I’m Breathing in the Chemicals*

Hello morning. Earlier than usual. Have to leave for school in a few…still planning science today. And trying to figure out my classroom. Mostly I just walk in and go Oh Shit and then start moving stuff around a bit. I always feel bad because other people spend more time in their rooms rearranging stuff and doing new things they found on Pinterest, and I’m trying to go as fast as possible, so I can get back to my sewing. Oh well.

So in awesome sauce news, I’m done quilting. Twenty-two hours plus of quilting, in case you were wondering. In fact, Saturday evening, I had a time I had to be out of the house, and this is how much was left…

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It took me a whole 3.2 minutes to finish quilting that on Sunday. But yeah.

Here was my trusty companion, randomly typing shit with her head and hitting Like and Dislike indiscriminately on my Pandora station.

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I spent the evening watching a band and taking on my persona of Draws in Bars.

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It either freaks out or endears me to waitresses. This one was so serious (the waitress, not the drawing), but wanted to have a discussion about art and her uncle and then took good care of me all night. So it works! I did another drawing…forgot to photograph it. It wasn’t that good…and because people showed up, I didn’t finish this one until later…

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And maybe it’s not finished. I like it though.

Sunday was nice…although knowing there is only one Sunday left of “vacation” (in quotes because I am at school at least twice this week, despite not officially being back yet), and the girlchild will be gone by then. Some animals know how to Sunday though, even if I don’t.

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So I finished quilting and trimmed the quilt…huge motherfucker.

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She quilted easily, nice and flat for once. I’ve been fighting some of the last big ones in the flatness category.

Went and bought binding…ONLY binding. Nothing else. It helped that I had the girlchild with me and some time constraints. Got the binding stitched down last night…

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And then settled down on the couch for the hand sewing. I tell you, I’ve been looking forward to this part. Just relaxing and stitching and watching some TV for a while. Kitten follows me wherever I go.

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Kitten is lying on the next quilt (well, it’s a numbered drawing anyway).

There’s the back and the sleeves. In over an hour of hand-stitching, though, I didn’t even make it all the way down one long side.

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It was already late and I knew I had to be up early. So there will be more tonight. I should email the photographer…finally. A finish. No panicking on the other stuff that needs doing. Really. Seriously. I should be panicking. About all of it. Quilts, school, losing the kids to college again, money, dogs. Aack. There’s so much I never ever get done.

But I guess you can see my priorities. Spending time with people when I feel like it (probably should do more of that), lots of art and animals and even hiking when I can. It’s not a bad life…just a bit too stressful and work-oriented some days. I’ve held the goal of Art Everyday for the last couple of years now and I don’t suspect I’ll be letting that go anytime soon. It’s where my head needs to be.

Unfortunately, my body needs to hightail it to school now. Keeping life balance in mind…biggest thing in most teachers’ minds right now.

*Imagine Dragons, Radioactive

Anywhere We Go…*

Holy moly, waste of a morning just trying to get technology to work right. Chrome just doesn’t like me unless I’m incognito. So there we are. Seriously, I meant to be sewing right now. I quilted for about 6 hours yesterday and got all the outlining done and started on the background quilting. By the end, the machine was making some noises, but I think it’s the foot…I’m not sure. I’m hoping I can finish today and go buy the binding and maybe even get it sewn on.

I also bent the hell out of a needle…usually they break!

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So I need to check my needle stash before I start sewing again.

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I wasn’t sure I’d get the outlining done even, it was taking so long. Fourteen hours plus of just outlining.

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One eye done, one eye not.

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Her whole face, although I realized afterward that I never did the starfish, so I’ll have to go back and do that.

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The kids and I stayed up way too late, me quilting, the others chatting and searching up weird makeup videos and who knows what else. Almost every animal was in here with us. So we’re all slow-moving this morning. Ugh.

I bought this the other day…couldn’t resist.

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Because I need another sketchbook? Nah. But all those goofy creatures. I will never run out of sketchbooks.

OK. Quilt my ass off today. Seriously.

*IAMDYNAMITE, Hey Girl

I Don’t Get What They Do It For…

I think I’m officially in panic mode…and it’s because we were proactive Wednesday and started planning the first science unit of the school year. But then you start thinking about what you need to do, what needs to be set up, what changes you want to make from last year. And you start to panic. You think about how many hours a day you will have to be grading and planning, on top of the hours at school, plus meetings etc. And how are you going to get everything else done? And new schedules and students and realizing you’re getting ALL the little brothers and sisters of the kids you happily said goodbye to in previous years. And then yesterday (I didn’t even have time to write yesterday), you have a nice luncheon with teacher friends, and it gets worse. I know I do this every year. I freak out about a week or two before school starts, because I realize how little I got done and how much is left to do, and I’m losing days left and right to school crap. Plus the kids will be leaving for college at about the same time, and that sucks too.

And the art stuff has been difficult to get done this summer, between working another job and having machine issues. And today I found out I have another project that has to get slotted in there. I mean, it’s a good thing, it’s something I wanted to do, but I’m hyperventilating.

Stop. Deep breaths. Manage.

Thankfully, all the construction noise that surrounds me at the moment didn’t start up until 9 AM this morning. They actually let me sleep a little. It’s been a sleepless summer.

Yeah. Gotta get my head out of this crazy.

So Wednesday, we hiked, and then I quilted a little bit Wednesday and Thursday nights…I’m up to 10 hours in. And I’m hoping to get it done sometime tomorrow.

I originally hoped to be done today, but it’s already 10 AM and I have errands, plus gaming tonight, so that ain’t happening. But hopefully I can get significantly into the background today.

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There’s a lot of detail on this thing, and some fussy little stuff for quilting, like those passion flowers, but they look awesome now that they’re done.

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I got the whole lower torso done Wednesday night…

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And even moved on to the heart…

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Then Thursday night, I did the right breast, covered with cat…

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Strategically placed flower for nipple…and then did the tiger (hid the nipple in the fur pattern) and the cactus and the seaweed to finish up the left breast and arm, except for the octopus. It was midnight. I was tired.

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So today, I’m going to do the head and the right arm, plus the very top of the torso. And then start the hours of background. This one has a lot of it.

So I had been wanting to do either a Cuyamaca or Lagunas hike all summer, but it takes a while to get out there, plus weather, so this last Wednesday was the first one I felt organized enough to pull it off. I have to make dinner ahead of time and figure out the leaving time based on sunset and hike times, etc. I wanted to repeat a hike I did in January 2015, but that was full snow. I read the organizer’s description, but there was one section I couldn’t figure out, so I emailed him and he sent the GPS map, which actually turned out to be way more useful than all the Afoot and Afield pages I photographed. In the end, it was a well-marked trail and we only had one minor crisis of direction. It lasted about 2 minutes.

It was a gorgeous day for it…nice and cool for most of it. They threatened thunderstorms in the early afternoon, and the clouds definitely looked like they could pull that off, but we didn’t start hiking until 5 PM.

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I love the mountain vistas, the pines, even the dead grass.

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And the views. Smartass.

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There was some minor bouldering, just because.

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I like hiking with my kids. It’s gonna suck when they’re gone. We did see a deer, but I couldn’t get a photo of it in time. We thought we’d see more when we got to the meadows, but the cows were out and so were the mountain bikers, so just the one. And girlchild didn’t see it, so she was pissed.

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There’s something about climbing up…

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Lots of bugs and grasses on the back end of the trail, the Sunset Trail portion.

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And then we came out into the cows…and the Water of the Woods, which still has water. Last time I saw it, it was mostly frozen over.

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The meadows are gorgeous, even without water in the lakes.

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We came back via the Big Laguna Trail…there weren’t any other hikers that we saw…just one pair of bikers on this end, and then a group of about 15 of them near the end, and we could outwalk them on the slopes.

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Big beautiful pines that survived the fires. You can see the burn marks on the trunks.

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The sun was definitely on its way down. We had a couple of really slow miles due to…um…chaos. Let’s just call it that. But we sped up on these last miles (and we had headlamps, worst case).

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We figure some virus or something causes these giant ball-shaped things on the old oaks…

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And this has to be woodpeckers…or something. Such perfectly placed holes, all the way up and down the trunk.

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This low-lying plant (not the grasses) had all these weird giant pods all over it.

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We saw morteros galore in this rock…would have been a nice place to hang out in the summer. Much cooler than East County is at the moment.

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I think this was officially sunset. We did think we should have gone BACK the Sunset Trail, so we could have seen the actual sunset, but this worked…

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These tiny flowers were everywhere…

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This was watching sunset hit the trees to the east…

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And the last bit of the path, as dusk fell around us.

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We drove off in the dark, 8 miles, a good hike…probably the last long one before they leave. We’ll see.

And yesterday, while talking to the garden guy who came out to help me figure out my yard, we watched the raccoon who has been hanging out in our yard walk right across in broad daylight and climb the tree…about 30 feet up. He’s sleeping in a fork of the tree up there…

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If you can’t figure it out, the left circle is one of his feet and the right circle is his head.

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I didn’t have my phone when he walked across the yard, unfortunately.

So I’m quilting today. Lots of hours. Need to get done. Construction noise has started up again. So distracting. Oh well. Turn up the noise.

*Amanda Palmer, The Killing Type

Oh Life, It’s Bigger*

I got some significant quilting in last night…was finally able to get my head down and into it without breaking the thread every 20 minutes etc. What a relief. What’s ironic is that I don’t have much quilting time in the next two days…OK, not ironic. Just plain frustrating. But it’s all stuff I need to do in one way or another, so I have to just take a deep breath and realize I’ll be quilting all weekend to get done. Or something.

I can only sit like that for so long…

So I did some tulips and grapes and a giraffe and some trees and a hand…

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And a crane that took a really long time and was very hard to see in the dark (sheesh. I need better light in here.).

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Oh yeah, and a gecko. I started on the vines around him, but didn’t finish.

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Look at his suction cup toes! OK. That’s crazy.

There’s the whole crane…

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It was not easy to stitch without good lighting. I have a light on my old machine…I’ll need to get one for this one, I think. Yeah, I think this machine will do the job.

I did a flower as well. Just a little one.

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I still need to do a good chunk of the stuff in the lower torso. It’s all lots of tiny details, but they all really pop once the stitching is done. Aargh. I really want to just stay home and do this. It’s the hardest part about going back to school, because I often come home too tired to really manhandle a quilt under the machine. Or to do anything, honestly. The first two weeks are usually pretty difficult. Plus I was missing my kids already last night. Got all sad in the head.

I played with puppy quite a bit last night to tire him out, and finally put him on the chair (Kitten allowed it) so he would stop trying to rip up the linoleum floor in here. Yes. It’s coming up. I know. But you don’t have to HELP it. He’s like offended by the floor. Honestly it makes more sense to be offended by the wallpaper. Or the general mess in here.

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I have not made a significant dent in any of the messes in the house. Well, except the entryway. And stuff is already piling up in there (OK, most of it is going to school today).

I spent most of the day with girlchild. I had a Groupon at our local ceramic-painting place. She made me an awesome mug last year (World’s Okayest Mom) and I broke it. Funny…I do break mugs all the time (I’m a klutz), but usually after years of using them. I think this one lasted a few months. So I painted a mug for me and she painted a mug for me.

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Mine is the weird one, yes.

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Hers is for me to take to school. I’m amused.

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Appropriate use of an apostrophe. Thank god.

School. I am so not ready.

*REM, Losing My Religion

If Today Is All We See*

So. I went in yesterday with the two sewing machines that I had killed now, and even though I made sure the newer one didn’t work in the morning, it worked by the time we got there. But what he thought it was now was something that wasn’t even worth it to fix…it would cost too much. Parts aren’t even made any more (my “newer” machine is probably circa 1990). The older one he could make work, no problem, but he cautioned me that it wouldn’t hold up to my quilting practices.

So it’s not that I’m hard on machines per se…it’s that the average person drives their car about 15,000 miles a year, say, and if we’re talking about my car, I drive it more like 100,000 miles a year. Except we’re talking about sewing machines. And it’s not easy sewing…it’s hard on the machine itself. So dirt roads for the car.

To shorten the story, mom and I went back and I’m currently test-driving an older Sapphire, which has the larger harp, but is more of a workhorse. It’s used…but probably not much. Yesterday, I managed to quilt most of this one using only one bobbin…

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Not bad. I broke a needle in the beginning, but I think I was using the wrong foot. I switched to the one my mom loaned me, a springy bouncy free-motion foot, and I was much better off. It’s different than my old machine, of course, but it was pretty easy to use after I tried four different things and ripped a bunch out and tried again.

So later that night, I tried the outline quilting I do, which is very different…much slower, I need control, and it goes through a ton of layers. It did really well with this.

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It was late by then, so I didn’t do a lot, but I’ll do some more today and then make a decision. I think it will work, though. All my sewing machines have been hand-me-downs from my mom…but she does more of the design work, and I don’t need something like that, so she’s been trading in her old ones over the years to get the one she’s got now. This one is much simpler, but will hopefully stand up to the work I give it.

And the good news is that I can now quilt this shit out of this thing and get it done. I want the quilting done this week (although the next three days are kinda screwed for that…).

We did walk the dogs yesterday…

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There are so few dog walks left with the kids this summer. Wah. Calli had something wrong with her foot at some point, and boychild considered carrying her. It didn’t last long (she fussed and squirmed)…

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The other thing about this machine is that I can close the lid and the thread is covered up completely. So it’s CAT PROOF. Oh yeah.

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That’s a selling point. I still have to do this with the quilt to keep Midnight from lying on it or vomiting on it, but I don’t have to remember to remove the spool and rethread every time. That’s a plus.

It’s funny though. I was sitting there contemplating having no working machine at all, or limping through on the old one until I completely trashed it, or trying to use other people’s machines and knowing that I couldn’t do that forever…and I thought, shit, I should be a painter or something. No major machinery that you need for that. But it’s not actually cheaper in the long run, I think. Brushes and paints aren’t cheap if they’re good quality. Certainly I could still quilt without a machine, do it all by hand. I did that with a few of my early quilts (and even they aren’t hand-quilted…just hand-appliqued) and it took FOREVER. So I’d finish like one small quilt a year. When right now I’m looking at needing to finish three or four large quilts before the end of the year, certainly before next spring, another two more. And two or three smaller ones. Oh yeah. It’s crazy, but you can’t do it without a machine that works. So there we are.

It’s my Christmas present. I have good parents who try to support my crazy art. And honestly, when you think about the stuff you get for Christmas and birthdays, this is one of the best presents for someone like me.

*Zero 7, Morning Song

Hell Ain’t For Sure, It’s Only a Chance*

Well, the plus is that the sewing machine still isn’t working this morning. This doesn’t seem like a positive thing, but it means I can take it in and he can actually SEE the problem, EXPERIENCE it in real time. That is the only way to get it fixed for good.

I’m about to go up to my neighbor’s house and offer the workers WD-40 for their wheelbarrow. Squeaking. Horrendously. Worse than the squeak is Simba’s need to bark to protect us from the squeak. Yes, it’s a horrible noise, but it’s unlikely to kill us. He’s very protective about weird-ass noises. It was so delightfully quiet on Friday, when they weren’t here. Today I have drills and hammering and squeaky wheelbarrows and more yelling.

So hopefully I’ll have a working machine tomorrow. (please please please) Then I can drown out their noise with that.

Yesterday, I finished the drawing…just under 5 hours on the full-size part…plus maybe 2 hours on the stuff that was in the sketchbook (I watched a 2-hour movie…let’s put it that way). There’s a lot of Stare Time built into that…staring at the drawing, trying to figure out what goes next and where and how…staring off into space, trying to visualize it.

I’ve done a head in the clouds before…it’s a worry space, a hope space, a remember space. Depends on the drawing.

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This one is definitely a worry space. She’s long…I know she’s 36″ wide, but I haven’t measured the height yet.

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Kitten is still invading the work space…she’s extending her claws because I was batting at her…she was in my personal typing space. She doesn’t seem to care what I need.

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The kids came back, mostly cranky and some exhausted. Simba was quite happy about that. I won’t let him sleep on the bed.

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And then later that night, I numbered the pieces. I kept thinking this one was easier than the last, fewer pieces, less crazy. Hmmm. Well. In general, it is. But I went a bit crazy in the cloud…

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I took some of the things from that other failed drawing…I figure if that one ever becomes a quilt, it’ll be OK for the gas-mask woman to show up again. The nuclear power plants and leaking barrels have been around for a while.

Oh yeah. See? It is fewer pieces than the last one. Psychotic grin on face. Uh huh. You don’t wanna know the deadline on this one. Let’s just say I’ll be tracing Wonder Under starting today, because I can’t afford to lose any time waiting for my machine to come back. I’ll quilt the other one as soon as I get the machine back, but I’m busy until then.

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It’s confusing too, because basically there’s 3 figures right behind each other, so some of the parts are labeled so I know who they belong to…and I tried to number one figure at a time. I’m sure I’ve fucked that up somehow.

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Those aren’t even her arms.

Seven hands. Yes. Only 7. I guess technically there are 4 figures…I don’t really count the little guy in front.

Anyway, the plus is that I have school kind of under control (well, for where I can be at the moment…I can panic further on Wednesday when we start planning shit I don’t even know anything about), I finished all the copyediting last week, and at least I have another project ready to go, so I’m not wasting more time. I also copied the other drawing, the one where I have to cut off the head and the bird, so I can draw that as well. Although there are two smaller ones and some coloring book things that have to happen first. So even though it’s a Monday morning and school starts in two weeks, I’m not completely panicking. Well, just a little.

*Mojo Nixon, Tie My Pecker to My Leg (yeah, you read that right…it was a challenge to pick lyrics for the title today)

Bring Your Alibis*

So yeah. The sewing machine experiment lasted for about 18 minutes. It jammed up the first time 12 minutes in and then repeatedly after that. Weird things going on with it. I’m taking it in tomorrow, but not after making sure it’s warmed up and jamming happily so the guy can see it in action. I don’t mean ‘jamming happily’ like making good music on a Sunday afternoon. I mean like vibrating needle shaft that won’t move or sew and makes me swearz-a-lot. Yeah.

So the thing is, I don’t really believe in fate or messages from the gods, but sometimes I think you have to look at what’s working and what’s not and choose to walk away from some things. I’ve done my due diligence with this machine and it’s not going to work until I can get it to fuck up for the machine guy and hopefully that will be soon, but there’s no point in the last two Friday nights, where I’ve been grinding my teeth and growling and wanting to throw it in the pool. I mean, yeah, it’s frustrating. But it’s not like I don’t have some leeway on this deadline AND shitloads of other stuff to work on.

So get on with it, Kathryn. I have to admit that Friday night was mostly a wash. But Saturday afternoon, after the machine pissed me off, I took about 15 deep breaths and walked out of the office, determinedly heading for the big drawing on the light table. Because I kept staring at the original drawing and trying to let my head process it…and I’d even penciled in a head and a boat (like you do) the other night, but couldn’t get past that. NOW was the time.

You wonder why so many cats end up in my drawings. (It’s because they’re always WATCHING me. )

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Same with teacups. Except I don’t really feel like they’re watching me. Just that they’re always there. Really I should be drawing more scissors and mechanical pencils.

So I did pencil in some of the stuff at the bottom, like the boat and the general leg placement (there were issues…as you’d think there would be with three people standing stacked up behind each other. Oh hey. That’s a good title. Stacked up. Hmn. Document that shit.). I love that some titles come to me as I’m drawing, and some I have to pull out right before I have to enter it in a show, because I can’t think of anything.

So I added all this stuff at the bottom, referencing my first Earth Mother quilt from a million years ago.

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Puppy is such a cute dork.

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Then I had figured out in my head about 4 or 5 days ago about what was going on the sides…a layered landscape from water to mountains…

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So I added that on each side…

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Here’s the little guy, fishing.

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This quilt actually has two males in it! I know. You’re shocked.

Plus yeah. A cat.

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So it’s not done, though.

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I did start the head, and it’s got references to Tlingit art. I was born in Alaska, and I swear the graphic arts and totem poles from there are so stuck in my head…I think I must have filed it away in baby brain, and parts of it have been leaking out over the years. People talk about not appropriating other cultures’ art, but sometimes it just sneaks in. The Native stuff has been in there for so many years. The idea of filling the figure with symbols…you have to wonder how much influence early exposure has on one’s brain. I do.

Anyway, so I’m hoping to finish drawing this today and then number it. Although technically, I think there are two smaller ones I need to work on as well. So I may try drawing those this afternoon as well. While I’m on a roll. With a Sharpie.

So this is the booklet I got from the class…

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We worked in groups to try to plan a standard yard. Interesting ideas to use rainwater and take irrigation down to nothing or almost nothing. Certainly things to think about.

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Then my evening turned into puppy walk…man, this dog either needs to learn how to poop appropriately for one who has fluffy butt fur, or he needs to get used to my bathing him.

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Bad design.

Then this morning, I pinbasted the wool quilt that has been laying around forever. It won’t get quilted any time soon, but when I feel like it, it’s ready.

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Last night, I remembered I hadn’t sewn any of the eyeball buttons on the next wool quilt, so I did all 30. I flicked one across the room at one point and had to go searching for it. No, I would not have bought more. I would have picked a random button that didn’t match.

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Now they all need trimming. Guess piecing is on the back burner for a while. It’s OK. Julie and I are trying to figure out an easier way to do the borders, but honestly, I guess I did the borders on Earth & Twig above all as one and didn’t die. So I could probably do these that way too. By the time I get enough room in my schedule to put the borders on, it’ll be winter. Winter Is Coming. Yeah right. We have to live through Southern California summer first (doesn’t come until September/October).

Then since I had marshmallows and Rice Krispies, I did this. Sometimes you just have to.

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The kids are on their way back here, mostly to be cranky and entertain the puppy, I think. I’m in need of a nap, personally, but will try to hold it off with caffeine. I want to go finish the head part of the drawing and start some new stuff. Might as well use my non-quilting time wisely. This week is kind of a bitch. Same with next week. And then I’m back in school. Summer is so short some years.

That’s it. From now on, my blogpost titles are always lyrics from whatever I’m listening to as I write…well, until I get sick of that. Or forget I thought of it.

*Hotel California, Eagles

Time Is Running Out…

I took a class this morning on waterwise gardening, trying to use what little rainwater we get in an already dry landscape. It was interesting enough…honestly the best part is the free booklet and the 90-minute consultation. I figure I’ll need to spend the next 3 or 4 months trying to make the soil not awful, plus kill weeds, and move dirt around to use the rainwater better. I won’t be planting until November or later. Which is fine…

Anyway. Yesterday. Yesterday I quilted. I wanted to quilt for a good long chunk of time, but the sewing machine is acting up again. In the first 2 hours, though, it only had issues three times, which isn’t bad. It was the last hour that got hinky, and at some point, I just turned it off and walked away. It didn’t help that puppy needed attention and was trying to rip the linoleum off the floor in here (don’t worry…it’s already coming up…he likes to destroy things that are already damaged). So I gave up. And was frustrated as hell.

Three hours in though…shit, I need so many more. I’ve been scared to turn it on again, thinking it will just keep doing this frozen vibrating needle thing. But maybe it’s related to overheating…and it won’t happen for a while. I don’t know.

I did manage to quilt all of the earth portion…

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And started up into the body. Right after the owl is when it went bonkers.

Don’t you feel like, with electronics, if you leave them alone for a while, they will magically work again? Well. We’ll see.

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I had a couple of nests…the machine has some issues anyway, beyond the needle thing, for sure.

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And the pileup on the machine to keep Kitten out of the thread and Midnight from lying on it (and all the other things animals have done to my quilts over the years: muddy paws, chewing, vomit…).

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Then I spent some time trying to tire out the little boy dog.

I was trying to figure out his birthdate (I don’t think it’s on any of the paperwork we got for him), and I happen to know the name of the first owner and I found her on Facebook. She’s a kid…really. I mean, she has a job and all, but her FB feed reads like a 12-year-old and I don’t think she is. She’s obviously happy about the puppy in the beginning (who she eventually names Fluffy Teddy or something like that), but there are photos of him in a crate with BAD scrawled all over the photo. Surely, he’s not always a well-behaved beast, since he was still rancidly biting when we got him. In June, she posted that she missed him…now I didn’t get Simba from her, but from ANOTHER kid (college-age) who had only had him a few weeks. So who knows what’s up with all of that. He’s here now…

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Psychotic teeth and all.

I did the top part of that redraw…I like the bottom, but not the top.

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I swear, drawing is a pain in the ass at the moment. Need my head in something that makes sense, that’s successful.

Anyway, I’m gonna try to quilt again, and if it doesn’t work, I’m going to go work on the other drawing(s) I need to do…hope they turn out better than the one above. Time is running out. I really need this thing quilted soon.

Just Get My Head Into It…

Morning is never really my strong point. I’m one of those late-night people. I don’t really get much done in the morning. And currently I’m sitting here in my office and I can clearly hear people at my door, plus Simba is going ballistic (Calli is in Arrowhead), but they haven’t figured out that my doorbell doesn’t work (oh hallelujah…I live in the boonies for a reason) and apparently they don’t want to knock. I’m OK with ignoring them because I heard them at the neighbors and it’s selling something, whether product or religion, and I don’t need either.

Yeah, my attack dog is a Pomeranian-chihuahua.

Last night, I had to text pictures of him to the girlchild, who missed cuddling with him. Huh.

So yesterday was kinda wishy washy. I copyedited for a while. Need to finish that up this morning and send it back. It’s the last chapter, so I hope there’s another book coming, but who knows…no guarantees. Then I was supposed to go to my stitching meeting, but I still don’t really have anything portable. The quilt is huge, so transporting it to quilt on it somewhere else is not realistic. So I took the last of the birds…

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I didn’t actually finish stitching it until later last night, but it’s done! A miracle! Well, until you realize that now I have to trim them all down, stitch them together, add the borders, and then do 96…NINETY SIX little balls with fancy stitching in the borders. Well. That’s gonna take a while. There’s no shortcut for that.

The birds are Sue Spargo’s 2013 block of the month project, and I’ve been working on them…well, since 2013. Mostly at soccer games, honestly, and then stitching meetings after that, because they’re nice and portable. I’m thinking the whole quilt is not gonna be so portable, and probably uncomfortable to stitch on in summer, being totally made of wool. But I’ll try to get to the point where I can stitch balls on.

I call it Bird Crazy, but it’s actually called Bird Dance…

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See all the balls? Yeah. So I’ve finished 30 birds…in about 3 years. I’m rocking it. Seriously, though, people always want to know why I’m working on other people’s patterns, and the reality is that mine are often not portable, or not something I can work on at a soccer game (I’ve spent a huge part of the last 10 years at soccer games…really until the last 12 months). And I like the embroidery on wool. It’s relaxing. And enjoyable. So it’s my hobby. I’ve always enjoyed embroidery…I just don’t usually have time to do any of it on my own quilts, because the deadlines are so tight, or because I’m so mentally done with the piece by the time I get to the end.

I do have one top I started quilting where the plan is to add a lot of embroidery…and I did a memorial quilt for our last dog (who yes, died in 2012? I think?)…by DID I mean that it’s a bunch of wool pieces and a background, but I haven’t gotten any further than that yet. Things I’m making for me don’t get priority on the sewing list.

So after stitching meeting, I came home and played with puppy for a while, but I know I have a bunch of deadlines to deal with, and many of them require drawings, so I thought I would do that thing I always WANT to do, which is sit out on the deck and draw…so I did.

It was after 5 PM, but still not cool…but the sun is on the other side, so that makes it bearable. And I played some music and drank some milk (of course)…and did this.

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Now straight up, I like the body but hate the head and the bird. So they’re gone. But I think I can work with the rest of it. I’m probably gonna enlarge it and cut the head and bird off. There will be a head and a bird. Just not those two. Sometimes when I haven’t been drawing for a while it takes me a bit of fudging to get what I want. So that’s a start.

I love that prosthesis, by the way.

Then I had told Simba, who got left behind from the Arrowhead trip (not enough puppy supervision), that I would take him on a walk, because he got stuck inside while I was gone. I waited until it was cooler, much cooler…in fact, we were racing the dark back (I’m OK with that, except for the coyotes and the snakes).

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We saw a horse…twice…and Simba was sure he could kill it. I think. The horse was more intrigued than scared, luckily. Like…what the hell is that tiny growling thing? Exactly.

I was trying to tire him out, and it worked for a bit. Midnight is very tolerant of him, but she’s also bigger than him…and he truly doesn’t know what to do with her…except sometimes clean and/or nibble her ears. Which she doesn’t seem to mind.

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Hiking made me tired, but eventually I managed to come back into the sewing room. I recently finished the last little bit of embroidery on the 2012 Spargo quilt, Earth and Twig, after letting it languish for a good long time (like probably 2 or 3 years…see, I do that too). Yesterday, I finally found the backing and other pieces, then pieced the backing (hanging in the background)…then ironed the front and cut some batting. It’s ready to be sandwiched, hopefully sometime today.

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I’ve never quilted wool before, and honestly, it will be on the back burner for a while, but it will be ready. So that makes it closer to done.

Today I might have an art opening, if I feel like dragging myself to it. I have a few other things I need to do before I can start quilting, but that’s the goal…to quilt a lot. Don’t think about lesson planning and school supplies and deadlines and crap like that. Just get my head into the art and do it.

Pinned Down…

Well. It wasn’t the most effective day in the world, but I eventually ripped some usefulness out of it. Proof that I can flail for hours and still look like I got shit done. So yeah. Lack of sleep kicked my ass. I tried napping, but barking dogs and daylight were not my friends. I couldn’t concentrate for many hours, probably due to heat. But when I look at my post-it note for yesterday, I crossed off three and a half things (out of seven), so I did OK. I think. I feel like I’ve been fighting this all summer. All I do is work and sweat and clean and make art and sometimes eat or do random stuff like Shakespeare or art exhibits (OK, those aren’t really random). I’d really like to go on a travel vacation, one that is somewhere cool I’ve never been. I see lots of friends doing these things and I think, well, I could plan a year out and save up for it…in fact there are three possibilities in the next 12 months…but then I get fucked over by a cat swallowing thread and needing surgery. Sometimes I feel pinned down by my own life. An insect struggling with pins in her wings.

The kids are leaving this morning for Arrowhead with their dad and grandpa, an annual tradition that leaves me alone for four days (well, I get the little dog and two cats, so not totally alone). I have a shitload of stuff to do, so keeping busy is not a problem. It’s just that my brain was already in a cranky place…so I’ll have to work that out (drawing?). I even have a fridge full of food, so I could notionally get away with not cooking mostly. Except eating the same stuff over and over gets boring.

If you see me in a wine bar with a sketchbook, feel free to come over. Just don’t ask to see what I’m drawing.

So sandwiching a quilt this big (63″w x 73″h) is a pain. I found four yards of a backing fabric (that’s probably another nod to Sandi Fastnow there…) and pieced it together…then earlier today, I bought batting (and thread…JoAnns still has it, but in smaller spools) and washed it. So I cleaned out the entryway (again) and the floor and kept the dogs off of it while making and eating dinner and then laid it all out and spent an hour lying on the floor pinning. Yeah. I know. Pain in the ass.

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I still like her. She hopefully has exhibits in her blood…at least one. I hope.

Simba was pretty good about leaving it alone (notice the ONE paw). He’s confused by my projects, but he behaves pretty well.

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Check out all those pins. I finished after 11 PM. I had the fan on me in there as well…way too hot for this. No wonder I had all those weird dreams last night…

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There were some fussy bits that wanted to puff up and be cranky…as always. But I think I tamed them.

I had another one to sandwich, but there was no way I was lying on the ground for another hour or so. I’m hoping to do that one today, before the floor gets really dirty again…but honestly? I don’t know where the backing fabric for that one is. It’s one of the Sue Spargo quilts, so it came with a background, and I think I have to piece it as well, but I don’t know what I did with it. Sigh. I am losing my brain.

See how hot it was? Kitten gave up lying on my keyboard and mouse and annoying the fuck out of me while I’m trying to copyedit, and went to lie in the sink.

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Way cooler in here mom. You should try it.

OK. Copyediting, then something, then stuff, and things, and then sandwich another, and then start quilting and/or drawing and stuff. Be effective. Efficient. You only have two weeks and a bit before you go back to school. Don’t THINK about that, because you’ll panic, but remember you need to be working better than yesterday. Keep an eye on the post-it.