A Place to Start

Empathy: a friend sent me an article this morning by Alisa Golden about empathy in art (you can read it here) and I was thinking about maybe that’s what the deal is with the quilters who want no politics with their fabric. Why do those of us who make more political quilts get upset with them? I don’t like to just write off a whole group of people with the “stupid” or “ignorant” label, but what I really think they may be lacking, or maybe just AVOIDING, is empathy. Putting yourself in the shoes of a mother who has been trying to get her children away from drug dealers and violence. Feeling like you need to find a better world to raise children. How is that hard to understand?

I had a student this last year with gang connections and lots of family pressure regarding that, and I said more than once, if I were his mom, I would pick him up, put him in the car without telling the rest of the family, and I would drive him far far away and not tell anyone where I was going, and I would raise him somewhere that those influences were not available. Because he’s 12. And he deserves a chance to grow up without having to fight a rival gang member or be surrounded by drugs and violence. And I realize mom probably doesn’t have the ability to do that financially or supportwise. It would take a lot of courage to walk away from everything you know and some of your own children to make that happen. So if I were really her, maybe I wouldn’t do it. But I do think about being her and being the mom of this troubled kid and how I would solve that problem.

So empathy. We certainly don’t have an empathetic president…or government in charge. If I listen to any more white men explain people of color, immigrants, gays, trans, or women to me…I try to avoid them, but occasionally their rhetoric slips through. I don’t have a lot of empathy for them. When I try to get there, I just feel their fear of change and loss of control and power. Geez. Find something else to get you excited then. White supremacists? I have a hard time with empathy. They probably have a hard time with me too. But this is what we need…to feel the humanity in all of us and to help people through the hard stuff without the NIMBY attitude. Ask them why they need to believe what they believe. Explain it to me.

So what does this have to do with art? Well, I guess that’s how I do the empathy thing…I put mine out there and hope it speaks to someone. It’s what I know how to do. Golden wrote: “Art is not just about the message. It is not only about the meaning or feeling or mood. It is also about getting outside of yourself and your own game and respectfully touching base with someone, somewhere else.” So if we can do that with our quilts, that should be a good thing.

I am incredibly lucky and pleased to not have jury duty this week…I’m even more pleased that they told me I had the whole week off, because I was all stressed out about gas in the car, food in the fridge, stuff to take with me, planning for something that might not even happen. I don’t do well in those situations. I like to know what’s coming. I handle uncertainty all the time, but every day? Yikes. No. So this week is free…which is good, because I already had 3 things planned and now I have 4. I would have canceled or moved them if I had to, although the two medical appointments are not so easy to schedule…so it’s a good thing I don’t have to.

One of the appointments is with a diabetes educator, because that’s the way I get to figure out how to use my new medicine. I went through the diabetes classes when I was diagnosed 16 or so years ago, and I’m pretty good at paying attention to what I should be doing…but my body is changing as menopause decides whether or not to be a thing (certainly yelling “Make up your damn mind, uterus!” has absolutely no effect on the situation), and I’m convinced by what I’ve read and understood about the whole thing that it is the hormones that are causing the majority of my issues right now. I am not exercising enough, that’s true, but nothing else has changed. I’m hoping the education comes with some sanity, because I’ve had some crazy thrown at me over the years…and when I try to say, um, no, diabetes is not caused by eating red meat…I get lectures or incorrect information. So I am trying to keep my mind open and not be cranky about being educated. Perhaps there is new information and they won’t just lecture me about my stressful job and my shitty sleep habits. Or not. They told me to bring my new meds too, but you inject once a week and I don’t want it to be on a Tuesday…it’s one of my busiest and most stressful days of the school week. So we’ll have that conversation. Show me without actually doing it. I feel like that could be a thing.

Boychild is still in Mammoth…there are worse places to get stranded, although this is one of the more expensive places to get stuck…

Apparently his dad and grandpa are on standby with a flatbed truck to go get him and the car if necessary. Sigh. Poor kid…finally decides it’s time to come home, and he’s stuck 6 hours away. Hopefully it will be an easy fix.

So I worked on this a little last Thursday and last night…on the wild dog in the center.

He’s a little blurry, but I did needleweaving over the brown dots…

I should find the instructions for those silly flowers…I know they’re in a different month. That’s why I haven’t done them.

After dinner with the parentals, I came home and quilted for a good long while…enough to get the dark outlining done. I started around the sun with a yellow…

Then I’ll do the stars with a golden orange, the background of the sky etc with a variety of off white and beige colors, and then finally the border in green. It’s not a small amount of quilting that’s left, but I might finish today.

When I got tired of that (I set a goal and met it), I came out to work on the drawing. I cut out the bottom of this viewpoint, because I wanted it to obviously be a penis, so it wasn’t long enough for the size I drew.

Fixed. That was easy.

I can’t get all this immigration bullshit out of my head, so it’s now in there too.

This quilt is more about women’s issues and women’s rights, but it seems like keeping one’s family together should be a right. I should put an American flag tattoo on the arm.

Then I drew the next of the pregnant women. She might be the last mostly full figure…we’ll see. The drawing is changing in my head as I draw (and watch the news…maybe should turn that off). I don’t know what her viewpoint is yet…

Still working on that. Added a cat. Like you do.

You can kind of see how it’s going here. I really am trying to keep it simple…ha!

Yeah. I should stop saying that. It’s not completely true. So I’ll keep working on this today.

So what’s on the table for today? Hope the boychild’s car gets fixed quickly. Go to the gym. Pick up the other dog. Hopefully finish quilting…I wonder if I bought binding fabric? Probably not. It was how many years ago that I sandwiched it? Two? I’ll go through the pile and see if I can figure it out. Then work on the drawing after dinner again. Let it percolate all day so I can make decisions. Have empathy for someone. Or lots of people. It’s a place to start.

Art on My Mind

I forgot to mention yesterday that I was watching and rooting for all the marches yesterday. I’m hoping that we as a country find a way to be more accepting and kind to all humans, no matter our own political bent. And I really hope that (a) we stop separating children from their families and (b) we reunite those kids who are separated. I don’t care about what the law says right now or which president we want to blame for it…just fucking fix it. Stop blaming people who are trying to escape shitty situations. Let’s help them. Take responsibility for humanity. The days of this country against that country really do need to be over. We are one world community and what we do and say affects others. It’s like watching your worst period of the day in middle school, the one that may even be your smallest class, but the least functional…listening to them bitch and moan and gripe, reworking every classroom behavior tool you’ve ever used in your life to try to manage them and get them functional again, even sitting in circles and singing to each other (dammit, sometimes that works…if you’ve never taught, then be quiet). We need to do that; we need to be that. No excuses.

So there’s that. Wait. That applies to the quilt world too. We all have quilting and a minor (or major) fabric obsession in common. Maybe that can be a way to make the rest of it better…for kids, for families, for the disabled, for the disenfranchised, for the groups who need help, need food, need shelter. If you are in the privileged party (hello y’all white folks like me), you need to be part of the solution…making it better, easier, safer. You don’t get to ignore it because you don’t think it’s about you, doesn’t affect you, you don’t believe it actually happens (I listened to a Mexican woman tell me children weren’t being taken away. I was confused by that.). Sigh. This political existence is stressful. It’s easy to try to ignore it…it’s hard to see solutions that work for everyone. A friend from high school just commented that he was willing to give up ICE if the Democrats were willing to give up the Department of Education. Well. Hmmm. Maybe he doesn’t know what that department does? Or maybe he’s rich enough that his white boy children won’t need federal aid. My kids got federal aid to go to college. A whole lot of people could never afford college without that aid. Pretty privileged idea…although honestly, with DeVos in charge, it’s hard to see the good in the department. Tell you what! I’ll give you DeVos in exchange for ICE. She can go. She’s mostly useless. But the department serves a purpose.

Sigh. So there we are. Don’t even get me started on the Supreme Court. Maybe my whole existence is political right now. I know many people where that’s true and they don’t even get a choice…refugees, immigrants, people of color, the trans community, anyone who doesn’t fit in the box.

Satchemo staring at me. I don’t remember what I was doing. Organizing shit.

Definitely drinking tea.

So I went around and around in my head about this drawing and how to take what I liked in two drawings and move shit around and get what I wanted. So yesterday afternoon, in between lunch and dinner, I taped two big pieces of paper together and started tracing the original woman from 6 or 7 years ago…because I liked most of her…

Then I was going to revise the uterus and the eyeball thing (viewpoint?)…and maybe move the arm on the right, because there was now more space…so I put the newer drawing up there so I could see it.

And I redrew the uterus (much better). That’s kinda where I left it last night when I went band-watching.

At the venue, I drew with one of the fam…she drew me…I’m the one at the top of the page (wearing my Rebel shirt)…she had her Sharpie going.

Eventually I started drawing too…

And finished that one…pretty good…

And I started another one…I was too tired to get up and dance. I was perfectly happy just sitting and drawing.

It forces me to do that. Being somewhere that I can’t work on cleaning house or yardwork.

So then this morning? No this was last night, I worked on finishing up the tree with the leaves. I might still revise the viewpoint thing.

The next solution to this drawing was to move the second figure further down a hill. So I turned the drawing underneath until I got the second figure at the angle I wanted, and I started drawing her…well, tracing anyway. Mostly.

I liked her…I just needed her to move. So this is as far as I got…

She still needs leaves and there’s this lamp in the middle of nowhere and then the hill and whatever is going on next. That’s a little bit more complicated.

Meanwhile, boychild’s car broke down in California somewhere…not close enough to go get him, but he may be hanging out in Mammoth for a few days. There are worse places to end up. Hopefully he didn’t totally kill the car. Sigh. It’s been one car problem after another in the last month.

So I’ve got a plethora of things to work on today…hopefully I will be able to continue tomorrow (knock on wood that jury duty doesn’t start tomorrow). I know I’m going to forget to check the website or call at some point. I need to calendar it. Just know that art is finally totally on my mind…so I don’t really feel like doing anything else.

Mostly Brain Dead

Interesting conversation online came up yesterday about feminism and quilts. A quilt teacher mentioned that she had never heard her students discussing feminism and quilts (she should hang out with me and my quilter friends, I guess) and a whole bunch of women claimed feminism is politics and/or man-bashing and there shouldn’t be politics in quilts. Um. Why not? And feminism is not about man-bashing…I think men are just fine. I just want equal rights for all versions of gender and color and culture and ethnicity and whatever word you would like to put in there, but I also think ALL of that belongs in quilts. It doesn’t HAVE to be in quilts…but why would we say it can’t be there? So many rules. Sigh. The one I’m drawing (mostly in my head, honestly, because yesterday was not a drawing day and today probably won’t be either) is all about feminism AND politics (they’re not the same) AND it will be a quilt. Because that is my chosen art form, and I especially like that I use an art form that used to be only made by women who needed things to keep them warm and they wanted them to look interesting (not just pretty).

I guess I just don’t understand why if you don’t like something like politics in quilts (can you say Threads of Resistance?) you don’t just WALK ON BY. You can chat with your friends and say, hey, I didn’t really care for that exhibit that was all political, but I do love me some Baltimore Album quilts…did you see those? (By the way, I love me some Baltimore Album quilts, for realz.) It’s not hard to be civil and allow others to express themselves differently than you do. And that goes for their relationships and marriage and how they dress and how they live and who they love and how they love. But that’s just me.

And me today? Got a lunch date with an old friend and then the man who lives here, his band has a show tonight, so I have my table reserved for some food, wine, and musical drawing. Sounds good…hope it turns out that way. That’s the plan anyway.

I got very little done yesterday. It was just one of those days. I spent about an hour going through the quilts in the boychild’s room, rolling up one grouping, pulling 6 that are shipping out. I still need to find 4 little ones that are supposed to ship out as well, but this was a start…

It’s a good thing I did that, because he’s on his way back. I still need to move the roll where it belongs and actually SHIP some of these…some I just rolled together, because they won’t ship until August, but I don’t want to put them back in the big roll.

Then I was fussing around doing some other stuff, ran some errands, bought more thread, worked on the quilt under the machine (not an art quilt…just needs to get done) and realized these guys needed exercise. Hence the sad faces…

So we walked them…

And then we went out and watched a band and ate some dinner and came back to this HUUUGE beetle thing on the window screen. I’ve never seen one of these…a gecko came by and thought about eating it, but it was bigger than his head, so no. He left.

We are surrounded by wildlife.

This is Simba this morning. He had a huge tick on his chin (yes, he’s on meds to kill ticks? I don’t actually know what it does to the ticks if they bite him…), but he’s off to play now at the other house.

And I need to get off of here and get ready to go to lunch. I’m hoping to come back and work on something later…whatever that something is. I feel like this summer is so discombobulated. Oh well. At least there’s nothing to grade. Because I’m mostly brain dead right now.

Might Be Over Now, but I Feel It Still*

My definition of a break is different from vacation. Vacation is when you get in the car or on a plane and you travel somewhere and hang out there and it involves not sleeping in your bed and possibly eating weird food. Vacations are cool. I went years without vacations because I couldn’t afford them, and as it is now, I don’t do them a lot (still money), but I try to do one a year for a week and then a few smaller ones. This year, I’m going to Boston (excuse me, Waltham) to visit the girlchild in November. It’s really hard (for me) as a teacher to take time off during the school year. It’s such a pain in the ass to create good lesson plans and hope a guest teacher won’t completely fuck it up and teach the kids something completely incorrectly (sigh…it’s way too common) and then I lose days when I come back, trying to correct their misconception AND deal with behavior. So I avoid it.

I rarely get to travel during summer, because of that lost paycheck. It’s hard to plan to spend a chunk of money when you know you won’t have any more coming in. I currently have a list of things I need to buy but will need to wait until September (or whenever the credit card cycle starts that will bill in September…teachers, you all know what I’m talking about). I would love to vacate right now. Really. I would. We tried to set up a weekend camping trip, but we waited too long and all the campsites are booked. And I can’t plan anything in July during the week because of the silly jury duty. August is already a disaster schedule-wise.

So no vacation right now. Staycation? OK. Go see some music, maybe hike a bit, possibly kayak, go to the zoo? I don’t know. Something I don’t do during the school year very often, because I’m so buried. But maybe that’s my resolution for the 2018-2019 school year? More weekend things that are less about work and more about being a relaxing human. (I suck at relaxation, you may have noticed.) This is a break though…a break from the job and the kids and all the other crap and that in itself is a good thing.

Anyway, my car window got fixed yesterday. I was worried that it would be the wrong window or something else would go wrong, but it worked out and the gardener who accidentally shattered it with a rock ended up paying for almost all of it. So all that turned out well. I was expecting to have to spend more time and energy on the issue, and I didn’t have to. So that sort of freed up my brain all day to do a bunch of different art- and fiber-related activities. I think it was the first day since school got out where I felt like I was on break. Because no school. No doctor. Only two errands and they were done early. Nice. Need more of that please.

So I started out with trying to finish the ironing on this…another cat! Shocking.

And some tiny sewing implements…

Then I started ironing it onto a background, but I needed to go to my fiber-related summer social meeting. So I packed up some bits and pieces and headed out. I cut the Wonder Under for the two small quilts…

These lunch containers work well for keeping pieces separated…the sandwich one doesn’t though because the divider doesn’t go all the way up.

So those are ready for fabric choosing.

Then I finished sewing all the wooly bits down on this, September’s blocks.

I also pinned October’s pieces down to that blank block, but that was when I got home…and I stitched a little on (I don’t know what month I’m actually on? July?) the bigger piece. I’m getting closer to done on this. I didn’t photograph any of that.

Then I ironed the rest of this down. I like her. She’s ready to be stitched down.

I’ve been trying to keep doing yardwork, but mostly in the evenings because it’s too hot otherwise. Last night, I was entertaining the dogs while whacking at trees and bushes that haven’t been trimmed for a million years. I lost the puppy for a while in there, and Calli kept bringing me half-chewed sticks to throw.

I will probably never finish back there.

So I can’t do the stitch down on the skinny quilt until I finish quilting this. I don’t want it to go back in the pile. So I quilted for an hour or two, until I was almost out of thread.

It’s not hard. It just takes time. Thread purchase on the list for today. I didn’t want to buy more unless I knew I needed it. Now I know I need it.

So after all that, running out of thread, I decided to try drawing. It’s always hard to get back to drawing if I haven’t done it for a while. It’s like my hand stutters. I have an enlarged old drawing, I have this original drawing from 2011 or 2012, and then I have this cat on my lap. Huh.

Anyway, so I started drawing the righthand figure again, but now I have an issue because I like parts of the old drawing better than the new and I like parts of the new drawing better than the old. Aargh. So I think I’m going to copy both real size and then put them together? Or maybe I’ll copy both enlarged and put them together?

I just don’t know. Or redraw it again. Sigh. Maybe that. The shape of the old one is better but what’s in the belly of the new one is better. Fuuck. OK. Well no decision there, eh? Nothing new. Indecisive brain for two weeks now.

OK, so today…buy thread, make some copies (decide at some point what I’m copying?), pick up the ceramics I painted last week, go watch some music and grab some dinner. Easy. Not too bad. I can handle it. I might even feel relaxed by the end of it!

*Portugal. The Man, Feel It Still

Eyes Burn with Stinging Sweat*

So the training is done…I’ve spent three days (that’s it!) staring at this in the morning and afternoon…

I don’t do freeways and traffic for my job any more. I did it for many years, until I was lucky enough to get a job just down the street. I don’t really enjoy it. OK, no one enjoys it. I’ll be doing it again this morning to try to get my car window fixed, but that’s it…until I get called to jury duty downtown. Ugh. OK. Not thinking about that.

I spent all day for three days staring at this…two notebooks, a million highlighters and post-it notes, a computer, a phone, a poor desperate apple that was all bruised and beaten and will come home to go in my compost. I might eat part of it, but mostly not. Plus caffeine. Oh god yes, caffeine. And some people.

What do I know after all that training? That I am woefully unprepared for the test portion of certification, but that’s fixable. That I’m not starting in 2019. I mean, I might start studying and collecting stuff in 2019, but I won’t start the official process until 2020 at the earliest. I need my district to pay for it and I need to not have to come home some nights and work another job. Yes, I bid on a copyediting job last night. Because I need the money. Let’s hope I don’t have to do it at the same time as jury duty.

It was almost 8 PM when I finished. The moon was out. It was way prettier than this picture can ever show. I miss my old cameras that recorded more than the phone does.

So after I went and got my annual eye exam, came back and did a sample edit and wrote a bid, and ate dinner and only embellished 2 balls instead of 3…then I numbered the two drawings. Mind you, these are only 5×6″. This one had 90 pieces and the other had 39. Still not small or easy. But they jumped the line because they’re due the end of July…

Then I traced the Wonder Under for each…it took about 30 minutes to do this more complicated one…

And about 10 minutes for this one.

Not bad. I need to trim the Wonder Under today, but then I really need to finish the other two things that are in my studio before I do any more on these two. Luckily those shouldn’t take long. As long as no more crazy shit appears in my inbox or hits my car or gets rescheduled. Seriously. The good news is that my eyes are fine. I didn’t even need new glasses yet. That’s a plus. I’m hoping the car window thing is easily solved (I don’t have a lot of faith in it this morning…men who think they know how women are always wrong…that shit) and I can do the errands I need to do and maybe just stitch this afternoon at my friend’s house, which is what’s on the calendar. I might need a nap. I’m so tired this morning. I’m sleeping in tomorrow. It has been mandated. Someone needs to explain it to the animals so there are no interruptions. Who am I kidding? You know there will be interruptions.

Trying not to assume the worst with the Supreme Court…or with the Janus decision. Politics, man. It’s so hard because you can’t put your head in the sand and ignore it all…that’s what they want. So you have to let it into your head and let the possibilities fester. Like what kind of dumbassery will we have to deal with next?

That’s when I turn to making art. It helps. Not with the lack of sleep, but with the feeling of helplessness this administration has made so pervasive. My faith in humanity is being severely tested.

*Alice in Chains, Rooster

‘Cause You Don’t Have to Rush*

A reminder that working all day does suck up brain time and make art difficult. That said, I do it. I used to only really make art on breaks…so Winter, Spring, and Summer. I finished about one big quilt a year and a few smaller ones in between. I didn’t do nothing during the school year…I just didn’t do a lot. It didn’t help that I had little kids and they had homework and soccer and piano lessons and a whole host of other things that I graded through and sometimes embroidered or appliqued through, but that was mostly hobby stuff…not the real artwork. Looking back, I’m not sure how I got anything done. But I did.

Yesterday? Not so much. I mean I did get some stuff done, but it was a lot of tiredness mostly. Because when I got home, I made dinner and then walked the dogs…

No nature last night…because it was late and I didn’t want to deal with coyotes. I did want to get exercise, because sitting all day in a training feels exhausting as well. Although I did find a place that makes and sells (important!) tea. Oh hallelujah. So that got me through yesterday afternoon. One more day today and I’m done. I can honestly say that National Board Certification is a lot of work…but I think I will take it on…just not this year.

On the walk, there was a kid who was walking, but when he realized that the dogs and I might be walking faster than him, he took off at a run. Like he couldn’t get passed up by the old lady. He’s way up there in the picture…you can’t see him, but he’s walking again. Lame. Nice big old field though. Everything is dead and brown already…no rain for a while.

Calli appreciated the walk but was tired and hot afterwards…

Simba also appreciated it, although he appreciated less my picking the sticks and foxtails out of his fur later. And Satchemo didn’t get to go. He does go out on a leash, but I don’t deal with that crazy. Cats on leashes. Yeah no.

I realized I wouldn’t be able to stand to iron for an hour or more…too tired. Feet hurt. Even though I sat all day…the irony! I usually stand all day. And I didn’t feel like stitching on balls. I looked at them and rejected them. So much for three a night, eh?

Oh well, so I have to do these two small art quilts by late July for an exhibit in the fall, so I’ve been carrying around these 5×6″ pieces of paper I cut for that purpose. So I drew. And then as I drew, I realized the boxes are horizontal and I had drawn the first two vertical. Duh. So I redrew one of them (and changed it), but now horizontal…

And then I decided I like the one in the top left, so I scanned it and shrunk it and printed it out again. So it will be that one and the bottom right.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to keep these little pieces after the show…maybe toss them up on Etsy.

So that’s what I did instead of finishing the ironing on this quilt that needs to be done. I also thought about (but did nothing about) the big drawing…mostly because I think I decided I would need to be standing to do anything about it.

I can’t decide whether to start with a drawing in the big sketchbook and then enlarge and add to it, or whether I know what the parts are already…just cut a big piece of paper (I have a HUGE roll of paper I bought a while back and it lives in my living room and no, you can’t have any…ok that sounds mean, but you know how when people find out you have something or you can do something? And then they want it or they want you to do it and you’re like wait but get your own. Do it yourself. OK, I’m obviously in a mood. Never mind. Something about a comment…”is anyone an artist?” came up when we needed to make a poster.). Cut a big piece of paper and start drawing on that. That decision (and action) was more than I could deal with last night. So I didn’t. I’ll get to everything. I hope. I committed to a piece of art that goes with a poem…picked one of my old poems, the one that sucked the least (damn, some of my old poetry was really awful). So I need to draw that too. Maybe tonight? Ugh. Maybe. I want to draw. I’m just tired.

Too much thinking. Need more art, less thinking. Perhaps more sleep too.

*Kate Nash, Navy Taxi

Need to Be Out of Here

Well. I need caffeine delivery at my training. They are nice. They feed us lunch. They bring us snacks and extension cords that don’t have a third prong hole. There’s plenty of water. We can pee whenever we want (trust me, for teachers, that’s a major issue)…but there’s no coffee or tea and the day was long. I don’t sit for that long normally either…like unless I’m on a plane. They had us stand up a few times, but I need a long walk and more caffeine. I’m even willing to bring my own milk and tea bags, if they’ll just give us hot water.

So if you’ve never heard of National Board Certification for teachers, it’s not an easy process. In fact, it’s a monstrous pain in the ass…but doable. And I think it’s useful…not only as a way to focus on how one teaches and picks resources and handles assessment and feedback and differentiation (which is hard), but also to protect teachers from crazy administrators (they’re out there, along with the crazy teachers and the crazy parents). They talk about creating teacher leaders, which kinda cracks me up as I look around the room…there’s some crazy people like me in there, and then some high achievers (English, we’re looking at you), and some who had no idea what they were in for, but it does take all kinds. The teacher leaders I’ve dealt the best with are those who work hard, think about kids and curriculum all the time, reflect all the time, and are willing to share information. Science doesn’t attract a lot of teachers who like to follow rules, I’ve found…there were only two other science teachers there, and I’m betting one doesn’t show up at all today and the other one is only going to show up because she thinks I might be able to help her. And I might.

Anyway, today will be longer. And harder. And I need to find caffeine. Or another thermos.

What else did I get done yesterday? Not much. I watched the window fall out even more…

Fixing it Thursday.

I sewed Pekinese stitch on three balls. THREE.

And then I ironed. Eventually. It was late.

The face…I ironed the teacup separately, same with the leaves…the snake, I did right on the hair. I don’t worry too much about being exactly in the right place for that. It’s not overlapping anything it needs to cover.

The camera and the eye were separate…easier to see where the pieces need to be when I do it that way…

Then onto the face. Cool. I like it.

She’s really pale…which means she’ll pop on a dark background.

I’m almost done with the ironing of the bits. I wanted to be done last night, but I got home and was tired and tried to deal with some stuff, entering a show, finding an old poem for a show…now I need to make the art to go with it, because I committed to that show. Whoops! Nah, it’s OK. I have to do two small pieces by the end of July too. I cut out some small pieces of paper to take to my training, in case I feel like drawing, but that’s hard to do with total strangers sitting next to you and watching everything you do. Plus I don’t know what to do on such small pieces. The big drawing is still sitting on the light table, waiting for me to start something…anything.

But I was in bed around midnight, because I knew I had to get up even earlier this morning…gotta fight traffic. If I get called on jury duty, it’s downtown. Talk about fighting traffic. Ugh. Not looking forward to that. I need lots of sleep over summer break…to make up for how little I sleep during the school year.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll finish ironing tonight, maybe even get it ironed to the background? I only have about 60 pieces to go, if that. And they’re big and easy…no fussy little face parts. Then I’ll have to finish quilting the other one so I can do stitch down on this. That won’t take long…but it will take SOME time. This week is so packed.

There was a video made of the Things That Matter Preview Exhibit…my quilt and I are in it…this exhibit is up at Visions Art Museum through July 8…and then the full exhibit will be in Chandler, Arizona, in November.

I don’t think I’ll be able to make that opening…pretty sure I’ll be hanging with the girlchild in Boston…but I hope I’ll see the full exhibit at some point.

OK, need to be out of here…in so many ways…

Whole Days Turn into Holes in My Mind*

Sigh. Well the universe said hi yesterday. With a rock. It’s interesting (I was gonna say funny, but it’s funny strange, not funny ha ha, so maybe it’s not funny at all)…it doesn’t matter how much I plan money out for summer break, there’s always something that throws a wrench into that plan. I guess in the scheme of things, this is not a biggie…it just had shitty timing. We were driving home from the grocery store yesterday and drove past a guy weedwacking a slope, and his machine shot a rock right through the side window of the car. Shattered it. Now thinking back, with about 12 hours of processing, I guess we should be really really glad we were almost past when that rock shot through, because it would probably have damaged a person if they’d been in the way. I still haven’t found the rock in the car. A chunk of the shattered glass below has now fallen out…on the driveway and into the car…

Just from opening and closing the door and the hood…the hood because the next thing we had to do was jumpstart the Honda, because its battery was having issues (we don’t drive it enough with the kids gone). And then I drove that down to the gas station and filled the tires, put gas in it, cleaned all the windows, because I have teacher professional development today…so I can’t get the other window fixed until probably Thursday, the guy wasn’t insured but said he’d pay for it (if he gave me a real phone number and actually has $400), and my insurance won’t cover it because I carry a high deductible to make insurance cheaper. I hope he’ll pay some of it though, because I don’t get paid in the summer….so it makes bill payment a little challenging sometimes. Especially by the end of August. I can’t order stuff for school until after the credit card cycle is done for July so I won’t see it on a bill until September, when I have a paycheck.

Anyway. I’m trying to find somewhere cheaper than the first two I looked at, but they want a 4-hour window of time to come fix it, and I can’t just leave a car with a hole in the window in a parking lot…so I guess it’ll be driving the Honda for a few days. I just tried the Honda again this morning to make sure it would start and it did. I guess that’s the universe too…

So that kind of blew my afternoon up a bit, trying to get information from insurance and glass places on a Sunday afternoon, with both neighbors throwing parties…we had kid noise on one side and bad cigars on the other. Fun stuff.

I did eventually iron…I was going to draw, but the afternoon kind of clusterfucked my head. So ironing was easier…bird and heart. I’m not sure how the bird will play on the background…I might need to add something behind it…we’ll see. I can’t remember if I was holding fabrics up to the background or not. I think it’ll be OK. The background is pretty dark.

Then a phone and the pills in the stomach…plus all the rib details…

With dinner, there was some more stitching on balls…

Three of them. My average no matter what? I thought these would be faster, but apparently not.

Then back to the ironing…lungs and heart…fussy little beasts.

And the left arm, down to meet the squeegee.

Then I rolled all of that up so I could do the top section…the right arm.

Next is the head and then all the stuff in the sky above. I think I have about 170 pieces left to iron together, and then obviously I need to put it on the background. I might get to all that tonight. Since I can’t fix the window.

Kitten told me it was time to go to bed (it was after midnight…she was right…)

But that mockingbird. Pillow over the head. Gotta pack up for this meeting…call my car guy and see if he has a recommendation for glass replacement. Text the gardener. Meditate.

*K.Flay, Giver

I Like a Plan

A Sunday without planning for school. Again. So delightful. No school worries. Although I’m in teacher professional development for the next three days, so that’s not really no school. But they will feed me. And hopefully it will be informational and useful and not just annoying overachievers. We’ll see. I think I use up all my people skills (what few I have) on my students all year. I need to rebuild those reserves. Maybe hanging out with teachers I don’t know for three days is not the way to do that…but who knows? Maybe I’ll be totally reflective and motivated.

Right now, I think I need a nap. The mockingbird is back. He’s been all over the neighborhood, but last night was in the tree outside my bedroom again. It makes me crazy. I slept with the pillow over my head. Drowning out noise with fabric and feathers. Ironic that. Bird drowning out bird. Very philosophical this morning.

I have this drawing I’m contemplating. I started it years ago, 2012? And it grew, but I’m not sure it grew logically, and it means something different to me now. I was going to just go with it and maybe add to the bottom, but now that doesn’t make sense to me. I thought about just using half of it, but every time I look at it, I see pieces I like and pieces I don’t like, that don’t go with the story as it is now. So I think I’m going to redraw it but move pieces around…make it less horizontal too while I’m at it.

It’s going to be my epic summer quilt. But first I have to tear this apart and redo the whole thing. No Biggie! It’s taken me a week of contemplating it and deadlines to finally make the decision. So redraw it I will.

But let’s go back…it’s been a busy two days. I had a voucher at the local ceramic painting place that was expiring, so me and a million moms and kids headed to the same place to use them up. No one would sit at my table…which was fine by me…but I got side-eyed by about a million people for painting nudes I guess…

These are before firing, of course…who knows what they will look like fired.

Well, we all will next week when I pick them up. I make about one mug a year…I tend to break them. Overuse them. All that.

I also made a uterus bowl…like you do…

With a lot of symbols on the outside.

And then I made a sign for Saturday’s march to keep families together. But that was once I came home and made dinner…I didn’t do that at the ceramics place.

San Diego had already scheduled a march for the 23rd and then the national one came through for the 30th. I already have stuff going on the 30th, so I’m just doing the one march…hope the second one pulls enough people to make a difference too.

I saw this cool sculpture walking to my meeting spot…

And then lots of speeches (too many speeches, honestly) and a short march to the federal building…

It’s frustrating to live in a time when we have to yell and stomp so much for our government to hear us…and they still blow us off. Sigh.

When I got back, my brother was texting me pictures of the boychild with his cousins…going tree climbing.

My kid is the biggest…so far. The others are getting taller every time I see them.

Mine is the long one in the middle…

Looks like fun. I wanna do that. I kinda miss those summers when I would drag the kids up to Seattle to hang out for a week.

Anyway, boychild will be leaving Monday apparently to head south. He should be here in a week or so. So that means cleaning his room. It’s not too bad. I piled the worst of it in the girlchild’s room last year when my guy moved in here and I hadn’t finished cleaning up stuff in my bedroom. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with stuff. I’m not sure if I need it or not and I hate throwing things away. I threw a lot away last summer with the garage clean out. I think I reached a limit at some point.

Anyway, that’s next week. And sometime in July, when I panic about the girlchild coming home.

Meanwhile, my office is always a disaster…but especially after I’ve picked all the fabrics and haven’t cleaned up yet…I leave everything out in case I lose a piece (I found a lost one last night)…there’s a cat in this photo…

There it is. Kitten on Mt. Batting.

She spends a lot of time there. It’s safe from the other kitty and it’s comfortable and in the room where mom spends a lot of time.

So at some point yesterday I felt awake enough to iron for a while, up into the thighs. The sun comes in here in the afternoon and makes it hard to see stuff.

And then I took a break for a while and went to dinner and then came back and worked on the lights and the squeegee and the uterus…not all of that is ironed down though, because stuff is supposed to go behind the top part of the pelvic girdle…

Kitten came down to visit (and watch Supernatural apparently)…she sat on the chair that is hidden there for a while, until the other cat came in and got territorial. Sigh. At this point, I had cleaned about half the papers that were piled on my desk…I still have the other side and then the desk to the left. School sucks up so much time that there are balls that just drop…and cleaning the paper crap up is part of that. So I lose shows sometimes in the paper piles. I forget about them. I try to be logical, but I’m not always good at it. I want to try a different organization plan in here, but I need a new stacking file thing…the two I have don’t fit into each other unfortunately. So that’s a trip somewhere. Organization has been my issue my entire life. I like it when it happens, but I keep changing how I do stuff to try to get MORE organized, and then I wait to see what sticks. I’ve reorganized in my office/studio about 3000 times. I have a plan for hopefully next summer (need money) to do a remodel of the whole room…but I’m not there yet.

Anyway, I was ironing the gingko leaves separately, because they had a lot of tiny pieces and I needed to see the pattern before I ironed them onto the belly fabric.

There they are…

And then I put them on the belly fabric, but folded the leaf itself down until the stuff above was done…first a stomach, liver, and intestines…

And then the ribs and abs…then I could iron the gingkos all the way down. I still need to add a bunch of detail bits in there, but it was just after midnight at that point. I took a break in the middle because the library emailed me that my book was due soon, so I finished it…plus my feet hurt from standing, so I gave them a break.

I’m officially more than halfway done now…lots of complicated stuff still to be ironed. You can see all the bottom bits are rolled up at the bottom. I decided to just keep going instead of ironing the parts separately and trying to fit them together at the end. Especially with the hand that will come down and hold the squeegee…I wanted to make sure everything meets up.

Oh yeah, I finished all the red balls on this quilt and started doing the embellishment of the fuschia balls, which are only a slightly different color than the blush pink balls (there’s one of those on the top for comparison). The stitch around the fuschia balls is fairly easy, but requires going around twice. I only did one…I took time Friday night to finish the 4 red ones that were left and start the fuschia, which is why I got no artmaking done. Plus tired.

I made up for it by doing no ball stitching last night…but I figure if I finish embellishing 3 balls a night on average and there are 80 (79) left to go, then that’s 26 nights. So sometime in July. Plus I should be quilting the other wool quilt, but I have to finish the cotton one that’s under the machine, and ain’t none of that happening in the next three days. So there.

So there’s finishing ironing, maybe quilting, getting prepped for tomorrow’s teacher PD, groceries, maybe a dog walk…if it cools down enough. Maybe some cleaning or organization. We’ll see. Yardwork that’s never done. EVER. One week of summer break gone. I hate that feeling. Then I have to persuade myself that there’s a ton left, everything will be fine, don’t panic. DRAWING. I need to draw. That’s a plan…I like having a plan…

Today Is a Brain Fart.

Well on the one hand, yesterday I started to feel like I was on break. On vacation (staycation…can’t afford to go anywhere). I felt less like school was hanging over me. On the other hand, I still don’t seem to be able to sleep at night. I can’t FALL asleep, even when it’s really late. The shower is dripping (fixing that soon), it’s too warm, animals are making noise, even the human ones, my brain is racing. That! That’s the real problem. I almost got up last night to meditate at like 1 AM. That might have been a smart thing to do. I’m feeling it today. Ugh. I’ve been exercising too, so that’s not helping either. It SHOULD help, but it’s not. Ugh. Always a work in progress. Until I die.

I’m glad the brain is trying to vacation though. It should bring me along.

So yesterday was this…

I don’t really need all that hair for summer. Some of my upkeep is going to require me to use a razor. I’m cool with that.

And then I quilted this for a bit until I got annoyed…

I got most of the way down one side. I’ll do more today. Maybe. I think I need more thread.

Then this guy was Way Too Close. Satchemo. I need to be able to breathe without cat hair going up my nose. His paw is reaching out to caress my cheek…

Because I’m not petting him. It’s not because he loves me. OK, maybe he loves me. But only because I pet him.

Then I set this up to sort all the pieces for the current quilt. There’s always a cat involved when I’m working on the light table…

This guy came to visit. Too big. Legs. Bug. Eeek.

Luckily he was on the outside of the window. We walked the dogs in there somewhere, and then I finished sorting…

Ate dinner and worked on these…I think I only have 5 left…of the red.

Which means 80 left of the other colors. But the embellishments are easier for those balls. Simpler. Less time-consuming. Maybe?

So hopefully it will go faster. And all those balls will get filled up and then I’ll sandwich it and put it away for three years before I quilt it. NO! Not that. I don’t know where I’m putting all these in the house anyway. They’re wonderful and brightly colored. They deserve to be hung. Maybe I’ll rotate them.

After all that, I eventually made my way into the office, cleaned up the mess, laid out the first 100 pieces, and started to iron. At 10:30 PM. Just like normal!

There are two figures hidden in the landscape…they’ll be more obvious when it’s ironed to a background and outline stitched…but I didn’t want them to be really really obvious.

I made it well into the 200s last night.

This part is usually really meditative. Not sure why my brain isn’t cooperating. Right now, I’m so incredibly tired. Ugh.

OK, this is funny. I got a phone call while writing this and then realized my meeting was at 11 AM, not 4 PM, so I kamikazed off to that and totally forgot about this. FUCK MY BRAIN. Seriously, it’s impaired. So it’s good I’m making decisions about wills right now, right? Yeah. Shut up. It’s fine. Gonna go paint some ceramics now. Can’t deal with the rest of anything.