I Know You Know It…

Apparently I like to pick out fabrics…or my mood finally switched on to art mode. Either way, even though I spent a good two hours yesterday arguing with the girlchild by text about whether she had taken my shoes or not or whether I was in the right to demand that my shoes be returned to my house (ah, the wonder of divorce), and then we weren’t speaking to each other for the next 2 1/2 hours, somehow all that shit worked out and I managed to do some grading and make some art.

Actually, first of all, this is a drawing from Saturday…

Which needs a redraw. I like the hands. I like the belly and crotch area. I need the head further down. I’ll try again. I also went to an art event Saturday night, but I’ll have to deal with that in a later post…too many photos for a Monday morning.

I had mostly cleaned in here Thursday night (yes, I know it doesn’t look clean, but what do you know?)…

And set up for ironing, did a tiny bit, but then succumbed to cranky exhaustion.

So last night, I managed to avoid both, and made it through all of the first 100 and second 100 pieces…

There they are laid out by 10s. Very exciting, no? Yes, I’m a little obsessive sometimes. But look at what I can do with it!

Basically, last night I ironed everything together up until the bathtub…here’s the ginkgo tree…

Some of those browns are just shreds of skinny pieces because I’ve cut so many tree branches out of them.

Here’s what I’ve used so far…not much color.

There was a dog on a rug, a cat, a ginkgo tree, a pile of clothes, and a pair of shoes.

Next stop? The bathtub. Which might be a bit difficult. I need big pieces for that. Here’s everything I’ve ironed so far…

I got to piece 229. On this quilt, that’s almost halfway done…which is good, because my brain is realizing I have to get another relatively big one done by mid-July? Ish? And that is closer than it appears in that mirror.

I also started revamping my LinkedIn page to include my editing and proofreading experience, which is old, but still useful. I’m debating joining a couple of groups that might get me work, but school is still hanging over me. My car went into the shop, though, and between it and my house insurance, the next month is going to be ugly…which is a problem, because I don’t get paid over the summer. So I need to get some focus on…realizing I don’t know how to edit electronically (well, I can mark up in Word), and might have to take some courses to figure that shit out. Anyway. I try to worry about the smaller stuff, one bit at a time. College crap. Getting the boychild home crap. Getting through state testing crap.

I aired out the boychild’s room and rewashed his bedding, realized we were still short a pillow and his fitted sheet no longer fit. Elastic with issues…so I made a run to Target for another pillow and a fitted sheet. Set all that up, so he at least has somewhere to sleep. He can work on cleaning the rest of it when he gets home. Asked the girlchild to clean the bathroom, and she tried to blame part of the mess on her brother, who hasn’t been home since January 19. It’s gonna be a fun summer! I know you know it.

More drawing. More art. I was commenting that I find it hard to draw specifically about the relationship I have with my daughter. I can draw about motherhood in general and the stress that goes with it. Earth Mother shows up a lot in my work. But when I try to parse out how the two of us work and why it drives me bonkers sometimes, I just can’t make a picture about it. I can only hope she has a really nice roommate in her dorm who doesn’t kick her out after three months.

It’s OK. I know her worst behavior gets saved up for me. OK. Apparently I have to go to work. Damn paying-the-bills job. And please don’t tell me you want teachers to love their jobs…there isn’t a single teacher out there who loves state testing, and most of us are trashed by the last 6 weeks of school.

Speaking of trashed, I dropped my favorite mug yesterday…

Dammit. I made it myself. I made another one at the same time, but I’m apparently not allowed to have it back. And the other large mug I had sprung a leak. So I’m fussing around with a tiny mug, checking Groupon for the next coupon for the ceramic painting place.

OK, off to my day, if only to figure out all the ways I have screwed up already. Love Mondays.

SIT. DRAW. DO.

Whoa. OK. Hello Saturday morning. There were all these things I was getting done and it just seemed to propagate more have-to’s. That’s just wrong. Every time I turn around, there’s another one bopping me in the face. This time of year, with graduation and end of school and college demands from two different schools and this thing and that thing. Crap. I need to send a quick email before I forget again.

OK, done. My brain is on overload. That said, I spent the last two nights speaking to almost no one (well, except via text) and last night, I went 6 hours speaking to nothing human except the pizza guy (it was Friday, I was tired. I think I’ve talked to my car guy more in the last two days than to anyone I care about. OK. I care about my car guy. He’s nice.). My brain gets a little weird with all that incommunicado shit, so it’s now trying to balance all that lonely with the girlchild currently singing some song like she’s trying out for American Idol. But then she’s leaving again. My lord. Maybe I should have more children (fuck no).

OK, with all that in mind, know that I worked for about 12 hours yesterday, grading for more than 4 hours last night. Because I’m fucking nuts, that’s why. I just sat myself in front of the telly with a DVD of Elementary, another version of Sherlock, recommended by the boychild. The boychild, by the way, has been trying to get my website banned in totalitarian countries…

There’s Afghanistan. He said he could access it and then they decided I’m violating their shit. Whatever, Afghanistan. Hell, I probably violate the laws and regulations of half the Southern United States as well. I’m not bothered.

So after grading until I wanted to crawl into a cockroach-infested concrete box (watching too much weird TV), I gave up and did other stuff. I sorted all the Wonder Under for the first bathtub quilt, which is actually Bathtub 2, because I like to be confusing like that.

Not a lot of pieces. Really. It only took like 20 minutes to sort them. So then I went to the newly cleared (but not totally clean, please don’t hold your breath on that one) studio and started picking fabrics.

I didn’t get very far. I was tired. It was late.

By then, everyone was back in touch with me, via phone and in person, although I think girlchild only said three words to me, “Where’s my dog?”. Um. You mean that big Golden Retriever thing that’s been following you around, whining, since you walked in the door?

Yeah. Whatever. Not a great mood. Went to bed with a book and a cup of tea and woke up to a Kitten hurdling my head (her code for “I have to Poop Now.”) and a mood. So blasting Rufus Wainwright right now is probably not the best choice. I have a shitload of stuff to do, but I don’t feel like doing any of it. It’s all too complicated. I just want to have a reasonable amount of human connection (and there’s nothing about teaching pre-teen/teenagers that fits that bill, sorry) and time to make art. And whatever. A clean house. Ha! I am still listening to music way too loud for an old person.

Maybe drawing should be on my list. And Motrin. Yes, I realize I’ve been dealing with a lot of headaches lately. The weather systems locally have been a little crazy lately, which doesn’t help. And my foot still hurts, so I’m not getting regular exercise. OK. Getting off this thing. I’m feeling like I need to DO. DO is better than SIT. Unless SIT includes DRAW. And maybe wine.

Rainy Days…

So it was (still is) a rainy day in San Diego, which is good (we need the water), and it makes me want to stay home and not do anything, so when I got home from school yesterday, after doing afterschool duty standing in the rain (fun stuff…at least I remembered my jacket and the kids cleared out really fast), I decided I needed to clean up the studio. Slash office. Because really this is just a tiny room with a bastardized closet, the former owner being an artist and needing shelves just like a fabric artist would need. And I used to be a freelance book editor and everything ran out of here, piles of book manuscripts on the floor everywhere, files galore. Even then, I had fabric in here though, not as much as I have now, because I started editing in 1996, the year the boychild was born, and my first real art quilt, documented, was made in 1999. I made art quilts before that…I just was learning how and didn’t keep track of dates. I was still screenprinting up until then and for a time after, and I had a studio space downtown until right before the boychild was born, and that was a nice big space compared to this, being a room maybe 8×10′? The studio was more like 600 square feet…something like that. Now I have this tiny room with a sliding glass door that is completely blocked by my sewing table. Nice view though.

Then when I stopped editing, I was going to school online, so there were notebooks full of articles off the web, because I don’t really like reading on a computer, although now I read on the iPad, no problem. And when I started teaching, the file cabinet was now full of teacher materials, an entire bookshelf (there are 4 in here) is just teacher materials, books mostly. Somewhere around 1990 is when I started collecting fabric, when I started making quilts, although not very artistic in the beginning, just learning the process. I’d always been drawn to them and I had been taught to sew fairly young, so it wasn’t much of a jump to start making quilts. I didn’t finish most of the early ones as actual quilts. My first big quilt top is still in the hope chest in my bedroom. I don’t hold out much hope for finishing it. Not sure I care much about finishing it!

My fabric stash definitely has outgrown this room. I have fancy fabrics for crazy quilting in bins under my bed, where they never see the light of day, because I haven’t done any CQ in ages, and the cotton stash is pretty amazing too, although I do try to keep it all in here. When I’m working on a quilt, after I’ve ironed all the Wonder Under to fabric, I keep all those fabrics in separate bins until that quilt is finished, in case I’m missing a piece when I go to iron it together. It makes it easier to find the missing fabric if I don’t have to sort through ALL the bins of that color. So I had all the fabrics from the Earth Mother quilt in three bins, there were two additional bins of fabric from Mariah’s stash, well, and then a third one with all her blues (she had a lot of blues), and then I had a trash bag full of fabric from Sandi’s stash…and all of it needed to be put away.

So that’s what I did…

Aerial views of piles of fabric by color. I had three piles of blues and three piles of greens and two piles of browns and two piles of purples.

And then on top of that, I had stuff pulled out of almost every drawer from when I was looking for fabrics, because I had never straightened that up either. So between texting two different people, a phone conversation with my SIL while she was watching one kid play baseball, talking to my car guy and then my dad because I have his car until car guy figures out what’s wrong NOW, a conversation with my ex about school and money and dramachild and the dog being scared of gophers when he came to get the dog because the girlchild didn’t feel like coming back here after watching softball because I am that evil, and heating up leftovers for dinner, I also put all that shit away. Well. Not true. I have 10 blue fabrics I haven’t found a home for yet, mostly because I’m really running out of room in my current storage. And because I gave up. Sigh. OK. Not something to complain about. What’s funny is that the current quilt has some pieces in it that are really huge, and I might need to buy fabric. NOOOOOO. My goal is to not buy any except maybe binding. I have a large piece I can use for the background and I always have stuff I can use for the backing…but the binding is an important part and usually I need more than a half yard, and half yards are all I normally buy.

Anyway, I’m glad I did all that cleaning (and there is a ton more to do…but I have all summer), because last night I also finished cutting out all the Wonder Under for the first of the bathtub quilts…

It took me a bit over an hour and a half last night to do that last piece…it had a lot of skinny tree pieces in it. Make that two episodes of Orphan Black. I sorted and cleaned the studio to Deep Space Nine. I get tired of all the quiet, although before that, I was being yelled at, so I guess there’s a fine line in the middle where I’d like to exist and can’t. So it took about 4 1/2 hours total to cut all the pieces out. My plan is to sort them tonight into bins and hopefully start ironing to fabric, although if I were a very good girl, I would grade papers. Well, I would grade assignments online. And then papers…which next year, might be all online. And it will be another quiet lonely night, because girlchild is out and about. Boychild is coming home Tuesday though, so I will have company on some of the nights when she is out gallivanting around for the next three months. At least it will give me an excuse to cook something besides leftovers again.

So on to the next stage again, a more exciting stage, and maybe the mess in here was just weighing me down, or maybe state testing is messing with my head, but it’s been a very long week. I’m so tired right now, I’m wondering how to find the energy to get in the car and fight the stupid traffic to school, which is only 2 1/2 miles away, but rain brings out the worst in people here in Southern California. Maybe if I get the rest of this tea into me, that will help. I want to draw. I want to curl up on the couch with a blankie and put the TV on and draw. Listening to the rain drip. And then take a nap.

Sigh. A personal day is not an option today, not with state testing. I bully through, like all good teachers do.

A Gopher Tale…

The dog (Calli) is staring intently out into the lower yard, worried-looking but not barking or crying. She looks at me when I slip out the back door, whining slightly and so excited that I’ve come out to see what she sees. I peer down into the weed-infested space (I really should do more yardwork. At midnight. On Sundays.) and see one of the 3-foot-tall weeds jiggling, like something is down there. I make the executive decision to walk down the deck on the back of the house. It will look right over that space, and then if it’s a skunk, I don’t have to meet it up close right before school. Calli follows me, thrilled that I know what’s worrying her. I get to right above the wiggling weed and peer down. There’s nothing there. Nothing’s even moving at the moment. I wait. Calli waits, whining quietly. The weed starts to move again, and there is a noise of teeth gnashing. I look more closely. The weed is not just moving; the entire plant is disappearing inside…a gopher hole. Oh. OK. That’s funny. I laugh. Damn dog is scared of gophers. I try to put her out later to pee, and she cries at me, protesting, scratching at the door, and then running back in, Golden Retriever vs Gopher a pure loss in her tiny little mind. I love this dog, but damn…she’s scared of gophers. So much for protection.

Girlchild says it’s because she’s afraid SHE’LL disappear like that. Huh. Silly dog.

So I had tons of crap to deal with yesterday, but I was damn efficient and tried to keep irritation levels at a minimum, hard to do when having to give yet another state-mandated survey on top of state-mandated testing, none of which works the way it’s supposed to work. Our theory now is that the adaptive testing actually refuses to accept wrong answers at some point until students go back and try to fix some of their bad answers. That can’t be true. That doesn’t even make sense…but I have to admit, despite the fact that I’m a teacher, I don’t understand how these newfangled tests are working.

Then I finally made it home for girlchild’s dinner-making extravaganza (chicken salad) and some quiet time (not…prom-dress worries with SVU in the background) on the couch, trying to grade some more (I really want to be caught up. It may never happen. Ever.) until I gave up and started cutting Wonder Under, because I remembered my mistake of the night before. Make Art Dummy!

The thing is…photos of cut-out Wonder Under aren’t very exciting…

(trash on the right)…not even to me. Although that box is almost full.

Here’s all I have left to cut…

Now THAT’S exciting. Just one piece left. That’s one evening maybe. There are a lot of little pieces, yes, but there’s also some big whopping pieces in there. (Big pieces take less time to cut out.). I’ve done about 2 1/2 hours, so maybe another hour, hour and a half? I did one whole piece last night in less than an hour.

Now I can start to get excited about ironing to fabric. That’s way more fun. Color and stuff. Making artistic decisions and stuff. And stuff! But I do need to clean this space out first, get some shit out of here and straighten up all the fabrics, put all the stuff away from the last quilt. I still haven’t done that. Sigh. Damn. I hate dealing with that stuff. I can put the fabric away, pile it up by color and straighten up. When I finished the last batch of financial aid stuff, I put everything in labeled file folders, because I didn’t do that last year and it was chaos this year trying to figure out what went where and where everything was. But I still need a home for all that. I still learn from my mistakes. Good thing really. I make lots of them. But I’m a hoarder genetically, so even getting rid of the rest of the upholstery scraps from that recycled quilt causes me issues. What if I NEED them? Really? Seriously? I won’t be able to find them…that’s what if.

And I got a bunch of fabric from a mom I grew up around, the mom of some good friends. She’s not quilting or sewing any more, due to a series of strokes. I’m glad to take in her fabric…kinda makes me feel good thinking some of my stash comes from Sandi, but I have to put them all away too! I know. My problem. I’ll deal.

So I don’t remember where on FB I saw this, but this video about the nipple is good…I didn’t even know about the no-male-nipple laws. This is probably NSFW for most workplaces, which is also an issue, because if I were watching a video with topless males, there might be an issue, but with topless females, it’s always an issue. Go home and watch it.

It does seem like we need to Free the Nipple, people (without the comma, that’s an interesting sentence times two). Certainly looking at my art, it would be nice if people were a little less dramatic about nudity. A naked woman does not equal porn. Neither does a vulva nor a nipple.

Leaving you with that. It’s a good way to start the morning.

It’s Just Better That Way

At certain stages in the creative process, I just flail. It’s like I can’t concentrate, like my brain can’t connect to the piece. I don’t care about it yet. I’m just doing because I know I’m supposed to be doing, and if I’m tired or cranky or otherwise in a moody place (welcome to my world), then I can’t barely force myself to make anything.

Last night was one of those nights. The Should Do’s marched by in a relentless line, and I graded papers, because I have a shitload of journals that got handed in yesterday and the rest of the pile will get handed in today, and that means I will be grading until they bury me in the ground, which might be tomorrow. No matter what, I have no recess, no rest, no time off. I need to grade my ass off. And I did grade some…and when I was done, I exercised, because that is good for me and I miss it, and even though my foot is killing me by the end of the day, I still need to be physically active in a cardiovascular way. Damn doctors making me wait for the referral to the next level though. This is no sprained ankle. It’s not even my damn ankle, you fucking idiots.

Deep breaths. Art brain showed up after all that and suggested drawing or cutting things out (pretty easy to do), but I was beyond tired at that point. I sat and finished watching the show I was mired in, and then went to bed. Woke up depressed because hey! I didn’t make art. DUH. Stupid brain. You should know better. And today is an uber-long school day, thanks to my service to my school as a union rep (hate those meetings…but I can grade or draw during them)…so by the time I get home, I will be exhausted again. It’s never-fucking-ending at this time of year.

(excerpt from Y The Last Man: Vol 1…a somewhat amusing yet sometimes kneejerk treatise on what the world would be like with no men. Apparently some women would be assholes still…but I’m amused by the y chromosome comment, because some of my smart kids were thinking that through as well when we were learning genetics.)

Note to self: Let art brain win tonight. It’s just better that way.

Oh Hallelujah

The financial aid crap is finally done. After 20 minutes on the phone to somewhere, Ken, lovely Ken, confirmed that all the documents are there and processed and available to the institution (I keep thinking “mental institution,” which is more about how I feel). It’s out of my hands now. Bless them. I don’t need to worry (OK, that’s not going to happen…now I need to worry about how much they’ll award this year and whether I’m gonna be broke in a year). But seriously, I’ve been working on this for both kids since the last week of January. How can it take this long? So much time and energy. Sigh.

In other news, I cut out a little bit of Wonder Under last night. Mostly I did school stuff, because we are in the middle of testing and there is all this free time for kids after testing is done, and yesterday was a giant scheduling clusterfuck, and today could be even worse in terms of headaches. I ended up losing my prep, which meant trying to eat in front of kids, which I hate doing and I do a shitty job of doing anyway, so my blood sugar was off all day and the headaches that go with that were on Motrin number 8 at some point, which isn’t actually that much, but it’s because I kept thinking, “Ouch, I have a headache, I should do something about that,” and then forgot to do anything.

Whatever. I’m semi-prepared for two hours today and 17 kids with nothing to do…oh, to clarify, 7 of them have stuff to do…they’re just not going to want to do it. So we’ll see how that goes.

I have no pictures of cutting out Wonder Under. I do however have pictures of the big quilt I finished recently, Earth Mother for Ventura, thus called because of their requirement for no nudity, no politics, and no violence…

She’s not a small quilt, at around 55×66″. Plus she’s got 90 hours or so into her…

I talked to my photographer about how to best provide prints to those who want them, and he gave me some names of places that could do that.

Now I just need the time to go research that. Ha!

Might have to wait until school gets out.

It was an interesting experiment, making this quilt. Still sussing it out in my head. And there’s no guarantee it’ll get into the show! As always. Oh well. On to the next one, right?

Diverted Destruction Details

So I can’t post final pictures of the two Diverted Destruction pieces here until the end of May, since one will be in a magazine and I don’t know why not the other, but whatever…the photographer has finished, so here are details of both pieces.

This is Upholstered Nude, finished back in March…

It was made entirely of recycled upholstery fabrics from those annoying sample books, except for the background, which is from the stash of my friend Mariah.

Mariah supplied all the fabrics for the second piece, By All Means…

Forcing me to work with a range of colors that weren’t really planned, but also to use leftover blocks and strips and bits and pieces from her previous quilts…

Cuz, honey, y’all know I don’t piece my backgrounds.

I will be posting the full pieces the end of May…not sure which one will be in the show, because I don’t get to pick that, but the opening is the end of June in Los Angeles. Will let you know details as we get closer to the day.

I’m just glad to have them both done EARLY. How strange.

The Cutting of the Wonder Under

Mothers Day: the only day of the year children will try to feed you and clean up for you. Well, apparently the girlchild last did those two tasks at Christmas, but I’m fairly sure I helped. She did good. Food was wonderful…we will miss her when she leaves. I just don’t pay close enough attention when I cook to do it well. I’m always trying to escape the kitchen to my studio.

I did a couple of drawings this weekend while watching the end of True Detective, which was good. At some point, I couldn’t draw because I was concentrating too hard on the show…always an issue.

But before that, there was this…

Which I actually want to do over…and this…

Which might be OK.

And the other 15 drawings are still roaming around in my head, creating havoc with my ability to remember how or when to do anything (or maybe that’s menopause…hard to say).

And then at night, after dinner and cleanup and exercise, I finally got around to this…

The very titillating Cutting of the Wonder Under.

Stay tuned for many pictures of piles of paper cut out with fusible web on one side. Très exciting.

State testing starts today, so I have to be at school early, because I have duty and I have to get my room set up and all my stuff located. I’m completely unprepared, unfortunately. My brain? Mush. Dammit.

This Mood

So many things achieved. I hate when my mood doesn’t reflect what I’ve gotten done…some of that is moody hormones, unfortunately, but some of it is getting bogged down by other crap that just won’t leave me alone. The little stuff is really getting to me at the moment. Need to dump that mentality. Must be getting to the end of the school year.

My two quilts are going to the photographer today…I dehaired and ironed them this morning, got up a little early to make sure I had enough time. Probably won’t finish writing this before I have to go, but that’s OK. I graded papers last night too. Girlchild and I were going to go to this art and music thing, but it was canceled for the rain (yes. we had rain. a miracle.), so she went off to dinner with friends, while I watched the series finale of Sons of Anarchy. Sheesh. Well, it’s done anyway. I think it’s hard to end a series well (Sopranos for example, not as an example of ending well). At least they got to make a decision about how to end it, instead of just not being renewed.

So I finished tracing the Wonder Under on Bathtub 2 last night…

And no, Kitten wasn’t helping. She mostly sat around on the papers I needed and then rolled around presenting her belly for petting. Then attacked. It’s nice when she comes out though.

It took almost 8 hours to trace this quilt, which is more than I would have guessed, but there are some whopping big and complicated pieces in the bathtub and water that took more than a minute or two to trace. I usually figure about 100 pieces an hour. Tracing big pieces takes longer than small.

The next step is to cut them all out and then move on to the ironing. I need to clean up the studio first though. There’s some stuff in there that’s been there so long, I don’t know what it is. Time to get it out of the way. Summer cleaning is how teachers think. We don’t Spring Clean. There’s no time. Summer is when our brains like to get rid of stuff and reorganize and move stuff around.

So that’s on the list. Even starting now, I think. I can’t iron fabrics for the next quilt without some major cleaning in here.

I’ve had some conversations about smaller quilts I can make for sale this summer. I don’t want to do all cats, but I will do some. I’m thinking of a different owl and maybe a raven…and possibly one like the cancer donation quilt I did with the hands and the heart, but simpler. So I’m finalizing all that in my head and figuring out how to fit in at least three major quilts between now and the end of September. Ha! Wow. Crazy much?

Honestly, though, I’m kind of looking forward to putting some sort of plan together for summer work on quilts. It helps school feel less crazy. It helps quiet nights at home seem less lonely. It helps with the frustration of my job. It helps temper the teenaged mutant attitudinal beast who is currently on my couch, bitching about everything I say or do (walking away, my sweet. I love you, but I’m not in the mood). I’m crying at the drop of a hat these days, stupid hormones. Fuck. Going to draw today. Seriously. They’re whirring about in my head, causing strife and stress and nausea (oh wait, those are the hormones, right?). My photographer gave me some really positive comments about the quilts I dropped off…not that I didn’t like them, but I keep having this discussion about pretty versus significant. I prefer the latter. Most people like the former. I have to find the happy place between them for the stuff that sells easily and then keep making the big stinky stuff to keep me sane. Like sanity is my strong point! Whatever.

This mood. Sheeit. Dammit brain, I finished all this stuff. Would you back off for a bit? Sigh. We can engineer bridges, put humans in space for months on end, we know how to replace a lens in an eyeball without stitches, but we can’t find an acceptable treatment for menopausal crap? This world we live in. Don’t tell me it’s equal. It’s not.

An Hour a Day

Things that are good right now. Right this second. The dog is sound asleep behind my chair and is not eating the girlchild’s underwear. I am only teaching Punnett squares for about three more days and then I am done done done with the stuff that is apparently so hard we can’t do it. I had an awesome book club meeting last night and a long talk with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. I have another social meeting tonight. Grades are done. I think I have uploaded every stupid-ass document Cornell needs onto the financial aid system. The boychild is coming home in less than two weeks. It’s supposed to rain. There are leftovers in the fridge for my lunch today. Google Classroom finally updated so I can grade assignments from my iPad. I’m wearing jeans to work today (this after a long work dress code discussion at book club last night). My foot hurts but it’s not a broken bone. I already had an ankle brace in my stash. I still like Cheerios for breakfast after some 48 years of eating them. Two of my quilts are traveling with the People and Portraits exhibit, and now they will be at all four AQS Quilt Weeks in 2016.

Deep breath. See. That’s all ok.

I had book club last night. This is a group of smart geeky women, the two oldest besides me are a good 10 years younger than me, but they are accepting and funny and sarcastic and intelligent. Some of the best conversations I have some months are at these meetings, no matter what the book is (we panned the book…Mass Midnight by F. Paul Wilson…lousy dialogue, messed up the story, didn’t even make sense at one point, not pleased with how they dealt with anything, except that the vampires didn’t get all sexy or sparkly). I don’t make it to all of them, because of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but I do have a good time when I go. I had a long conversation afterwards with a friend there, and it got me home and dinnerfied late (thanks to the girlchild for making dinner), but I did manage to get off the couch and do art. I almost always manage to do that. I’m not a couch sitter really. I’m usually grading papers (did that yesterday too) or sewing or cutting stuff out or drawing if I’m on the couch. Girlchild’s new TV obsession is SVU, of all things. Kind of a mental shock for her to go from weeks of watching Friends (which almost drove me bonkers) to the Law and Order offshoots. I suggested she start with L&O and she just looked at me like I was crazy. She finished the second AP test yesterday, so she’s a little braindead.

So I traced…

Only for about an hour. That’s the key. I think some people are like, well, I’m not going to get very much done, plus it’s late, and then they never get up. I regularly do about an hour a night, or try to anyway, and when I have more time (and energy, honestly), I do more. I can do almost 4 hours in a good night, but that’s rare, except on weekends and vacations. But an hour a day is 365 hours you didn’t spend on art before. An hour a day when you figure about 7 hours to trace all the Wonder Under for this quilt? That’s a week. That’s nothing. And I wasn’t always this good at it. I had to push myself to get here. I used to put it on my calendar, just like I did the blog writing. And then it became habit. And now, I have to be sick or out of town to not be making art, and even then, I’m probably drawing with the latter.

Which reminds me, driving to the book club venue last night, a drawing related to the Barton thing I showed you yesterday popped into my head. Like BING! And it’s still there, because I didn’t draw it last night. Aargh. I need a full day just of drawing I think.

So 4 1/2 hours in, I’m 400 pieces in as well. Only a couple hundred pieces to go. I’m feeling better about this piece. Progress. It helps.

Keep doing the work. Keep getting up off the couch.