Drawing Should Fit in Somewhere

I should plan better. I should not stay up late the night before I’m doing a lab in class where I have to keep them from sucking chemicals into their mouths. And then go to a long union meeting. And then home for about 40 minutes, where I try to persuade a semi-depressed Golden Retriever to eat. She eats Just Fine at my ex’s house. It’s only here (same food) that she refuses to eat and stares up at me with those doleful eyes, making me feel like a heel for leaving again. To go to book club, where I’m only 23% into the book and I’ll probably finish it, but only because everyone is saying how wonderful it is and I totally should just bully through the first third to get to the good stuff. Um. OK. Another 10.3% is what you’re saying? Of an 800-page book. Whatever.

So tired was I last night that I sat on the couch, and then laid down on the couch, and then took a short nap. Not a long nap, because cat and Golden Retriever, but maybe 10 minutes at about 9 PM, which is earlier than I ever leave book club. I wasn’t in the mood. Usually I come out of there really up and excited and invigorated to be with my people, even though they’re all significantly younger than I am. They’re still geek girls. Just not in the mood.

That said, after the nap, I came in here and stared at the quilt top, which is looking pretty fine, and remembered I was missing a fingernail and a finger wrinkle…I thought. I made a new fingernail and then tried to find the missing finger wrinkle, but apparently I had already fixed that little problem. So I started to stitch it down…

Stitching it down is a very meditative process, because basically my brain is saying, “Stitch there, now don’t forget that piece, go back and stitch it down, and then to get to the next section, go that way, and then stitch there,” so there’s really no room for other crap, except when I was really depressed and the other crap was screaming at the top of its lungs. Now it’s more low level, so I just ignore it and let my brain move my hands move the fabric move the foot until I look up at the clock and go, oh shit, I can’t stay up super late again because I was tired. Wasn’t I tired? Well, I’m still tired, but not like I was on the couch.

I stitched all the legs and the rug and the beautiful twat (thanks Sion) and the lower torso. I somehow lost the bellybutton or maybe there never was one? That doesn’t make sense. There’s always a bellybutton. So it’s here on the floor somewhere, who knows where. I cut a new one. Maybe it’s not as fancy as the other one (one piece instead of two…yes, my bellybuttons are usually two pieces), but it will do. And then I headed down one of the arms and found I was missing another fingernail, but I think that’s another case of something falling off, unfortunately, which occasionally happens. I didn’t do the best damn job of ironing everything down at 1 AM on Tuesday night. Shockingly.

Two hours in…at least another two…maybe three…to go. Tonight hopefully. Still trying to stay on track.

I finished the baby quilt. At some point will get a picture of it. There was a joke going around that the baby couldn’t come until I was done, so Tuesday night, I texted the mom to say I had finished. An hour later, she texted that her water broke. Baby was born Wednesday morning. This is a superpower I don’t need, so don’t tell anyone.

All I really wanted to do last night was draw, though. I felt it on the way to work. While I was at lunch. During the lab, when I was very busy, I could hear art brain complaining. During the union meeting. On the way to book club. It had subsided by the time I got home, or I think I would have drawn instead of sewn. Sewing was easier. Fewer brain cells needed to be employed. But drawing should fit in somewhere. Sometime. Will have to think that through.

Weekends are…

Well. Yeah. Weekends…are made…not for Michelob. But for relaxing. I hear. I apparently don’t practice relaxation well. And I wanted to draw, but that didn’t happen. Long story on that one, but just so you know, if you’re out in a bar or restaurant with me, I don’t usually draw unless I know you pretty well…because you’re gonna want to watch, and then I can’t draw because you’re watching. So yeah. I didn’t draw. I wanted to. In fact, last night, I wanted to dump all the hours of work that needed doing and draw then too. But I didn’t. I feel really buried by work at the moment, and the only way to deal with that is to get some of it done in some sort of power rush of grading and organization. And then I can relax a bit again until I have to do it all over again.

So Saturday was full of work, freelance and school. I guess I am now a semi-expert at converting doc to epub…semi-expert because there are always new problems that will pop up. It’s the one thing I learned from working in publishing…no matter what you think you know how to do, the next project will bring you something you don’t know how to do. Anyway, so there was that. And then grading papers and assignments…lots of that. But sometime in the late afternoon, I finally got the binding on the baby quilt…which I’ll post below (baby hasn’t been born as of yesterday afternoon, so I’m still good…although I’m still hand-sewing the binding on).

I didn’t do any art stuff until Sunday though, when I finally pulled this out…

I’m in the endless stage of cutting stuff out. I have a lot done, but everything I pull out is a huge piece of flesh with a million pieces on it, so it feels endless. I did get a lot done last night, but there’s at least two more hours in there. I’m days behind now. Gotta catch up. Fours weeks left. Iron it together this week, stitch it down, sandwich? I do have a 3-day weekend coming up. But a shitload of grading this week and a meeting or event every night but tonight. Crazy week after last week, where I felt all this empty alone stuff weighing me down. And snot weighing me down as well. I didn’t get really sick, but I definitely have snot going on. Gotta watch it, because I ended up with pneumonia this time last year.

Here’s the baby quilt…hidden below the fold so she won’t see it…Facebook just posts the first picture on the blog.

It was a good choice to go get another binding. This one finishes the edge nicely. Ties it all together. The others didn’t. I’m fussy about my bindings.

My opening is tomorrow night…

Looking forward to seeing the whole show…it wasn’t fully installed when I left (my stuff was)…hoping people show up. There’s some new work, some old work, some never-been-shown work (well in person…everything’s on the web…well, most everything).

OK, taking my sick self to work to infect the minions who infected me. Not really. I was probably most contagious on Friday…and that kinda crept up on me during the day, so I obviously didn’t infect them on purpose. Might wanna watch who I sneeze on today though. Could be retribution of sorts…

Saturday Morning Art Headache

So when I wake up on a Saturday morning with a headache, it’s usually because I stayed up too late making art…yup. I did. I partied with fabric. But it was good. I mean, it was good once I woke up this morning and realized everything I got done. Yesterday it felt…well…less good. I am still not fully recovered and I get these weird moments when I feel like I’m going to collapse, all dizzy and weirded out and like low blood sugar, but my blood sugar is fine. I think it’s just exhaustion, but some days, I run ragged and I’m fine, and some I’m just tired all day and then it gets bad. Yesterday was one of those, unfortunately.

So I really wanted to be done cutting out all the pieces to the giant-ass quilt on Thursday night, and that didn’t happen. And yesterday, I knew I would have to go to school to interview because we are short a history teacher (again), and I had the muslin all washed. So it was a matter of laying everything out in my head and designing a new process, because all this IS new. I needed a 16-foot stretch of clean hard floor. Where do I have that? At school. Ahhh. Gotta be there anyway. It’s supposed to be air-conditioned (it wasn’t…that was part of my problem). I can do this.

I ironed in the morning…21 FEET, not yards.

Then I went to school. I was reading another teacher’s blog and she likes to take a picture before she starts setting up for the new year. Honestly, the last two years, I haven’t taken anything down because it’s too much of a pain in the ass, so everything is still up from last year.

My floors are delightfully clean, as are my counters. That will not last.

My AC doesn’t work. That is a problem. Especially since they apparently were in there a lot over the summer fixing it from June when it wasn’t working. When they’d cancel the work order and tell my office manager it was working, or when they’d say they’d fixed it and then the next day it wouldn’t come on. Some days…I’m not starting the new year with nonworking AC, people. Fix it for real this time.

I have a lot of stuff that was in cupboards just in case they used my room for summer school. I yelled and screamed about that, because of the chemicals and equipment we have stored in science…not safe to have other people in there. Plus my other teacher friends are finding that even though summer school is run by teachers in our district, they are shitty about respecting our rooms. Hate that. They take supplies and pull stuff down and leave the projector on for weeks at a time.

Anyway. So my room’s in pretty good shape, once I find everything I put away to keep it safe.

So on to the fabric…I measured 16 feet on the floor (the stretch between beams). Boychild and I figured the human needed to be longer than that, though, because it would need to drape down. Rather than do really complicated calculus, I set up two chairs 16 feet apart and draped the damn muslin…

Until I thought the drape looked right.

Then I cut it to that length (17′, in case you’re wondering), and taped it to the floor, stretched out. Then I started drawing the outline on there…this is the head…

And the legs are down here…

I thought I would want a little more width for the arms (yes, I could have bought wider muslin, but it would have been more expensive…so I made do).

I forgot to bring pins, so the fabric is taped together. I’ll sew it maybe today?

Then I cut about an inch around the outline…

I still need to cut the hole in the middle (actually might just draw it and leave it uncut until later) and cut the arms apart from the body. The arms will hang down towards the ground. That means I will have to cover both sides of them. I don’t know how I’ll do that yet. A lot of this, I process it in my head and let my brain…well…I let it brainstorm solutions until I’m ready to try for real. I have a square of fabric at home ready to practice string piecing. I think I need to transfer the outline to both sides in pen too, just to be safe.

Something about being in my non-air-conditioned classroom and crawling all over the floor (and maybe because I didn’t eat lunch, just a late breakfast) kicked my physical butt. I had the shakes. I did not feel well at all. I went home and took a short nap. Then I seemed to recover. It happened Tuesday too. Or was it Monday? I don’t know. I just know I have to rest more. Except I have too much to do.

After I cooked and ate dinner and did some other stuff, I started cutting pieces out again…and finally fucking finished…

It took over 25 hours. My hand is glad it’s done. I was going to quit then, but I wasn’t tired really, so I decided to get the sorting over with…

It’s funny how small almost 1900 pieces looks when in the bin, all cut up. I laid out 19 bins and started sorting…

And I was done 2 1/2 hours later. I almost quit about 5 times, but then I just wanted it done. I do so much better when I wake up to a fresh part of a project. Yes, I stayed up way too late. But I haven’t been falling asleep easily, and even after staying up so late, I still couldn’t fall asleep. And no, the furry beasts did not let me sleep in. Hence the headache.

But now I’m ready to start sewing and ironing two different projects, so that’s good, because I have one week before school officially starts for me and two weeks before I’m flying the girlchild to Boston after putting the boychild on a plane to Ithaca. Let chaos ensue. There are two giant boxes ready to ship to Boston on Monday, to be in her room on the day she moves in. Holy crap. For real. I’m sending her to college. I think that’s been the falling-to-sleep issue this week. Realizing that they will both be gone for months. That’s hard.

In other art news, Part-Time Oasis will be in the SAQA Oasis show at QuiltFest Oasis Palm Springs October 8-10, and then will travel to PIQF in Santa Clara in mid-October. I hope the Mancusos are ready for me again…although this is California, not Virginia, so we should be OK.

I’m just glad it got in…

Back to (Semi) Normal

So yesterday was mostly normal. I finally ironed and cut stuff out the way I should have been all week, interrupted by many sessions of Kitten petting and loving. She’s not a lap cat or a cat that likes to be held much, but she did follow me all over the house, even asking to be on my chair with me (which yes, means I perch on the edge while she takes up the rest). She disappeared at about 7 AM this morning when I was letting the Incredible Peeing Dog back in, but girlchild found her (yes, I panicked. Even though every window was closed). She was in the hanging sweater container I use for smaller older quilts. It’s in the closet…perfect size for a small cat.

I’m so glad she’s back. It’s amazing how much emotion we have tied up in these little creatures who are only around for 10-20 years (or in Babygirl’s case, only 2 1/2). Kitten’s 6th birthday is next Friday. She’s supposed to be with me for the next 7-10 years. I hope she knows that.

Yes, I am a crazy old cat lady. But as everyone starts warning me about empty nest syndrome and I start thinking about how to fill all that time with some social stuff, so I don’t go hermit crazy (I’m an introvert, yes, but I still need human interaction beyond my 175 12-year-old students), I realize that I do come home and talk to the animals and they help when I’m sitting there on the couch, cutting out a trillion tiny pieces of fabric. It’s the difference between alone and not.

I picked fabrics for a little over 4 hours yesterday…including these feather shafts that I wanted to shade from one color to another…

I finished the larger of the two figures and the bird above her. I’m ready to start the smaller figure. I wanted to be done with ironing today, but I’ve gotten through about piece 1120, so there are at least 700 to go. I don’t have 7 hours today, so probably tomorrow. I have 16 hours in so far…and I guessed about 21. Think it will be closer to 23. Maybe not. There are more Things That Are Alike in the second figure. The first figure had all these tiny animals and plants that needed to be picked out separately. That shit takes time…and sometimes research. What color are a bee’s legs anyway? You’d be surprised.

I was tired yesterday. Didn’t sleep well enough the night before, plus I’m still recovering, and Thursday’s drive all over San Diego County plus tons of walking and stress basically kicked my ass. I took a nap yesterday and when I was too tired to stand, I would go sit on the couch and cut pieces out.

I did about 2 1/2 hours of cutting stuff out yesterday…

The cut-out pile is on the left…after 6 hours total, it still looks awfully small. The bin on the right is the stuff that still needs to be cut out. You’ll notice that swirly flesh color has been in there for like the last three posts, mostly because I never get DOWN that far. So I’m ironing faster than I’m cutting. That’s OK. I’ll get to the flesh eventually, probably early next week.

August 5 is looming as a deadline (for something?!) because I know I’ll probably be starting work on a new major project with a September 12 (well, that’s the opening, so earlier) deadline, and that whole school-starting thang is popping up as well, and then there’s the two kids I need to get to college. One needs jeans and the other needs Everything in the World. Or is that just what is piled up in my living room? Hard to say.

I have made zero attempts to clean up the house this summer. There is no point until they both leave. Actually, the boychild does clean up after himself.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…

As I’m going through, I do try to pull from what’s already there to tie everything together, so although now I’m working on the city girl, some of those reds and whites and grays and yellows will show up in her as well. I will need more gray though. And I haven’t made a flesh decision yet, but will be doing that probably in the next 20 minutes or so, because the next stuff I pick is her feet.

So there we are. The panicked end-of-summer creativity surge of an artist who teaches science to pay the bills. I’ve mostly ignored school all summer (that is such a load of crap…there have been at least 200 texts about school and a host of emails, plus I did a bit of Google Classroom), and that will have to stop. Damn job. Why are you messing with my ART??? Yeah, OK. Whatever. Seriously though. It’s August 1, and this is the first day I allow myself to consider school schedules and lesson plans and copies to the print shop. My team lost its history teacher (again!), so the three that are left are meeting Tuesday after my first professional development of the year. Next week is an appointment clusterfuck. All the teeth-cleaning, boob-squeezing, meaningless followup with an OB/GYN I’ve never met because I had the procedure done and my insurance has their crazy followup needs (I’ve already seen my primary care doc…so this really is pointless)…all of that is this coming week. I seriously have no day without at least one appointment on it, most with two or more.

Remind me to take up meditation again. Right now, I’m doing the best kind of meditation…fabric picking. Makes me smile.

Disappointed…

I spend a lot of my life dealing with organizations that are sometimes heavy-handed with their behavior. I don’t ever quit a group because I think the leadership is making bad choices. In the past, I’ve found the best way to deal with that is to become part of the leadership or to find a way into the change process, whether it’s becoming a union rep, being a reliable person ready to help the leadership, or just speaking out when necessary. It means I’m not always popular, but that’s never been a worry to me. Incompetence in leadership disturbs me. Ignoring the membership, the peons, the lower echelons of the group…that annoys me. Don’t ask for my opinion and then ignore it. Excuses are the worst: I can’t expect professional behavior from a group because they are all volunteers? I don’t get paid for the vast majority of volunteer work I do for two art groups, and I am glad to do it. It helps both groups run better and I am involved in some of the decisionmaking processes because I do that. As a teacher union rep, I don’t get paid for the hours I spend at meetings, but we are supposed to have an adjunct duty and that is mine (some people’s adjunct duties are much less time-consuming…in fact, I’m not even sure what a few people are doing except not showing up to the meetings they’re assigned). I’m a union rep because in my first year in the district, I had an issue that was a direct result of another rep not doing their job and then claiming that I never did what I was supposed to do (not true). Faced with incompetence, I ran in that year’s election, hoping to oust the incompetent (oh no…still there…because no one wants this job). I’m still there, and I hope the people I serve appreciate my work. I think they do. I do it anyway.

Another art group I’m in recently behaved badly…the people in charge. I don’t agree with what happened, not to say getting rid of someone at the top might be necessary, but it seemed that there was no attempt to remedy the problem beforehand. As a teacher, if there’s a problem with a kid in class, I have a list of interventions I have to go through in order to deal with that kid, and it’s extremely difficult to actually get a kid out of our school permanently (as it should be; we are a public school), so we learn how to work with kids and parents and admin and the district as needed to get where we need to go, ideally what’s best for the kid and all other kids in the class. In the other groups I work in, if there are personality conflicts or problems, we do try to work through them, and sometimes that means ignoring the behavior of one participant (or even anticipating it and heading it off at the pass to make sure it doesn’t happen) because there really is no change that can happen. But we would always try to mediate before kicking someone out (and I have to be honest, no one has been kicked out).

As a woman, I have noticed that we are particularly bad about this sometimes, this facing the problem head on and speaking it to the person in question. We complain and gossip to each other, behind their backs, and then we tolerate the issue until it’s almost at an explosion (we’re there at school right now, both as a whole and as a team, unfortunately). Sometimes that inertia is just a lack of energy or time, like now, at the end of the year, and sometimes it’s just easier NOT to have that conversation. But if you’re an international organization that depends on volunteer hours and you aren’t listening to your membership, and worse…volunteers can be kicked out without any attempt to mediate the situation, then those of us who tend to speak up, to dissent even, hey…we’re not likely to volunteer. Why would we? You aren’t encouraging diversity in that case, despite what’s said. You certainly aren’t working to mend the divide or figure out why there was a divide in the first place. You reward competence with firing. Granted, I don’t have all the facts…but I’m not happy with how it was handled no matter what.

Am I going to quit the group? No. That would be stupid. They have provided me with support and exhibits and opportunities. I think a large number of the people at the top have mostly my best interests at heart (and the others…well, whatever.). I don’t believe in voting with my checkbook and leaving. I believe in change from within. I wish I had the time to volunteer, because they’d probably kick me out pretty quickly too. Unfortunately. And I’m significantly disappointed.

I’m looking forward to the end of school because two of the school issues will go away for at least a little while. The art group issue? It colors my view of the leadership. But I have art to make and that has to be my focus right now. But I’m not looking at them in the same way.

Speaking of which…I quilted last night (in utter exhaustion, post-bowling)…

I only had energy for about an hour and a half; got about halfway around the outside edge. So at least another 2 hours I think (isn’t that what I said last night? Dammit). Nine hours total so far.

Ugh. Two days of school left. A heavy heart about the art group. Tired. Girlchild graduates from high school tonight (after I finish school)…It’s going to be a very long day. Hoping I have the energy at the end to keep quilting. If not? It will get done eventually.

Hiking It Off…

Ah. Grades are done. For the year. No more grades for at least 2 1/2 months. No more lesson planning for…um…a while (teachers work unpaid over the summer, in case you didn’t know that). I just have to survive a field trip to a bowling alley, one day of “teaching” (who thinks that’s a good plan?), and trying to entertain my kids during graduation because they’re not allowed out of my classroom for two hours.

Sounds fun, doesn’t it? But grades are done. That is a relief.

I planned a hike with my kids last night because one said he’d never been up Iron Mountain and because I want to test my foot out and make sure the pain isn’t coming back before my podiatry appointment. Plus I’m totally out of shape, so it makes sense to kick my physical ass when it’s 80 degrees out (I survived…tomorrow, I will be significantly sore, but I will survive). We did Iron Mountain, which claims to be 7 miles (I swear I thought it was only 5)…

I was uber-smart and made dinner the night before and put it in the fridge. I always forget how long this takes, and doing it after work is exhausting sometimes. I had a good long conversation with the boychild though…

I pissed off the girlchild (again) on the drive there, so she took off…

Whatevs. She got back in the car with us at the end, so I guess she hasn’t disowned us yet.

It was a little warm (OK, a lot warm) at the beginning, but a nice temperature by the end. And it was a relief to do it. I had two muscles cramping, and my knee is fussy, but the foot didn’t hurt. I’m planning more for next week too.

This week is more of a survival thing (I keep saying that…because it is). That said, I managed to finally get off the couch after 10 PM and head into the office…

Oh wait. That’s not an office picture. Oh well. I did quilt…

And whoever the dingbat is who thought I could do the background quickly? She forgot that I needed to go in and around all those branches and leaves of the tree. Which took me over an hour last night. Argh. I’m at 7 hours and 40 minutes. I might get some time tonight, but Wednesday night is the girlchild’s graduation and Thursday night is something else. So I’d like to be done, but it’s highly possible I won’t be. And I might run out of thread (I should deal with that, shouldn’t I? Have a plan? I always have a plan. I put the color number in my phone. There’s the plan. I put a reminder in my calendar for after school)

How is it possible that the neighborhood mockingbird never sleeps? I hear it again now and I heard it when I went to bed. I hate that thing.

Anyway, I suspect there’s another couple of hours of quilting in this (at least)…so I underestimated the time. Oh well. It’s not like I can finish it sooner just because I want to. And I will get it done.

I Know How She Feels…

I think this recycled quilt titled itself last night…yet another quilt title pulled from some Star Trek episode. Anyway, we’ll see if it sticks. I finished ironing all the pieces last night. This was the hair…

Yeah. I tried a bunch of combinations and this is what I liked…although I think the dark purple got pulled from the hair and put into something else.

I used 34 fabrics total…and I’ll keep them in here until everything is ironed down…

Just in case I lost something, but also because I might make more oranges. It took about 2 hours and 15 minutes to pick the fabrics. It was an hour and 40 minutes to piece the background.

It’s not a big pile like the last quilt…

So I started cutting it out, because it wasn’t very late.

I didn’t get all the way through it though, because the day ahead of all this had been kind of a nasty one.

Here’s my best zoo picture…

I know how she feels.

The thing about field trips is that it’s hell until you get on the bus, and then usually it’s fine until you get back. I had one kid issue before (made her cry) and one kid issue after (made her leave), but otherwise it was fine. Exhausting and blood-sugar-killing, but fine. I’m not sure all of the adults are still speaking to each other, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue. I think we all need a break. OK, I know I need a break. Even if it means bringing 20 hours of grading home with me, at least I don’t have to be in the classroom, dealing with adults and kids and air conditioning (they found a temporary fix) and a network that’s not working and parents who can’t parent and expect me to do it for them and kids who can’t follow basic rules.

One day to survive. I heard a couple kids talking about how they weren’t coming to school today because they didn’t feel like it. I also considered that, but then realized that wasn’t fair to my school, my team, or my kids. But interesting. My mom would have forced me to go.

I am exhausted, physically and mentally…even emotionally. It’s funny that we’ve only been back for about 12 weeks, but we are so worn out. My Spring Break plans include finishing the smaller quilt, the recycled one; ironing down, stitching down, and starting the quilting on the Ventura Earth Mother (maybe even finishing it); cleaning house; doing yardwork; finishing all the grading; sleeping a normal amount occasionally; getting back into the gym habit (I was there last night…my SIL called me a gym rat); hiking; and reading some books. Hanging out with some people I want to hang out with…including my Belgian exchange sister from high school, who is coming to visit with two of her kids. And there’s an art opening as well at Grossmont College. So yeah, I guess it’s still busy. Of course it’s busy…I am rarely not busy…but it will be more like life and less like overwhelming stress. There’s something wrong with a job that expects so much of you, but pays you so little AND gives you so little respect. And then there’s something about the kids who hang out with you on the field trip and tell you all this goofy stuff and connect with you and we stand in front of them every day and try to get them to see a different view of the world. We’re not always successful, for sure, but sometimes we are.

With that, I do need to go survive the last day before break…

Not Thinking Too Hard…

I brought home 119 science packets last night, the last unit we completed. I had already graded 21 of them at school, one small class’ worth, but I really need to finish the rest over the weekend. Funny, this is the smallest number of students I have ever had (maxed out at 190 one year), but I still can’t balance the grading. You take a weekend off or you schedule it so everything is due at once, and all of a sudden, there’s an avalanche. I just started my 14th year of teaching, and I still can’t find a best practice on that part of the job.

So I sat there for about three hours…and I got through 68 of them. The pile on the right is done…

The pile on the left is still staring at me…balefully. I watched a bunch of TV to drag me through it, and I got faster and faster (which is why sometimes it’s better to just bully through and do ALL of it at once, because once you’re on a roll, you DO get faster and faster). I stopped and made dinner in the middle (girlchild blew me off for yet another Friday night…whatever), and at around 10 PM, I quit. I have my smallest class and my largest class left. It’s easier to grade the good students, because everything is there, complete, and in order. The ones that kill me are the kids who don’t put anything in order and put random stuff in there (one kid stapled a field trip permission slip in there…guess it made it look more full). Sigh. Worst part of my job…well, besides navigating politics and administrators.

Anyway. I was exhausted by then, but in true Kathy fashion, I don’t ever let that stop me from making art. OK. Sometimes I do. But not last night. Just grading all night and not doing something for me makes me cranky. So I dragged myself into the office and looked at what was next to be ironed. And remembered I needed to do a label for the quilt that sold, so I did that first. By the way, the second Catching Cancer is available, if anyone’s interested…

It’s 10 1/2″ w x 12 3/4″ h, $140. Let me know.

And then I started looking at elephant pieces. Teensy weensy wrinkles and eyeballs and lots of gray gray gray, which can be blue-ish or yellow-ish or brown-ish. Grays annoy me. I use them all the time. I love gray. But it drives me nuts. If I were really anal-retentive obsessive compulsive, all my grays would be sorted by their base color and I wouldn’t have to search all through a million bins trying to find the RIGHT gray (I never have the RIGHT gray. I am always buying more gray). So I needed a run of 7 fabrics for the elephants, because they are standing in front of each other, so you have to think about that.

Well, YOU don’t. I do.

There’s only three elephants, but they take up about 100 pieces of Wonder Under…

And I had to add fabrics for eyes and tusks. Here they are all laid out. The old Wonder Under is releasing like crazy. The new stuff is fucking awesome. It doesn’t release and the paper comes off like a dream. The only issue I’m having is that my iron is getting stuff stuck to it from the old Wonder Under, and I can’t get it clean enough, and that is having an issue with the paper of the new Wonder Under, which is really plasticky. I didn’t read the instructions (ha! never do…), so maybe I need to reduce the heat. Or clean my iron better.

It took about an hour to iron all the elephant pieces down…

The next thing on the ironing list is an apple tree with the tiniest pieces ever…because some crazy woman thought that was a good idea. Then I move onto HUGE pieces of body parts and bird wings. I might need to go gray/white shopping. Seriously. There’s a huge heron wing in there, so I have to figure out what color that is. Blue gray? Maybe?

Underneath my feet while I iron…

She was very tired. So was I at the end of it…girlchild came home way too late (apparently clocks are so passé). By then, I was sitting again (so tired yesterday…couldn’t stand to stand and iron for long), working on the binding, which has to get done today, so I can get it photographed tomorrow. Boom! Then I need to start the other recycled piece.

It’s good to be finishing these and moving on. I’m not enjoying the Have-To’s on the quilt front as much as I enjoy the Want-To’s, but those Have-To’s get into shows, and right now, with my rejection rate on the stuff I LIKE to make, if I’m going to be in shows, I have to cater a bit to whatever the hell it is they think they want. I can’t try to figure out why the stuff I really want to make, the stuff I enjoy, why it’s not getting into shows…unless it’s an invitational, so they don’t see it beforehand. I just have to move on and try to balance the stuff I really like with the stuff I need to make for whatever reason…paying the bills, participating in a group show. It is what it is. And I do actually think this Ventura quilt will be cool in the end…even though I really had to fight my own inclinations to get it drawn.

All right…I’m sewing that damn binding on now. Obviously I am Thinking Too Hard.

Hello Friday…

Hello Friday. I’m glad you’re here, although you will be long and full of tests and whiny kids who didn’t study because they think grades are magical things that happen to them and there will be soccer and a plane flight and lots of girly squealing on the other end…wait…no…this is me and Vickie…we don’t girly squeal…we guffaw and snort and make rude comments. So there’ll be lots of that. And maybe I’ll be allowed to sleep…who knows? But there will be lots of food and a musical and hanging out with Tanya and Ethiopian food and maybe some SCIENCE and some art supplies and who knows what else.

But it’s Friday at least, and although I will get absolutely no art made today, Saturday, or probably even Sunday, that’s OK, because I will be feeding the artist’s mind with all the experiences and laughter and goofiness and serious discussion that it needs to be what it is. To do what it does.

Plus I have Monday off, so I can catch up!

Who am I kidding? I will never catch up. Seriously, I have three assignments that need grading from last week, can’t hand any of them off to my TA because they’re too complicated, and I’m about to get four more today. Really I should take all my grading with me (not happening). Or I should stop assigning things.

I am looking forward to coming back and getting my focus on…it’s been off this week for a variety of reasons. I need to stitch down, sandwich, and quilt the two cancer hands. I need to stitch down (although it will probably fray like a bitch) the first of the recycled pieces and pick fabrics for the next one, because they are currently in piles in my living room. I need to start tracing Wonder Under for the Earth Mother from Ventura (seriously, I think that’s her name). That’s next week. Ha! Because I won’t have 7 assignments to grade, 2 soccer games, a union meeting, and god knows what else that hasn’t even hit me upside the head yet?

Yeah. Whatever. I can do it.

And I’m taking my sketchbook on the plane. I’m hoping to sit beside some conservative businessman and draw scary boobs with eyeballs in them. Wait a minute. I really do like that idea. I have not done that. How have I not done that?

Hey Vickie, can I sit at the breakfast table with your kids and draw? She’s gonna say yes.

Meanwhile, my FFAC donation quilt will be winging its way to a newish art quilter in Florida, while mine comes from Belgium…

I’ll post pictures when it gets here. Could be a while. I can handle waiting. Then maybe I will hang art in the living room, ignoring the girlchild’s edict of no nudity. My house. My rules. Ha. Like that works.

In other cool news, Earth Stories is now traveling through the middle of 2017…

It will be in Athens, Ohio, May 23-September 7, 2015; San Jose, California, November 6, 2015-February 28, 2016; Huntington, West Virginia, June 25-October 2, 2016; and Erie, New York, January 20– June 11, 2017. Plenty of opportunities to see it…I’m aiming for the San Jose one of course.

I fly places once or twice a year…my quilts? They get to go all over. Lucky beasts.

Sundays? I Got This…

Sundays for teachers are hell. They are the day you get ready for the week. You do all your errands, do all the grocery shopping, get your laundry done, and also lesson plan. You do your best to keep Saturdays free, but Sundays…hell, Sundays belong to the man.

I love Sundays during breaks. I don’t have to do any of that shit. Well, I still have to grocery shop, and I’m sorta trained by now to make them work days. They feel that way anyway. I remember back in the old days, before kids, when I was married but not encumbered, when I didn’t bring my job home with me and have it looming over my head on a regular basis, Sundays were nice then. Late rising, a nice hot cup of tea, reading the paper (who gets that any more?), and watching all those fix-it shows on PBS. Hours and hours of Norm showing you the right tools…if you only had the right tools, your house would be fucking amazing. And Sundays were lazy days. You might make it to Home Depot for all the tools you needed, but you didn’t have to. That could wait until next Saturday, couldn’t it?

Well that explains a lot around here, doesn’t it?

Sigh. So I feel like I wasted many hours this morning on god-knows-what, but eventually, I got my act in gear and started getting work done. I spent an hour and a half on kid budgets…a fun thing you get to do when you’re divorced and all the expenses are split. December is always a clusterfuck for expenses, made even worse by applications to college. I sometimes just want to crawl into a hole and pretend none of that happened (three apps left).

After grocery shopping (holy crap, having the boychild home is fucking expensive) and buying textbooks (not mine; boychild again), I managed time for art…bindings on the two birds…

They’re pinned down now…waiting to be sewn down. These are the first two quilts of 2015…at some point, I’ll get that summary post done for 2014, wherein I made a shitload of bird quilts.

Sometime yesterday I got the good news that Absolutely Nothing, the Women at War quilt, will be in the show at Grossmont College in March. More about that later. But cool. Yay. Happy.

And then there was this drawing. It so wants to be a quilt. It’s too many hours for the cancer quilt, but I don’t fucking care…

It gets to be. I drew this ages ago. The Wonder Under’s been trimmed for a few weeks. I traced it back over Thanksgiving break…not sure when I trimmed the Wonder Under…my task app is not being helpful.

So I really should have started the cancer donation, but this one has been fucking screaming at me. So I listened. It only has 160 pieces.

It’s mostly flesh colors…

Two sets of flesh colors. It took about an hour and a half to iron the whole thing down to fabric.

Twenty three fabrics…

This isn’t going to be very big. It’s not going to take very long. In fact, in a little over an hour, it’s mostly cut out.

Probably another ten minutes would do it.

Why do this one first? Before the one I know has to be done? Before the bindings are done? I told you. It was yelling very very loudly. In my old age, I try to listen to the ones that yell. There’s a few more that are yelling, but I will do the cancer one next, I swear. Although I have to sew those bindings too. I also need to grade papers and do about a thousand things tomorrow.

I have one more week of break until I have to go back to school. Balance is the thing. I have to figure out how to balance all of the pieces of my life so I don’t feel like shit. It’s kind of important. I’ve got my focus on that. Don’t drop any damn balls, but don’t let the balls take over your life either. I figure once I figure the whole life/balance thing out? I’ll be dead and it won’t matter any more. No worries. I got this.