Moving on. Yes. I’m still pissed. And sad. And frustrated. No, I still don’t know if my quilt will go to the two remaining AQS QuiltWeek shows in Chattanooga and Des Moines.
The thing is, I’ve been censored before for stuff that’s actually THERE, but not hallucinations. That’s what makes this even more frustrating. It’s just not there.
But I officially start the new school year today, so my life is no longer my own (really, it never is…but it feels more so during the summer). And I still have a major quilt to finish fairly soon (no penises in that one, although there are two males…and two uteri). I spent most of the weekend cutting out Wonder Under…
I’m about 7 1/2 hours in. I was convinced last night that I only had one more yard to cut out (of about 8, I think there were 8)…I was wrong…
Two yards. So I probably won’t finish tonight either. Or maybe I’ll finish cutting, but I still need to sort and then I’ll move on to picking fabrics.
The pile of cut-out stuff is there, growing.
This is a smaller and less complicated quilt than the last one, but it’s still got over 1200 pieces. So it’s gonna take some time…time I really don’t have.
Thanks for all the positive comments and energy you’re sending my way. I meant to link to Tanya’s article as well yesterday, and think I forgot…she wrote a great article here…after writing a great article about censorship, including me and Randall Cook and Annabel Rainbow, as well as some others. Censorship is rampant in art, especially if you live in certain parts of the country…that slips over into art quilts as well. Really, I just want to live in a world where the people who are trying to control me and my work and my uterus and all that other crap would just go monitor themselves and stop trying to spread it out toward people who want nothing to do with it. And I guess I’m a total idealist because I really do believe humans can get there (maybe we need alien assistance?). The sooner the better.
Late start again. All outta whack in terms of schedule. Whatever. I had to dehair three quilts this morning to get them to the photographer, so that took precedence over writing here. And then 700 errands. But whatever. I hate driving around in circles and that’s what I had to do. Too many things to keep track of…things to do, to finish, to write, to print. School is such a load of stuff. And this year more so, because all of it is a Never Done It Before. It’ll be OK. It will.
So yesterday was the girlchild’s birthday, so most of the day was under her control, which is legit. I wish MY birthdays were under my control, but until I tell myself it’s OK to take the day off (but then what would I DO? Go out and do stuff with my friends who work? Hang out with my kids who are at college? So yeah), that’s the way it goes. I like my birthday on weekends. Teacher problems, eh?
She wanted to ride bikes around Coronado, so we headed down there and rented some bikes. There’s a dedicated bike path in the area, so we rode a good portion of it, including under the Coronado Bridge…
Honestly, I hadn’t been on a bike in a million years, like I don’t even remember when. So I was a bit wobbly in the beginning. And whenever we slowed down.
Helmets so we don’t die. Yeah. Some people think it’s weird that we still do stuff as a family, even though we’re divorced, but it was important to me anyway that the kids had a relatively normal family life, despite the divorce. So birthdays are like that. And other things we do…like an annual trip to see Shakespeare. I see too many divorces where the kids feel like they can only be with one parent at a time, and I know that sucks. I’m not gonna say it’s always been easy, but it’s fine now.
We went past the Hotel Del Coronado…too many people in this section…
And had to figure out how to get back at one point…
It was a gorgeous day and a cool experience.
Although I sunburned in weird places (I did use sunscreen).
Meanwhile, back in the art world, we have a Nightstand show coming up with my women’s art group, and I just got permission to do a bed. So I’d asked my dad to bring down a cot from the cabin in the mountains, and I needed to measure it…
And test it out…because I’m also taking it camping in October. It was surprisingly comfortable.
Puppy was a bit unsure of its existence. I am still doing a nightstand…it will just probably not have fabric. Should be interesting. And overwhelming when I think about time…
So after dinner out and presents and cake, the kids went to their dad’s house, and I sat there. I could plan for school? Nah. Ugh. I could cut fabrics for the owl commission. Not tonight…the office is still a mess. I need a brain for that. I don’t have a brain right now. I could start the next quilt. I need to do that. The deadline on that one is Right There. I might not even make it. And it doesn’t take any brain power to trace Wonder Under. So I started tracing…
It seems a bit crazy to literally finish one and start the next one on the same day, but remember I already did all the drawing and numbering back in July when the sewing machine died. So this made sense.
And I have so many deadlines at the moment that I’m a little worried. I’ll figure it out. And certainly, once the kids leave, I don’t have much of a life (sad but true)…I spend lots of nights making art because it makes me happy and content and peaceful, and that makes up for the crazy that is my job. I couldn’t imagine just coming home from work and watching TV and going to bed without making something every day. I guess I could clean more and do more yardwork or whatever, but this really is what makes me…ME.
Thought maybe I’d give you video for some of the songs I’ve been using for my titles…this one is pretty relevant at the moment.
Oh my. The jackhammer is back. Of course. I took 4 days off working (not art…although I did take a bit of a break on that too) because I NEEDED it. I was hitting that braindead stage where I just get irritable and don’t want to do anything but sleep, and I suck at that. So I ignored copyediting for four days. Today was my planned return to the Sitting-in-Front-of-the Computer crazy. But there’s jackhammering. Sigh. So I turn the music up loud. But it doesn’t make me feel particularly friendly toward this neighbor, I must say. He’s also the one who wants to trim my trees so he can “reclaim his view.” The view you never had, dude. (Kathy goes to buy new trees to plant…seriously…so I don’t have to see or hear you.)
Yeah. I’m in a mood. Whatever. I did relax a bit…but you know, one of the things I do to relax is read, and my book took a particularly dark dive last night while I was reading (in the dark, on a blanket, waiting for the fireworks to start). I’m sad about that too. So maybe I just need to work my brain into the hole and then climb out again.
I’m still cutting out tiny pieces of fabric. No change there. I just didn’t do as much as I’d planned over the weekend. Oh well.
I was trying to organize the wool projects I do for “fun” (no really, they are pretty fun to stitch on), because during the school year, things got out of control. So I pulled everything out and tried to figure out what the hell I’d been doing.
First of all, this one has been almost done for ages…
It’s Sue Spargo’s Earth & Twig. I decided it was missing a flower, so I had started sewing it down and never finished…
So I stitched it down and found a center, but not the thread that I used on the others (probably because there isn’t any more). I thought about buying another skein of it, but shipping is almost as much as the skein. So I’m still considering a solution to that. I did wash the backing and binding that she had sent as well, so I could get to that stage. Maybe.
It’s a fun little quilt…
Then I found all the Bird Dance blocks (I’ve been calling this Bird Crazy since I started it).
I’m working on the last three right now. Well. Not right this second. But anywhere I have to wait. But then I realized the borders are a bitch and a half. So yeah. Not gonna be done with that for a while.
I then tried to organize the rest of it. Went through and labeled boxes and consolidated stuff so there were only two places I could find any block: in a master box for that project or in a travel box for working on stuff. OK. Three places, because the ones I’m doing embroidery on are in these zip bags I got from the Container Store.
I also cleared off most of the piano and the chair, trying to get stuff organized for when school starts, and then organized the stuff that lives on and near the couch. And continued cleaning off the table (desk?) in the office. I really want to achieve organization. REALLY.
Then we hiked…
It was a little warm, but not too bad, compared to last week. The dogs can’t do more than 3 miles really, so that was it…beautiful day for it though.
Saw this…mostly everything else is dead and dried out by now. But this wasn’t.
The dogs even ran for a bit. So did we. Possibly a mistake. But it felt good.
The family hike is set for Wednesday. That means I need to copyedit today and tomorrow before the hike. Ugh. I will still cut stuff out, but I probably won’t get done. It’s OK. Stuff gets done when I can deal with it. Honestly, trying to concentrate with the jackhammer is challenging enough. Turning the music up even louder.
So today we will apparently lose 10 degrees in temperature, which will be nice. I’m also done with the chunk of copyediting I got up front. I’m waiting to hear from them about whether it was acceptable and if I’ll get more, but meanwhile, I don’t just rest on my laurels…I’ve got quilts to make! Well, after I get my eyes checked and run the 17 errands I didn’t run over the weekend, because I didn’t have time. But also, I finished cutting out all the Wonder Under pieces…
There’s Midnight inspecting them. That box is full of pieces, 1900+ of them. The Wonder Under is not great on some of the small pieces, but I’ve dealt with that before. I can retrace or match tiny pieces of WU paper with tiny pieces of WU fusible. Both work. It took 13 hours to cut them all out, so a little less than I thought. I suspect the next phase, ironing onto fabric, will take 20 hours at least. And I need to straighten up in the studio first so I have room to do that.
So once I’m done with errands, I sort pieces, which will take an hour plus, and then clean up, and oh shit. I don’t have a background. Hmm. Crap. I hadn’t even thought of that. I know I have some big pieces that might work…or do I? I have one 2-yard piece. That’s not big enough. OK. It’s a good thing I started writing this before I left…I need a background.
This was while editing yesterday…he’s sitting on the chair behind me…
I’m pretty sure he can’t get up there by himself.
Anyway, I’m hoping today is artistically successful…because I’ve been missing it and don’t want to get too far behind. Work is good for paying for college, but it’s not necessarily good for clearing my mind. And that’s an important part of the summer.
I love when out of the corner of your eye, you can see that your phone just did something, but when you look back at it, whatever it is has disappeared. I’m amazed by how dependent on our phones we are…and yet I love being able to look stuff up at a moment’s notice, map to multiple places without having to print stuff out, find a restaurant nearby, or pull up my website for some info. Yet in my principal’s meeting, he wanted to know what I was doing on my phone (um, taking notes? or texting my BFF?)…in a meeting two principals ago, he got mad at us for taking notes on our devices and forced us back to paper. The current guy is young enough to be my kid! But yeah, I was taking notes. No really, I was.
I’ve already dealt with the girlchild’s last-day-at-school texts this morning (this box is a million pounds!), last night I finally got the boychild to answer, and then went back and forth with a teacher about how some kids are gonna need consequences and parent meetings. Maybe we were better off when we didn’t hear all that. Hard to say. Being alone most of the time means I like the connection…but it is a LOT of connecting.
So my phone is flashing away at me and I’m still oh so tired. I don’t know what it is about this week. I don’t think I’m sleeping a lot less, but the mornings surely hurt.
I went to my stitching meeting last night and now all I want to do is get on a plane and go to Spain. Or anywhere really. But Spain would be nice. Wish I taught geography so I could go for a teacher scholarship with National Geographic. If you can’t afford to travel, you have to find other ways? Well yeah. I guess.
I was pretty braindead when I got home. I was grading before I left, and then finishing up a comic book I had to return (um, graphic novel). I eventually made it up…standing even…and came in here to stitch down the quilt…
Like I said, I didn’t think it would take long…
And it didn’t…about an hour and a half. This thing is small and uncomplicated. Probably a good thing at this point of the school year. Twenty-three days.
The back.
I check the back to see if I missed stitching anything down.
Then I realized as I was stitching it down that I was missing the black circles (the pupils) in the eyes. I had noticed they weren’t there when I was sorting pieces, and I meant to cut new ones, but forgot. Actually, I noticed even before that I was missing them…after I trimmed the Wonder Under and was ironing stuff to fabric. I thought I had already ironed them and just didn’t remember it…that I’d find them eventually.
Lost pupils. And I remembered (and forgot again) while I was ironing. And I remembered again last night…but didn’t do it because I really do need to try to get to bed before midnight thirty on a school night. So hopefully tonight…after two openings (ha!), I will cut out some pupils (ironic. I’m cutting out fabric to represent a hole.) and iron them on and stitch them down, and THEN…only then will I be able to sandwich this puppy.
Some Freudian thing about the word pupils and my job as a teacher there. Yes. I know. I got it.
I’m not expecting any work getting done tomorrow. I have an opening at night down in Barrio Logan and I have a science thing all morning. Ugh. Survival of the fittest. I’m pretty sure I’ve proven my worth to society…maybe y’all could mellow out and let me sit on the deck and draw in the sun for a few hours (when would that be? You’d have to be home during daylight AND awake. Not happening. Silly Kathy. That’s what summer is for.).
I’m definitely plodding along…not getting a shitload of anything done, not ever getting to the end of any project, whether grading or quilting, not finishing anything. Not accomplishing much. Except I did. Everything’s just slow. I’m slow. My brain is slow. My mood is dank. All I really wanted to do last night was draw, but I didn’t know what I wanted to draw. Just wanted to lose myself in it. No such luck. Too many things I want done and I’m not getting any of them done. Not motivated. Tired. Moody as hell.
I did iron. I thought I might finish. I might have finished if it had been any other night where I felt motivated and awake and competent. But in the end, the last few pieces (OK, there are probably 50 pieces left) just kicked my butt. I’m 9 1/2 hours in and there’s probably 30 minutes left. I really could have done that last night. Well, last night I didn’t think I could, so there we are.
Here’s everything that’s been ironed so far…
But I’m looking at that dark piece on top and thinking it might not show up on the background…I’ll have to figure that out. Maybe. Maybe not right this second. But when I’m ironing it together, you better bet I’ll be thinking…shit…I wish I’d dealt with that already.
Here’s everything I’ve used so far…lots of bits and pieces really, since the flesh is the main part of the quilt.
I should finish it tonight, but that depends on so many factors. I can’t predict the mood or how the other shit I need to do will fall out. Last night I had some technology stuff to do and the computer was just a bitch. So was my iPad and my school computer kept crashing apps, so it was altogether a frustrating day in the world of computers. Although I suspect that the latter are because they need to be replaced. My iPad mini is a first generation and it regularly tells me it is full and I delete stuff but now it’s getting cranky and slow too. I don’t know what to do about that. There’s no money to replace that. The school computer is older and was old when they bought them, honestly…I don’t know how much more time it has, or even if its problems are its age or the age of all the infrastructure around it and on it…fairly sure we need to update some of the apps we use beyond regular releases…like you know, pay some money out…things schools don’t do.
I did two things for myself yesterday, trying to improve my mood. The first was go to the gym. I liked that. Should do more of it. The second was go fabric shopping…notionally, I needed that pink there for the binding of the baby quilt (which I did not sew on last night because I did not feel like it, but will hopefully come home and do tonight because I am a good girl)…and I bought two possible backgrounds for the quilt I’m working on now…
But there’s something relaxing about walking through the fabrics, letting your eye wander, and waiting for something new to catch your eye.
And I realized I don’t know what I’ll be working on next. I need more work for shows, because I don’t have enough for all the shows I want to enter at the moment. Too many things are traveling for too long. I’m regretting one of them…because it could be in better shows than the ones I agreed to as replacement to the ones where the shipment didn’t get there. And another sold, which is not a bad problem to have, but it was only in one show before it sold and it was one of the big time-consuming pieces from last year, so that’s made me short quilts as well. I saw a drawing I did last year for a smaller quilt and think I might do that before committing to the next big one, but then again, Spring Break is coming and that’s a good time to make a big quilt. So we’ll see. I haven’t even drawn the next big one…I have the idea, but it’s nowhere near being on paper. And with the current mood, it’s hard to know if I’ll be able to draw it. Right now, I think it would be sad and angry drawings, which isn’t a bad thing…it’s just not what I saw for that quilt.
Sigh. This mood sucks. I’m doing the shit I’m supposed to do to kick it. So kick, asshole.
One of the things that came out of the depression I went into July 2013 was that I had a really hard time listening to music. For a good year, huge swaths of my musical library caused me to weep interminably, which really sucked, because I love music. Always have. All types. I’m a total music slut, although the majority of rap, hip hop, and country are outside my music love arena. So usually when I trace Wonder Under, pick fabrics, and cut stuff out, I watch TV…mostly Netflix but increasingly Amazon Prime Video as well, and some stuff on the Tivo, when I’m in the other room. I watch that when I’m ironing the whole thing together too. But when I’m quilting or stitching stuff down, I always used to listen to music…in the early days, to my iTunes, but now mostly Pandora, which is just one HUGE channel of Kathy’s music and everything she likes. I love my Pandora. At the gym, when I’m hiking by myself, when I’m quilting, whatever.
And I couldn’t listen. Because the 80s were reminiscent and the 90s too and then the 00s and fuck me, there was very little that I could listen to. And trying to quilt a million miles an hour while crying was just a recipe for disaster. I did it a lot though. And then I switched to putting on bad TV, or TV I didn’t care too much about, while I was sewing, because it was dialogue and it was easier to take than music. It didn’t trigger anything. I guess music ties into some very deep emotional places in my brain. TV just distracts it. And I needed the distraction. But TV isn’t ideal for quilting and sewing things down, because you’re meant to watch it, and I can’t watch two things WELL at the same time (notice how I didn’t say I couldn’t watch two things at the same time…I am a middle-school teacher. I regularly watch 36+ things at the same time.).
You know what I’m doing right now? Listening to music AND sewing. Ha! Fuck you brain. Finally beat it. How many months. Fuck. Don’t even count. Just say thank you. Now REM’s Everybody Hurts will still kick my ass, my perimenopausal brain’s ass, and make me sob like a motherfucker, but that’s fucking NORMAL. I’m OK with that. I can listen to all the other stuff and sing along and get up and dance sometimes, because that’s what music is supposed to do to you, thank you very much, and if I cry occasionally because it’s a really sad song…there’s another Amanda Palmer one that kicks my ass…The Bed Song.
But see, that shit’s normal. It’s OK to have a song or two that rips your heart out. It’s not OK when it’s 90% of what you’re listening to.
I got my music back bitches. 2015. It’s all good from here on out. Seriously. I feel really good about that.
So yesterday I had a plan to go to the gym and then come back and do quilty things, but I have to be honest. The quilty things were screaming at me, so I ended up just doing that all day, and ignoring everything else. Yup. Again. Because sometimes that’s how I roll. This morning, I still have the same plan, but I’m actually going to go to the gym. Really. I am. First I have to pay out a shitload of money to the kids’ colleges, but then I can go relax by beating myself up on a bunch of machines. I’m OK with that. It feels good.
So what did I get done yesterday? A lot. First I ironed the whole thing down onto the background…I had a couple of dark blues lying around that I bought a while ago for this quilt or for something else. I like dark blue for backgrounds, so it’s never a waste. I liked this one, a batik…
When I started ironing, I put the bathtub with the figure in it on first, but then remembered not to iron the edges down because there was stuff that had to go under. Well, I mostly remembered. I didn’t iron heavy at this stage, but this is the new plasticky Wonder Under…it came up, but it wasn’t happy about it.
It didn’t take long to get it all ironed down. And I don’t know what I was looking at yesterday, but my times were completely off. It took 10 hours and 54 minutes to iron the whole thing together and down onto a backing. Not bad.
I always keep the trash from trimming the fabric until I finish ironing, in case a piece is in there. But then I often forget to look in there for any missing pieces. There were a few. They were small. I recut them. No biggie.
Then I started stitching down. Because I was committed at that point. I was fairly sure I could finish the stitch down yesterday…
Midnight really wanted to sit on this. In fact, once I turned around because the boychild was helping me figure out why the damn computer backup wasn’t working, and there she was, plopped right in the middle of it. Damn cat.
More stitch down. I went fast. I sew like I’m driving a sportscar. I started sewing before I learned to drive. You might say one prepared me for the other.
When we left for dinner, I wrapped it up around the machine like this so the cats couldn’t sit on it.
The back is sometimes even more interesting than the front. I look at the back to try to find all the places I missed…I missed quite a few this time, but I fixed them all. So hopefully that was it. I hate fixing them later, because I have to change thread. Annoying. Changing bobbins and changing thread. That reminds me…I need to go thread shopping today. I don’t think I have enough and I don’t want to run out on a holiday. Except maybe JoAnns is open tomorrow. Interesting. They close early tonight but are open tomorrow. OK. Keeping that in mind. I have a spool and a partial of the color I want.
So that was after dinner, but it was still early (by my clock). So. Hell. I’m all in. I have to clean the floor before I can lay a quilt out (too many muddy feet tromping through there), so I do that. Then I go hunting for a backing…end up using the rest of what I used on the front. I have other stuff I’d rather use, but batiks tend to be wider from selvage to selvage, and I didn’t want to piece it…this size fits perfectly on a batik that’s about 44″ wide…the image is about 34″ wide. I love not piecing (so stop making monstrously huge quilts, woman). Laid it out on the floor, yelled at one cat who tried to use it as a slip-n-slide…
And pinbasted her.
It took less than an hour to do that. And the stitch down was only 3 1/2 hours. Speedy. I’m guessing the quilting will be 11-12 hours though. I’m hoping to start today, maybe get in 3 or 4 hours (which means I need to get my butt in gear and get outta here). Yes, I have plans tonight. Sheesh. They’re really complicated, involving food and champagne and movies on a TV probably. And my sketchbook. Because if you can’t quilt your way into the new year, you should draw your way into it, right?
Anyway. It’s in progress. My goal is to have it done, binding on (dammit, I don’t have binding, do I?) by Sunday, so I can sew the binding down at my meeting that afternoon. We’ll see. That’s a lot. The boychild’s birthday is in the middle of that too. Sigh. And I wanted to hike. Balance! Sheesh.
Hallelujah Friday. I needed you to arrive. It’s been a long week and I haven’t gotten as much done as I’d like. For instance, last night was completely useless. I had no brain power left. And this morning, I woke up with a headache…weather-related? Or the fact that I need to go back to the chiropractor? My new chiropractor is great, but I can’t seem to get back on a once-a-month basis…I don’t know what the other one did that was different, but it seemed to hold for longer. Weird. And no, I don’t think he’s holding back on purpose so I have to come in more often.
I’m a little frustrated with my inability to get to the art stuff, but have to accept that there must be a reason. The next step in the quilt requires brain power, and I guess I just don’t have it at the moment. I trust my art brain to get there when it can.
I have been doing some hobby stitching, stuff that occupies the hands but doesn’t hurt the brain. I did some in Seattle and I did some last night, instead of working on the girlchild’s Xmas stocking that will never get done.
I’m trying to upload the photos onto WordPress and it’s being cranky this morning. Seems like the whole world is a little cranky some days, doesn’t it? Cars cutting you off, crazy people in stores. So I try a workaround to get the photos. I’ve switched to a different posting platform, which they call “new and improved” and I call “eh”.
And that’s not working either. Sigh. NOW it works. Geez.
So I worked on these in the car on the way to Thanksgiving. They’re easy enough to do. I travel with them. I used to work on them at soccer games. They’re fun to stitch.
I don’t know if I can get the other three to post. Technology has been semi-frustrating in the last few days. Anyway, I worked on one of them last night at my stitching meeting…
It worked! (The upload). It’s not done (the block). Still.
Then I came home and ate and tried to focus. Ha! So I have this huge pile of fabrics from a friend’s mom who died and they needed washing (I’m allergic to all those new-fabric chemicals), but then they needed ironing, and that’s usually where I balk. I’m finally doing it though.
Originally there there two laundry baskets full of bits and pieces (some larger than pieces), but I’m down to one. So that’s good.
And I pile them up by color to make it easy when I need to put them away. Talk about braindead work. Ironing, folding, piling by color. There’s some I can’t imagine ever using, but I remind myself that I don’t know what I’m going to do, and that fabric there, that pure 80s calico, it might be the perfect thing for the piece I haven’t made yet.
You never know.
Yeah, I really don’t like this new and improved posting experience people. But whatever. So my goal this weekend is to get as caught up as I can and be kind to myself and other people and fucking clean out the boychild’s room! I have been working on that, but it’s still not there. And my office is not better, which means I can’t cut stuff out. And it’s all a little overwhelming when you toss the holiday crap into it as well. Yup. December kicks my ass every year.
Gotta go to work. I guess the plus is that it’s still Friday! Oh yeah baby.
Moods are weird. They hide in the shadows. They swoop down without warning, clipping your ear. They surface in the middle of something where they don’t below. Ask me enough questions about what it’s like to live alone with my kids at college, and eventually the mood attacks. Plus I’m tired of working too many hours…although it’s not likely to change for a long time.
I did blow off work last night. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was significantly frustrated by some of my classes yesterday. Field trips always bring out the bitchy-girl attitude and whiny little boys. I’m not in the mood for either. So when I went to my stitching meeting, I chose art.
I actually shoved 8 of these tubs into a bag and grabbed a coupla pairs of scissors, and I sat there and cut stuff out.
Which was probably the smartest thing to do. I was interrupted by girlchild walking home from work (which I told her not to do, but you know how that goes) and mom calling with news that my great-uncle had died. He encouraged me to be an artist, but I haven’t seen him in a while, almost two years. Every time I saw him, I assumed he’d be dead by the next time (horrible thought, eh? But he didn’t look well), so it wasn’t a surprise. It’s sad, yes. But he’d been in the hospital for months and I didn’t even know that. I’m outside the loop.
I got three bins done at the meeting. Then I shopped a bit, because we do meet in a Barnes and Noble. We’re all readers, so it’s probably a dangerous place to meet, but whatever. It makes me happy.
Then I came home and sat on the couch and tried to motivate myself to do anything at all. I had a couple of conversations yesterday about needing a vacation. You know, the kind where you go somewhere and sleep a lot and maybe do some stuff and sleep some more and eat, but you don’t have any errands or work or anything like that. I don’t ever do that. Can’t afford that anyway. Don’t have time for it right now. But now I’m dreaming of it.
I couldn’t finish all the bins though. Too tired. And the movie I was watching was unexpectedly sad. Or was it? I don’t actually think it was. I think I was unexpectedly sad. Or emotional. Or all of the above.
If you’re trying to figure out what I’m doing, last year I made about 15 small bird quilts and sold them. They’re quick and relatively cheap, and people seemed to like them. So I decided to do cats this year and meant to do it over the summer, but life intervened, so I’m doing them now. And there’s only 6 cats (and one is significantly weird), and then there’s an owl and two versions of the heart in hands that I did for a cancer donation earlier this year. I’m hoping to have all 9 done by the end of this month.
Ann Scott asked me some questions about art and quilts; she asked other artists too. You can see their answers here on her blog.
Julie gave me these, in honor of my educating children about zombies…
I can’t decide where to put the stickers. They are just too awesome. So that was a cool thing. Ending on that note. Going to the zoo today. Can’t think beyond that.
So I found an iron on sale here while visiting two different Bed Bath and Behemoths, and thought about just buying it because I have a very empty suitcase I’m taking back.
Seems like the iron will get bounced around though. And we already know I will drop it a few times (I always do, although I’m getting much better at that with old age), so it should start out being treated better than that.
I didn’t go to two BBBs because I couldn’t find stuff; I went to two because my maps app wants me to have a tour of the Boston area. I think. Because I went to a Target too, and here they’re in the same mall, but my app had me drive to a completely different one.
Sometimes you just need the big picture. That might be true for everything.
Girlchild is ensconced in her dorm room with two other roommates…it’s crowded and I don’t know how she will survive the winter…not because of the cold, but because I don’t know where she will store all her clothes.
I’ll go back in an hour or so to drop off the last of the stuff I got this morning, and then probably return a shelf to Home Depot, and then off to the airport to fly home. I am exhausted, tired from travel and no sleep, plus I don’t deal well with humidity, and I’m emotional as hell. The moment you realize how far away both your children will be is not an easy one. I think it’ll be great for her, but it’s not easy to leave her here.
I’ve been reading a lot, even at dinner by myself last night (hey, there’s reality), and drawing a little…this one is sideways, but there’s not much I can do on my phone…
I did this one on the plane…
Girlchild allowed me to take a photo with the wacky balloons. I have some of her room and the school, but they’re on the camera.
This was the car queue to let us into the dorm. We waited until they cleared the 5 cars that had just driven over, and then they unloaded the car. I got to drive to a commuter lot and they bused me back on campus.
Girlchild tired at dinner…
A view out the plane as we left San Diego. I’ll be back there, alone, in about 11 hours…then teaching the next day (might have been a mistake!). Hopefully I’ll be awake and asleep at normal times. I think I’m currently on UK time.
Yeah, I know that doesn’t make sense.
Then back to teaching and art making and cats and a dog and all that stuff…
Kathy Nida 