Lots of Pieces…

Rain does one good thing for us, besides soak the ground and fill the reservoirs (I guess those are pretty good things)…it makes us stay indoors. Now honestly, on breaks, I’m kind of a hermit anyway. At some point, I don’t want to leave the house at all, because there is art to be made. And lots of it! So I do that. And I like it. Even if the weather is lovely out…which it’s not.

I have a leak in the roof…it’s been dripping very slowly through a light fixture (ever so safe, water and electricity). I suspect half of Southern California has a leak in their roof at the moment, honestly. Luckily it’s over a tile floor in a relatively unoccupied section of the house, so I’m politely ignoring it and hoping I can deal with it later…because accessing that section of the attic means pulling my studio apart. Not thinking about that. Might think about it tomorrow.

Otherwise, we’ve had 2.6″ of rain where I live…I’m such a weather geek that I have a website linked to a local weather-info-gathering station about a mile away.

And yes, in Seattle (which was sunny yesterday), this is nothing. But our annual rainfall has been as low as 3.3 inches before…our annual is somewhere around 9″/year. So getting almost that in 2 days? Roads underwater, rivers running through sidewalks, standing water everywhere. Plus no one knows how to drive in it, so when girlchild’s friend asked her to come over yesterday in the worst of it? I said nope. No. Not driving anywhere right now. Sure enough, people had to be pulled out of cars etc.

A damn good excuse to stay home and sew, if you ask me…although I did do a lot of grading too. But that’s just a survival thing. I’ll do it again today. I finished grading another assignment…and one class worth of the big unit that they turned in…just two more classes of those. I’ll do one today and one tomorrow. When I finish that one, I only have 3 assignments left to grade, and one is posters that three kids worked on, so do the math…I only have about 50 of those to grade instead of 155. Not that everyone turns in their assignments anyway. I should probably knuckle down and finish the torturous one that I did one class’ worth and then quit. Sigh.

Anyway, besides grading, I finished the drawing for the next quilt. Now this is for a deadline that I may very well not make. But I’m going to try. So it has to be within a certain size…easy enough for me to do. It needs to be a smaller quilt so I can get it done in time, right? I start the drawing…y’all have seen the headless woman with way too many arms…and then I added more.

She has 10 arms total and 3 heads (way more than anyone really needs). Each hand has an object associated with it as well.

DSCN2833 small

The drawing is about 30″ wide by 42″ high, so a finished size of maybe 40×50″? Same as the last one basically.

And I know I have about 7 weeks to finish it. With a major installation and school starting back up and grades due. But there are three 3-day weekends in there! It might not matter. I did finish one quilt in just under 6 weeks during school (well, with Thanksgiving and Winter breaks, so not really just school)…but I think it had a lot fewer pieces. Because I numbered it last night. And I was a very bad girl. I drew a LOT of pieces. As I was doing it, I was thinking to myself…that’s a LOT of pieces, Kathryn. But I did it anyway. Because it asked for them.

OK, the one I did in 6 weeks was 768 pieces…this one is 980. Big-eyed stare. OK. I own that. And I will figure it out. Either it will get done on time or it won’t.

I am one step closer to that happening though. Tracing Wonder Under tonight? Maybe.

Most of the afternoon, I spent piecing blocks for a baby quilt…

I was given the colors…cheated a bit with the one on top. Oh well!

I don’t make baby quilts often, and I always use the same pattern.

It took about 2 1/2 hours to make 20 blocks, and that’s because I was being careful, not fast.

I don’t piece particularly accurately unless I pay really close attention. Now I can lay them out…although I might wait until my parents’ dog is gone again. It’s hard enough to keep the cats off it. It usually takes about 5-6 hours for me to do one of these. Not hard. And it’s for a good person. Hopefully the baby won’t be too early, because I think she’s due in less than three weeks. It’s OK! I got this.

The post-it with tasks on it did not get much crossed off yesterday, mostly because what’s on there is huge things like “fix bookshelf” and “prep Grossmont show.” Which I really should start to do today. Like now. Except I need to grade too. AARGH. Too much. I got a lot done yesterday…and it still feels overwhelming today. Gotta work on that…the FEELING. Because the lots-of-stuff-to-do? That never goes away.

More Do

There’s a day during vacation (and this really isn’t a vacation, people…it’s way too stressful) when you realize you have to go back to work at some point and you have 700 things that still aren’t done. Yesterday was that day. Actually, it kind of feels like Every Single Day of Winter Break has been like that, where I’ve looked at the calendar and tried to parcel stuff out amongst the days and completely failed. I actually went old school yesterday and wrote the to-do list on a post-it. And then crossed stuff off as I finished it. But every time I walked past it, I wrote more stuff on it, and that’s just not helpful. I crossed off 4 things yesterday. I worked on three others, but didn’t finish them, so I can’t cross them off. And I did three or four other things that weren’t on there, but I should retroactively put them on there so I can cross them off, right? Sigh. Sigh!

Meanwhile, all of San Diego is underwater. I did manage to do my driving errands yesterday in non-rain hours (it happened)…well, except for groceries, which were flood-level hours, and that was just in the parking lot. Today is supposed to be worse (I should probably check on the garage…it gets wet in rain). I did sweep leaves out of a drain that wasn’t…well…draining…and in fact, it needs to be done again (I can see that one from this chair). Haven’t seen any roof leaks, so that’s good…it’s a relatively new roof. But it gets gloomy and cold, and I don’t want to run the heating and turn all the lights on unless I have to…too much money. So I rummaged through the firewood and started a fire around 3 PM that (due to the monster-sized pieces of wood from trees that have fallen on my property) kept going until well after midnight. And warmed up that part of the house and looked nice as well.

Artwise, I didn’t finish the binding. Dammit, I need to email the photographer (write it on the list). There are 15 things on the list for today. I need kid assistance on some of them. Artwise, I cut and taped the headless drawing and then started working on it…this was the after-3PM activity, with dinnermaking and some grading tossed in for variety.

So I knew I wanted to add some width, although not a lot, to this drawing, and it definitely needed a head, so some height. Maybe more than one head. She’s already got 6 arms. Again Kali is where I started…I always think of moms as Kali, many-limbed destructive forces, but still earth-mother-like. Earth Mother doesn’t always have to be nice. Nature isn’t always nice. And that’s kind of where I stopped drawing Kali and started drawing something more in the mom range. We do many things, multitask (have post-its with too many things on them), and yet we’re juggling all those things in a not-so-healthy way sometimes. I read somewhere this morning about the purpose of marriage (or partnership) not being all the religious, societal stuff, but just to have a partner to help with all the crap in life. You aren’t the ONLY one emptying the dishwasher and cooking the food. You have help.

Oh My Lord. And there it is. Because I think that’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’ve spent years without it honestly, even with grown-up kids (they’re gone a lot), so many tasks have to be managed or directed or whatever. And I’m so tired of that. Just walk in the house and do what needs to be done. Someone walk in and fix the stuff I don’t have time to do…take a look at that post-it and cross something off of it (because you did it…not because you’re being a smartass).

Anyway. So I added paper to the sides and the top.

Then I started adding arms and a head…I did start with pencil at one point…just to make sure I didn’t screw it up too badly at this stage, although I’ve cut off the additional drawing before and started over, so that’s always an option.

And I kept going. There’s a lot of time spent staring into space or at the blank parts of the drawing, figuring out what fits there. I remember one college painting professor getting mad at me because I don’t draw all those iterations…I do them in my head. He wanted 30 or 40 sketches for each painting. I did one or two. And then argued with him about the waste of time to put them all on paper. They were in my head. He said I wouldn’t be able to do that forever. Well. OK. Maybe so. But I’m still doing it now.

So that tree took a while to appear. I am timing this part of the drawing process…

I don’t usually keep track of the time I take doing drawings in the sketchbook, but I do on the enlarged drawings because it’s usually the harder part, and I like to know how long it takes. HOURS. It takes hours.

And at some point, my brain craps out and stops looking. Hence the liquid paper on the left arm and thumb. Walked away after that.

Granted, it was late. I’d been drawing (well, or thinking about drawing) for an hour and 20 minutes. At some point, it’s diminishing returns. I’ll finish today. And number it. And then figure out a schedule. Can’t really do that without a piece count. This one will be tight. I might not make the deadline. But the quilt will still be a good thing. So I’ll do it anyway. And I already have one in line behind it. Aack!

Because of the cold rainy day and the fire in the fireplace, I had cats…

Any time I sat on the couch, there they were. In fact, Kitten is sitting on the quilt that needs its binding done. You can tell I grade here too, right? Notebook, 17 colors of pens (I might as well enjoy the grading with pen color choices, right?), piles of papers. Ugh. Need to do more of that this morning. In fact, it’s the next thing on my list unfortunately. Which is why I’m still writing. Procrastination.

View of the driveway during some of the worst of it.

It’s a giant pool of water. Yes, I know it rains where you are…but like I said yesterday, when we get our average annual rainfall in one week, we all freak out. Strangely, it’s sunny right now. It wasn’t 10 minutes ago…it was raining. But there’s another inch and a half coming in the next 24 hours…after flash-flood warnings yesterday. So if I had errands that needed driving, now would be the time…except I’m missing the kids, and they’re the ones I need to errand with today. Ugh.

OK, grade, draw, cut, organize, prep. Those are the things I need to do today. Less worry. More do.

Dark Blue on Dark Blue in the Dark…

Progress is slow, but at least I’m moving in the right direction. Now if someone would just clean up the kitchen besides me. I had professional development all day yesterday on coding, which I’m actually OK at, but there still isn’t a clear and easy way to use it in science without sitting down and reading a 38-page PDF. It’s interesting that we walk away from 6 hours of “learning” and I still don’t have something I can use in the classroom without spending more time and energy of my own. But that is how it always is. So I stash it away (with the giant-ass book, yet another one) in my cupboards and will try to implement it at some point, but probably not this year, because I don’t know where it would fit in our current curriculum and I’m finding that this year is already pushing my buttons.

I also graded yesterday, which caused a few panicked emails after midnight last night from students who hadn’t turned in that assignment. OMG! More work. Another assignment to be graded today. I want to start with my head above water next Monday…because it will quickly be under again, right?

Already I have 10 12 things on my to-do list for today, and some of them require going out in the rain…over an inch today. Amusing, since some years we total 5 inches of rain in the whole year…they’re guessing close to 4 inches here just this week. I have a garage that has leaking issues, so boychild and I went down last night and made sure there was nothing cardboard or paper on the floor. Many years ago, probably the last serious El Niño, we put everything up on shelves so that when the water leaches down the slope through the wall into the garage, nothing is ruined. It let me throw some more stuff away too.

I was up late finishing the machine stuff on the newest Bathtub quilt, hallelujah. It took another hour and 20 minutes of quilting, running out of thread (this is why I braved JoAnns hell on Saturday), quilting dark blue on dark blue in the dark (the lighting in here sucks)…

Nine hours and 34 minutes total in the quilting…that was less than I thought. Less breakage than on the last equivalent quilt? Less stuff to fill in? Who knows. Just glad it’s done. Don’t get me wrong…I like this quilt, I like quilting…but school is rushing towards me and there’s a lot of stuff going on in the next two weeks…enough that I’m doing a lot of deep breathing and reorganizing my brain to take it all on.

There it is…like you can see it. I ironed it to get it relatively flat. Mostly my quilts are flat anyway, but ironing helps because I do quilt heavier in the background than in the image. I know real quilt people want even quilting density all around, but I don’t. I want the image to pop, and it does that when I don’t quilt evenly between background and foreground.

Laid it out and stared at it for a while, because it’s not gonna be straight no matter what…and that wonky is OK. There’s no actual straight lines in the quilt. It’s the way my brain is…sorta wonky…made even wonkier by old-lady hormonal surges and fluxes.

I like her. I like her better than the last bathtub quilt. It’s good that I like my own work, isn’t it? (laughs)

I had another backgroundy fabric that I had considered for this one, but I’m glad I didn’t, because it was just a tad darker than this one and worked perfectly for a binding. I have a hard time with binding colors on these dark blue quilts…and yes, I make a lot of dark blue quilts. It’s a good background for the images I do. But you need something darker or a color from in the quilt to work as a binding. I don’t like using the same color, because then it doesn’t frame it. I like the eye to have a place to stop at the edge and then bounce off and wander back in. See. I did have art training. So there.

Anyway. I still have to do all the handsewing.

And email my photographer. Because this sucker is done early (well, if you look at deadlines) and that’s good, because I need to get another one done in less time. Which might be nuts. That’s one of the things on my list for today…tape together the enlargement and finish the drawing…which could be a good 5 or 6 hours of drawing.

But first, venture out into the rain and get the driving errands done. Should have grabbed some firewood for the fireplace…it’s going to be cold all week and I don’t really want to jack up the heat. Hmn…pollute the air? Or make my utilities bill horrendous? It’s a tough call. I only use the fireplace about twice a year anyway, so I’m not sure I feel too bad. I’m sure my footprint is entirely too large anyway, being a carnivore and a quilter (fabric dyes, cotton, electricity for all stages).

Crap. Now I need a name for that quilt too. Sheesh. OK. While I’m sewing on the binding. I know what this one is about (just like the last one)…so I’ll let that percolate.

Not Ready…

And there isn’t even a major holiday for me to be not ready for…

I did not reach my goal of having the binding on the quilt yesterday. I ran out of time. Now I could have blown off all social engagements (which would have included dinner and cake with my son for his 20th birthday), but I remembered I was a human and went and did ALL the things, and now I am about to go to school for professional development, so it’s early and I’m tired and I’m not quilting. I could have quilted last night, but I got home relatively late from a stitching thing and potluck that was fun and nice, so I vegged around on the couch (yes! I do that!) and then went to bed with a cat, a dog, and a book. Maybe tonight. I hope. I really only have about an hour of quilting left, around the very edges. Then I need to trim it and bind it. I also copied the next one, but it needs more drawing. Luckily, San Diego is getting rained on for days, which just reinforces my hermitlike tendencies, so I can get stuff done. But also…baby quilt, figure out what’s going in the Grossmont show and prep all of them (iron, dehair, hardware), and grade stuff. So not a stress-free relaxing week. It’s possible that I don’t know how to do those. I admit it.

I did get my holiday photo of kids and animals…

Calli refusing to look at me, both cats pissed off, and boychild refusing to smile. Oh well. Nothing new. Actually, he used to smile in the past. Kitten being reluctantly held by boychild and Midnight looking like a black blob being held by girlchild.

And then girlchild with her dog…who just went in the pool even though it’s cold and raining…

That dog drives me nuts. Notice Midnight trying to get into the photo on the right.

So that’s done. And the tree is divested of its ornaments and just needs sawing in half, which we decided against doing in the dark at 11 PM last night (but only barely). Because once Christmas is down, you just want everything put away as quickly as possible.

Anyway. So back to the goals…because if I can keep them clear in my head, I can maybe achieve some of them. Finish bathtub quilt in the next day or so…quilt and trim tonight? Maybe get binding on depending on exhaustion/frustration level (I really should grade stuff). Tape together enlarged drawing for next quilt (which has to be done very quickly, so remember that as you’re doing the rest of the drawing). Finish drawing it. Number and start tracing onto Wonder Under…OK, here’s the problem with that. I was going to use the light table to pile quilts that were prepped for Grossmont. Rethink that plan. I can’t wait to start tracing until after I install on the 18th. Stack quilts in office until done with Wonder Under? Yikes. Keep thinking. Has to be somewhere the dog can’t lie on it. The cats are going to be a whole ‘nother management level. Start baby quilt. Baby is officially due in like um dammit, I don’t have a 2016 calendar next to my computer like I always do so I don’t have to pull up an electronic calendar (I’m a visual person…it needs to be Right There). I was using the My Owl Barn artists calendar, but they don’t seem to have done one this year, so I will need to be more creative later. Not now. I think I have 3 weeks and a bit before baby is due. Almost 4 weeks. No problem. I should start cutting this week though.

See how vacation is eaten up? Yeah. Me too. OK, off to work in the rain. Not ready. Ugh.

Bathtubs

I finally made it to the best part of making the quilt. Well, besides the drawing. I love the drawing part, but I usually make quilts a really long time after I’ve drawn them, so that’s a totally separate endeavor in my head. My favorite part of making the quilt is ironing it together. I don’t make a master colored drawing, so I never really know what it will look like until it’s all ironed together. It’s all in my head up until then. My head’s a big place, apparently, with lots of colored drawings in it. And undrawn drawings. And piles of worry. I did try drawing last night, but I’ll need a redo. It’s OK…it’s a process…especially if I haven’t drawn for a while. I can get a little rusty. It’s harder to get what’s in my head out on paper. But it’s coming. Today I think.

Anyway, so you’ll see the not-so-good drawing and then the better one…I promise you. I hide nothing. Well, almost nothing. I’ve hidden how many cookies I’ve eaten in the last five days. But who needs grocery shopping? We have cookies! Breakfast lunch and dinner, there’s cookies. Yeah. I know. Whatever.

So I started ironing yesterday, just like I planned…I didn’t get far.

OK, I got a little further than this…started on the rug on the right side. But it was a good start. A pile of books, some scissors, some embroidery thread, and a hoop. Because yes, that’s what I have hanging around my bathtub. Just to clarify, I don’t have a free-standing bathtub like this. At all. I don’t even know if I’d like one. I do love baths but don’t take them often because the kids’ bathtub is not particularly comfortable. And cats like to walk the edges. Well, not all cats…just Midnight. And she’s a big ~~fat~~ fluffy cat, and occasionally she falls in. So that frightens me. Well, and taking a bath is such a thing…I used to do it in the old house all the time, especially pregnant. Soaking in warm water. It sounds quite nice at the moment, but I don’t have time. Maybe that’s part of what this series is about…taking the time to soak in the tub with all your things around you, populating the room. Yes, I am admitting now that I didn’t think out this series before I started drawing. Yup. That’s pretty much how I always work. Just start drawing. Sometimes there’s an idea or a spark or a phrase or a theme, but the bathtubs came out of nowhere. That thing I used to do to relax. Hmn.

Anyway, I’m hoping to iron for 4 or 5 hours today. Isn’t that what I said yesterday? Can’t remember. Yup. But I also said iron a few hours yesterday and that turned into about 45 minutes, because it took longer to pack stuff up to ship, and then I finally FINALLY finished the Christmas letter (it’s OK, I titled it Holiday Letter, and it’s still the fucking holidays, so get off my back) and printed it, and now all I have to do is address all the envelopes and put stamps on them and decide if the kids should sign them, and yes, it would have been smart to sign the original before I copied it, but here’s one OTHER thing I decided…sometime between now and the start of the next school year (that’s 8 months from now-ish), I’m buying a new color printer, because mine is crap. It’s seriously older than my divorce and it won’t print color for shit…and I’m done with it. So there. Maybe even in a combo with a scanner so I can get rid of that beast as well. Maybe. I have a small space in here. Because that would be cheaper than copying the letter elsewhere, plus I print color stuff for school sometimes.

So. I did that and I moved money for college, and that’s where my head went down a giant financial rabbit hole, because that’s a whole shitload of money I need to make in the next 5 months. OK. So there it is. I need an extra 1-2 K a month. Deep breaths. I can do this. Probably not if I spend a bunch of time in a bathtub.

Really it’s much better to deal with the short-term goals for today: shower (always a good plan), grocery store (for something besides cookies), clean up a little, maybe even start pulling quilts for the exhibit before I put everything away in my room, and then iron. I’m even going to grade some shit. Seriously. I am.

Bathtubs though. I’m thinking a big deep white bathtub somewhere in the house (is the boychild coming back this summer?). Or maybe just in my head. For now.

I Got No Title…

Hope you all survived Christmas, if you celebrate it. There’s always too much food and everyone needs a nap. I did manage to finally finish cutting out all the pieces for the next Bathtub quilt…it took 10 hours to cut them all out…seems like too long. But it takes however long it takes. I sorted them yesterday afternoon…

Meanwhile, the girlchild is texting me about a missing muffin pan (pan, not man). So I had hoped to make it in the studio and start laying stuff out for ironing, but I had to deliver a table and chairs and said pan and a bunch of other stuff. So I took over my bird embroidery and sat and did that while the girlchild cooked. I’m so far behind on this one. Oh well. I’m not super-motivated at the moment. Oh well. Still brain dead from school ending.

We made a ton of cookies (this plate was fuller by the end of the day)…

Kitchen in the middle of baking chaos…there is not enough room in there.

Dad with Calli…always a ball in her mouth…

Told ya…

Calli helping to open her present…

And sleeping later on…with her mom and her grandpa…

We cooked up the rest of the cinnamon buns…so the dough wouldn’t go bad. But I think I’m freezing these.

I finally got the Seattle presents wrapped and in a box to ship today…

I did get fabric for Christmas…I like when people pick out fabrics they like for me, because it helps my stash if other people contribute. I buy the same types of stuff, really. So this is a plus…

The studio is almost ready to iron this bathtub together. I need to move the fabrics out of the way and clear part of the floor…

But I’m remarkably brain dead this morning. Last night, I just sat on the couch with a cat, a dog, and a kid and vegged out. I’m hoping my brain lets me get something done soon. Work looms in the back of my head. Need to look at what pieces will be in the Grossmont show…will have to prep all those quilts for hanging as well. I’ve booked the week after Jan 1 for that.

So I can set a goal…let’s look at how long it would take to iron this thing together…maybe 10 hours? Another 5 to stitch it down? A couple of hours to pinbaste it? About 12 hours to quilt it? Another 5 to bind it? So if I’m good and I start ironing today, maybe just a few hours…and then another 5 or so tomorrow? Then finish ironing Monday. Girlchild has a soccer game Monday night, so I will be freezing to death on metal bleachers for that. But maybe I can start stitching down Monday night…finish it Tuesday. Then maybe sandwich and pinbaste Tuesday? Start quilting (need thread…pretty sure I need thread. Might need batting as well). Quilt Wednesday and Thursday. New Year’s Eve…got plans. Won’t be quilting that night. But if I can finish Thursday during the day? Then trim and start binding on the 1st? Boychild’s birthday is the 2nd, but I don’t know what he wants to do…plus I want to hike again next week. So that’s not on the calendar yet. But let’s say I can get this thing done by next Sunday? I can do that. And then call the photographer…and get the drawing done for the next one that has to be done super quickly. And I can start it the following week, even though I’m prepping quilts for installation.

No grading this next week? I might try to do say one class one assignment per day. Just to make the following week less hellacious. We’ll see.

OK. First part of all this is get off this chair, take a shower, eat some food, and go ship that box. Then come back and start the ironing. This is how I get the quilts done. I have to make a plan and then I can go faster or slower, but at least there’s a guideline there instead of just doing it when I feel like it…sometimes I just have to get up and go because I wrote about it here and I know I’ll have to answer to that tomorrow, so that’s motivation…

Not Relaxing Yet…

At some point in all this holiday crap, you run out of time to do anything else, so you can relax. I haven’t hit that yet! Whoops. Waiting on a grocery list for the holiday meals, plus still have some wrapping to do (did a lot of it yesterday), and the tree’s not even decorated really (may give up on that), plus at least one gift in progress…maybe two.

I keep seeing all these teacher articles about burn-out and exhaustion and how we have to let ourselves forget about work for a week or so or we won’t have the emotional energy to go back. I suspect there are other jobs like that out there too. So I’m not stressing too much about the work pile over THERE (which is actually mostly on a computer, so it’s much easier to ignore).

I am almost done cutting these out…

Really couldn’t persuade myself to stay up any later to finish those. I’ve been really tired the last week or so. Trying to sleep through the night is an issue at the moment. Not sure why. So I saved those for today, I guess. Hoping to start ironing tonight, but we’ll see. I do have some other stuff I need to get done.

I went shopping for baby quilt fabric…got these (not for the baby quilt)…

I’m not sure where big raccoon eyes will be appropriate, but I got them anyway.

Here’s the baby stuff…

Not my normal color range. The darkest pink is for the binding, and I may rethink that when I get there. These were their color choices. Yup. It’s a girl.

I was cleaning stuff up in the living room and putting things away. Now that the shelves are installed, I’ll be able to put books and stuff back up there, which means opening boxes that haven’t been opened in 18 months. I found these in a bin…

I took a class from…ugh…I just had to search through all my likes on Facebook…Jude Hill! I took the class a long time ago and never got past this part, but wanted to…just don’t have time for all the things I want to do. She does beautiful work. I often wish I could just sit with bits of fabric and thread and create things like she does, but either my life or my personality don’t work that way. I want to be more spontaneous and slow about working, but if I do that, I never get anything done. The reason I can get so much work out there is because I plan for it and create in a very specific way. I’m not saying one way is better than the other, because obviously I still crave the time for the other way of doing it, but in reality, I work a million hours a week and I don’t have time to sit and stitch like that. I think. Sigh. Right now I don’t feel like I have time for it anyway. Too many deadlines I’m looking at, both art ones and life ones. Maybe when I am old and retired, I will create like this. Or maybe I just can’t because it’s not how my brain works.

So they are back in a pile. And I’m not entirely sure what the one in the top left was supposed to be or even the box-like one. There’s two obvious cats and a butterfly, and I think the column-like ones were the lion-type creatures she makes, except I don’t want to make Jude Hill work. I want to make my own. And maybe that’s why I stopped there. I learned how she put stuff together and then I stopped. I don’t remember. Because at some point, you have to make it yours…

In case you’re interested, it was her Patchwork Beasts class, which she’s now put online here, but please donate if you use it. Artists should always get paid for their efforts.

I’ve been working on other things, but you will have to wait to see them. Meanwhile, I’m supposed to have kids here and we’re supposed to be hiking like now, and then grocery shopping (hell!), but there’s no sign of them. It’s still chilly and looks like rain, although that’s supposed to have stopped until tomorrow night. I’ve declined a copyediting job because I know nothing about Blender. I need more work, dammit. I’m going to be short money for college at some point in the next few months. Maybe I’ll stress over that for a while before the kids show up. It’s on my to-do list, and then I can hike off all that stress. Good plan.

I Can Do a Day…

I’m sitting here at night (last night), on chat hold with AT&T because the upgrade for he-who-shall-not-be-named wouldn’t go through, and I really want to tell the sweet woman named Maria who is helping me that she typed a run-on sentence (because I NEVER do that), but she spelled bear correctly in the phrase bear with me, so I guess she gets brownie points for that. But as I’ve been hammering my students to capitalize I and put spaces after periods, I’m realizing this is the type of job they might do. I did it for Turbo Tax in the old days. It was a sucky job, but I was a temp in those days, and being a temp made me realize I did not want to be a temp, just like being a secretary made me realize I did not want to do that either. Please don’t ask me to make a judgement on my current job, middle-school science teacher, today…with one day left before vacation…because I might feel somewhat negative about the job at the moment. But no matter the job, y’all need to be able to spell. And use capitals. And periods. Seriously. And don’t fucking hang up on me because you cold-called me about doing work on my house and I don’t have the money for it. You’re an asshole.

There has been good news, but I also blew a fuse on the Christmas tree lights and then destroyed the fuse inside because it wouldn’t pop out like it was supposed to, plus I couldn’t find replacements for the lights that weren’t all white, and I wanted old school, but even Amazon Prime couldn’t save me tonight, let alone Target a week before Christmas. Should have shopped back in November, right? So some significant frustration, plus black enamel paint all over my hand, don’t even ask how I did that. And the boychild’s flight got canceled, but he’ll be here today…soon enough. Poor kid. Too many hours to get home. It’s morning now and I know he made it to Chicago and is on the plane to San Diego. Good stuff.

I need cookies dammit.

Nah. Gonna pour a glass of freezing wine and cut out bits of fabric for a bit and try to remember where I hid those presents. I did consider microwaving the wine last night. It’s not mulled; it’s microwaved.

One day of school before I get three weeks off. I have 7 assignments to grade. It could be worse. I got almost all the way through one assignment yesterday. I will try to do the same today. And then the girlchild comes home tonight, so it will be chaos here for a bit as we try to get Christmas handled. Ha! I am so far behind.

I did cut things out last night eventually, although only for a little over an hour. Here’s where the boxes stand at the moment…

Pretty exciting stuff. Still not halfway. OK, I just went back and looked at the other Bathtub piece, and it had 200 fewer pieces and actually took 7 1/2 hours to trim fabrics for, so I’m not feeling so bad now. I just really wanted to be further along. I need to do some serious drawing in the next week. Sit down with some Netflix and just draw for a day. I think that’s allowed. Maybe.

I just left the room to heat up my tea and worried about 17 things that need to be done. My brain is in overload. And I’m supposed to wear a Santa hat and an ugly Christmas sweater today. I own the first, but not the other.

OK. Anyway. It’s a day. I can do a day. And then I can relax a bit. You too. You should relax a bit as well. Because I said so.

There’s a Line

So apparently I was done with school last night, because I came home and made art for three hours instead of working. It’s unfortunate that I have to go back for two more days, but whatever. Certainly the headache that started yesterday morning is notice that I need some time off. Or it’s the weather. Or that crick in my neck. My chiropractor says I should get regular massages. Um. OK. But those cost money. It sounds lovely and all, but…I can pay for college or pay for massages. Suspect my kids would prefer the former. Speaking of kids, both bedrooms are clean and vacuumed and one kid comes home late tonight and the other, the girl, tomorrow. Her roomies will miss her greatly of course, because they will only be able to read her mom’s blog and not have the fun of harassing her. I’m being stalked by her roomies…it’s OK, I stalk them on Facebook and Instagram…and as soon as they send me photos, I’d be glad to make a giant-ass nude quilt of them, a la Botticelli? The Three Graces?

Or if they’ve been eating too much junk food, it might be a la Rubens? A sign of wealth, all that chub…

Or my favorite for simplicity (aka fewer drapey lacy fabric bits), Raphael’s Three Graces. The girlchild gets the butt view…y’all can fight over left or right.

Actually. That would be a cool idea. I did Crone/Mother/Maiden already. The apple thing is stupid though…are those even apples? They should be brains or heads or eyeballs. Seriously ladies, I think I’m doing this drawing. Good thing I have your photos off the web.

OK, enough crazy. I finished the fucking wine glass…it only took 11 fabrics. Here I was trying to decide about the color of wine. Red is often easier to do in fabric, but the glass is right next to the heart and I didn’t want to compete with that.

Now I don’t remember what color the wine bottle was. Oh well. The quilt doesn’t have to pass a logic test. Certainly I’ve put screwier mess-ups in my quilts before.

I used a whopping 102 fabrics…for a quilt this size, that’s a lot. Don’t know what to say about it, except that’s what happened. Some of it is because I took so long to work on it, I think…

The more stretched out the time in between picking stuff, the more I forget about what’s actually in there. When I was sorting the fabrics out by color for that photo, there were a couple that I didn’t remember using. I also had some fussy moments with the blues in the end because stuff I thought matched before didn’t seem to match now. OK then. Eleven hours and 24 minutes of ironing for only 770-some pieces. I started Dec 6 and finished on the 16. Not super fast. Eight days of actual working on it…most less than 2 hours at a time.

Bathtub 2 only took 4 hours to trim the fabrics. I’m already 4 hours into this one. I started on the 10th, but haven’t been doing it regularly.

Here was the pile I started with…

By the end of the evening, I was working slowly through it. There’s a few more hours of cutting there, to say the least.

Wish I could take it to school and just get it done, but I need to be grading stuff still. I have 8 assignments to grade, including the one due today and the three due tomorrow. Some are easier and less time-consuming than others. I’ll probably have to come by school on Sunday to clean my room up for the custodian and work crews, but also to pick up all of Unit 3. Ugh.

Looking forward to doing some drawing and ironing a quilt together, and even making a baby quilt, and a few things for Christmas, plus seeing my kids and not having to see the other kids (the ones I teach) for a while. Not looking forward to grading stuff and cleaning, which needs doing…my dad finally got the shelves up that have taken so much time and energy on all of our parts, thanking him for that, but now I have to get my act together and put stuff on them, which means going through stuff that’s been packed up for a year and a half. Obviously desperately important stuff. Not putting the CDs back up there.

I really do want to draw that three graces thing now. You can totally see me making that quilt, can’t you. Huh. Wonder what it will bump in line…because yeah, there’s a line.

Still Need to Iron Glass…

I thought I would be done with the ironing last night. I just had that relatively smallish pile of Wonder Under pieces. It looked like something I could bang out in an evening. Well, if I didn’t deal with grades first. I went through an entire assignment where fully half of the kids didn’t scroll down to the second page. It’s like not turning the page over and looking at the back. And I know I told them how many questions there were and to scroll down, but as you know, the words of adults somehow bounce around inside the brains of teenagers and fall back out without resonating.

I tried to order materials from Staples so I wouldn’t have to go in…didn’t have time, free shipping, blobbity blah, but it always took like a day to get stuff from them, until this order. It still hasn’t shown up from last Thursday, and when I track it, there seems to be no movement at all. Troublesome since I needed that stuff today…I have some I can use for the kids who are fast, but I may be at Staples tonight after all. So much for being reliable people. And now their website isn’t even coming up. Interesting.

Anyway, I did iron…I ironed hair and a heart and blood vessels and a clock and a uterus, but I forgot the ovaries (they’re there…I just need to pick a color). I used to always make uteri bright pinks with fish swimming through them, but as I age, my uteri age (the fabric ones and the one still inside me), so now they are grayed-out purples. Still pretty but not as alive, not so vibrant. The figures have cracks in them…have for a few years. Wonder where that came from. No I don’t…suspect I will carry the cracks until the end. They will get smaller and more filled in, but they’ll still be there. She’s still crying because I have to say that these perimenopausal hormones are fucking nuts. I cry at such stupid stuff…although the book I finished Monday night, it was a legit cry. The Man Called Ove…good book, by Fredrik Backman. But you will cry at the end.

Here’s the pile of stuff I still need to cut out…

It got bigger. Mostly because I didn’t cut any out recently and I keep ironing stuff.

I still need to do the ovaries, the eyes, the lungs, and that damn wineglass…this pile…

I’m over 10 hours in right now for less than 800 pieces. That’s a lot. Not sure what’s up with that. Slow ironing at the moment, I guess. The problem with the wineglass is that it’s transparent, but it fucks with what you see through it. And then the part with the wine in it, it fucks with it even more. But you can still see through it. The part with the wine is a little easier, because you pick your core wine color and then some shades past it, however many it might take, and you construct the section with the wine that way. The glass part is a little harder, because technically you know you should be able to see flesh colors etc through it, but then it gets harder to see the glass in the actual piece of art, so reality is that you have to fuck with what the eye perceives to make the glass obvious in the quilt. There are some amazing quilt artists out there who make quilts JUST of mostly transparent or reflective things, and they do a great job with it. I just have one glass here though. So it might not be amazing. I am totally leaving it to the end though, because I can’t be super tired when I do it, but basically I will be tired no matter what, because that’s the way this week is.

I did vacuum the kids’ rooms yesterday and finished washing the girlchild’s bedding. I’m ready. Well, except there isn’t enough food in the house. Can’t do much about that right now. Apparently we’re driving through In ‘N Out on the way home from picking up the girlchild. Amusing since she would barely eat it when she was home. I guess the food at Brandeis really does suck…which is sad.

Anyway, with any luck I’ll be done ironing tonight and I’ll move on to the long period of cutting stuff out. I’m hoping to be ironing down by the weekend, but who knows. Maybe Monday…no school and all. Looking forward to that.