Tag: 1 Year of Stitches

Kick My Brains around the Floor*

I’m finishing up progress reports, dealing with the last-minute panicking kids who are desperately turning in assignments to bring grades up (um. That 5-point assignment that is 125 days late will not help you.). I’m hoping to find quilting time this afternoon…surely I am going to buy binding fabric no matter what, because I won’t have time any other day this week…the shop closes too early. What’s more important as I go into the school week? Binding fabric or groceries? Um. Well. Are you asking me that? Because I’m getting the binding fabric first. Yup.

I woke up this morning, barely, couldn’t open my eyes (noise before actual wanting-to-wake-up time), but as I’m struggling to go back to sleep or something, persuade my bladder it doesn’t need to be up, an entire drawing pops, fully formed, into my head. Just like that. I know some of the places it came from…a focus on climate change and the effects, plus walking around ArtWalk yesterday. But yeah. A full drawing. That I now have to DRAW. Because I can’t download directly from my brain. Yet.

I have a bunch of cards of artists I liked from ArtWalk, but no time today to post…and I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of most of them. So I have the pitstops and distractions…one stop at (damn, can’t remember the name, but it was cool) for a cooling peach sangria and a seat…yes, those are fluffy sheep on the ceiling.

IMG_4391 small

Then more walking in the heat…

IMG_4392 small

A good set of phrases to keep in mind…

IMG_4394 small

Then a ride to a gallery opening, which wasn’t open yet. Awesome…Border X Brewing in Barrio Logan…

IMG_4395 small

Plenty of art there as well.

IMG_4396 small

I have photos from the all-women show at La Bodega Gallery, which is open again (seemingly without the crazy crowds), but no time to post today. We came back and watched two episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, which is just as intense as you’d expect it would be, but definitely worth it (probably it inserted itself into my dreams as well; hence the drawing in the morning fuzzy brain)…and I did the hand on the right, except two stitches, I forgot the anchoring stitch, and I obviously didn’t finish the hand. I’m deciding how I’m gonna handle that. Not sure. Like the tree, it will take many days to finish perhaps.

IMG_4409 small

Today. Finish grades, do one day on this piece, quilt a lot, hopefully all of it (doubtful), find a binding, do the damn grocery shopping, get the mind and body ready for another full week of school…only 33 days left, and I’m skipping two of them and three of what’s left are minimum days for kids because of testing (this is not actually better, because we use up a shit-ton of energy managing kids during testing, and I’ve got a couple of uber-challenging sweethearts in there). And I gotta get that drawing out of my head and onto paper. Somewhere. Somewhen. Somehow.

*Queen/David Bowie, Under Pressure

It’s Never Quite as It Seems*

Leaping out of bed at 6 AM, grabbing the phone and finding the camera app. Not to go to work…simply to try to record what freaking animal travels past my bedroom window every morning, usually at 5:30, but apparently it sleeps in on Saturdays. Simba is barking wildly, like he needs to kill it. Then again, he barks at the wind, at phones ringing on television shows, and random shit that’s at least 5 miles away. So I’m not really paying attention to him. Did I catch it? No. It’s either raccoon or skunk…not sure why I care, except it’s constantly waking me up…not because of its stealthy movements through the leaves. I can sleep through that (usually)…but I can’t sleep through Mr. Barkypants. Some part of me thinks if I get a picture of it and show it to the pup that his tiny little brain will go, “Oh. That’s it. I don’t need to bark at that.” Um. OK. So when I write that out, I realize how crazy it sounds. That dog would just bark more.

Yesterday was Calli’s 8th birthday. She acts a lot older this year though…maybe that’s the growing arthritis. I don’t usually have her on Fridays, but I automatically went and picked her up, so whoops. I wanted to go on a walk, so I figured she probably did too (I was right). Even with the arthritis pain, she loves walks.

IMG_4352 small

It doesn’t matter how I try to organize and untangle leashes…the little one is a leash idiot.

IMG_4356 small

The plant growth this year is crazy…

IMG_4357 small

The last time we were here, it was almost underwater…

IMG_4358 small

This was exciting for both of them…that is a bunny. There were lots of bunnies, actually…

IMG_4363 small

And lots of wildflowers…

IMG_4365 small

And these weird giant spiky pod things…

IMG_4368 small

These flowers are here every year…there were actually fewer of them because they were inundated with the taller grasslike weeds.

IMG_4369 small

Unfortunately, Simba was badly designed. I constantly consider shaving his butt fur. It’s really impossible for him to poop without it getting stuck in his fur sometimes, which is lovely. Really lovely. He needed a flea bath anyway. The fleas this year have been awful…I feel like nothing is working…

IMG_4374 small

He doesn’t like water. At all.

Before we went on the walk, Calli went and rolled in the skunk-infused dirt again, so she reeked. So I bathed her with better-smelling stuff and her skin stuff, so she has to sit with it on for 10 minutes. Always fun.

IMG_4376 small

Yeah, I should remodel this bathroom. Remind me to put in a dog-washing station. Seriously. That pink bathtub has to go.

I finally caught up on three nights on this…almost a third of the way through? And I’m lagging. I filled in the eye on the left with three different colors. That’s it. Now I want to do a hand.

IMG_4378 small

I tired the dogs out at least. Tired myself out as well…was already physically and mentally exhausted from school.

IMG_4379 small

I finally managed enough energy to eat dinner and then started quilting. The machine was amazingly well-behaved last night…which is good.

IMG_4380 small

Kitten was not so helpful. There’s some competition apparently between the two cats for time on my bed, and Kitten is being nonconfrontational with the other cat but very needy in the studio. Pet pet pet. Nice kitty.

IMG_4386 small

It took a wine assist last night…too stressed to think straight. It’s been a long week. But I got a decent amount of quilting done.

IMG_4388 small

There’s a lot of things on the to-do list today. But I’m up and trying to be efficient. Gonna get through the first two quickly so I can get on with some quilting and artful enjoyment of the rest of the day. Artwalk is downtown and there’s another opening I want to see…plus The Handmaid’s Tale is on someone else’s Hulu. So that sounds like a good afternoon and evening. I’m hoping. I need some down time before I barrel through grades. Tomorrow I’m hoping to be done with quilting and to buy a binding. And deal with the other quilt. Yeah…that much closer to having a clue what will be in the solo show…probably that’s a good thing.

*The Cranberries, Dreams

Wish I Knew What You Were Looking For*

I came to some weird conclusion last night that I only had an hour and a half of artmaking in me on any given school night. Now I know that’s not true…there’s been nights when I’ve come home and figured out how to do 3-4 hours of work afterwards…but the week after Spring Break is not one of them. The machine did behave better last night and I was more efficient about the spacing out time on the couch (double time that space-out!), so that was good. But I’m still stitching down. I was really hoping to be done last night. Nope. Nopester. Nopealicious. Nopearama.

Not done.

I did this first…trying to be good and stay on it. The green ferny stitches on the top right on that bush that has been there for a while.

IMG_4321 small

Then I headed in to work on stitching down the stuff on the top. I had some blobby bits on the back, but got that resolved. I think it’s because the spool was almost empty. I’m using Superior’s MonoPoly right now. There’s no way NOT to read that as the game.

IMG_4324 small

Found some semi-efficient way to go through the water…I think all that’s done, except the Golden Retriever.

IMG_4325 small

Not sure how I missed the dog.

And then doing that bloody complicated bush was the thing I did right at midnight. Well that’s it then. Because I still had the torso and head to do, and that was going to be at least another hour. The bush was bad enough, all overlappy and then the bobbin thread ran out.

IMG_4326 small

I can’t really justify staying up past 1 AM on a school night right now. So I didn’t. Tonight I finish though! And then hopefully sandwich? I’ll have to get an earlier start to pull that off. Because kneeling on a tile floor at 11 PM is my way of having fun fun fun. Seriously. It is.

Kitten too. You can see it in her face.

IMG_4323 small

Here’s where I admit that she only has half her teeth because of some weird genetic thing. So she often gets this bitchy lip thing going that is really just because she’s toothless.

Anyway. Today? Finish stitch down. I can commit to that.

*The Church, Under the Milky Way

Underground Like a Wild Potato*

Oh yeah. School kicks your butt. Just plain old physical exhaustion at the end of the day with some measure of mental (what’s another word for exhaustion…I’m too tired to think of one or even access a thesaurus dammit) tiredness. Enervation. Fatigue. Lassitude. That might be the first time I’ve used the word lassitude on this blog. Might be the last too.

I’m still braindead this morning, after two hours of cats cleaning their nether regions right next to me, one on each side, unable to toss them off the bed because of my parents’ dog Katie, who tends to chase them. Even in the dark. In the middle of the night, she’s lurking right next to the bed, waiting for something tasty and sharp (claws don’t seem to deter her) to fall from the mattress.

I wish she’d get over that. It’s a pain carrying the furry beasts around and depositing them appropriate places so they can eat and poop, and then Kitten was demanding that I bring her to bed, despite the fact that she’d be stuck there all night by Psycho Dog. Katie goes home tonight, so the cats will be free to walk around like the bossy furry beasts they prefer to be. And I will be free to toss them off the bed when a 4:30 AM butt cleaning seems like a good idea.

So school was fine really…and then we had to wander over to another school for a talk by George Couros, who was a principal and a teacher and has a TED talk you can listen to at the link. If you want to. I won’t force anyone to listen to a TED talk. I like a few of them, but mostly I’m like, yeah, OK, either that makes sense or where’s your evidence. Or both. So. Just like every day. I didn’t get anything revolutionary…or revelatory (yes, WordPress, that IS a word) out of it, but whatever. I thought it was ironic that they were trying to motivate us to be passionate and amazing when there are were only 38 days of school left. They kept saying there were 32 days of school left, but I counted again, and maybe they’re not counting days that I am counting? But it’s 38. Except now it’s 37. The cool thing is that he said it was OK if we were on our phones or asleep, and I did neither. I happily stitched. Happily stitching meant that I could focus on what he had to say AND stay awake. Seriously. I wish my boss would figure that out, although he hasn’t made me stop drawing in staff meetings.

No, I’m not done with the bird, but I’m close…so technically that would be done with the top block, whatever number that is, and on to the bottom block with the tree etc.

IMG_4313 small

The frog. That’s what it is.

I also caught up on this, three days’ worth. I’m getting less efficient as the year goes on. I was panicking about getting the quilt done. So I did the eyeball outline on the left, to be filled in later, the weird branch going off the eyeball, all in chain stitches for both, with pistil stitches coming out of the chains. Then I did a chain stitch in an orange color near the tree, to the left, filling in some of the black in there, finishing up with French knots above one of the yellow flower shapes.

IMG_4314 small

You’d think I’d finish filling in before branching out. Oh well.

I had some space-out time. I read for a while. I couldn’t deal with anything. Then I finally got up and started the stitch-down on the bathtub.

IMG_4315 small

The machine was a little fussy, but I figured it out and got a good hour and a half into it. Didn’t get a lot DONE, but I stitched. Slow but steady.

IMG_4316 small

More tonight…hoping I have the energy. Today is a long day. Most of them are long days. The first week back is exhausting. I said that already.

*The B-52’s, Private Idaho

So There

I have 12 minutes before I need to get ready to leave to march for science. Funny, it wouldn’t have been my first choice 30 years ago, when I was in college. I was very much an English literature and art major before I was a science person. Some of that was teachers who told me girls don’t do this, so when I asked questions, mostly trying to figure physics out (it’s still not my strong point), they wouldn’t answer. Somehow I should have gotten all the information I needed from their dry, boring lectures or from the textbook I barely cracked.

When I got my tattoo earlier this week, the fact that I was a teacher came up and the desk guy, who looked barely out of high school, was entranced with physics, with the labs, though…not with the post-lab work…like many of my students, he likes to do and explore more than he likes to analyze afterwards in some sort of productive manner. I love science for its creativity, its persistence, its ability to fuck with us…but I also love it for how it solves problems…and not just in one way, but in millions of ways. I didn’t know back in high school that this subject was one of the best for people who are both right and left brain, who like to see order in the chaos, but are admitting the chaos is always there…who like to find answers even while making more questions.

So I march for science. I march for the Lorax. I march with Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. I march with all the women who have chosen science as a career despite all the men who stood in the way. I march for my students, who love the labs, but not the work that goes with them. I march for a subject I didn’t particularly like in school, but grew to love over the years, a subject that now distinctly colors the art I make. I march even though it’s going to be hot and there will be no bathrooms. I march even though I didn’t make a sign (I have a lab coat with my name on it and an eyeball hat and a Lorax t-shirt). I march with my co-teacher, even though she’s currently marching in Texas. I march for the people who don’t believe in climate change, because they can’t see the science through the politicians.

So there.

In other news, I’m putting a binding and a sleeve on this one and trying to hang it from a wall instead of putting it on a bed…ironically, since it’s a quilt about being a quilt.

IMG_4201 small

I didn’t get much done on this one due to yesterday’s errandness…

IMG_4202 small

Puppies are bitey and old lady dogs aren’t.

IMG_4203 small

I worked on this while gaming…

IMG_4211 small

And I did three days’ worth of stuff on this, mostly down in the bottom right…Some blue star stitches with french knots and cross stitches, then some stitches to decorate the herringbone, both straight stitches in peach and fly and lazy daisy stitches in green.

IMG_4212 small

Just trying to fill in space as I reach the 1/3-way mark. Whatever for? I do not know. But I can’t stop now.

I Don’t Want to Fake It*

Well finally there is progress on the quilt…for some reason, finishing one task and moving on to the next one feels like movement. I’m still worried about finishing in time…with good reason, really. But I did finish ironing yesterday…122 fabrics used in a little over 12 hours. That’s a long time to pick 700 fabrics, actually. Not sure what’s up with that. Trying to get my mind back into doing it after traveling for a week, I guess.

IMG_4157 small

Lots of blue…it is in a bathtub though.

Kitten was not helping by sitting on all the ironed pieces. She loves those boxes, and I forgot to block her access…

IMG_4149 small

Then I started cutting out. Well, first I graded an assignment, which is my current rule. Grade first. Only 6 left. Ugh. SIX. Yeah. Well.

I cut for 4 1/2 hours yesterday. I cut through Walking Dead, the Bronte sisters show on PBS, and an episode of The Americans.

IMG_4165 small

I did not finish. The bottom box still has the whole bathtub and the water in it to do…plus more. But I got a good chunk done. The plan is to finish cutting today, then sort, then start ironing down.

I threaded through the running stitches last night.

IMG_4160 small

There was some furry love going on. These two like each other.

IMG_4158 small

This one just gets jealous.

IMG_4164 small

Oh yeah. And I got a tattoo. I’ve wanted one since I was approaching my 30th birthday. I might have been pregnant then. My now-ex told me he would divorce me if I got one. Then I aimed for 35, but ended up with a divorce instead…plus no money. It’s hard to spend disposable cash on something like this when you don’t have a lot…so I just put it off…for years. Last year, I had decided I would do it…but just got side-tracked. And then my kids gave me the money for my 50th birthday…so I had to do it. I didn’t have the money excuse. So I finally found the time and went in and talked to the artists…came up with a plan (all this actually happened pretty fast, but I did have a stash of photos I liked on my phone)…and he did it yesterday.

IMG_4153 small

I’m really happy with it. Big smile on my face for a long time yesterday.

IMG_4161 small

I know some people will wonder why I didn’t draw something of my own, but first of all, I don’t draw for tats…I draw for what will eventually be quilts. And the detail and size of most of my drawings would be prohibitive…like first, where am I gonna PUT that? And how am I gonna pay for it? I’m OK with this stylized yin-yang eyeball. I don’t need it to be my art.

Anyway, it took me a while to get that off my bucket list (and now I have about 17 other ideas I want…but it’s OK. I gots no money for that.). Now I can do something else I’ve been talking about for years (well I’ve been told I can’t shave my head, but you know how that goes…just give it time)…

*Cake, Love You Madly

I Tripped and Fell, and Did I Fall*

I think I write in the morning most days because it helps me wake up. Drink the tea, spill the beans, get the leftover words out of my head, make plans for the day, make sure art fits in there. Get my head around the day. Of course, it’s also still Spring Break for me…and I’m trying to catch up on almost 4 months of not enough sleep. Ugh. I honestly, right now, on Tuesday, don’t feel like I’m up to surviving the last two months of school. There’s only 38 days. And I’m gone for 2 of them. But it feels overwhelming still. Maybe that’s because we don’t have the first three weeks completely planned. Just maybe. But also because I go back and progress reports are due. I graded two easy assignments yesterday and input a bunch of stuff from the week before break. I have 7 assignments left. That’s an assignment a day (I’m ignoring the one that’s sitting in my classroom…hoping to have time to grade it when I get back).

(Just took a 10-minute break to throw a ball for Simba…he had the rips.)

This year has been stressful. But I’m close to finishing up some of the most stressful parts. So that’s good. I’m looking forward to a summer break, even if I probably have to find work for most of it. I shut down most of the copyediting stuff a month ago when I was getting lots of requests but literally had no free time in which to complete anything. I’ll be opening those up again soon…because I need work for the summer. I still don’t know if either of the kids is coming home; the flights will start being an issue pretty soon. I hope they have somewhere to sleep if I can’t get them home right away…or that they find jobs or internships where they are. I want them to come home, but understand if they don’t. The money that has to be paid out over the summer scares me a bit…even with my tax return, the summer is going to be tight. Need work. Yeah.

So yesterday I finished a bunch of stuff…I also did two days’ worth of stitching on this…the herringbone in the bottom left and then a running stitch from the left side and over the tree…I’m going to thread another color through that tonight.

IMG_4136 small

So that’s 106 days of stitching…almost a third of a way through the year. Still feels like I will probably fill this up before the end of the year.

I started watching an episode of The Americans while I was stitching and wanted to finish the episode, so I worked on the Folk Tails block…with puppy on my leg (his favorite spot) and Midnight cleaning herself down the couch.

IMG_4137 small

I forgot to take a picture of what I got done…but it wasn’t much.

I ironed in the afternoon, did the bathtub water. Then cooked dinner and did the stitching above before heading in for the flesh fabrics. I picked a run of 7 flesh colors and some other fillers. This quilt is about aging and menopause mostly…like a lot of the bathtub quilts seem to be…this is the third bathtub quilt I’ve actually made…I think there are 5 or 6 drawings.

IMG_4141 small

A shot to show you how I use fabrics that change in color sometimes…so yes, I was looking at the drawing and deciding where on the stripes each piece needed to go.

IMG_4142 small

Not exactly random I guess. I was tired when I finished ironing all the flesh colors, but it was still relatively early, so I kept going…did all the heart/blood stuff and then the fire stuff as well. So all that’s left right now is hair and lungs, mostly.

IMG_4143 small

Honestly it wouldn’t have taken much time to do it last night, but I was exhausted. I’m not sure why. Just accumulated tiredness still. Like jet lag, but school lag.

Here’s the pile of fabrics I was using by the end of the night. I find these piles happen even when I try to be all organized and keep runs of color together.

IMG_4144 small

While I’m picking, I can’t be bothered to be organized. I do that when I’m done, pile them all up in the boxes by color, although I was being lazy here…it was almost 1 AM, in my defense.

IMG_4145 small

And then I moved the ironed pieces into a larger container so they’d have room to breathe. I plan to be cutting these out by tonight…

IMG_4146 small

I’m going to have to grade something first. I’m more than a little panicked about trying to get this quilt done on time…but all I can do is keep doing until it’s done. Which makes me a bit hermitlike this week. Oh well. I’d probably do that anyway.

*R.E.M., Strange Currencies

Spray-Paint the Vegetables*

I’ve spent the last two days trying to get through all the have-to’s…well, beyond the art and the grading. I’ve sent all the things I promised to send while I was gone. I’ve filed my taxes. Finally. I even got groceries…so now I can eat. Although the thought of having to cook all my meals again was depressing. Ah well. It can’t all be perfect. Who knows how long I can survive on goldfish crackers and Brussels sprouts. I should probably plant the whole front yard with sprouts…I wonder what weather they prefer. Probably not mine.

I still have 9 assignments left to grade…the same number I’ve had for the last week. That’s next on the list…start banging through some of that. And get pieces ironed down to fabric. I started that last night…worked on it for about three hours even.

I laid out all the 200s…ironed them all down…below is everything it took to make a cell phone with charger and cord. Yeah. Kinda boggling.

IMG_4114 small

I used a lot of grays and whites…did the bathtub, a Golden Retriever, the phone etc, some pill bottles, a bra and underwear, and a faucet…a washcloth…a soap dish. I think that’s it…

IMG_4115 small

I stopped right before starting the water because it was around 12:30 AM and I was tired. I’m at about piece 375, so a little more than halfway. Ugh. So I want to be done today, but I don’t know if that’s a thing that can actually happen. I had a lot of other stuff in the last few days to do as well…but I’m running out of time…always running out of time.

While I was gone, Kitten found the blocks I’d been embroidering and apparently deposited hair on them every single day.

IMG_4085 small

Saturday night sunset…

IMG_4093 small

Yes, after going through Napa and the Santa Inez Valley, we wine-tasted in San Diego. Don’t judge.

I did some green on here Saturday night…I’m now a day behind again. The green was under Live, a buttonhole stitch, and then continued into the flowers to the left of the L, putting lazy daisy leaves in to fill the space.

IMG_4097 small

I also finished Block 4 (on the left). The instructions for Block 5 (on the right) don’t come up until April or May…and I’m only on February. I don’t know why I did them out of order like that. Because I thought it would be easier to have the blocks sewn together and all the wool stitched down before embellishing, and then I changed my mind. So January’s three blocks are done.

IMG_4098 small

The bird, warthogs, and green tree are January…then the sheep is like Block 14 or 15, but it’s one of February’s blocks.

IMG_4099 small

Then these are the other two February blocks, which had to be sewn together. I started the embroidery last night at my parents’ house…

IMG_4111 small

Easter was two different houses…and this weird party game. You write a phrase and pass the pile to the next person. They try to draw it, then put your phrase on the bottom. Then the next person looks at the picture and tries to write the phrase describing it. Then again and again. I’m amused that my “Pass the whole pile” turned into “Dodgeball with Special Ed students”…cruel surely.

IMG_4100 small

And the other one I did, “May the force be with you” devolved into a stoner dude with an obese pony. Huh. None of us should get a job in the movies I think.

IMG_4107 small

I gave my mom this for her birthday or something one year…so she stitched it and gave it back.

IMG_4110 small

Unknown year reference…I’m sure something interesting happened then. Anyway. That kinda summarizes my weekend.

Today? I gotta decide what next. I’m thinking it’s coordinate all the clocks in the house. Some are correct, but the one to the left of me is an hour fast and the one on the microwave is an hour slow. And that shit just takes up too much of my brain. Then maybe lunch (yes, late) and debating grades vs dog walk vs tattoo. Yeah well. Can’t say I’m thinking straight yet.

*Beck, Loser

Looking Up…

So we made it back, alive and still a bit muddy (one load of laundry is done; the tent and rain cover are out on the deck, waiting for me to have the energy and help to clean it out), still a bit exhausted. Driving through Los Angeles can do that to you. Ahhh, traffic, I miss you not.

It’s the first time I’ve taken a week’s vacation without the fam in about a million years. Being a mom and a financially strangled one at best doesn’t allow for such things, so it was much appreciated. And there will be more, once we do the math and see how bad the money actually was, and then try to focus on future travel plans. There was lots of WOW said; even if you’ve seen them before, the redwoods elicit WOW.

So then I have about 50 pictures of the trees, looking up…

IMG_3624 small

Because that’s what you do…

IMG_3666 small

(That was the one non-rainy day on our trip…the day we chose to hike around…)

I’ll have to write a post later this week about the trip, I think. Too many pictures for a Saturday-morning brain.

I did draw each night…well, minus one…

Certainly what I was experiencing ended up in the drawings. The first night, we had set up the campsite and cooked under a lean-to tarp, and sat there listening to the rain for hours. We’d made it to the visitor center and read about local animals and plants, and seen a beetle and lots of ferns and trees.

IMG_3944 small

That beetle on her cheek was on my sketchbook for a while…I saw his big brother in the bathroom for the next three days. Just hanging out…on the toilet paper rolls…waiting…for something.

We hiked the whole next day, with on and off rain…but a lot of sun. We cooked tacos that night, and tried to get the fire started. I think it lasted a whopping 20 minutes before the rain kicked up again. We had moved the tent by then.

I don’t think this one is done, but I was tired.

IMG_3945 small

At least one hand is facing the wrong way…or both are left hands…or something.

The last night, we had very little rain (after rain on and off all day, mostly on), but lots of high winds, which is a little nerve-wracking in a forest that really only loses trees to wind and the occasional flood.

IMG_3946 small

I skipped the next night…but the last night, food was on my mind apparently. And misplaced arms. They’re just wrong, all wrong.

IMG_3947 small

As part of the last day’s drive, we stopped at the California Fibers’ exhibit at The Blackboard Gallery in Camarillo, California, where two of my pieces are currently hanging through early May. This is Give Me Time…

IMG_3965 small

As always, I love having my photo taken and can’t figure out what to do with my hands.

And here I am with Holding It All In, which is a big quilt…

IMG_4032 small

I’ll be writing a California Fibers’ post about the show, with details, later this week. I’ll link it here. It’s a nice show…in an interesting space.

I did keep up with these once a day stitches, albeit barely. I did some green lazy daisy leaves on the right with that curly line I added earlier in the week, with the pinky lazy daisy flowers (that’s three days right there)…then a feather fern stitch thing next to the tree trunk (hard to see here) and some star-shaped flowers in red/burgundy with straight stitch green leaves to the right of the feather, under the bird…finishing the thread off with some French knots (or colonial knots, who knows) down the side there.

IMG_4074 small

I didn’t actually do much stitching (or reading) on the trip. I finally pulled this out the last day for in-the-car stitching (mostly I can’t stitch with curvy roads…or while I’m driving)…finished the tree trunk, which I’d started at the campsite until I couldn’t see in the dark any more, then finished the flower center and started the bird. I think the bird is all that’s left, and then I’ll be done with this one. Maybe tonight. Not sure what my plans look like yet.

IMG_4078 small

I know they include cleaning and drying these, the second load of laundry, finishing my taxes…

IMG_4079 small

Working on the current quilt, which has to be done in a week, a ton of grading, some emails/contracts/headshots (ugh) to be sent out, and I don’t even know what else. Trying to get my head around all of it…which I will…eventually…maybe not today. Still looking up…even though the trees are gone…but here, at home, the furry beasts are all around. Both cats slept with me last night (strange), although I did not appreciate Midnight’s hairball extraction in the middle of the night (guess the duvet cover needed washing) or Calli’s early morning plea to pee. And the house reeks of skunk…fun stuff. No one cleaned while I was gone (another wonder of living alone). But I’m glad to be here, in my own bed, surrounded by annoying beasts, where I can make a proper cup of tea whenever I want dammit. (still wanna travel more though)

Water Pooling

So when the weather app says 0.08″ of rain, that really means it’s gonna rain almost all night, leaving muddy puddles everywhere. The app kept saying rain would stop in 60 minutes. Thirty minutes would go by and it would still be 60 minutes of rain. The plus is the tent only leaked in one place (put a hand towel under it), and though it was cold enough to see my breath, it wasn’t horribly cold. 

All these pictures took a horrendous time to load, due to intermittent cell service…so they’re all out of order and I can’t even see them at the moment. 

Oh there they are…the Eel River. After more than half an inch of rain last night, today eventually got sunny and verging on warm for us Southerners…

We took a 5-mile hike and saw beauty everywhere…

Checking out gurgling streams…

And waterfalls…

Some fungus among us…

Last night, we huddled under a tarp shelter and I drew a bit…

Raindrops and a spotted skunk showed up in the drawing…under the tarp. Hat with lights was helpful…

Made burgers for dinner…after the fire in the pit got rained out…

I finally got almost caught up on this…I was 4 days behind. I did some blue fly stitches in the bottom area, then a bunch of cross stitches in a thread that went from peach to teal, also down in the bottom. Then the fly stitches that look like redwoods in the bottom right, in a variegated green.

Left it at one day behind, losing light.

These are some of the trees above the campground.

And here was our original setup.

Last night’s rain pooled under the tent, so we moved it today. 

Good times. Well fed and hiked. Mostly warm and dry. We will appreciate the hotel bed and shower when we get there. We haven’t killed each other yet, for those who were concerned. And my eye stopped twitching…all good news.