So Many Choices

My brain is a little garbled this morning. I’m hoping that’s not a problem. I was so bloody efficient yesterday, enlarging the drawing last night…I started with 200%, but the head was huge, so I backed it down to 150%. That looked reasonable. I didn’t have time to tape it together, but that’s OK. I’m supposed to be working on 17 other quilts before that one anyway. I made it to my stitching meeting, where mostly I read an article in New Yorker and chatted. I sewed a few stitches. I made it home with dinner…always a plus. I’m tired of eating the same thing this week. Brain freeze on the same food every day. Sometimes I don’t care at all and some days it just drives me crazy. Suppose it depends on what I’m eating…more of the quinoa chicken bowls. They’re good. Takes a ton of time to make those though. That’s the problem. Not sure I have the time this weekend.

And then too many choices. I wanted to start picking fabrics, but I was just too tired to make that happen. I thought about taping the drawing and starting to draw the rest, but that tired thing again. So I came in here and quilted…

All the outlining is done and I’m quilting orange in the background. Or red. Maybe it’s red-orange thread. See the backing fabric? Green robots? Leftovers from a baby quilt from a few years back. I count my years at this school in history teachers, because we can’t keep them more than a year, it seems. My old history teacher’s wife and my new history teacher’s wife were each having a baby, within about 2 weeks of each other. So they each got one. I never met either wife, I think. Weird, huh? Whatever. I pass on the quilty goodness.

I don’t actually make that many baby quilts. I’ve made like 6 of them. And then for a while, I made these little landscapes for wedding and Christmas presents. I’ve probably made about 20 of those. I actually have one of them back from my ex-MIL after her death. And then I’ve made about 90 art quilts. Which is crazy. Seriously crazy. Assuming I have another 30+ good quilting years left in me? I could fill the damn house. Maybe it’s better if I make fewer big quilts rather than lots of smaller quilts. Huh.

And I should probably give up on the Etsy site. It’s not like I’m regularly gonna make more little safe quilts for that…or even unsafe ones. And there’s no sales. So shut that down I guess. Or go look at the timing and calendar when to shut it down.

So I didn’t get much done, but I did get some. It’s all I can do some days. Some. A little. A bit. OK, I think I actually quilted for an hour and a half. It was like meditation at the end of the day, and I actually fell asleep at a reasonable time last night (mostly because I think I’m about to hit a wall of mental and physical exhaustion after this week). I’m feeling good about all of it. Finish these two quilts and start picking fabrics for the next one. Relax a bit with the art. Stop trying to make a deadline where one doesn’t exist. You have enough choices…you can handle fabric or draw or quilt…so many choices.

So many choices. Meditating with art.

Attempting Wake-Up Maneuvers

So the not-sleeping catches up and whacks you in the face. OK. It whacks me anyway. I napped after work yesterday. That’s it…I’m officially an old person. What I love is the cats climb up on the couch with me, flanking me. I set an alarm, because I didn’t want it to be like last time, when I lost 2 hours to nappiness and then couldn’t fall asleep at night. I’m already having issues with that. So 40 minutes later, I was all groggy (hey, I set it for 25 minutes and then it went off, scaring all the creatures on the couch, so I went for another 15…then the girlchild was texting me and I attempted wake-up maneuvers). And I didn’t really feel like doing anything, which is too bad, because I always have stuff to do. And I didn’t feel like figuring dinner out either. I probably had enough leftovers for lunches and dinner last night, but the potatoes were MEH and I had eaten that for lunch and hell, what I really wanted was to be physically transported, no WAIT, I wanted the waiter at Himalayan to be able to walk through some sort of transport thing that put him in my living room to take my order and then to bring it to me. But not to wait around and stare at me, wondering why I can’t get my butt off the couch.

That’s when I got up and ordered more tea, because I’m running out. It took me a good two hours and some fakeout of a dinner menu (it’s always OK to have salad and Brussels sprouts), plus staring at my phone and the telly for a good long time before I could function. Part of that is what I taught yesterday, which was kind of a performance art, relay race of neurons and action potentials. I spent a lot of time running around the room yelling “DO IT! DO IT!” and “SEND IT BACK!”. So if you’re thinking teachers just sit at a desk (I don’t really have a desk for such activities), imagine the yelling and the running instead. Today will be a nice quiet video viewing of brain structure and function to counteract the running and screaming of yesterday. The one day you could have the superintendent walk in and you’d be totally OK with him seeing the real live crazy of Nida teaching science? Yeah. He didn’t show.

So when I remember that and the not-falling-asleep of the night before, I guess a nap is warranted.

After that, I finally got my brain to function and finished cutting out all the Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is temporarily called Fishface, just because I had three drawings out at the same time, and I needed something that would tell them all apart. The other two are Totemwoman and Spiralwoman. I already have a quilt called FishWife, so it could get confusing. She’ll have a different name at the end.

There’s all the pieces…about 2 1/2 hours of trimming Wonder Under.

Then I sorted them. This quilt is gonna go fast, I think.

Compared to the last one anyway. And I still wasn’t tired. Because I’d had a nap. So I sat down with the drawing from the weekend and tried to finish up the torso a bit so I can copy it. And I think I’ll toss it in the car today and go enlarge it and start drawing stuff for real.

Like real size. This is already big. And I’m not sure that heart is gonna stay. There’ll be a heart, but the chest/upper torso is off. So maybe I’ll cut it off a couple of inches up into the drawing and then redo the chest and heart full size. Usually I enlarge 200-300%, though, and this head is already considerably bigger than the last Earth Mother, so maybe I won’t? Or I’ll rethink the rest of the body? I’m not sure.

I got good news last night that two of my quilts will be in the Feminism Now show at Gallery D in Barrio Logan. The opening is May 14 from 6-10 PM. If you haven’t been, it’s part of the Barrio Art Crawl, so there are a few studios in the area of Gallery D, plus other studios, like La Bodega Gallery and the Bread and Salt Gallery, in the area. I’ll post a link closer to the time.

This is the smaller piece that will be in the show (currently out for professional photography)…

And the larger piece it connects to will be there too. The smaller one will travel to Sweden (date/location TBA) with the exhibit, and then hopefully there’ll be another exhibit in Los Angeles or down here in San Diego, once the Swedish exhibit closes.

Yeah. I really need to go to school. I had to meditate to fall asleep again last night, so caffeine will be a necessary part of the day today (it’s what’s for breakfast! and lunch! and dinner!). At least I’m making progress, even if I have to nap in between the job and my real life.

Gird My Loins

Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I finally went and found the iPad at about a quarter to 1 and had to re-upload my meditation program, because apparently I deleted it somehow. And then meditated, confusing the dog massively. Even then, I couldn’t sleep. I even considered taking today off from work (wow. two days in, people. well done.). I remember in my old job taking a personal day every once in a while, just a day to clear my head and do what I want and not think about whatever it was that was the issue. But I just had Spring Break, I hear you say. OK. Well, that tells you a little bit about my job then, doesn’t it? It’s not even the kids right now…it’s the other adults and some of the situations. We live in an inherently violent and sexist society, and I wish it didn’t have to be that way. I can wish that all I like, but when it comes down to reality…it doesn’t look like it’s changing any time soon. And apparently I’m a shitty teacher for not just accepting the way things are. Wow. I’m so done with this school year. 51 days.

I also worked last night, which didn’t help things. A last-minute project showed up and ate up the evening, which is fine. I need the money. I always need the money. Dear college: Knock it off. Give me a break. The girlchild was shocked that tuition went up. I was not. I’m not happy about it, but it’s always going up. Everything is always going up.

I did a little art stuff…started cutting out Wonder Under for the new quilt…

That’s about an hours’ worth. Halfway done. Ish. I’m not engaged with this project yet. Too stressed out. Too tired. Maybe when I start picking fabrics for it?

Maybe it’s just a matter of not having that deadline to work toward. Knowing that you only have X number of weeks to finish something gives you a drive you might not otherwise have. Then again, I come home from work and the last thing I want to look at is more grading, lesson design, or whatever. I don’t want to think about kids or what will be taught in homeroom or whether or not I will be able to work with my team next year. I just want to relax. Monday was better because I went out and climbed a big sweaty hill. I guess that’s a lesson in itself. I had a trauma training at school yesterday as well (because I don’t recognize trauma?) and they talked about self care. Gave us a list of self-care tasks. Oh yeah. That. I do that. And that. And that. And I still want to run screaming from my entire life some days. I guess we all do. And no, donuts aren’t the solution.

Making art for me is the solution. Drawing the pictures, trying to make sense of the world with a simple line, getting the morass in my head out onto the paper. Some people call it a gift, but it’s not. I worked my butt off to be able to channel that stuff out. And I can’t even draw fast enough. I can’t draw enough to clear it all out.

So each morning, I write this and I check how I feel. And I label what’s in my head: Thinking or Feeling? Lots of feels this morning. Too many thinks last night. And the feels are particularly hard right now, whether that’s due to lack of sleep, hormonal surges, an empty house, or whatever. They feel (ha!) overwhelming. So part of my mindful practice every day is to spill it here, then contemplate what the day might bring in terms of opportunities to help the feels, to spill them out in an appropriate way, to offer them to the Earth Mother, to Nature (those hikes save my brain!), to dribble them out on the elliptical, to shelve them between the pages of a good book, to cut them into tiny little pieces while I trim the Wonder Under, to block their effect with music or pictures or drawing or tracing or whatever the hell it takes.

With that in mind, I gird my loins, mount my trusty steed, Subaru, and venture into combat, looking past the inevitable strife and conflict towards an attainable goal of peace…tho temporary it might be. An evening with scissors.

Oh yeah, in case you don’t know how to gird your loins (again, where’s the female version…)

Being Mindful

The last two plus years have taught me one thing across the board…being mindful of one’s state of mind, understanding what you need to get through the difficult and enjoy what you can, being able to step back from bad stuff and scary stuff and stare it down…this is absolutely necessary to finding peace and joy in your life. Yesterday’s peace and joy came in a walk at the end of the day, new yellow flowers dotting the landscape, the dog snuffling through some dead thing (not so joyful for me), conquering that bad-ass hill I walk up on a regular basis, powering up it, even though I’d had a long day. I said I wasn’t going to work when I got home, but I had dual emails from child and parent, so I dealt with those at 9 PM because I knew today wouldn’t leave me the time to do so. I packed up care packages for my own kids and entered an art thing that I’d forgotten about and was due this week. Paid the property taxes.

And then I flailed a bit. How to continue to let the mind repair any damage done during the day? I’m honestly amused at some of the crazy that goes on among adults at my school. It’s like being in middle school again…well, maybe high school, because in middle school I hadn’t found myself yet. I was still pretty meek and quiet. By high school, it was ON. (Ask my parents. And my Physics teacher. Who was also my Calculus teacher…and kind of an ass.) I even stood in the living room with my teacup for about 5 minutes, staring around, debating the options. Kitten was following me around, waiting to see where I’d land so she could be in the same space. Calli too, damp dog from her post-walk swim. Where is Mommy gonna be? We wanna be with Mommy! Who needs roommates for adult conversation…I have furry babies.

I could cut out Wonder Under for the next quilt. I could trace another quilt. I could work on that drawing, get it to the next stage. I could work on one of the wool quilts I have going, which is pretty brainless. I could come into the office and clear stuff out, move the excess into the boychild’s room (shhh. don’t tell him.) for sorting and start that process. I could work on the two quilt tops that are in the office and have been in process for way too long. Which suited me best last night? Usually it’s no question…the project that is yelling the loudest (usually a deadline-based thing) wins. But last night, I couldn’t tell who was yelling loudest…because there are no deadlines at the moment. And I’m OK with that.

I ended up in the office with the two quilt tops. It seemed most efficient to try and finish those, at least the quilting part, because they will both need hand embroidery: one a lot and one a little. The orange one was already pinbasted, so I did the other one…

I don’t even know how long this one has been around. A long time. It’s freehand cut. I haven’t done that for ages. This is the one I want to do a lot of embroidery on. We’ll see though. First I’ll quilt it. I don’t usually do a light background either. That’s a challenge.

Then I started on this one…

This is from 2013 I think…the drawing is older than that. It’s strange.

But simple enough. It needs a little embroidery. I’m still debating the quilting in the background.

This piece has alternatively been called Fire Mountain and Fire Forest in my head for years. And that background…yes, I was experimenting with different-colored backgrounds for a while. I get into that dark-blue rut because it’s easy. For me at least. Followed by dark purple and turquoise. So quilting on these for a few days will be good. I’ll probably cut some Wonder Under too. And ease myself back into regulating schoolwork with school stress. As much as I can. It’s good that I have a few projects I can work on right now. They ease the tension, give my mind a place to restfully wander late at night, when I can’t sleep (because that’s been common the last week or so). Stay up late so you’re tired enough to fall directly to sleep. Unfortunately, my brain is still wandering after 1 AM these days. Must dial it back an hour or so, or I will start to look like my students. Or get cranky. Or both. Here’s hoping the mindfulness and the art will help with all of that.

A Sketchbook on the Deck

Oh my lord. Morning. Not my superpower. I’m pretty sure I have to go to school today, but it’s so quiet here, I have to check the calendar and the clock to make sure that’s true. Is it really Sunday? (it’s not) I keep expecting the trash trucks, but in truth, they don’ t show up until it’s time for me to leave for school. My phone still has the golden hue of nighttime…which is funny, because it’s not THAT early. It just feels early. I really should have a job that allows me to be a night owl and an introvert, instead of what I have. Oh well.

So I managed to get some stuff done yesterday: quilt made it to the photographer, bookshelf that had broken and been fixed made it back into my office, all the crap that belonged in it made it out of the bathroom (yes, that’s where I put it), a pile of school stuff made it to school (after I took a turn too fast and threw it all over the back of my car). Yeah. I rocked it. Funny. It didn’t feel like I rocked it. I remember getting to a certain point in the to-do list and looking at a clock and thinking SHIT. The day is almost gone.

I worked on the drawing some more on Saturday…I like the feeling of sitting out on the deck in the semi-shade, even though the dog keeps chewing up the pinecones she brings me, and then I have to step on all the pieces, which is kinda like walking through a field of Legos. I swept the deck yesterday too. I had some eye starts on the drawings…it’s interesting that all I have to draw are the two eyes to know something is wrong…

Nope. Way too far apart.

These were better. Good distance. Similar size. I’m onto something here.

I think this was another fail. The face. The eyes. Aargh.

Insert picture of cute baby. I made the quilt under her. I love that her feet are blurry.

Maybe I should just stick to baby quilts…

No. I can do this! There we go…

That’s what I needed. This is working. Except the fish in the net are smiling and they shouldn’t be. That’s as far as I got. I’ll finish up the head mostly and then go enlarge it and do the rest to size. I think. Like I’m going to have any brainpower for drawing this week. I’m already exhausted. I honestly don’t feel like I slept at all last night. That’s really common for teachers, by the way…to not sleep well on a Sunday before school starts, especially after a break. You’re convinced you’ve forgotten something major and you won’t remember it until the kids are sitting in front of you.

So yeah. Sleep.

Meanwhile, I’ve been tracing the Wonder Under for this other quilt…

And it has so few pieces (399…except I realized at the end when I was tracing the cactus spines that I totally misnumbered all of them and there’s really probably 415 pieces in this)…that I finished it last night. It took 3 hours and 40 minutes and one yard (approximately) of Wonder Under. At 11:43 PM, I was going to quit, and then I realized I had hardly anything left, so I just finished it.

That’s it. And no teensy weensy pieces like on the last one. It’s almost sane to make this quilt. There must be something wrong with me. It’s like I’m attempting to do something that won’t completely challenge me while I try to finish out the school year (which will challenge me). Actually, I would hope this would be done well before the school year is out and I’m working on another one. But I’m not that bothered at the moment. I will be later. Just not now. Now I’m trying to figure out how to survive the next 11 weeks. What do I fill my weekends and my evenings with to make the Kathy World a better place? People and art and hiking and books. Obviously not a clean house, because I didn’t achieve that or an amazing yard over break.

Although last night, girlchild and I made a plan to spend ALL the money we both had in savings to just hop onto planes and meet in Jamaica. We figured we could afford a round-trip flight and maybe a cheap hotel. Food would be a stretch, but we didn’t care. Probably doesn’t help that it snowed in Boston over the weekend. I have less of an excuse with 80-degree temperatures here, but it was a nice fantasy.

For today, though, I’m gonna be doing pretty good if I make it through school and a walk with the dog. Then I’ll reevaluate. But really, right now, I’d rather be sitting on the deck with my sketchbook…see, I don’t even need to go to Jamaica.

Drawing in the Sun…

OK. Work poking its head in. It’s been doing it all week. How do I know? Work dream (nightmare) last night). Stress teeth grinding. Better today, because I only have one period left of the project to grade, although I have two assignments I haven’t even touched. It’s OK. One is extra credit and only about 15 kids did it. The other one…sheesh…I’ll get to it eventually. Just not today. Today I will finish the one period and hopefully it will be easy. Less than 3 hours. And then planning for next week. The other science teacher and I did plan the week…it’s just that some of it was kinda vague. And I don’t remember what we did. Plus I have to write warmups and send the parent email and update my website. Teachers of the computer age. Except when we lose teams next year, I won’t be able to send a team email to parents any more. Sigh. That’s gonna suck. Because I’ll still do it, but if I can persuade the other teachers to do it too, parents will then get four emails instead of one. And they barely read the one. Oh well. This is not a problem I made and it’s also not one I can solve. I’ve spent the last month telling myself not to worry about next year until it happens. Maybe fairies will descend upon us and make everything sparkly and nice and I won’t need to deal with the shit I think will happen.

It’s not really denial. It’s just hope…I think. It’s certainly protective.

So yesterday I was having a crisis of mental attitude. I made lunch and I went and sat on my deck in the sun and I threw the ball and pinecones (because she lost two balls) for the dog. I used to have a view of the mountains, but I think I would have to climb into my neighbor’s yard and prune his trees to get that back. Might do that someday.

Calli knows that if she wants me to throw it, she has to put it in my lap. This is her pretending she doesn’t know that. Eventually she follows the rules.

So I wanted to try drawing a revision of last year’s Earth Mother, but without the no-nudity clause. So I started with the face, and this one was too angry. Or petulant. Or irritated. Hard to say. Too much chin.

A plane flew by. Apparently yesterday was the Assyrian New Year. Kind of interesting. I wouldn’t have known that without the plane.

I made another false start with a shitty pair of eyes before I got to this one…which WAS going somewhere, but…

I didn’t want both arms down and that damn jellyfish is way too huge. So I stopped on that one and made two more lame starts, before I gave up and went and graded things. I’m not done trying…I will try again. Maybe today. But it wasn’t working for me yesterday. That happens…especially if I’m aiming for something in my head that’s still a little unfocused and vague.

But drawing in the sun is probably something I should try to do more regularly. Because that was nice…birdsong and blue skies. Except for the tree shredding that was happening in the neighborhood somewhere (woke me up this morning too).

After grading, I did some straightening up on the light table, which has a plywood cover on it when I’m not using it, so I pile stuff up there that needs to be put away to trace stuff. And then I started tracing the next quilt, which isn’t huge…

She’s about 17 x 21″, so a little different than the one I just finished…plus only half the pieces. That should be a plus. I drew this while flying back from Boston after dropping my daughter off for college. Rough flight. But another version of the Earth Mother. I guess it’s on my mind. Constantly apparently.

OK, so I am going to finish grading this morning. Well…probably early afternoon, based on previous attempts. And then maybe draw. We’ll see. I do have to move a bookshelf back in here that dad fixed so I can refill it with all the books etc., which are currently living in the kids’ bathroom. And rumor has it at least one kid is coming home, although not for 7 weeks. Not sure about the other kid. I’m sure he’ll let me know if he needs a flight, right? Sigh.

My positive attitude for the rest of the school year depends entirely on what I can fill the afterhours with to make up for the crazy. And my ability to just write off certain kids, because they haven’t changed their behavior and contacting parents has no effect. So yeah. Whatever. Let the politicians go wild with that shit. I am not a magician. And then try not to react to whatever crazy admin throws at me. I’m done, people. I’m still teaching, I’m still helping the kids who are there and present and asking, but I can’t parent 155 kids. Someone else has to help. Such a frustrating year. For all of us.

Remember. Drawing in the sun. Panacea.

Get Up. Get Out. Get Doing.

There’s a few days it’s nice to avoid when you’re a teacher: St. Patrick’s Day if you forgot to wear green, April Fool’s just in general practice, and 4/20 if you teach middle or high school (I hold out hope that elementary school doesn’t have that issue). So I am rejoicing that April Fool’s is a holiday for me this year. So I don’t have to deal with all the lame April Fool’s jokes that 12-year-old brains come up with.

I’m not so happy that it’s the last day of break, but I will survive. It happens every year. It’s a long stretch until summer though. Fifty three school days. Fuck. I know it’s really not, but Spring Break was early this year, so it FEELS long. And I haven’t even started the feeling part yet. Part of it is the 3+ hours I spent yesterday grading ONE CLASS of a project. Sheesh. On the one hand, most of that period turned theirs in. On the other hand, I’m banging my head on my desk over some of the stuff I saw.

Two more periods to go. Gawd. I might die.

I got nothing useful done yesterday, except 4 hours with a newish baby and coworkers, which was definitely worth it. And dinner out. And grading. No fucking art. Man I feel it today. I need some outdoor time. I need art time. Like right now. And a plan for the next two and a half months. So I don’t go nutsy cuckoo. Make ALL THE ART.

But first I’m cleaning out photos. In my pajamas. Because it’s all I can handle at the moment. I went on a hike with the dog on Wednesday. It was a beautiful day, not too warm, but blue skies and fluffy clouds.

Not a soul on the trail but us…

Flowers are still blooming.

I spent a lot of time grading on the couch in the last few days. Kitten kept me company.

She’s really quite adorable when she’s asleep. She can be a bit of a psycho when she’s awake.

So probably 3 weeks ago, maybe 4, I went to an all-women show at La Bodega Gallery and never had time to post pictures. I have to say that the quality was better in this show, but still a lot of same? I had a few that caught my eye.

As you can see, the majority of them were the same size, hung super tightly together. So it was a little hard to give each piece the time and space it needed.

Lots of them were portrait-type images…

Some weirder than others.

All different styles…

And then the relief of a non-portrait…

I need this explained.

One-eyed cats…like tadpoles.

And just a line.

I like the complexity of this one…plus sperm.

And some collage…

This was just cool.

But so touchable…

I’m not the only one who always sees the bones through the skin…

And this was great…I think I read all those books as a kid.

I like the owl. I’m not sure about the big-eyed, half-naked waif.

The hair lines…

One of my favorite artists…keeping it simple.

I’ve had headaches like that…

Just plain fun…

This…this is a book.

I don’t like the idea of destroying books, but making art out of them seems OK.

I just liked this…

And this…minus the shell pieces…

This woman was doing an all-over body painting. She’d done the female before we got there and was working on the male…

I was a little curious if he also had a g-string hidden under there, because otherwise it might get weird. Not bad, just weird (lots of little kids…whatever). I did not stick around to see what would happen next…too many people. Can’t think straight at some of these openings.

I have another batch of photos somewhere…I’m trying to clear stuff out…grading, my brain, the house…before break is over. I know how much the next two months are gonna kick my butt. I need some things to be clean or done before I sink back into the job quicksand. Yeah. I need a raft or something…something semi-solid I can stand on above the sucking so I can walk on.

Oh yeah. I forgot. Art Quilt Elements officially opens in Pennsylvania tomorrow. I’ve been seeing all these posts from the SAQA conference going on in Philadelphia and it makes me feel even more distant from what I want to be doing right now…it’s been such an antisocial, hermit-like break, which I realize is my fault as well, although everyone I know works pretty much, but that’s just kinda how I roll. Going to conferences and quilt shows out of state are just not part of my life. I’m in financial survival mode. And at some point, everything becomes overwhelming. BUT…you can see all the pieces in AQE in this slideshow: AQE Slideshow

My piece…it’s in there with all the abstracts. Some aren’t abstract, but it’s heavily weighted, isn’t it? I guess my quilt gets to hear all the interesting conversations while I’m here. That’s not so bad. And I get to keep making more…funny how that one is such a positive note on gender equality, what we WANT and they’re smiling and holding hands and it all seems so doable. Ahh. Well. It’s what I want, eh?

OK. Get up. Get out. Get doing.

Panic

It’s funny. When I get closer to the end of a school break, I start to panic, realizing I haven’t done nearly enough of ANYTHING (because I always forget that I don’t keep going for 24 hours straight on a regular basis, and the priorities shift. Yesterday I got up with the intention of finishing 3-5 classes’ worth of the project I assigned before break, but I only got through 2 before I was screeching at the top of my lungs and wanting to throw my computer out the window. So I went to the gym after that and gave myself a break, but then thought I could easily finish the binding on the small quilt that needs to be done by Friday and then do another class of grading.

Oh yeah. Binding takes longer than I thought. First I had to cut a new set of binding strips, because I had done wibbly wobbly math in my head the previous night. I am notoriously bad at math late at night. And then sew them on. And remember to eat dinner. And finish the book I was reading (it was good…it deserved finishing). And then I started the hand sewing, which always takes much longer than I think it will…

Which is kind of the theme of the whole quilt. It took 56 hours to make it. I started it just over a month ago. Most of it has been completed over Spring Break. But it’s tiny for that many hours, only 16 x 24″…proving to those people who want me to make smaller stuff so they can afford it that when I go small, I don’t always go simple. It has over 800 pieces in it, which is a bit nuts.

Here it is finished, not official photos, but I was trying to hold off on taking just one small piece in because it’s cheaper if I have more than one…and I hate having to pay a big chunk of money on such a small piece, but I don’t think I can get another one done just to justify the photo shoot.

There is that other crazy top lying around, but I still have to finish the other three classes of project grading. Before school starts again. And do a few other things. Time always speeds up at the end of breaks and I lose entire days it seems. How is it already Thursday? And I’m considering inking it now that I’m seeing the photo. So that’s more time. But not a lot.

I am planning on starting another project right away…the drawing’s done and numbered. I just need to shift a lot of stuff off the light table. But really, what I need to do is finish the grading first. I don’t want to. It might hurt. But before ALL of that, I get to go see my co-worker’s baby today. School can wait for that. Hell, everything can wait for that.

Never-Ending Cups of Tea Would Be Cool if They Were Real

Stayed up way too late again, but for a reason! OK, it’s always for a reason. It’s not always a good reason. My brain is sometimes very juvenile. Anyway, so I finished quilting.

I didn’t get a lot else done yesterday honestly. It was a lost day. Oh. I did hike the dog. And there are photos! But they’re on my phone and I need to get my act in gear and do some work today, so you’ll have to wait to see them.

It took about 3 hours to do all the outline quilting, which honestly was the biggest part of this quilt.

I had to go pretty slow because the details are so freakin’ tiny…

And I was lucky to have a color of thread that worked for the background. I know some of you have incredible thread stashes, but not me, so I thought I might have to quit last night and go shopping today, but no! I had one that worked…

The total quilting time was 4 hours and 23 minutes…a baby quilt. I had a few places I had to go back and fix because I’d forgotten to stitch them down. I mark them with pins. Ironically, this pin is in the wrong place…it’s the next artery to the left. But I figured that out.

And then quilted the background, finishing around 1 AM or so. After I think.

Then I read the prospectus 17 times and measured twice as many times before I trimmed it. I really hate pieces having to be an exact size. She’s only 16 x 24″. Tiny really for me. This would be a perfectly reasonable quilt at 200-250% of this size. Anyway. Then I cut the binding but realized in the middle of the night (OK, morning, because I didn’t go to bed until morning) that I cut it too small. So I have more and will cut again today. But I really really really have to grade stuff first, as much as it might kill me. And tomorrow is actually kind of busy, so I need to get the quilt done today as well. Dad will be disappointed that I haven’t worked on the yard, but that’s because his priorities and mine are different. So I’m going to plop myself on the couch with a never-ending supply of tea and I’m going to grade until I start pulling my hair out. Then I’m going to the gym (I hope). Then I will come back and put the binding on the quilt and then grade some more…and if that doesn’t sound like a fun day to you, well, then, I agree. Finishing the quilt will be fun. The other parts suck. Well, I like the gym. And never-ending cups of tea would be cool if they were real.

I Can’t Think of a Title Because That Damn Crow Won’t Shut Up.

An empty nest during Spring Break…it sounds like bliss to those friends of mine who still have kids at home. I remember Spring Break was almost torture, because I still had tons of schoolwork, housework, and yardwork to do, but I had to entertain two kids as well. And feed them and clean up after them and all that. As they got older, sometimes they would help around the house as well, but it was still work to get through those two weeks. They were necessary to my sanity in the school year, but I didn’t feel relaxed at the end of them. Yes, I’m lucky to have two weeks off, because as any teacher knows, it takes a week just to try to recover from what you’ve been doing in the weeks before. So I get the recovery time and then a week to try to fix whatever I need to fix. Or finish grading, more like it…almost 9 hours in the last two days, but one assignment is done and input. Hopefully the next big assignment will go faster (ha!). I’ve already done some of it, the paper stuff mostly, before break started, so that was smart. But the computer stuff…my school computer is dying and is scheduled for a reboot after break, but I’m trying to bully it through some work before that happens. Otherwise I have to sit in here at this computer and I can’t have some TV show nattering on in my other ear, persuading my brain to continue working. My brain requires multiple stimulants to do just about anything. Seriously. Even art. Can’t be quiet.

So it’s been too quiet here, too much alone time. Spring Break with no kids around. No one around really. It is what it is. At some point, this will be summer break as well, although not this year…at least one is coming home. Not sure about the other one. We’ll see. I’ll have to put the house on Airbnb or foster a child or puppies to get through that.

So I spend my days working through the lists of crap to do that are mostly in my head. Yesterday, the front yard, which has been a disaster since the septic field was redone, was on my list. The weeds are over 4 feet high and I’m waiting for the county to get called. My neighbor is frustrated, but he’s retired and has a gardener, neither of which are my superpowers.

Weeds. Huge ex-lawn. Deck covered in leaves. Tree overhanging.

Two plus hours later, I’ve cleared the deck, trimmed the tree, excavated weeds to the middle (mostly), and weed-whacked part of the growth.

My whacker isn’t going to make the grade though, so I went and borrowed dad’s. It’s gas-powered and I might need a shoulder harness to wield it, and if I don’t hold on tight, it might send me skyrocketing through the air into my neighbor’s yard. I’ll have to go back out again today…there are more weeds to pull and things to whack. And the real decision of what to do with the space anyway…I’d love to have the time and money to re-landscape it in a more native-plant style. But that’s not in the cards. It rained a little last night. Hopefully that will help with the weeds in the middle. They were not happy about being pulled.

This morning, I pulled 17 thorny splinters out of my hands…and that was WITH gloves on.

So after that and groceries and cooking up some weird stuff (some recipes are just lame with amounts of ingredients) and grading for fucking hours, I finally made it into the studio. Late. I pinbasted this one and the other one (which I didn’t apparently photograph).

And started quilting. Barely. It was late.

It’s the line that will pull this thing together. And I’m running out of time, so I need to put some significant hours into this today.

Oh! And good news this morning…a quilt I made for a specific show actually got into said show! A miracle. The Goddess of Never-Ending Chaos will be in Houston as part of the Turmoil SAQA exhibit.

This is kinda what it feels like when I meditate. Seriously. Even with the kids moved out. I’m glad it got in. There were 24 chosen from 220 entries…typical 10%…but it’s nice to be in there once in a while.