It’s Over

Spring Break, that is. Every year, the end comes with a depressing wail of remembrance of the last X weeks of school, with a realization that you got almost nothing done that was on your list, and that sleep will elude you for months now. Seriously, even though I went in to my classroom yesterday to make sure everything was OK (it wasn’t…and not by my own fault), and I know I have everything copied and planned pretty much for the next four weeks, I still woke up early, completely wired, stressed out, sure I’d forgotten something.

And the fact is, I probably have. So what. I got this.

I’m ahead of the game on the two quilts I wanted to work on over break. I have three assignments I still need to grade. So I’ll do that this week. Somehow. I’m doing OK. The world isn’t going to end because I’m back in school. Hopefully.

So I went shopping Saturday morning for binding fabric for the Ventura quilt. I laid it out on the floor of the quilt shop, which I could do with gay abandon, because there’s no politics, nudity, or violence in this quilt, per Ventura’s guidelines. Y’all realize this is for a juried show that I might not even get juried into, whatever, I did it anyway and someone will show it. Because it’s pretty and has no nudity or violence or politics. Unlike most of my stuff.

When a quilter has to buy “just one piece of fabric,” y’all know how that goes. In fact the binding was the most mellow of all the fabrics I bought…

On the left, you can see the back of the quilt that needs the binding. At the top, you can see the one I need to stitch down sometime this week.

I spent a couple of hours cutting and sewing on the binding by machine and then pinning it all down…

It’s about 29 feet of binding and sleeves that I now need to sew down by hand. It’s OK. I’ve got plenty to watch on Tivo. And it’s kind of relaxing to do that anyway. Except for all the pins sticking you. Here’s where 17 people pop in and tell me I should sew my bindings completely by machine (I don’t like how it looks…I’ve done it) or fuse them (same deal) or leave them off altogether (eh). I still follow the rules for some parts of the quilting process (that should stymie my counselor some…she’s convinced my sole purpose in life is to break the rules, and yet, I break so few of them). Anyway. She’ll be done this month easily. The quilt…not my counselor. She’s got tons of work left to do.

That’s a lot of pins. And sleeves. I put sleeves on the top and bottom on big quilts…the weight of a slat or dowel in the bottom sleeve helps it hang better. I’ve finally got myself trained to do that automatically. It took a year, I think, to get to that point.

Good Kathy.

Then I looked at the clock and ran through the things that were next on my list. I need a couple of drawings to get done, both for possible juried shows. I have a lot of binding to do (obviously) and that other quilt needs to be stitched down, which I didn’t feel like doing last night. So I cut out a piece of paper for one of the drawings (it has to be a specific size). And then I left it in the other room, because trying to draw straight lines to make a box in which to draw sounded like hard work (it was after 10 PM at that point…give me a break). So I had a small drawing that needed to be made into a larger, more complicated drawing, one of two for a show I’d like to be in (jury!), so I sat down with the smaller drawing out and ready, and started making it bigger…

Obviously, I still have some work to do (and actually, I ran off the bottom of the page, which will be an issue at some point). There will be two figures in this piece, so I have to draw the other one as well, and then copy them and try to fit them together correctly. Sounds like a project for this week (wait a minute…I will probably be brain dead most of this week…maybe not the best choice). I also have two other drawings that I might enlarge and start numbering/tracing. I have deadlines all over the summer…usually they don’t come until late August/early September. Not so this year. It’s not like I was going anywhere anyway. Hiking maybe. Camping maybe. An opening in LA. That’s about it.

One of the (many) things I didn’t get done over break was dying fabric (and socks)…

It’s all sitting here waiting for me. Plus a box from Dharma is in the living room. I could pull this off on a Saturday morning sometime, but National Cup soccer starts this weekend, so it could be a while. Oh well. I got to hang out with my Belgian sister, I did two hikes, I finished (pretty much) one quilt and got significantly into the next one. College decisions happened (mostly…because nothing is ever set in stone here), I made it through the boychild’s taxes and his FAFSA (one more financial aid application to go). I listened to music and watched movies and read books and got a tiny bit of the yardwork and cleaning done that was supposed to happen. Same with the grading…a small portion was completed. I wouldn’t be Kathy if I were caught up on grading after a vacation.

The rest will come. I’ll figure it out. Back to reality. (More caffeine please. Brain still not online.)

Having More Faith in My Brain…

I’m waiting to get enough tea into me to be able to get out of here and buy binding fabric. I trimmed the big quilt yesterday afternoon…laid it out on the floor (which was already dirty again)…

I really tried not to quilt too much extra this time…got it centered well and paid attention to whether the fabric was all the way under the top. It’s a waste of thread and time otherwise, and I hate wasting either.

Trimming this was really REALLY easy.

This never happens, but I got the measurements right, got it totally square the FIRST TIME. No adjustments, no straightening of a side. Just cut it. Measure it. Revel in it.

It’s about 55×64″. Not small. Now I need binding. I thought that last night as I looked at the time (crap) and then starting googling the two local shops where I could have gone. One closed in 4 minutes, the other in 34. Nope. Can’t do it. So I folded it up and decided to do it this morning. I mean, I’m sitting around waiting for the girlchild and her dad to get back from Boston anyway. I SHOULD go to school and set up for Monday’s lab (ugh. don’t make me.). I stopped by school yesterday to show my Belgian sister where I work and ran into another teacher, who is now ready for Monday. The thing is, I’m not MENTALLY ready to get ready for Monday, if that makes sense. Then I would have to admit Spring Break is almost over. I mean, technically it IS over, because I never count the weekends. So yeah. How many more weeks until summer? Ten weeks. Ugh. Major ugh.

Sometimes this job really sucks it out of you. I know what my to-do list looks like for next week, and I want to crawl back into bed.

But NO! I went over to my parents for dinner again and came back tired again. But I’m trained now, after over 20 months of teaching myself to make art almost every single day, I can’t possibly lie around and do nothing.

By the way, I read this…

And loved it. Read it in less than 36 hours. Interesting science. Good story. So that was part of Thursday and Friday. It’s been a while since I’ve read something that engaged my brain so well.

So I have this second recycled quilt I need to do…it’s been sitting around in pieces in a box for a few weeks…

So I started ironing it around 9:45 PM last night…like you do. Yes, when you are considering sleep, I am considering more work.

It’s only 160 pieces, so it won’t take long, right? And I don’t have to finish it tonight. Or do I?

I got this far and thought, I’m tired. I could stop. Nah. Can’t. Stop.

These fabrics are all from Mariah’s outcasts.

So I had to consider what I had, because mostly it was long strips of fabric. And it wasn’t always easy to find enough of what I wanted. But it turned out OK. I think I pieced one arm. Not that you could tell.

Then I pulled out the background.

All pieced from her leftovers. This is at least three different quilts I think. Maybe. And everyone is telling me it’s not going to work, that the background is too strong. But so I talked to Mariah about this. Part of where my brain is going is that Mariah herself currently has a life like that background, with a 2-year-old, an 11-week-old, recently left work, trying to make all of her life parts work, financially, socially, not going nuts being stuck at home with small children who can drive you freakin’ bonkers (I remember that feeling, distinctly). So it almost feels like your life is going to swallow you up, that all you are is mom and cleaner and food source and there is no time to be you (I’m fairly sure she’s not quilting at the moment!) or to even just have a quiet moment without someone fussing or screaming or throwing things.

And you manage it. It might feel like it’s going to take you over, but you manage it. Sometimes by the skin of your teeth. Sometimes with tears pouring out of your eyes. But you manage it.

And honestly, she’s not really fading into the background. I moved her around a bit to get the hands on darker sections instead of really light sections. But I think with the quilting that it will be exactly what I wanted it to be. Is it different? Well yeah. It has to be. It’s Mariah’s bits and pieces subjected to Kathy’s mind…Kathy who went through all that 17-plus years ago.

Anyway. Stitch down next, then sandwich and quilt. Then we’ll see where we are, because I will do something overall on the background anyway, quilting of some sort. But I think it’s exactly what I imagined. Despite the moments when I thought “what the fuck are you thinking here? This will never work.” Kinda like my life over the last 17 years. Probably what Mariah thinks in the middle of the day sometimes.

I guess I should have more faith in my own brain.

The Two Sides of Kathy

OK. Let’s not joke about this. There aren’t just two sides. I’m a dodecahedron…at least. But titling my post “Kathy: a Dodecahedron” would probably just overemphasize my geekdom. Geekness. Geekosity.

Yeah.

Yesterday I quilted for many hours, then went to the beach and jumped through a bunch of waves at the beach, then showed up at my appointment in a towel and bathing suit (eliciting much amusement to those in the waiting room, and even a bit of applause after I emerged from the bathroom fully dressed), then to dinner at my parents, and then I went back to quilting, this time tiny fussy bits of blue that showed through between elephant legs and bird wings.

In the morning, I had the whole left side of the quilt and a bit of the top to do, so I just sat down and quilted until I wanted to scream and tear my hear out, I was so sick of blue and stippling and did I mention blue?

I kept hoping and praying the phone would ring and I would be able to leave to go to the beach, but they spent more time than they thought they would at the Midway, and it wasn’t until late that I got the call, and by then, I was done with the main part of the background and was in the apple tree branches, still wanted to tear my hair out and scream and rant and rave about stupid crap and filling in fucking tiny spaces and gaargh.

The beach was fun, jumping in the waves and getting salty water in my eyes, just like in high school and college.

After all that and dinner with my Belgian sister and her kids and my parents, I came back, tired, exhausted, up since holy crap in the morning to take the girlchild and her dad to the airport to go visit college, the one where she might actually go, but I wanted to be DONE DONE DONE.

I even did the clouds…

They needed something.

And then, after 19 hours and 34 minutes of quilting this week, starting Sunday, I was done.

Done. It’s done. OK, I still need to trim it and bind it, so another 6 hours or so, because it is a big beast of a quilt…but done. Almost.

OK. I’m still trying to get my head around that. I mean yes, that was my goal over break, and yes, I blew off a ton of other things (grading, cleaning, yardwork) to get it done, but it’s done. A month and a half early. Whoop! I can work on something else. OK, yes I have to finish that other recycled quilt, but it won’t take long. And yes, I have two that I need to do early in summer, or maybe one is later, can’t remember. Time to sit down with the schedule again.

Then this morning, my exchange sister Claire and I went on a hike. Much as we went our separate ways after the year she lived in our house, my senior year of high school, our lives are not that different. She hikes in Europe and I hike here. We both try to figure out how to eat healthily when kids are there and then gone to their dad’s houses. We both try to figure out what happy looks like from here on out. And we both know part of it has to be outside.

We hiked Iron Mountain, which I’ve done before, but never in full daylight…always night hikes. It’s the big mountain in the picture.

It’s a local favorite, but less crowded than Cowles Mountain, because it’s longer.

The weather was nice today… mostly cloudy when we started and not too hot…

The views were a little hazy, but still nice long views to all the compass points…

The yucca have started to bloom…

It’s a dry hike, but there were lots of wildflowers by the side of the path…

And as the sun burned away some of the cloud cover, you could see all the way to the ocean…

And south to the Mexican border…

(Yo Julie…what is it?) Julie says it’s called a Silver Puff…what a dorky name. It’s quite soft…not as spiky as it looks.

A rare sighting, a California horned toad (aka lizard). Sweet little one…

And more beautiful views…

California poppies…

And Claire staring off into the landscape…

And here’s the panorama that shot came from…

Beautiful day, great time with a long-time-no-see sister…two sides: quilt on my not-so-fat butt because I get outside and do that hiking thang. They often conflict with each other, as the need to do one fights with the need to do the other, and the need to fit it all into a single day or weekend is some sort of Clash of Kathy Brain. It’s kind of a miracle I get as much done as I do…but it was all good, all worth it. So one of my 12 facets is NOT about housecleaning or yardwork. I’m OK with that. Now I’m going to go read a book (oops, another facet) until they call me with the next event.

Quilting for MILES…

Do you know how many episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine I’ve watched while making this quilt…like ALL OF THEM. OK, not really, but it’s getting close. This entire quilt has Major Kira and Commander Dax quilted right into it. And a little Ferengi as well.

I have been quilting for MILES. Seriously. I’m on spool number 3. I’ve been quilting for hours, days…OK, only since Sunday. It just SEEMS like for-freakin-ever. I’m in the dark blue badlands of the quilt. I purposely started on the right side because there was this vast expanse of emptiness that needed quilting and I knew it would be a challenge…one of those things where I keep wanting to get up and go find something else to do, whether it’s eat lunch or read a book or holy crap, I’d probably clean something before I’d work on that. True story. So I’ve bullied through that whole side, in between all the other crap that keeps popping up on my list. I couldn’t focus on it yesterday at all, but at some point, I managed to do 4 1/2 hours total…most of it after 10 PM. Which is why I’m sitting here before 6 AM, getting ready to take the girlchild and her dad to the airport, barely awake…because I quilted until well past midnight.

Here’s part of that vast expanse of dark blue scribbling.

I’m 15 hours in. I thought maybe 17 hours? Maybe 20? It’ll be somewhere in between. I’m hoping to finish today, but maybe not. I have a trip to the beach and counseling and dinner with the Belgians and I’m only half awake on the third cup of tea. So you never know. But when I finish this post, I’m going to quilt for a while. I started somewhere above the sun on her head, which is on the left side of the top bordering area…I finished ALL the quilting on the right side (1800 miles of it, seriously), and last night, I finished the whole bottom section. So I only have the left side, which does have a vast expanse of blue, but not quite so vast as on the right side.

Ugh.

Here was about midnight last night…on the bottom section.

This cat just whines at me at night. I petted her, I scratched her, I combed her because she has giant knots of winter fur trying to fall out but failing, and so she scratched me back and drew blood. Again. She does not like the combing of knots.

She likes to sleep behind the sewing machine in the afternoon, after she’s spent all morning sleeping in the sun in the living room. I’m OK with that, except when she cries constantly. She wants to sit on my lap, and I can’t quilt with her there. I have too much to do to sit quietly as a cat couch.

Anyway. The girlchild is hopefully on a plane with her dad by now and they will land in Boston sometime this afternoon. Hopefully it will be a useful trip. I’m sad to be missing it, just because I think it’s easier to visualize your kid away at college if you’ve actually traversed the campus with them…maybe I will have to try to figure out how to do that this year…skip the third day of school for me? Huh. It could happen.

At this point I’m just procrastinating. That blue thread is whispering to me, promising it won’t fray or break or knot. Lying bastard. Siren song of scribbled stitching. I’m tired enough that it almost makes sense.

Surviving Openings…

Art openings are strange beasts. On the one hand, hey, your art is getting out there and people are seeing it, because it got into a show. And it’s lit well and hung on a nice wall, usually white, and there’s space around it that you never get when you hang it in your house, and you can stand back from it and actually SEE it. And there’s often free food and drink (although if it’s on a college campus, then there will be no alcohol). But there’s also the nervousness you get from putting your work out there, wondering if anyone will understand it or if, like what often happens to my work at quilt shows, they’ll just walk away, muttering something about that not being a real quilt. There’s photo opportunities, which mostly drive me nuts. I know I need to take them, but I’d really rather not…

(Thanks, Julie, for taking that one…really it’s best to make me laugh.)

If you’re in the show, you really are expected to stay for the whole opening, even though most of us would rather be sitting in our studios staring at the next piece than standing uncomfortably in a gallery situation, wondering what to look at next. I am the photographer for two groups I’m in, so that makes it a little easier. I walk around and take photos (although I am often lame about it…missing an entire artist at times). I need to go write that blogpost for the group as well…I’ll probably link to it here in a later post, because there’s no way I’m writing two separate posts.

I spend most of the day before the opening trying to distract myself, grinding my teeth, girding my loins for social niceties about my art and their art and all the art. I did get interviewed last night and photographed by two different official types. The interviewer was very nice, although it was a bit strange to “talk into his pen.” But he liked the piece and got it, and talked about his grandmother and mother being quilters, and how his sister would like this quilt. So that was sweet.

It’s also nice to see people looking at your work and reading your blurb and then some of them come up to you afterwards and tell you how much they like it or ask about how it was made (usually people that have never seen an art quilt before)…

Many people have an idea of what a quilt is, and this just blows their minds.

Overall, though, it was a good opening. I was tired at the end. Friends and family showed up and were supportive (always a good thing). The show itself is interesting and varied. I got good vibes off my piece. All good things.

The show continues at Grossmont College’s Hyde Gallery through April 23…I’ve posted this before, but it shows that it’s only open Mon-Thurs, which kinda sucks, I know, but it does stay open until 6 PM.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do any of the student talks, because I’ll be back in school. But I survived the opening. And the piece is out there. Enjoy.

That Crazed Look in My Eyes…

I’m currently walking my son through filing his taxes 3000 miles away. Actually, I wonder how many miles away he really is. Only 2680 miles. It would cost about $315 in gas to drive there. Girlchild, if she ends up in Boston (a distinct possibility at the moment), will be 3001 miles away. ANYWAY. Taxes suck. Even suck more when they are more complicated than they need to be. Presumably, the government would like to punish you for being smart enough to put money away for your kids’ college futures. Whatever. It’s done. Well…it’s not done, because he’s still texting me and the damn state, which is the only part that wants money from the kid for going to college, has questions. Or TurboTax has questions. Sigh. I have taxes (not mine), the FAFSA, and multiple financial aid forms and all their usernames and passwords glaring at me at the moment, hanging over my head, giving me ulcers.

It’s no wonder I hide in my office/studio, quilting like a maniac, eh? Seriously, everything else is hurting my head. Is it too early to hang out at a wine bar with my sketchbook (yes. it is.).

I quilted yesterday. Which is something I’m not really getting done today. Dear taxman. You suck. College financial aid departments too. You also suck. Go the fuck away.

I quilted for almost four hours yesterday, which is pretty good, considering I had to go buy thread and pick up cat meds, plus I hiked a mountain…

You know, just for fun. It wasn’t a big one. I’m still outlining. I honestly thought I would finish the outlining last night, and I would have, if I hadn’t hiked. The hiking made it impossible for me to get off the couch for about two hours. Seriously bad. Ugh. But eventually I did and came in here…

I’m over 7 hours in. I have just a bit of the head area left to quilt and then I can start on the background…

I’m never really sure which is more time-consuming, the outlining or the background quilting. I guess it depends on how much background is showing. There’s a big chunk of it on the right side. I should start over there. But I had hoped to be quilting all day today, and I think I have lost that…for a good reason, though. My Belgian exchange sister (AFS) from high school is visiting for part of this week with two of her kids, so that will take up some of my free time, which is why I’m pushing to get the tax and financial aid crap done this morning so I don’t have to think about it. I’m also trying not to think about yardwork, housework, or schoolwork. It’s not really working. I’m a giant ball of stress. Plus there’s an opening tonight, so I’m already nervous about that. Although I’m sure it will be fine. That whole standing in public with my art thang. I like to send in stand-ins. Like my kids. Neither of whom are available. Whoops!

I’m still spacing out a bit while I quilt…sewed the cord to the extra light on my machine right into the quilt…

I’m sure it will come in useful that way. Huh. No, I fixed it. Ugh.

That’s where I quit. I think I just have the left side of her hair and the big cloud over there to outline.

Not much. Then background stuff. It’s hard, because the hike was totally worth it, felt great to get out there and see that I could still climb a mountain and I didn’t feel too bad (breathing was an issue for a bit), but I kicked butt and I’m sore today, but not overly sore. So yeah. Can’t stop doing that stuff in between all the other stuff and maybe the yardwork isn’t really that important, even when my ex and my dad come over and cluck about how little I’ve gotten done. I remind myself that they do not have two jobs and I do. And obviously yardwork is not that important to me. The boychild is home in 5 weeks…maybe he will do some of that until he gets a real job. Maybe that will motivate him to get a real job. It sure would motivate me.

OK, I seriously need a lot more caffeine and to start quilting, even if it’s just for a few hours today. I’d like to quilt the whole afternoon until the opening. It would put me in the right frame of mind. I’m always a little spacey after quilting all day…but calm, incredibly calm. As long as I can stay in that quilting mental space, it will all be good.

The opening tonight, by the way, is at Grossmont College here in San Diego from 5-7 PM. Late notice…sorry. The exhibit is Women at War…

And my piece in the show is Absolutely Nothing…

I’ll be there tonight…come say hi. You should be able to tell how much quilting I got done by the crazed look in my eyes.

Quilting. It’s Happening…

Saturday ended up kicking my butt in many ways. The stress of picking colleges and trying to figure out how to make that decision reverberates out into surrounding people. But the girlchild is much closer to a decision, and I will not be the one taking her on this college visit. I’m OK with that. I did the last one. And I have a ton of work to do, both for school and art (and honestly, around the house as well). So that was a bit of a relief. Paris is out, because NYU wouldn’t offer enough money to even make it a realistic possibility. A year there is more than my annual income. I guess they think I have a basement full of cash somewhere.

Anyway. With all that off my back (mostly) by 1:30 PM on Saturday, I had really wanted to be pinbasted by then (ha! Life kicks my ass yet again.). I did have the floor cleaned by then…which was shortlived…someone threw up on it last night (a cat). Anyway, I got the backing pieced and everything ironed on Saturday afternoon and then took a well-deserved break from my life (really a hot tub should be involved on a weekly basis) and started again yesterday. Once I was back from the grocery store (Easter dinner had to be purchased, even for us heathens), I laid the backing and batting out…

Walked away and came back to a cat kneading it all into submission (no photos of my yelling at her and chasing her off). And then I put the top on…

And pinbasted it. I have lots of people who ask why I don’t spray-baste. I’m not a fan of chemical overspray, and this thing is large. I don’t have anywhere flat to baste something this big except in the entryway. I might try it someday with something small, but then I forget and I don’t actually own any of the spray and it’s just way easier to pin it anyway.

It took less than an hour. And then I realized that I hadn’t bought thread for this. I usually have a bunch of dark blue threads rolling around, because I use them the most, but I remembered on the last big quilt making a huge effort to use up all the bits and pieces on spools and emptying like 5 of them. I found one partial spool of a color that would work, and of course, my thread store was not open on Easter (sigh), so I knew I would only be able to quilt until I ran out of thread.

And then I would have to WAIT. Until today. Horrors.

I was only going to quilt for an hour or so, but the bug got me and I did over three hours…

There’s still a bit of thread on the spool, and in a few minutes, I will head on out to get more.

I stupidly sewed the quilt to itself at some point (whoops)…

Because the girlchild was in here, bogarting my computer and distracting me with all her prom-dress shopping trauma. We finally found the dress she likes, but only if she’s a size 2. Which no one is, c’mon now. OK, some people are, but they won’t be forever.

Anyway. I was also getting tired. This is how I store it so the cat can’t lie on it (or throw up on it, honestly)…

I’ve finished the whole bottom third of the torso and started up the fox arm. The elephants were a challenge…go see my Instagram (knida) if you want to check out their crazy detail. If I didn’t have 17 other things to do today, I could get significantly done…and I might still do that. That’s the problem. Art brain gets closer to done and won’t let me do anything else but make art. Which explains a lot about me, I guess…how I have to force myself sometimes to leave the house for work or social events. Anyway. (Hiking tonight, by the way)

Quilting. It’s happening. Don’t got much to say about it. Just gotta do it. I figure 20 hours or so…so 17 to go.

Stitched Down…

I sewed a lot yesterday. I also stressed about taxes and colleges and flights yesterday. There will be more of that today. But I did finish the stitching…it took 6 hours and 21 minutes. I suspect a good hour of that was fighting with the machine and having to restitch part of the whole bottom section on Thursday night. Still, it’s time spent, and I keep track of that, because that’s part of how I price the piece…

I even went to a gaming party in the middle of all of it, ate, drank, played some Cards Against Humanity and almost won, and then came back and finished up.

Once the machine was behaving, it was easy. I just kept going until it was done. I got up every 30 minutes or so to stretch or warm up my tea or pee or walk to the mailbox…anything to get me out of the chair. I had a major tweak in my shoulder/neck yesterday from the night before (maybe the not-sleeping part of the night)…it’s still sort of there today, but much better. I didn’t get much else done yesterday, of course, because that’s how it works. When I buckle down and get serious about getting the art done, I don’t leave the house. I don’t do yardwork or housework. I don’t run errands. I don’t grade papers. I don’t do shit but get the art done. I even forgot to eat for a good portion of yesterday…realized around 1 that I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch. Whoops.

The cat slept behind the machine, obviously not concerned about the vibrations…

Sometimes they like the machine and sometimes they don’t. Limbo didn’t like it. He’d make that complaining cat noise and then leave. I miss that cat. Babygirl didn’t seem to mind yesterday, even when the quilt top was on top of her at one point.

My brain is in a better place today. Maybe I sewed it all out. No. Some of the angst and stress and badness are still there, lurking around a corner. Maybe they will always be there. Maybe that’s just who I am. I don’t know.

Can’t even come up with a decent title today for the blog post. Fuck that.

My real problem this morning, besides having to clean the entryway floor so I can baste the damn quilt, which is a big sucker, is this pile…

on TOP of the quilt, tax stuff…not mine. My taxes were done in January. These are the boychild’s taxes I’m trying to do, and I don’t understand any of it…it’s college funds that matured and rolled over and were somewhat dispersed, and it all makes my head want to explode. So the ex will deal with that or we will find a professional, because I can’t finish his financial aid without all that. It took me an hour to find 19 years’ worth of data on one financial fund. Ugh.

So I take a deep breath and consider the fact that I finally have most of a cup of tea in my tired brain, and I can clean the floor and then piece the backing and pull the batting out of the dryer and then get it all laid out, and worst-case scenario, the only thing I will accomplish today is the start of quilting this beast…and then perhaps my Easter will be a quilting day. Because that’s not a bad way to spend a Sunday. Everything else is going to get solved, one way or another, except for possibly the angsty depression that I carry around all the time…and I have been living with that long enough to know that I don’t have to listen to it. Depression panics and says the worst things ever, and the next morning after a cup of tea, it all seems manageable. Mostly.

People like this quilt. Maybe that’s all I need to know or care about right now. That and the 12-plus hours it’s gonna take to quilt it.

I Just Don’t Know

This damn piece is giving me angst. It shouldn’t. That’s what I’m told anyway. Wish someone would tell my art brain to get over the shit that bugs it so I could settle into my own existence. Apparently not an option. But maybe that’s why I make so much art…because I never settle into myself. I’m always questioning what I’m doing and how it makes me feel and whether it was good enough. Good enough for what, I don’t know. But that questioning, I don’t know that it’s abnormal in someone who creates all the time. Maybe that’s the difference between me and the people who did art in college and occasionally do something crafty, but they don’t stay up until after midnight every night making some piece that won’t get into any shows because it’s too in your face.

I just don’t know.

After running 17 errands in the morning, I was able to pick up my newly cleaned and tuned machine and I pieced the background. I also decided I didn’t feel like cleaning the entryway floor to lay it out. I thought the piece would be pretty easy to lay out, because it’s basically one large piece that’s all ironed together. If I had to place a bunch of smaller pieces and make them all fit together, I would have done it on the bigger floor space.

So here…it’s a little crowded, yes.

Couldn’t even get it flat. Oh well.

I laid it out anyway. Sometimes I’m kinda stubborn.

I tacked it down on the floor (this might be why my floor is dying…I do in fact iron on it.)…just enough to get it up on the ironing board, where I did the 30 seconds with steam thing that makes it stick better…enough that I can stitch it down.

And then the water droplets had to be placed…and I hung it up…

This thing is big…59″w x 66″ h. I thought 4 hours to stitch it down was probably an underestimate…but I did start yesterday…

And everything went fine for the first hour or so, and then I don’t know what happened. Something broke threadwise and I pulled everything out and tried to restart the stitching, and then spent probably 45 minutes fucking with my machine, cleaning stuff out, resetting it, turning it off and saying abracadabra over it, swearing and assuming I would have to take it back today to get fixed and I would never get done. Thread was tying itself up in huge fucked-up knots that somehow translated to shit in my head. Love that. Art brain. Get out of that hole. And then it magically started working again. And I spent an hour restitching all the crap it had fucked over. I’m sure it wasn’t really magic. I did something and that fixed it. But I don’t know what that something was.

When I finished restitching, honestly I didn’t have it in me to keep going. I was just depressed and frustrated with the whole thing. And with life in general. So I walked away and tried to sleep (ha!). Yeah. That was kind of a failure too.

Fucking Pandora is in pretty perky mode. I want to punch it. Where’s my screaming angry young men when I need them?

Seriously, though, I’m fighting a lot of stress about well everything I think. I’m about to crawl into a ball and lock all the doors (probably not realistic considering girlchild lives here half time…apparently) and not come out until I have to…which might be sometime around April 13. I’m sure there’s some people expecting me to show up before that, but I don’t know if I can handle that. Dammit, I unlocked the front door. The Golden Retriever is now here, lying on my floor. It’s harder to be depressed with a Golden around.

I’m trying to decide whether to stitch for a while (I might not stop) or to go to the gym first. I really should go to the gym. I have a social thing tonight. For a hermit who is feeling overwhelmed and antisocial, that seems problematic. Because otherwise I would go to the gym tonight. I like it when it’s quiet there. During the day is not so quiet.

This song was in my head too much yesterday…not sure why.

Not even sure I like it. Certainly can’t watch the video without getting sick to my stomach. Maybe just the lyric “I don’t know what I believe.” Maybe that’s all I’m hanging on to today. Trying not to think about all the crap I need to do. Trying not to think about that pit in the floor that’s screeching at me. Need to meditate more.

OK. Pandora has figured out I’m feeling depressed and is now playing depressing music. I’m not sure that’s helpful, Pandora. Really, you need a better formula.

She’s in One Piece…

I didn’t get as far yesterday as I wanted to…as usual. My machine is also still in the shop, so that sucks. Hopefully it’ll be done today, because I can’t finish the ironing. I need to see the background together before I can iron the whole thing down.

I started with the hair…

Then got the full face ironed together…this was the water section, so there’s a jellyfish, some regular made-up fish (Kathy-style), and a shell. Oh, and a starfish on her face…

Then I did the sun on top of her head…

I debated ironing the whole thing together now or fitting the pieces together on the background. It is easier to just deal with one piece though, especially if it can be ironed down to the pressing sheet, because then I can stretch pieces to make them fit if needed…which is what this one needed. So here’s the head ironed to central torso…

While I was working on this, a duck love triangle was working itself out in my pool. This is an annual event. The duck couple has been visiting every day, but today an extra male showed up and there was some significant drama for a bit until this point.

I kept working. Here is ironing the upper section to the lower torso…

Which also needed some adjustment, but overall, everything fit together fairly well. Here’s the whole thing rolled up…

For storage until I can get the background ready to go.

I’m sitting at the vet with the tiny-bladdered cat for her followup. I don’t want to spend an hour here, but it seems that is always the case. I need to go buy batting and hopefully pick up my sewing machine so I can get this thing to the next stage. I might have to do a college-visit trip next week, which is going to seriously mess up my schedule for everything I needed to get done over break (much like last year). Sigh. I don’t know why I make plans…it seems life conspires against me.

Left the cat…she wouldn’t pee and I persuaded the vet to let me leave her there for a few hours. I wanted to be stitching down yesterday! Oh well…let’s see what I can get done today…at least she’s in one piece.