So my original plan of getting all the fabric picked for the Women at War quilt did not happen. That whole watching-soccer and planning-for-school thing just kicked my butt. Plus digging holes and trimming dead branches off trees. And maybe sleeping. But only a little. Sleep is still not my friend.
But I’m not giving up. I set these goals to keep me on track. Like writing…I am still trying to do some every day; I’m just not worried about hitting a word limit every day any more.
This is what my NaNoWriMo graph looked like…
I was pretty consistent. I’m happy with what I did.
Then Saturday night, after late-afternoon soccer, I started ironing again…here’s the 4 different flesh piles I had…
Because this quilt has more bodies in it than I think I’ve ever done. Well, maybe not. I have some with tiny bodies…but these are big…and there are about 9 of them. I think. Hard to tell, honestly, down in the pile. By the end of Saturday, this is what I had in the bin to cut out…
And these are the other fabrics I’d used besides the flesh tones.
And here’s the pie I had in the middle of all that…
So the last two nights, I kept ironing, trying to stay on top of it…
This is Sunday night…and honestly, I wanted to be done Sunday, and I wasn’t…
Here’s all the fabrics I’d used by then…not very colorful.
Lots of browns and a ton of flesh colors (which aren’t even in that pile). Here’s the box of pieces to be cut out (guess what I’ll be doing next?)…
Monday night, I laid them all out so I could see them…again, this is still without the flesh colors…when you realize the red, yellow, blue, and green pieces are little tiny pieces in the big picture, it really is a mostly brown and flesh-colored quilt.
I finally got to the main figure last night. Usually, I number so that the main figure gets cut out first. I don’t know why I did it differently this time. I only had this much of the lightest fabric…
I had to fussy iron the pieces on there…but I really wanted to use it. So I made it work.
As of last night, this is what’s left to iron.
Here’s the pile of fabrics I used for the main figure. That tiny pile on top is what’s left of that light fabric. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it…
Make a really tiny flesh thing. So it was after midnight when I finished cutting out all the flesh of the main figure. This is what was left…
The bones, hair, nipples, lungs, heart, bandolier, and bullets. Oh. And a gun. Fun stuff. I was too tired to deal with that many choices, so I left it for tonight. And it’s only Tuesday, so I’m two days late. Not so bad. I should set another goal now. I plan to have all the pieces cut out by (Kathryn, think this through…you have gym and a soccer game in the rain and a meeting and a hike)…let’s say Sunday night. Then I can iron it together next week and (holy crap, I was looking at my calendar and freaking out about how much time was left, and then I realized it was still on November. Damn.) start stitching down the following week, and get it quilted Christmas week. Right? Sure. No problem. We’ll see what that looks like in real life.
Saturday’s soccer…
was playing against the team whose coach is the same for my daughter’s high-school team. We’ve never liked him, so it was awesome when girlchild made the first goal against them…
And I think we went on to make 4 more…
I was grading papers. I also wrote some of the novel. It was not particularly warm.
Yes, we had soccer yet another day…
Girlchild is playing well, no back problems at all. She starts the high-school season this week.
So I’m going to be spending a lot of time freezing and/or wet on metal bleachers.
But it’s the last year of that, which is kind of weird. Guess that’s part of why I’m an emotional mess all the time. Oh yeah, well, and there’s other stuff. But whatever. I’m getting lots of art made. And entering more shows. And reading a lot. It could be worse. I could be holed up in bed and never taking a shower. You’re thankful I’m not like that. Hell, I’m thankful I’m not like that. I wish I could say that making all this art makes me feel better, but all I can say is in the moment, while I’m picking fabrics or drawing or stitching, in the moment, there is peace and some level of forgetfulness of all the shit, and that is a good thing.
So I never do these. But Virginia is a good person and has done a ton of work for cancer and for SAQA and she asked nicely. I am excited to be an invited artist for “The 100,” to be held Wednesday, February 4, 2015. The goal for this fiber fundraiser for the American Cancer Society is to raise $10,000 in one day. My job is to make one piece of art and to persuade at least one of you to donate $100 on February 4. You will get an original piece of art (randomly assigned) from one of The 100 (100 artists who agreed to be a part of this).
I am sure you want to be one of the exclusive 100 patrons who will receive an artwork from one of the 100 extraordinary international fiber artists. Hell, I want to be a patron (hmmm…send kid to college? Or buy more art. It’s a tough one.).
Fiberart for a Cause has already raised $240,000 through the generosity of fiber artists and patrons.
I will be showing you what I’m making here on the website (as soon as I finish the one that has to be done by January 1). You’ve seen me do the birds in the last year; that’s about the size we’re looking at…at least 8×10 (and I can’t work that small). My internal debate, which is yet to be resolved, is whether to do a nude or not? Because I know that not all of the 100 patrons will be pro-nudity, but then again, it’s what I’m known for. I’m not sure how many of y’all want a uterus hanging on the wall, though. So yeah. My brain is leaning towards a nice, cute, furry or feathery animal.
But then the rebel-bitch in me wants to do a giant boob.
So there we are. Click on through, check out the artists, consider how cancer has affected you, and decide whether it’s worth the crazy risk to get a cool piece of art that you didn’t get to choose yourself. It’s kinda cool.
So yeah, I’m back. I’ve actually been here all along, but as I’m sure you realize, that whole holiday-with-family thing kind of eats up your free time. So I sleep even less. And at 1:30 AM, I’m not willing to START writing a blogpost. And mornings have been fraught. So here’s what happened.
On Wednesday, I spent a lot of time cutting out Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is for a theme of Women at War, with interpretation pretty open as to what that meant. I’ve felt like other people have been coming after my uterus and everything within and around for quite a while, despite some nice-guy misogynists telling me I was imagining it. I mean, what the fuck do you know as a privileged rich white man? Best thing you can do as a man? Admit that you mostly don’t have a fucking clue what it’s like to be a woman. You might have an inkling, but otherwise: Not inside, biologically, with periods and pregnancy and mood swings and menopause; not outside, trying to walk somewhere in public, dating, safety, being perceived as an object, wearing the wrong thing, whether you’re showing stuff off or not, it’s always wrong. Not breastfeeding, not being the mom, not with society’s expectations. I’m not saying being a man doesn’t have similar issues; I just think there are more “acceptable” options for men (in terms of what society believes). And I full-on admit I don’t understand what it’s like to be a man. Some men have some of a clue, but mostly it seems not. The better men are understanding even when they don’t understand.
So the drawing was full of all these stereotypes and yet she stands tall on a pile of men. Because every man came from a woman, y’all.
Anyway, my rampant feminism aside, I need to get the quilt done in the next…um…5 weeks. Yup. So speedy mode. Midnight? Not helping…
Licking my elbow does not help me. This might even have been the night before. It looks awfully dark. It is! It’s Tuesday night. I sit on the couch and watch all the stuff I have saved on Tivo…
If girlchild is still awake, I have to watch her stuff. Some of her stuff is also my stuff…top box is pieces, bottom box is trash…in case I drop pieces in it (which I often do).
In the late afternoon (because I had to run a thousand errands), I managed to finish cutting and sort them all into bins by 100s. This is a smaller quilt, so there’s only 8 bins! A miracle.
Of course, I also did the two birds that need to be done in December, so that was two more bins.
And then because this time of year isn’t crazy enough, girlchild and I hiked Iron Mountain in the dark with the group I often hike with.
She wanted to show she had conquered the mountain.
That night, I realized I would need to clean the office up a bit to be able to cut fabrics out. I hadn’t put everything away from last time (and honestly, it’s a disaster area in here anyway, because all my school stuff lives in here too). So I had drawers open that cats had slept in and fabric piled everywhere…
I like a fresh start. Plus I need that table cleared off because that’s where I put the Wonder Under pieces.
And one section of the floor, I think the cats had knocked a bunch of stuff down (they get a bit rambunctious sometimes), so I needed to clean that up. Finding floor space in here has been a priority this last month. Two feet at a time, people. Two square feet is all I ask.
I had a ton of fabric to put away, both from the last quilt and from Houston, so I started by stacking by color, because everything in here is stored by color, except for the ones where I can’t figure out what color it is.
That was about halfway through. There were some issues with storage. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I use…it is not enough.
And I found this from a million years ago, from an Ellen Anne Eddy class.
Hand-dyed silk velvet plus thread-painted fetus. You know, like you do. That may still be in here when I die.
So at that point, it was Thursday, and although girlchild does most of the cooking, that means I get stuck with the cleaning (and then she complains that she can’t find anything because I moved it…from the couch to her bedroom), and I also cook a few things and I constantly try to clean up in the kitchen, which drives her nuts, but I can’t stand having to do it all at once.
So this picture is about 10 minutes before dinner is served. She’s making gravy. The fire extinguisher is out because she spilled turkey juices on the stovetop and it got in the box where the controller things are (technical term) and short-circuited something, and for a few minutes, we had loud popping noises and big sparks and electrical fire smoke. So yeah. A typical Thanksgiving…
The wine? Well. Obvious. See fire extinguisher. Especially after loud pops and sparks. And no, it’s not fixed yet. It’s actually not top on my list at the moment. The rest of it works, I got everything cleared off of there because of the fire danger, and I have other things that are more pressing. No really, the sink is completely clogged and getting fixed this afternoon, so I can finally do all the dishes. THEN I will deal with the stove.
Thanksgiving was small this year…just my parents, me, the girlchild, and the ex…
Guess he has decided Brits can celebrate that holiday…food was good, of course…
She makes a mess in the kitchen, tries to set the house on fire, but it always tastes good.
And yes, we’re still eating it. Ex came over last night and took away two platefuls of food. Sent a bunch home with my parents as well. And then we realized girlchild wouldn’t be around next year to cook.
Shit. I think we’re going out. I do cook. I just don’t want to spend that much time cooking for so few people.
Or dogs. I don’t feed dogs people food. Dogs LIKE people food.
Oh yeah. Pie and pi. All good.
Once the food was all eaten and I had cleaned up as much as I could with a nonworking sink, I finished cleaning up the studio (ah, much better)…
Hung the new drawing where I could see it, assumed the background fabric I had would work, and started the next fabric-picking adventure…
I don’t know what YOU do when chock full of tryptophan. I told you I was a bit crazy.
I picked all the stuff on the bottom…
And then started thinking about the fleshy issues…a pile of 7 or 8 bodies that I need to be able to distinguish from each other? Need at least two sets of flesh runs…
Luckily, they’re pretty simple bodies, so I don’t need the usual run of 7 fabrics or so. Although on the right, that’s the run for the main female figure, I think. The stuff on the left was the first of the male bodies.
Friday morning dawned nice and clear, and soccer was first on the agenda…of course.
Girlchild decided to play for another team, because hers didn’t get into the tournament they wanted. Luckily, it’s local, because we have a game a day.
I graded papers (ah, back to reality) and watched her run around and score one goal…
They beat an Alaskan team 5-1. I’m sure that team was a little hampered by the over-80-degree weather. Then I came home and helped dad do some yard things and went and bought two trees with him to block off that big open space that has been there since April? March? Don’t even remember how long. I need to go out there today and dig holes and trim off dead stuff and be a responsible homeowner (my neighbors will be thrilled). And I went to the gym. See, this is where time goes. But at the gym, I wrote…yes, I’m still writing. The story’s still not done. And I finished my book (the one I was reading). And these were good things. And then I traced some more Wonder Under for another piece, a small one that’s been lying around for a good long while…
Of course, technically it has nudity in it, so it can’t go into any of the shows coming up that need smaller pieces. I’m tired of making things FOR something, though, even though I don’t mind the themes that I’ve been in…sometimes you just have to make the stuff you WANT to make. I’m getting a wave of that feeling coming on…strong. I traced this also because I was watching something on Netflix that I couldn’t watch in my studio and I wanted to finish the episode.
Anyway, then back to the studio…where I kept going on the pile of flesh…
Which is taking significantly more time than I usually take, mostly because it’s complicated to figure out what is overlapping where, and to make sure I have all the pieces for that body, and that the fabrics don’t overlap in the wrong way.
After 4 hours of ironing, I am barely in the 200s. The plus is I should finish the pile of bodies today, so it will go faster after that. I think. I hope. Because remember how I said I wanted to be done with the ironing by the time school starts again? And there are two more soccer games? Plus I have to plan for school, because hey, we do have to go back there, despite the scary adrenaline rush I get when I think about it? I calculated grades yesterday from the stuff I had graded so far after break. It’s possible I should just quit teaching right now. I’m an absolute failure.
Sigh. So. And on top of all this, I slammed my finger in the door and I keep reopening the wound (bandaids forever!), a Golden Retriever is currently trying to play ball with me, my kitchen looks like a hurricane hit it, and the fish at school has probably died because I keep forgetting to go over there and feed it. Girlchild has applied to her first college, boychild got food poisoning on Thanksgiving from something (he did not have turkey dinner), and I’ve been living on deviled eggs for three days (I’m not sure that’s a bad thing).
This time of year just kicks my ass. So I’m going to kick it back by making lots of art. Yup. You can’t stop me.
Here’s Aug(de)mented Reality 2…for some post-turkey amusement…
So. I’m officially on vacation. I traced Wonder Under Friday night for a little while, but I was exhausted and went to bed early, because I had a long hike early Saturday morning. I get up earlier for hikes than I do for school. It’s a little crazy. But it was a good hike (post later) and we went out to eat afterwards, which I almost never do, because you lose the whole day. But I could afford to lose the whole day because I have a whole week of them off. Anyway. It was good. And I came home and tried to function, but the body and brain were old and tired. Eventually, after the second or third cup of tea and some reading of the book club selection that I had to be done with by today (there’s nothing like leaving it until the last minute), I got up and started tracing Wonder Under again…
The fun part (wait, put “fun” in quotes) about tracing this section is that it’s a pile of bodies that are all overlapping, and although I might have tried to be logical about numbering them in the first place, that logic has now left the building, and I am often staring at the pile, trying to find the next piece in number order. Piece 225 took like 10 minutes to find. I don’t know what I was thinking. So the almost-200 pieces in the pile took forever to trace. But I wasn’t going to give up. I wanted it done, so that when I came back to tracing today, it would be straightforward and relatively easy.
The thing is, that pile is gonna kick my ass when I have to pick fabrics out, because overlapping and random behind spaces and I don’t even know what parts go with what body in half of it. Yeah. Way to fuck with yourself, Kathryn. I guess I like a good challenge.
So I’m 4 hours into the tracing and only at piece 287 or so. Like I said, it was a bitch. I have about 5 hours left, I’m guessing, and I’d like to be done today. No really. I would. That might not be realistic though because I still have to go grocery shopping and to book club and to dinner at my parents’ house. Hmn. Are there 5 hours LEFT after all that? So much for vacations, right? That’s why you’re supposed to GO somewhere, so you can relax and stop doing all that other stuff. Then again, I don’t really do anything else right…why start with doing vacations right? It’s a stay-at-home vacation because I can’t afford anything else. I would have loved to have taken the girlchild to NYC, met the boychild there, hung out, got an AirBnB apartment, checked out the city. It would have been cool. It would have been $1500 I don’t have right now. Especially with college apps coming up again.
So we’re here in lovely San Diego, soccer tournament, practices, a couple of hikes, dinner with the close family on Tday. And lots of artmaking. So my plan is to have all the Wonder Under ironed to fabric in a week. Because then school starts back up again and that 3-week stretch notoriously kicks my butt. And then I have vacation again, but only about a week and a half before this next quilt has to be done. So yeah. I need to work hard. Like usual. Like what the fuck is new about that? This is my life. It’s a continuous hard-work endeavor. I’m not always entirely sure what I get out of that. People tell me the art is cool, amazing, etc., but then I just make more of it. I don’t know if there’s a reason for it, except that I’m incredibly unhappy when I don’t make it. And there’s enough of that feeling in my life…I don’t need to make more of it. There must be a better balance though.
I did take time out to finish the book for book club. It must have been cold last night because (1) I was wearing polar fleece in the house (lots of windows behind the light table) and (2) the bitchy old-lady cat was in the living room, curled up tight next to me.
Which was fine. Notice the pile of dirty clothes on the floor? Girlchild has some cleaning to do. I’m tired of the slob factor. That’s one goal for this vacation…get the mess under control, at least enough to get me through December.
I wanted to show you where I normally write…
Yup. The computer. The computer desk is a mess. The chair has been scratched all to hell by bitchy cat, who often is sitting on the chair (you can see the top of her head in the picture). Right now, she’s not, but that’s because morning winter sun is over THERE on the table, so she’s curled up over there. Thank god. I can actually sit properly. I’m over 42,000 words on the novel, and I will easily hit 50,000 by Thanksgiving. I’m hoping to keep the momentum going and get to the end, whatever that is, by the end of the year or earlier. I’ve already decided no sequel. So I’m writing it that way. I guess I always knew I would. I do have another book started in my head though. Different story, different characters, different location. Still sci-fi though. Not sure what’s up with that.
Here’s Luana Rubin’s review of the two SAQA exhibits at Houston this year…she mentions my piece.
Someday I’ll meet her in person and tell her how to pronounce my name. Or maybe you could do that for me.
Some kind of crazy happened yesterday. I mean, there’s the regular crazy of my job, but then I came home right after work and sat down with a cup of tea and finished the drawing (it took 13 minutes to finish it, by the way, but probably 6 hours to decide how to finish it in 13 minutes). My car tire was having inflation issues again, so I knew I needed to get it some air, but I went to the copy place first and enlarged the drawing, then filled the car with air and gas, then went home and started taping the drawing together. I realized it needed more space below as well as above (I knew about above…there were some leaf-fitting issues…nothing major), so I taped more paper above and below. Girlchild came home and left with the dog. I seriously only see her (girlchild) for like 10-minute sessions, and then she’s gone again. Or I’m gone. Or we’re both gone. And I sort of realized that if I was going to get to quilt class on time, I wasn’t going to be able to finish drawing at the house. So I packed up all the stuff to trace Wonder Under, and I even dropped off my library book on the way there, and I got there and drew the bottom, which I didn’t even know was going to happen until it happened. This is how life is when you let the creative brain have free rein (or is that reign? I could argue both at the moment)…it just does stuff and doesn’t tell you about it. Wow. Just like my relationships. Ha!
Anyway. On track, Kathryn. So then I started numbering, and because of the bizarre penis pileup I have going on in the bottom, it took for-freakin-ever to number that section…
(OK, it’s just a pile of men, not penises) I was trying to be logical about it, but it turns out, you can’t be particularly logical about chaos. I had about 280 pieces numbered when I finished the pile, so I asked the other quilters at my meeting to hazard a guess as to my total pieces. Susan came in at 1500, Jean at 957, Mary at 1267, and Barbara at 850 (mostly because I kept saying it better NOT be over a thousand, but by then, she could see I was up to 400 and something and she was estimating beyond that. So maybe she had insider information by sitting next to me).
So I ended up getting to 749 (oh thank god…I might actually be able to finish it in time)…
But then when I got home (because it took me two hours to finish drawing and then number the piece, speaking of not being particularly efficient), I realized I hadn’t numbered the bullet thingie on her chest, which surely has a real name. Let me ask The Google. Holy crap! It IS a bandolier. I thought it was, and then I thought NOOO. That’s like something fancier than that, like something you wear when you dance or something. Yeah. Anyway. I numbered that and got to 768. Totally doable (crazy ass bitch. Are you NUTS?).
Meanwhile, I did write once I got back. I really wanted to start tracing Wonder Under, but I’m being really good about writing every day, so I did that first. I’m over 38,000 words. I will finish Thanksgiving Day (with the 50,000…probably not with the book) at this rate, which is kinda cool. It’s nice to know I can do it if I have to. I got stymied by some DNA testing terminology, so I just flagged it for future research. Googling stuff like “What’s that thing called when the DNA gets spread out and makes pretty pictures” is not particularly useful when you’re already tired. And it’s not worth spending hours trying to figure out right now.
Then finally…finally I was allowed to go back to the drawing…
Which turned out being bigger than I had planned…as usual. But I think it’ll be OK. It’s longer, but not wider, and wide is the issue in a small gallery. It’s 27″ wide by 45″ high, which is smaller than anything I’ve done for a while. Which is good. Because I only have 6 weeks. I think. Don’t think about it.
Those flying hearts showed up again…
I like them. At the moment. Don’t know why. A metaphor for where I’m at? Who knows. And DNA hand is back.
I didn’t trace a lot or for super long, because it was getting late, but I’m starting! So I think I’m ahead of where I planned to be. Or maybe I’m right where I planned to be. Hard to say.
Hey. Shhh. Over here. C’mere. Hey. (It’s done. The quilt. I finished it. Really. I did.)
Sigh. Started numbered the drawing September 6. That’s the first official time I take usually; sometimes I keep track of the taping, if it seems bad, but this one got taped and then drawn on the full-size, and I don’t keep track of drawing time. Finished November 17. I guess you could argue finished November 18, because it was after midnight, but I don’t consider it the next day until I’ve gone to sleep and woken up again. Completely arbitrary? Well yeah. I got a late start on the binding yesterday, because I had to meet the girlchild at the sports store to buy her soccer gear after school. I got home (completely exhausted by then) and decided (because I was braindead with exhaustion) that I should paint right away. Something about the paint drying before I started sewing and having more brain power then than later, for some quantity of “MORE”.
The real problem with the painting is that I have a ton of fabric paints, but most of them have dried up, being old, and I really should open every jar and toss anything that’s unusable. But if I had done that, I wouldn’t have been able to paint last night…so I didn’t.
I managed to mix something very close to the lighter color of the briefcase. Took me a while to get it, but I did.
I never took a picture of the bleed through, which is too bad, because it was pretty bad there. Less so in other places. (Must train self to wash with Retayne) Just trust me…there was a swath of blue across the light brown…
And now there isn’t. What a relief.
I used colored pencils and a little bit of paint on a couple other bits that had issues…
But otherwise, I left it there to dry while I moved money and calculated college costs, then cooked dinner and texted the boychild back and forth for an hour. He has snow on and off and ice and cold and rain and cold. Frozen hair (he has a lot of hair). I send him videos of his cat being a brat and he sends pictures of puppies and kittens and long dense sentences out of his essays that I then have to try to make sense of out of context.
Then I wrote a few thousand words where my main character communes with her bad plant self.
And then I sewed binding, poking holes in my fingers again. I don’t do well with thimbles. Put them on and then avoid that finger. It’s like my brain thinks there’s something wrong with the thimbled finger and tries to protect it, so it uses another finger. I debated whether I could finish last night…I had one whole short side, most of a long side, and then two sleeves.
I had one of my trusty companions.
There was another one, but she kept licking the stitching hand, so she got pushed off. I sewed for almost two hours and it was done. Please don’t ask when I went to sleep. It was entirely too late. It probably shows in my face today. But I’m done. Deep breath. I’ll have to total the hours later, because I have a parent meeting this morning. But the trimming and binding was almost 8 hours total and there was about an hour of painting and coloring. Not a small number of hours…and basically I did it in a little over 2 months. During the school year. Yup. Crazy. My hand is sore this morning from the sewing.
The next one? I only have 6 weeks. Ha! But I also have 3 weeks of vacation in that time, so I’m hoping that helps. And it needs to be smaller. So I should probably draw fewer pieces. I’m already at war in my head with this one (ironic, since it’s for a show about women and war). Drawing tonight hopefully. Also need to dehair and pack quilt for photographer…see, if you set up the photo appointment, then you HAVE to finish it. Minor issue: it has no name. I had one pop into my head just now, but I don’t know if I like it. And the boychild would argue it only deals with the traditional genders, which is true. I wasn’t having trans v cis issues, just the standard man v woman in society issues. There are two blogposts on this that I’ve been writing on and off for months. Maybe they will surface in the next week, along with my report from Houston. Maybe.
So I entered this art show recently that wanted me to categorize my art as fiber, textile, or weaving. OK. Well, I know it’s not weaving, because I’m not fucking weaving anything. There’s no under over under over bam bam bam (I grew up with a weaver. That sound is embedded in my brain. Try watching TV with a weaver in the room.). That said, the fabric is woven. Technicality. Now I usually call myself a fiber artist if I’m not calling myself a quilt artist, because I use the methodology and techniques of quilting, but then people get their gramma’s quilts in their heads and what I do just makes their brains explode, so I call myself a fiber artist because it gives me some distance from gramma. But sometimes when I say that to people outside the fabric world, they think I mean the fiber you eat that cleans out your colon, and I’m like YES, THAT kind of Fiber. I make art with Metamucil. Yup. So then you say you’re a textile artist, but I’m not sure that’s a whole lot better, because what the fuck does that MEAN? So I ask my daughter, and she says, “Call yourself what you like.” Wow. I raised that child, didn’t I? So I start looking up the definition of fiber, which seems wrong, except in a holistic sense, more like thread, so if I were a basketweaver or a knotter maybe, so I look up textile, and it says something about weaving fibers, and fuck. I don’t freakin’ know which these are and then I wonder if I should even be ENTERING, but the description definitely says anything using textile materials or techniques, and before I run around the house ripping my clothes off and RENDING them into materials I can use in my next quilt, screaming, and rolling myself into a tiny urine-soaked ball in the corner of my incredibly messy studio that definitely needs cleaning, I click TEXTILE on all of them and thus define myself for the rest of my life.
Or not. Really. It’s hard to say. Probably I shouldn’t be allowed out though.
So. The good news is that I FINISHED QUILTING. Fuck me. I am relieved. And saddened. But I think the saddened is mostly unrelated hormones, so ignore it.
I had guessed 15 hours, but that was before some psychotic bitch took over my brain and made me do teeny tiny squiggles all over the background, so I clocked in at 17 1/2 hours instead. Yup. Two point five hours of squiggling. And last night, when I looked at the clock and said, Fuck yeah, I can do it and who the fuck needs sleep anyway? Well, then the thread broke and the bobbin thread ran out and the thread broke again and I just continued to bully through until it was done. And that was the 2.5 hours right there.
Back only. You wanna see the whole thing? Come to the opening in January at Visions Art Museum. Or hang out here until then. I’ll post it then. I promise. It’s kinda cool. Now I gotta draw the next one. Cuz I’m starting it! Like NOW! Because I keep saying yes to things and at some point that means I have to do the things I said yes to.
Sigh.
And in the hopes of continuing to drag my depressoid brain (thank you, thyroid, for being a stingy asshole) out of the mud and into something like a life, I went over 25,000 words on NaNoWriMo yesterday…which means I’m over 50,000 words for the whole book. Halfway done with both, really. And what was weird was that I just started writing and she fainted. And I didn’t even realize she was GOING to faint. It just happened, and then I thought, why is she fainting? And that answer came too, and it was part of the story, an additional point in the plot, foreshadowing leading up to tomorrow’s action, tomorrow not being today or Saturday, but tomorrow in the story, which is now today, because I got to today in the story. Confused? This is why I have comments telling me in the story what day it is, because Saturday lasted for about 40 pages. Sunday was not as long. There was more sleeping and less action. As there SHOULD be on a Sunday, right? Today is a Monday, and Mondays suck. So this one will suck too.
I haven’t actually decided whether there is a happy ending. I think there is not. I know there is no sequel. So I think it is not. Maybe it is a hopeful ending, but maybe it is an ending where a dozen young women send me hateful contact email about how I killed off their favorite person ever. (see Divergent. She had to die guys. Oops. Spoiler.)
Because that’s how I roll. Crazy. I know.
Binding on tonight. Seriously. It has to. And then I start hand-sewing it, because this thing has to be done. Which means Sunday morning, I need to figure a way to deal with where the blue batik bled. Although it’s minor on most of it, there’s one place that’s bad. It’s OK. I have a plan. Sort of. I am trained for these maneuvers. I have the technology. (Technology just means tools, by the way. Someone told me that. Tools. I got ’em.)
Boychild is texting me about Cambodia and snow! Snow! Not here. No, he’s not in Cambodia. He’s in New York. Here we have drizzle. Well, we HAD drizzle. And my feet are cold (thyroid) and I need to switch the bed over to flannel (thyroid) and there’s a shitload of things I have to get done this weekend around the two school-related things I’m doing that are totally eating up the whole weekend anyway, so there (job that takes over life). And girlchild wanted me to drop her off at the other high school for the Magic Mountain trip at…GET THIS…4:30 AM. Really? Because I probably just went to bed. I think I’d rather have her leave her car there all day and have it stolen (because it probably would be) than do that.
At least you don’t have to listen to me complain about the quilting any more.
Holy crappity fuck fuck, how long is this damn quilting going to take. I think I only have this much left (holding hands out like a medium-sized fish to be caught, if I gave a shit about catching fish), but that space seems to stretch out like a hallway you’re running down in a nightmare where a monster is chasing your ass as you zigzag to avoid its damn sharply tipped claws, trying to keep your gluteus maximus whole and unscathed. I did replace the damn thread with the correct weight. Some dumbass put the wrong spools back in the wrong place. I didn’t even realize there were two weights at JoAnn’s, already my personal hellhole, but now I know. One more stupid thing I have to keep in my head. So when we were at the store, we moved all the spools in the wrong place, so some other clueless fuck wouldn’t be stymied like I was.
Here’s where I admit that I’m not finishing this thing tonight. I wanted to. I thought I could. I need another two hours I think, and I don’t have two hours tonight.
That was last night. I gave up. I was tired. It had been a very long day of meetings and racing around prepping for a sub today (I still have to go in early, because I forgot to do two things that are kinda major) and dealing with squealy kids and sheep hearts and then a union meeting and dinner out. By the end, I had a little energy left to start stuff and sorta sew, but then it all wandered off and left me sitting in a chair, barely mobile. Not even enough energy to get OUT of the chair and go to bed. Mighta been that cat paw, claws hooked, on my leg. Mighta been the rest of the room, chaotic, begging to be cleaned up, not understanding why I never get around to it.
Things always take way longer than you think they will. Unless they don’t.
All piled up at the end of the day. Defeated by a pile of fabric…
OK, not defeated really. Sort of. I can’t buy just binding apparently…
The one black and white one on the right is skateboarding skeletons. Seriously. I have a skelly issue. Wouldn’t it have been nice if I had taken a picture of it? Maybe tonight.
One of these is the binding (I went through dark blues, lighter blues, red, greens, and finally got to brown…I hope it works)…and one is for the next quilt. Maybe. It’s a good background fabric anyway. It will get used.
Not that I needed to buy more fabric really. The never-ending palette. Being a painter is probably easier…you can just mix your colors. I need to own each color.
OK, I need to go to school and I’m not really coherent anyway. I’m coping, trying to achieve something, trying to keep the head above water as chaos envelops me. Want to be more organized or something, but I’m a pantser. I’m a fairly organized pantser, but a pantser nonetheless. Wow. There are some interesting definitions of pantser…I’m the writing one…not the others. The others are just creepster.
Yes. I wrote yesterday. I’m still doing that crazy thang.
I ran out of time. You’d think with a 4-day weekend, it wouldn’t be possible for me to run out of time, but when you spend 20 hours or so grading, plus a hike, plus trying to plan for the week when you have a sub one day, and all the new class changes with the new trimester…it’s not surprising. It’s just frustrating. At 11:20 last night, I was folding fabric (I did manage to buy the binding fabric yesterday, even though I couldn’t get to the point where I was putting it on, which is where I was SUPPOSED to be yesterday). I did not try to continue quilting after that for a variety of reasons…first of all, I have the wrong thread. I went out to the store to get more yesterday morning (after they drew blood from two different places, thank you very much, yes, I drank my bottle of water…that’s why I’m going to pee on your seat in a minute if you don’t get on with it.). I had the number of the color, but apparently they are now selling two different weights? And I didn’t notice? And I got the wrong one? And it’s super fine (and I don’t mean that in the 70s way), so it’s breaking all the time (rhyme that: super fine, breaking all the time…nice, eh?), plus I don’t know if I can tell the difference on the quilt or not, but FUCK.
So I was doing all these tiny little squiggles (OK, I know they could be tinier, but they’re pretty damn small and very time-consuming…my fault of course).
And really, I’m pretty close to done, being up in the tree section. But NOT done. And today is a bitch. It will be a bitch. There will be very little time in which it will not be a bitch (do not predict bitchiness. Predict Lack of Time. I predict Lack of Time, which may lead to bitchiness on my part AND the day’s part, but I cannot predict that. Maybe someone will bring me a donut and that will reduce said bitchiness. Ha! That’s not enough. I think someone has to come hand me a winning lottery ticket for said bitchiness to be truly removed.). Fucking big-ass giant sigh of frustration.
WANT TO FINISH QUILTING.
I don’t want to go to school. I want to finish this. But I’m a big girl, so I will do my job…which today involves sheep hearts. MMM MMM GOOD.
Cats are no help.
Yes, she’s lying ON the quilt while I’m quilting, and complaining as I move it. Although they do answer when I talk to them. Saw girlchild for maybe 2.1 minutes yesterday. Said maybe 10 words to me. I talked to my ex more than her. Hell, I think I talked to the ladies at the quilt shop more (they wanted to see my quilt, I warned them about the nudity, they hesitated, said something about “in the name of art”. Not sure if theirs was a positive response…whatevs. I’m not doing it for the likes of you.).
Frustration. I’m running out of time. I need to get this thing done and to the photographer and I need to start the next one. The have-tos are starting to pile up. This one is done. Essentially. I think that’s the problem. In my head, it’s done. Why isn’t it REALLY done? Damn reality check.
OK, so I’m mood-managing this week. Turns out (after lame-ass blood withdrawal yesterday) that my thyroid is yet again out of whack, and I have like ALL the symptoms. Blame my crazy moods on that stupid nonfunctioning organ in my neck. Doctor in two weeks. Then she can fix THAT, and my elbow and my toenail and maybe my life, because that’s a giant clusterfuck. Is there a prescription for that?
PROS: NaNoWriMo. I rock baby. See, I can do one thing right. I’m over 21,000 words. I wrote another 2400 yesterday…got on a roll. Started on the bike, did a little on the elliptical (harder to type on the elliptical), came home and did more while dinner was cooking, and then while I was eating, holy crap, it just spilled on out of me. And the first kidnapping has happened, which leads up to the second death (well, really, there were 8 other deaths, but that’s different…they happened before the story started). I’d really like to do one of the write-ins that are local, but I can’t fit one into my crazy schedule. All the flash write-ins are on Sundays, and I don’t have a clear Sunday ever apparently. The night ones that I could go to are all far away, like La Jolla. Ugh. Long way to drive to write. And maybe writing in public ain’t my thing (except now I’ve done it in meetings, at the gym, in an airport). So whatever. The story progresses. There might even be an ending in my head at some point. You never know.
Speaking of endings. This. It needs to end so I can go to school and make seating charts. Because I live for that moment. Yup. I do.
I talked to three people yesterday. One of them was the guy who held the door open at the gym for me. I said thank you. The other two were a student and his mom, who met me at school, because he apparently hadn’t turned his journal in and I had missed it (I really thought I had caught everyone, but he’s a sneaky guy). Well, until the girlchild came home from Disneyland at 11 PM, but she was really cranky and didn’t want to talk much, just complain about whether I had the lights on or not (I do need light in order to walk down the hallway without killing myself, especially since she keeps leaving things IN the hallway for me to kill myself on). And I talked to the dog and three cats. Pretty exciting.
I graded my butt off until around noon. Then went to the gym and then to school to pick up the journal from that kid. Finished grades around 5:30 PM and started cleaning out this one section of my office that has been getting worse and worse. Basically, it was a pile of random shit that had fallen over and then been piled on again, and cats had knocked stuff over and spiders were living in there. Yes, I probably should have taken photos, but I decided to just get in there and clean it. That was good. Now I have 17 other sections of the house that need the same level of attention. It took about an hour to deal with this one section, about 2 feet square.
Giant ass sigh.
It’s a move in the right direction. Then, after procrastinating all day (yes, I clean to procrastinate), I finally started quilting again.
Tiny little squiggles. Sigh. Lots of them. My left elbow is bugging me again. I stopped lifting weights because I thought that was the problem, and it may be part of the problem, but it’s certainly not the whole problem. Tendonitis, yes, and I have a doctor’s appointment right before Thanksgiving, so I’ll bug her for more physical therapy appointments, because I used up my allotted amount for the year on my knee. My question is does the number of PT appointments per year go up as you age? Because maybe it should.
I got a couple of hours in. Not as much as I wanted, but then I thought I was further along in the grading and would have more of the day. I do have most of today.
I need to buy more thread though (did that). This is the back. And I need to get the binding fabric. And my car is having an issue that might be nothing and might be an alternator or battery. I’m trying to decide whether to be proactive and take it in or just ignore it until it’s a real issue. Really mature way to deal with life, eh?
Ugh. This week. I’m not allowed to say or think that it will suck until I have experienced it (thank you, counselor), but ugh. One day at a time. Except I can’t do that, because I have to plan. So I’m trying to plan without thinking about how the days will actually go. Difficult to do. Especially when you experience a sinking feeling just by typing out the instructions for your guest teacher. Dammit. I hate being out this much, but I don’t have a choice.
I really was writing my book on the stationary bike and the elliptical yesterday at the gym. I wrote a whopping 2800 words yesterday. I didn’t mean to; it just happened. I’m over 19,000 words at this point, and totally keeping up with the plan to finish on time.
Girlchild petting Babygirl, who was very demanding yesterday.
Oh dear. Am I the only one wondering why the parents don’t just grab their baby in their beak and fly them down from the nest? Don’t panic…there is a happy ending (I got very worried at one point)…
Yup. Need to go quilt. Fighting a really down mood. Tell it to shut up. At some point, depression just gets old. Don’t think about the crap that makes you depressed. Look at clean area of floor that was not clean yesterday. Smile. Then quilt. Forced smile. Yeah, sometimes when I smile and don’t really mean it, it scares people.
Kathy Nida 