying. It’s gotta be a bug. I thought you fixed that one. Sigh.
So then I started a drawing that popped into my head of a woman with an arm ending in a cactus.
Is this number 5? I don’t know. Yes it is. Well done. Five days in a row. Keep it up. I think there are 23? days of break?
Then I sorted the Wonder Under under the tree lights. OK it’s not a very big tree, so not really UNDER it. But next to it.
It took a little over an hour to do that. OK. Closer to an hour and a half. It doesn’t have a ton of pieces, like it’s not over 2K, but it’s still 1559 pieces. That’s not really a small quilt.
All sorted and ready for ironing.
Ah, if only the rest of the house were ready for that. Today’s list includes another period of science units, cleaning the girlchild’s room (which is mostly quilt organization and rolling, plus laundering bedding), making risotto (like you do), a phone call about an upcoming solo show (that’s exciting! More on that later), cleaning the studio so I can iron tonight, finishing any Christmas crap, and apparently going back to the grocery store for the girlchild. And another drawing. If I look at my to-do list, there might be more things, but that’s enough for now. I think I wanted to go to the nursery for a plant or something. And maybe the pet store for doggie gifts. Plus cat food. Ugh. Even on break, there’s so much to do. At least I got more sleep. And that damn shot didn’t fuck me up as badly this time. Good stuff.
Kathy Nida 