A Room with a View

This has been my view every night this week…

Although often there is a cat butt or dog face right beyond it. One night there was a fire in the fireplace. The TV fare has been a wide variety of sci fi and drama and action thriller, with an occasional foray into vampires or cooking shows (girlchild, not me. When she’s not here, I don’t watch cooking shows. Or Criminal Minds. Or any of those not-mean girl shows like Awkward and Faking It).

In the other room, where I’ve been ironing and dehairing and cutting wood dowels or slats all week, I’m watching zombies.

What’s interesting (and possibly stupid) about this quilt is that the pieces I’m tracing are all pretty small, so it hasn’t taken much Wonder Under so far. I’m only on my third piece, which is about 3 yards. And I haven’t even come close to filling the third piece yet.

Yesterday, I traced the central upper torso and the last arm (of 5…of course) on the left side, and then just started the last arm on the right. So I have that arm and a uterus (it’s floating in air…like they do) and then three heads.

I made it into the 700s yesterday, so there’s less than 300 pieces to go. I did a little tired flailing last night, so I didn’t get started on the tracing as early as I wanted. And that’s lame, because then I get into it and I’m all of a sudden not tired any more, and it’s really relaxing, who needs meditation, because I’m tracing all these pieces out and I can’t really focus on anything but that and the sound from the telly and it’s all very nice.

I don’t know if I can finish tonight. I hope I can, but I’m already really tired from the first week back to school, and I have to be up early tomorrow. So maybe not. I’m going to try. I’m going to come home from work and get some tea in me and allow for about 30 minutes of sitting down and vegging out, and then I’m going to pack up the box for the girlchild that I was going to ship today, but now she wants shampoo and I don’t have any (I did go shopping yesterday). So that’s going tomorrow.

Less than 300 pieces. Less than three hours. Order pizza. Boychild won’t mind. Almost 7 hours into the tracing. Don’t think about all the shit that’s getting turned in today at school. Of course, I haven’t spent almost three hours working on tracing this piece all week…too tired. But I think I’m far ahead enough in the ironing that maybe I can do less tonight. Because I still have Sunday.

I definitely have drive. You can’t argue that I don’t. And I should think more about what I have traveling in shows…I forget that stuff is out there and in the world. Two pieces in People in Portraits are traveling with AQS Quilt Week, starting in Phoenix, AZ, February 11. Earth Stories is at the San Jose Quilt Museum in San Jose, CA, through February 28. My Celebrating Silver quilt, Awakening the Crone, will be traveling with the Original Sewing and Quilting Expo, starting in Atlanta, GA, March 10 (I’m wondering how this will go down personally, but whatever). My Part-Time Oasis quilt is traveling; it was just in Oklahoma and will be going to the Home Machine Quilting & Sewing Show, in Salt Lake City, UT, starting May 5 (another one I wonder about). And I’ll have pieces in the Artist as Quiltmaker and Art Quilt Elements coming up in the spring. Not bad for something I only do in the middle of the night.

In fact, I have some shows I’d like to enter and so much of my newer work is out or spoken for that I’m having a hard time coming up with work to enter. Sad but true.

I’m glad I have the art. My counselor asked how I was doing with one kid back to school already and the other one leaving in a week, and the answer is I’m sad. I mean, I don’t have to clean off the counter as much, but the house is a happier place with the noise of other people, especially my kids, and that’s a hard thing to lose. I know it’s what supposed to happen and I want them to grow up and move out and have lives, but it’s still hard on my end.

Girlchild at school…in the snow…

OK. Got to go to work and teach kids how to argue properly. About science. They already argue about other stuff all the time.

Just Keep Doing

The routine. Ugh. What did you do today? I got up, ate, went to school and taught all day, dealt with crazy stuff after school, came home, vegged out for a bit, cooked, then ironed and dehaired a bunch of quilts, and then traced some Wonder Under. Attempted interrupted sleep. Did it all over again. But then again…it’s probably that routine that makes all those quilts. Because it’s already in my head…what I’m supposed to do. Get up. Make dinner. Wash dishes so you have time and energy to make art. Do it earlier. Don’t start at 11 (although at some point, I have no problems doing that…not on the week school starts back up). Start early. Make it work. Blow off all that grading. You did enough work at school today. What is your life about? Being a teacher (a little) or being an artist (a lot). Yeah.

A frustrating hour with a parent issue and a bunch of kids who were dragged to detention by admin didn’t help. I’m about to give up on that. I’m about to give up on a lot of it. Usually we wait until April…but Spring Break comes early this year…and the lack of follow-through on the kids and the parents is just wearing me thin. Especially the little stupid things. There’s an answer key on a disk I have at home. I want to put the answer key on my school Google Drive, so I emailed it to myself. The school email rejected it because of the “type of file it is.” You mean a PDF from a school publisher? Because that’s what it is. And I emailed it to myself. Fuck me. So the parent that wanted me to make 14 phone calls yesterday in the very short time I have during the day that isn’t eaten up by everything else…yeah. Same deal.

This is why the art. So much of it.

I had one pile on the left of stuff that was ironed and had slats or dowels, but then it was getting too heavy. It’s supported by a large flattened cardboard box on two chairs and a computer desk. On the right is now the larger quilts, with a couch and a coffee table and a cardboard box full of books. Trying to keep cats off…

And dogs for that matter…

Is not easy. But it’s worked so far. I have about 18 done…and I’m not really sure how many I need, and I’m still culling. I pulled one yesterday, and there’s one in this pile that isn’t going as well. In the first pull, I just grabbed anything that might work.

These are the ones that are still in need of ironing and slats/dowels. I don’t know how many are in there, actually. I just aim to iron about 5 a night. Some have more cat hair on them than others…if there were safely rolled up most of the time (which probably meant they weren’t going to shows due to age or just whatever), then they were pretty clean. It’s the ones that didn’t get put away after they came home that are the biggest hairy mess.

But there’s progress. And that’s good. And I’ll feel a sense of relief when it’s done, that’s for sure.

I did trace for over an hour and a half, and was way more efficient than I have been lately.

Believe it or not, less tired last night. Not sure why. But I’m in the low 600s now with about 5 1/2 hours in. Only about 400 to go, so if I can do 200 each night, I’m on track. I haven’t scheduled out beyond that. That might be an issue. Cutting out Wonder Under doesn’t take much time…ironing will be another 10+ hours. Cutting out those takes a little longer than Wonder Under. Then ironing. Yeah. I can’t see that far out. I have a bunch of stuff going on this weekend, a baby quilt to finish, grades due…all in the next 10 days. Then I can think more clearly. Just keep doing is what I say. I can handle that part. Last night I did well.

But I Like It…

It’s amazing how exhausting teaching is. You forget about standing and walking all day. And not being able to pee when you need to. And how your voice gets used so much more than at home. Plus I’m not sleeping well. Something keeps waking me up…besides my alarm clock. The heating goes on when the house is below 54 degrees…and it has been a lot so far this winter, as my gas bill can attest. The noise from the heater wakes me up sometimes. Ugh. Yes, I know it’s colder elsewhere…girlchild got snow! Now does she send me pictures of snow? No she does not. At least she texts.

Boychild is stuck with his boring, overworked parents (well one is overworked because of soccer, and that’s not me). And the animals. It’s probably quite nice here without all the people…I should know. I had that last night. Put a fire in the fireplace because I knew I’d be tracing stuff on Wonder Under and that room is cold at night when it’s cold outside…the thermostat is on the other side of the house, the warm side.

Anyway, before I traced, I got a few more quilts ironed and slatted. It’s looking like I’m bringing way too many, but I will probably cull again before Monday. I just want them ready. Then I can choose.

I only traced for a little over an hour yesterday…about 20 minutes in the morning before school (I never do that) and then late at night. I went to bed somewhat early for me (before midnight) because I was exhausted…but then something woke me up before 5 and I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I’m feeling groggy. Better than yesterday when I was groggy AND sad that the girlchild had just left. Perimenopausal hormonal woman with not enough sleep AND sadness. Not a good combination.

So yeah. I didn’t get much done. In the morning, I had a cat butt to contend with…

And past the cat, the dog snores on.

I know, Midnight. She’s a lazy dog. She tried to leave with me yesterday morning, because she’s used to going to my ex’s house in the morning because she’s been breaking out of my yard, but the boychild was here. So I left her. And her confusion.

At night, I had both cats in there with me, but curled up on quilts (not art quilts. Couch quilts). They like the fire in the fireplace too.

This is not a fast quilt to trace. It has little pieces. It has 10 hands in it. Hands are complicated. They have wrinkles and lines and fingernails. It’s not a small number of pieces. I’m figuring about 28 pieces a hand. At least. And then there are almost 1000 pieces in this quilt, so that’s at least 10 hours of tracing no matter what. I’m on piece 363. Only 600+ pieces to go. Actually. That sounds better. That’s about 6-7 hours. Wait. Six sounds better. I could do that in three nights…couldn’t I? If I don’t do anything else.

Sigh. That’s the problem. I have other stuff to do. Add the exhaustion piece when I get home, and it’s gonna be a slog. But I can do it. I think. Sigh.

I wonder sometimes why the art drive is so strong in me. I went to school with people, knew other people who were artists in school, and now they don’t do anything. They don’t draw or paint even for relaxation. It’s just gone. I can’t do that. It’s as strong as that maternal instinct. It’s right there, whispering in my ear all the time, getting me off the couch, standing for another 2 or 3 hours after standing all day at school. Sitting down at a sewing machine for hours on vacation. It’s crazy. It never stops, never lets up, never leaves me alone.

But I like it.

But Yeah. No.

Well. So the girlchild left this morning for college. The boychild is stuck here until…well…until National Pie Day. I think he must be bored, because when I jokingly asked him if he’d organize all my to-be-filed papers, he jumped at it. Excited. Weird. I never feel that way. And he was FAST. I helped a little…but here…

All organized by company or topic. Then I went through and filed most of it. I hate doing this. But I needed to find the roof receipt to deal with the leak. Ironically, it was on top almost. Don’t know why. It’s from 2010. I file sporadically. Sometimes I start at the bottom of the pile and sometimes at the top, so you never know what you’ll find in there.

So that ate up part of my evening. A significant part. That and fixing the girlchild’s pants so she could wear them for a few more months, and prepping a lesson for school, and putting away all the wrapping paper crap, and dealing with all the boxes that have been accumulating, and installing cable boxes, and cleaning out cupboards. Some of it was stuff that had to be done sooner rather than later, and then a bunch of it was just procrastination, because school made me tired and braindead.

It was almost 10 when we finished the filing. So then I didn’t have the energy to trace stuff, which is unfortunate, because although I did a bunch Sunday, I probably need to do that EVERY night to keep up. I did not grade though. But I did work on lessons. Because I needed to. Still need to.

I did start ironing and dehairing quilts though. Now I have three piles going…this is the pile that is ironed and clean and has a dowel or a slat…

It’s not a very big pile. I just started. Don’t judge.

The pile on the couch is stuff that has dowels but is not ironed. Eventually the ironed pile will go there, because it’s better supported and it’s easier to keep the cats off of it. But I need to shift some of it into the ironed pile first.

This is the scariest pile…those that are not ironed or dehaired and don’t have hardware yet. Or only have half their hardware. So that’s an issue.

Again, if I do about 5 or 6 a night, I think I’m OK. I will probably need to go back to Home Depot for more wood though. I forgot a couple. Oh well.

But really, if I want to get this new quilt done in time for its deadline, I’m going to need to finish tracing Wonder Under this week and start cutting it out on the weekend. I was up early today to see the girlchild off to college, so I’m ahead timewise by about 20 minutes. I’m just going to go work on it now. I could go to school early and grade stuff. But yeah. No.

Back to the Grind…

You know, the one I never left, because I graded almost every day over break?

I’m up. I’m semi-ready (not mentally, but at least in all the other ways) for school. It was not an easy wake-up call…the dog apparently needed to pee in the dark. I got up and let her out and stood there, eyes closed, leaning up against the back door, relishing the moment when I could climb back into a warm bed and continue that sleeping thing. By the time I got back to the room, the alarm was going off. Not quite dark then. Wake up time. Ugh. It’s not like I did a good job sleeping in over break anyway, but it’s nice to not HAVE to wake up before your time. I meant to go to bed before midnight, but I was tracing stuff and finally made myself stop and then was looking at something online and saw the news about David Bowie…and since you can’t trust the internet, I had to go searching for reliable sources. Sad but true. An amazing musician dead too early.

So yeah, I started tracing Wonder Under for the new quilt yesterday. I did do some prep for school, even went into the classroom, if only to realize all the stuff my custodial staff disappeared from my room, even though I drew a map of the room and counted chairs for them and all that crap. Sigh. Oh well. Who needs a teacher’s chair? Or a trashcan? It will be fine. I made a promise to myself that after the packet that’s due Friday, and my threat to call any parent whose child does not return it or who fails it (no, you may not write IDK for every answer) in order to set up a parent meeting, after that, I’m done. Any kid that comes to me for help or whose parent contacts me with a reasonable request to help (there have been some unreasonable ones), I am there for them. But I’m not chasing down all these failing kids any more. I can’t do this for another 6 months without going nuts. This group of kids is just not getting it. I’m frustrated as hell. And I can’t be. I’m putting it back on them and their parental units. Someone needs to help me do this job.

So balance it is. Art it is. I did three hours of tracing yesterday.

I didn’t get a ton done…only in the mid 200s…but it’s a start. I also need to start on the quilts…I think if I do 5 or 6 a night…iron them, dehair them, make sure they have slats or dowels with eyebolts, then roll them up…I think I’ll be done by Monday. So that’s my goal tonight is to start that as well. I’m not grading at home this week. Not gonna do it. Nope. You can’t make me. I finished all but three assignments, and one of those is half done. I did OK. Not great. Just OK. And there are more Fs now than there were before break. Also sad but true. Makes it all feel kind of pointless…because these assignments were due AFTER I counseled all those failing kids.

Girlchild leaves tomorrow. This sucks. She has both cats here, although I think right after this, she was moving her toes around and Kitten attacked. Screaming ensued and now Kitten won’t come back out on the couch.

Later she replaced the cat with a dog. A very tired dog. We’re not sure WHY she was so tired, but now she’s on the floor in my office, so apparently she still hasn’t had enough sleep.

I did drop my other quilt with the photographer, and he asked about why owls? Owls have shown up on the last few quilts I guess. Or have they? Not sure. Owls are wisdom. But they’re also protective. I’ve always put birds in. The wings, the ability to fly…all fascinating things. I’m not sure the new one has a bird…I know I thought about it…and a dog…and another cat, because there is one on the rug lying in front of the figure.

I’m supposed to provide 1-2 paragraphs about my work for the upcoming show. Thing is, I had to pull work from way back, which is cool, because some pieces have never been in a show…and they’re good enough. I just never found a show willing to take them. They never fit with the others. Hey there’s something I understand. But trying to encapsulate 10 years of art quilts in two paragraphs of explanation is difficult.

OK. Must go to work. Back to the grind. First day…no, the first WEEK is always survival. National Pie Day is coming…there’s something to look forward to. Seriously. January 23…who’s with me? Pie. Yes, my brain’s all over the map. Stay with me here. Some sanity might return.

Mt Woodson: The Fungal Trail

So no art was made yesterday. It happens. About one day every two weeks, I do nothing artistic. No Thing. Yup. Used to be, I’d go weeks without touching art stuff, but I don’t function that way any more. Yesterday I worked and I hung out with friends and I hiked with my kids. That’s not a bad day. If it were just work and nothing else, I’d be upset.

So my vacation is essentially over. I didn’t grade everything. In fact, I need to get one batch of science journals done before Monday no matter what, and I really should finish that assignment that’s kicking my ass. But otherwise, I did pretty well. That said, I am not well-rested and relaxed. It’s been a stressful break…too much to do, too much on my plate, too many things to worry about. But that’s just the way it is sometimes. There are still 8 things on the post-it, but I can’t do anything about many of them. I’m in wait mode. Or I need materials.

I also made some progress on the Grossmont show prep…figured out what quilts needed dowels or slats, made a list…heading over to Home Debit later today. Then I’ll need to start the long process of ironing and dehairing each quilt. Girlchild leaves on Tuesday. Maybe she’ll finish washing her dishes and putting them in the dishwasher by then, but it seems unlikely. I’ve asked three or four times now. So yeah. I love her. I really do. Boychild is stuck here for another two weeks…he’s looking forward to having access to the car and going on longer hikes than we do. Whatever.

So speaking of hikes, I’d never done Mt. Woodson…not sure why, except everyone seemed to say it was hard. And I won’t say parts of it weren’t difficult, because I’m not in good shape at the moment, but I did it. And I was a little nervous about it, but that’s how I get over that. I tell the kids we’re doing it and then we do it and I know I can do it, and that’s the end of it. Easy.

I also wanted to see the infamous Potato Chip Rock after seeing it posted on a million hiking pages. We started on the service road off the 67…one of many places to start this hike (we debated all of them).

The road was relatively well-maintained. There’s Woodson in the background.

The problem with roads is that cars drive them, and cars don’t always need switchbacks. So it was uphill. A lot of uphill. A 1200′ gain in 2 miles, apparently. Somewhat painful for the old lady. But a beautiful day…

Not too hot. A little chilly.

And beautiful views for miles.

The mountain has boulders all over it, plus lots of instances of nature having its way with big rocks.

Roots traveling all the way down…where there are dirt and water, the trees will find a way.

Lots of butt rocks.

Oh yeah. That’s a butt.

A view of the valley to the east…nice to see blue skies after four days of rain.

And way down there, the road where the car is parked.

More views, this to the northeast.

Interesting rock formations…

And an antenna farm at the top…

Boychild had a doggie friend for a while (his owners were behind us, then in front of us, then behind us).

There were a reasonable number of people going up this route. It was a weekday, but not all of us were back to work.

I’m actually fascinated by towers.

All the weird shapes and protrusions…

Then we headed down the other side, towards the west.

To Potato Chip Rock. It’s been there for years and everyone (except us) gets their picture on it. In fact, one of my teacher friends was there yesterday and had her picture taken with her dog on it. Me and the kids? We agreed there was no way in fucking hell we were standing on that. Because it would break.

There was a line for it…probably the shortest one ever (only 10 or 15 people). But still. Not doing it.

We headed out the ridge towards Poway. There’s another entrance at Lake Poway.

There’s the view to the south, with that tall peak near the middle being Iron Mountain, the one we hiked right before Christmas.

Standing on rocks…

And then we went northeast on the Old Fry-Koegel trail, where we delightfully saw no one the whole way back. We did nickname this section The Fungal Trail though, because of all the fungus we saw. Though this is moss. A plant. In case you didn’t know that.

But damn, that’s some fungus.

There were many yellow and white and brown versions…

Looking back up at Mt. Woodson from the north side.

This trail was nice. Not too up and down, although probably would seem like a lot of up if we went up that way. Can’t decide which would be worse.

More fun fungal things…

And cracked rocks…

Too early in the season for true spring flowers…

Lots of shade and a true trail…not a road. The mud wasn’t too bad, considering the amount of water that fell this week.

Another clump o’ fungi…

I’m not even showing you all of them.

This tree was burned up the middle, but still very much alive.

Signs were helpful. We had a map and a compass and a hiking app, but didn’t really need them for directions.

The fires a few years back definitely left their mark. And there were a few tree parts down over the trail.

We walked through this beautiful oak grove…

Gorgeous trees…and poison oak.

Just under 6 miles with 1200′ of gain. It took us just under 2 1/2 hours. Pretty good for being out of shape. And now I know I can do it. I’d like to try up Fry-Koegel and maybe the Lake Poway version as well. Next time.

I had found some smaller quilts when I was pulling stuff for the Grossmont show. I did the journal quilt thing back in 2005 or so. Got some of them into the book. Not sure where all of them are, but here’s a few things that will probably go up on Etsy in the next few days.

Maybe. And maybe I’ll get ready for school too. And start working on the next quilt, before days have gone by. Aack. Too much to do. Always. Ugh. It’s true I hate being bored, but there’s a fine line between not bored and overwhelmed. This does seem to be my existence. Oh if only I were a normal person who didn’t come home from work every day and try to figure out how to make more art. Just sitting and relaxing does not seem to be in my toolbox. And that’s probably OK.

Later…

I wish I were more organized some days. I wish everything was filed in the right place and the right order, that everything I needed was easy to find and right at my fingertips. But that would be more time taken away from the stuff that keeps me sane, like artmaking and exercise and spending time with people. There just isn’t enough time to be that organized. So that whole roof leak thing…need to find a piece of paper, maybe two, from X number of years ago, with X less than 10, but more than 5. I suspect my parents have a file somewhere labeled “roof”. Actually they probably have a “roof” file for all the houses they own and maintain. I however am not that organized. I have a file labeled “house” which is pretty efficient in itself, but the roof stuff isn’t in there. Because I never got around to filing it. Because I don’t have time. So it’s in the pile labeled “to be filed”…and that’s a pretty ugly pile.

So I’m going hiking this morning with the kids instead…last hike before they leave. You could argue my priorities are weird, but there really aren’t enough hours in the day for everything, and I obviously choose some stuff your average chick doesn’t. I spend a lot of time making art. Yesterday was 4 hours on a binding, although almost 2 of them were while I was hanging out with friends. That’s pretty rare. Most of my quiltmaking activities are solitary, not transportable. Sometimes there are people in the house when I work, but only when the kids are around really. That does actually make it easier…the human presence and sounds and occasional interactions. Because sewing the binding on is kinda boring and repetitive and doesn’t require much brain power, it’s really easier with people around.

That said, I finished. Bathtub 5 (which needs a real name) was done as of last night. 68 hours total. Started a little over 2 months ago, besides the original drawing, which was done April 20, 2015. I added some stuff to the drawing once it was enlarged in early November.

I had emailed the photographer yesterday about photographing it tomorrow…thus forcing myself to finish. Because it wasn’t as high a priority, but it will be easier to get it to him this weekend than next, and it has to get done soon enough.

I also started going through the existing quilt stash figuring out what can go to the Grossmont show. Some of the newer stuff is already spoken for. Bathtub 2 (aka In Deep) is going to Ohio for the Artist as Quiltmaker show there…

So I can’t hang her. I can’t hang anything that might get into a show before mid-March…and I have three entries planned for the next two months. So that takes up some of them.

So I started by going through the pile on my dresser, which needs to be put away. Then I pulled the three large rolls of quilts hiding in my closet and the girlchild’s closet. I went through each roll and pulled anything I thought might work. And piled them on the lightbox.

Some already have dowels or slats, which is good, because that’s my next job. The one I was supposed to do like Tuesday.

We met, the two artists and the curator, back in November? Or something? And she gave us this gallery map and we talked about where quilts would go and where sculpture would go…

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And I’ve been in the space and I know how big it is, but that still doesn’t help figure out how many quilts to take. So you can talk about linear space, and your can look at it visually (I’m visual by the way) and also being a bit anal, I like to graph it out…

And list everything and then I get overwhelmed, because it is an overwhelming thing, and I’m not sure how much space to put between them. I suspect it’s more than I think. I don’t want to take too few pieces, but I also don’t want to take way too many. So yeah.

Kitten…

She got it right. Anyway. So that’s where I’m at. Kids just showed up and we’re going hiking, even though Dad wants me to find the roof paperwork like right now and all those quilts need ironing and stuff and I probably need to do school stuff and grade and holy crap, I need to work on the new quilt too.

Later.

Lots of Pieces…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dark Blue on Dark Blue in the Dark…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway. I still have to do all the handsewing.

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

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

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