All That Hope…

Three years ago on April 1, we were lighthearted enough to switch classes at school. I taught history for one period, someone taught my science class. It was April 1 and we would only answer to the name of the teacher we were supposed to be. Two years ago, we were scrambling to deal with COVID and school. We were supposed to be going on Spring Break, but we had sent everyone home, and our district wasn’t ready for us to come back, so there was 5 weeks of a break that didn’t feel like a break. Last year, I was all virtual, never left the house, teaching art and science on Zoom, so April Fools didn’t even rank on my priority list. Today, we talked about things to do at school, but this group of post-COVID kids (are we post-COVID when I’ve had at least one positive case in my class in the last week?) is currently a bit out of control and we’re not gonna rock that boat. We’re gonna hope none of the kids do either.

Today is a mess. My car needs work before we take off camping in less than two weeks. I need to run errands after work, but I won’t have my car until 5:30. Tomorrow is chock full of stuff, and there are some things I need to do tonight to get ready for that. How late is Home Depot open? I’m hoping to have the energy to do all the things. As always. Really, I just want to read my book. As always.

I haven’t actually gotten much ironing done in the last two nights. I was fairly efficient on Wednesday night, despite dealing with exercise class and vet after school. I got everything in the torso done…

And then pulled it all off the teflon sheets and readjusted it so I could work on the upper half.

I did a little bit of the mountains above her shoulders and the neck. Ready for the sky up there…I think I have less than 200 pieces left? I have about half the 400s (all big sky pieces mostly), then about half the 1200s and maybe 30 in the 1300s. Very doable for tonight, once I get everything else done that I need done for tomorrow. I have two quilts to prep for drop off at a show, but I’m realizing I don’t know when pick up is for the other show in the same venue. I was expecting to hear from them, but I haven’t. Ugh. Can’t pick up on the same day I think? I’ll email.

Yup. Just emailed. Feel like the next week is going to be a level of chaos that I will not appreciate. The right eye isn’t QUITE twitching, but it’s close.

Kitten telling me that she did not appreciate not getting her breakfast on Wednesday before going to the vet.

She’s an old lady and we now get to deal with some special foods for her, but she’s still rambunctious (almost killed The Man who was trying to take her to the vet).

With any luck, I’ll get this quilt ironed to a background this weekend and start the stitchdown. Hopefully. I don’t see how I’m going to get her quilted and bound and photographed in time for the deadline, not if I’m gone for days. I need Spring Break away from home, though. I need to get out in nature and freeze to death in a tent and cook over a tiny stove and hike into some open spaces before I can finish out the school year. When we get back from Spring Break, there are 38 days of school left. Eight weeks. It’ll be the longest 8 weeks of the year, but it won’t be endless. There’s always an end. For this quilt. For this school year. Hopefully for COVID. Hopefully for the Russian attack on the Ukraine. Can I get some bigger hopes in here? For racism and sexism and all discrimination, and climate change and dictators and nuclear threats and all of it. Yeah. Better to start Friday with all that hope than to look at that to-do list and panic.

What an Hour Looks Like…

I’m constantly thinking in blocks of time. An hour for this, an hour for that. An hour looks like this…no wait, that was half an hour…

For one Joshua tree. An hour is the two of them…

Actually, I think it was only 45 minutes on Monday night…and I can’t remember if I’d already done the little bushes (creosote? no…something else) on her arm…

I think that was also Monday night. If it wasn’t clear by now, I decided to fill in the entire torso before moving up into the sky. So my numbering was not ideal. It’s OK. I’m working with it.

Last night, I got well into the 1100s…this is a little over an hour of cactus…

Lots of greens, lots of bits and pieces. Looks like tonight is more agave, lots more agave, and a lizard. Then I’ll need to pull all of this off the teflon sheets and reattach it so I can iron the top together. I’m getting there…much slower than I wanted to, but it will all be OK in the end. Eight more days of school until Spring Break, although I will have very little time to work on this over break. I rarely miss deadlines I choose (I sometimes miss them because I forget about them), but this might well be one of them.

When I go to the gym, this guy is there, sleeping in the parking lot.

I’m not sure why. He has a chair, nice hat and jacket ensemble. Cooler for his feet? I think? I wonder if his kid is practicing baseball on the field behind my car. Why not park closer? Why not sleep in your car? Not sure I understand. Maybe that’s not his car? I have questions.

I also think of this as The Panicking…but The Fuckening sounds better.

And this guy…he is apparently 7 years old.

I think of him as permanently The Puppy. Like Kitten…she is 13 and is going to the vet today for an ultrasound. I am worried about it; plus it costs a lot of money. I’m short money right now, but it will be on the next credit card bill, so I will just hope there is magical money by then. She is currently headbutting me because I didn’t feed her breakfast, per doc instructions. I’ve explained it to her, as you do, and she just does not understand. But she gets lots of pets instead.

So labs today…and a lost prep period (so many meetings). Plus shipping something, picking up the cat, exercise class. Then back to ironing. Another hour? I have other computer/art things I need to do tonight, so I can’t commit to more than an hour, unfortunately. We’ll see. If I’m not exhausted when I get home (I will be), maybe I will be more efficient (unlikely, but let’s not give up on that notion yet). Certainly I can finish the agave and that lizard tonight at least. Maybe more. One more hour’s worth.

No Nap…

Hey. So I need a nap. It’s morning, it’s 7 AM even, but I already need a nap. I fell asleep worrying about school after grading an assignment that made me rethink my career choices. It shouldn’t have. It’s a relatively easy assignment, and my other three science classes did pretty well on it, but this one class? Was I on crack when I taught them this stuff? Or was I asleep? Because they didn’t apparently get the same lesson everyone else did.

Except they did. I taught all of them the same day and this was the last of the four, so it should have been the most refined teaching of the day for science. So. Not me. Except, I’m a teacher, so we always think it’s us. I seriously half-cried when I got to the third kid (three in a row with zero understanding of the assignment, incredibly off topic). I eventually got to some kids who reaffirmed my faith in humanity and my own teaching (yikes!). So then in the shower this morning, I practiced the conversation in my head that I will have with them this morning. I already know that what I have to teach them today is difficult and requires multiple brain breaks, because I taught it three times yesterday and it was fucking hard. Not because the topic is hard…it’s not THAT hard. It’s just been warm, my A/C refuses to come on, the kids come to me hot from PE, and their brains are only just barely working on school at the moment anyway. It was a painful slog. It will be cooler this morning, so hopefully that will help with this challenged bunch.

I often have Nova overseeing (literally) my grading…

Meanwhile, I haven’t gotten much art stuff done. I managed a little more than an hour of cutting things out on Monday night…

Kitten is absolutely no help. She wants to sit in the fabric boxes but knows she’s not supposed to. So then she headbutts me until I pet her. Sometimes she’ll settle right there and sometimes she leaves.

Last night, I got home from work and went to the gym (good!), came back and started grading that hellacious class, questioned my career choices, almost cried, ate my dinner, finished grading that class, and finally started cutting. At 10 PM. There’s some people who think I’m always too busy to see them because I’m making art…I’m only making art after 9 PM, y’all. It’s the day job that takes up such a huge chunk of time. Even my phone thought I should’ve started earlier…

You’re right, phone. Usually I would have started around 9:30 PM. So it was a shitty night for cutting things out. Hopefully tonight will be better. I have book club on Zoom. I’d prefer it in person, because I need some time and space with humans in person who actually listen to me and don’t stare off into space and then say, “I don’t understand!” at the top of their lungs because they haven’t been listening. I will not be getting any of that this week except maybe at lunch. Maybe. Not even dinner tonight or tomorrow night. Zooms. It’s OK. I’m having a rough time of it, but it will get better…or it will be Spring Break. Either way, I’ll survive.

I cut things out for about 21 minutes last night before bedtime.

I see progress, but it’s slow. I cut out those long skinny cactus last night. That’s it. That’s all I did. I hope I do more tonight, or this quilt will never get done. I also need to enter another show (to make up for the one that rejected me yesterday…it’s OK…rejections are normal) and do my photos and script for the lightning talk for SAQA. I need the mind/headspace to do that one. I think I might have that on Friday? At the earliest? Let’s not think about the fact that it’s due Saturday. It’ll be fine.

Today? This morning, I have a parent meeting, then I teach that class that will torture me, then art, talking about idioms today, then the second part of science, which should be more fun and/or easier than yesterday. I hope. Then a lot of grading during prep period. Then exercise, book club, cutting things out. SLEEP. See, no nap. Hmmm. Must be doing things wrong.

How You Be…

Daylight Savings, how you be…all dark and tired like in the Spring. I will appreciate you in the evening, although not this week, because this week is a clusterfuck of meetings and crap. At SOME point, though, I will appreciate being able to hike in the afternoons again. It seems this school year is trying to copy last year, where at the end of the third trimester, I remember exactly nothing I’ve done because the doing of it was so traumatic and exhausting. Because I know that up front, I will write lots of notes to myself for next year’s Kathy, so she will know what I did.

What I DID do was finish the second round of copyediting, hallelujah. Gotta invoice that. I also ran some errands, sold one of my little journal quilts back from when we were doing those once a month. That was nice. This time of year, though, my brain is not my friend. Driving along, in my head…

I think I normally (pre-COVID) make it past Spring Break before this happens, but that’s a good 4 weeks away. Ah well. Embrace the suck! Find time and space for the stuff you like. For example, Saturday evening, I went to an actual art opening! I know! WTF! It’s almost like the Before Times…mostly because I wanted to see Amy Meissner’s work.

This is Milk on the Tongue, a piece (pieces?) about breastfeeding and motherhood and reconfiguring the purpose of decorative “women’s work” (those doilies! I have some of those). I love the 3D nature of these.

And the details…

And that there are 63 of them…although not here. I also loved seeing Amy again! We met at one of the Quilt Nationals (she says 2017) and she juried one of my pieces into a show. So that’s nice. Plus her work is intriguing on many levels and I really enjoy it. The exhibit is Small Acts and it’s at City College and there are lots of cool and amusing and cringy pieces in it. Totally worth it.

We also hiked (short one) on Saturday and hung out with some friends, so it really was almost like normal.

Despite the masks at the show and the constant worry you’re going to get someone sick. My school goes mask-optional today, like many in California. I’ll be continuing to wear one through Spring Break at least. I’m willing to watch the science experiment in my school, as long as I don’t have to be part of it.

I’ve been cutting things out…here’s Friday night with Kitten guarding it.

This is after I took her to the vet for her senior panel and physical, and she was still talking to me…sort of a miracle. I didn’t cut anything out on Saturday…

But I did last night…

I see progress. It’s slow, but it’s happening. I need to ramp up production on this one if it’s going to be done by the deadline. Ugh.

We went to dinner at the parentals last night, my birthday dinner. I forgot to take any photos except this one of Simba, because he’s not supposed to be on the chair. Although I guess he’s on the boychild, not the chair.

Cheater.

We have baby doves in the yard. They know not to move, apparently. The adults will fly away, but the babies pretend they are dirt and Simba never sees them.

Kind of boggling really.

Anyway. It’s Monday. Short classes, everyone will be tired and half awake, cranky by the end of the day. Then a staff meeting, but then chiropractor with short massage beforehand, so that’s a good thing. I think I’m cooking tonight too, though. Chaos day. I’m seriously behind in grading (again…goddess forbid I do anything but the day job in my spare time)…I lost a prep period on Friday to a lack of substitute teachers. I was hoping for an easy period, but no…she actually left complicated-as-fuck lesson plans, so I taught newcomers English! I think only one or two of them understood anything I said. Fun stuff. But more cutting the things out eventually tonight. A million hours from now.

Divisible by 11…

Wednesday. March 9, 2022. Hello age 55. Not so bad. I like numbers that are divisible by 11. Yes, I numerology my age. Why not? 54 was pretty…not in reality, but it could have been worse. Hoping 55 includes PEACE ASAP (I know Putin reads my blog…he seems the type), COVID fucking off, kids figuring out how to be at school again, and more free time. ALWAYS with the free time. As I copyedited last night after work. And will do so again tonight. It’s OK. My choice. I do wish someone would clean my bathrooms though. That would be cool.

But for today, the day with a parent-teacher conference for a kid I seriously worry about and who drives me bonkers on a daily basis…oh wait, this is the day I don’t have him in class…so not today. This is also the day of a union meeting, so Zoom for an hour plus. Ugh. For today, though, getting older is not so big a deal.

I now have the overlap of Still Ironing Wonder Under to Fabrics with Cutting Out Fabrics. So I will never see the bin full of ALL the fabrics after ironing, but I am being more efficient with my time. All good.

I ironed a lot of cactus on Monday night.

I had to consider what was in front and what was behind, plus what were the real colors of the cactus (I may have fucked with that slightly…).

Last night, I ironed the rocks behind her arms and up into her hair…

I used that purplish fabric on the left for the first (and probably last) time in the whole quilt. I’m getting close to the end…just her neck and face and then the hawk. So many fabrics!

So many greens really. And browns. Should be interesting to see it all come together. Kitten seems interested anyway.

I feel like the next quilt needs to have a million bright colors in it.

This is true. My new bras are less easy to get off with a shirt on, but I can do it.

Years of practice. Personally think bras should all go away, but I am still a middle-school teacher and that’s a thing. Boobs. Boys. It’s just problematic. The girls worry (WORRY) that I never wear a dress to school. WTF. I don’t think any of their teachers wear dresses to school. Seriously.

And this?

I know who one of them is…the Man falls asleep incredibly quickly. Lucky. So annoying.

OK, today is chaos. Two different labs, teaching art in the middle of that with a new (not new) group of kids (it’s mostly my advisory and 3 6th graders and one kid I’ve had all year). Need to switch out lab materials halfway, for some definition of halfway. Plus the two meetings. Yeah. It’s OK. It’s a sunny day, I have my lunch made, I get a prep period at the end of the day to try to get my head straight (and grade everything). I’d love to come home and go for a walk, but it’s not in the cards today. Or tomorrow. But I’ll have some good food that someone else cooked and I’ll do some cutting and ironing (and copyediting, which equals paycheck). We good.

Float to Work

I just don’t know if my computer is going to wake up enough to resize photos and let me post. It’s only certain parts of the computer…this bit is working fine…for now…until I try to save something and then everything slows down into one of those movies where everyone is frozen and you can run in between them all and grab all their food and drinks. Maybe that’s just in my head. It would be cool though. I’d have all the student phones up front before they even noticed. Because that’s half my day sometimes.

I’m bouncing back and forth between the photo editing app and here, because its response time is equivalent to a morning class of 12-year-olds and I can get a paragraph done before its eyeballs even twitch in response. Don’t expect many photos today.

It’s raining here; hence the float to work. Also there may be a gas supply issue here soon. We’ll see. Lots of kids will be absent, because they don’t come to school when it rains. I wonder if there are specific types of businesses where no one shows up if it rains, even though they’re open. Pool stores? Pools? It’s pouring and I don’t even want to drive the piddly 2.47 miles to work because I know it will take forever. There’s construction on two of the roads I take to school. YES, I know it’s a short trip. I just shouldn’t be THAT annoyed by it.

It’s fine. It’s Friday. Grades are due Tuesday. I’m not done. I don’t know when I WILL be done. I will be at school today until I finish all the art stuff, because I have to start with an all-new class on Monday. Ugh. Groundhog Day. Don’t like it.

I ironed a bit more last night because I was on a Zoom with quilting friends…

Actually I think these photos are from the night before…those are agave fabrics…

And last night, I ironed a tree and a bat. I’m in the 800s. Progress! More tonight. Hopefully.

I graded after the ironing, because I still needed to grade. I had a brief moment of kitty love…

Check out that paw. And then the computer took her place. She was nice. Grading until 10:37 pm? Not so nice.

If you’ve been on Instagram, you saw some of my old stuff…this is a lighthouse quilt I started in the 90s sometime…a friend drew the patterns. It’s the first hand applique stuff I ever did.

This is not a whole quilt yet. There are 12 blocks? 10 blocks? They’re all done and framed with sashing; I just need to piece the whole thing together. Maybe this summer. It would be about time, yeah?

OK, there’s more photos but I can’t deal with it right now. Need to swim to work and give an thinking assignment. After showing an 11-minute video of elephant’s toothpaste. We did that yesterday. Set fire to many things. Not the classroom. Looking forward to getting shit done at school so I can have some free time soon…for some definition of the word “soon”.

Barely Here…

Hey, February. WTF. You were barely here and now you’re almost gone? What is up with that? Pro: Spring Break is coming. Con: Grades are due again. Seriously short month though…will just make March seem vast and massive. So many things have to happen in March. I’m not ready. Like THAT matters!

Sigh. The Man spent a lot of time this weekend watching Ukraine/Russia coverage, and I feel for the people living there, I wish Putin would stop and/or keel over or run out of ammo, and I hope there is a peaceful and less destructive solution to stopping him (Go Ukraine!), but there’s some disturbing info coming out about African students not being allowed out of the country, because of their color…”Ukrainians first”…when OMG those kids must be fucking terrified, let them go the fuck home. Racism everywhere. Like that’s a surprise. Seriously, I get women and children first, but also those who are helping your economy by living there but don’t actually LIVE there long term…let them leave. There should be no race discrimination there. Although even the gender stuff…why do the men have to fight? Some men probably are not cut out for it and some women probably are, maybe are even staying to do that? The assumptions we make…they don’t help society.

It was too much for my brain. At one point, I told the Man that he had seen the same news stories repeat three times now, and I got a glare for that. So I did other things. I had a lot of grading to do though, and I’m missing one earbud, so finally put it in the ear closest to the television and blasted it so I couldn’t hear bombs and more explanation of details. I realize I have the privilege of doing that, living here, but also, I have a job to do and it’s hard enough to do without bombardment of really horribly anxious things in my brain. Small doses, a summary at night, I can handle that. Lots of donation programs popping up for Ukrainians, refugees and in country. Need a shortcut on that info too…donating via a quilt block pattern? I’d rather send what little money I have directly to an aid agency. Keeping my eyes open on that one.

I’m still ironing the quilt…it’s really slow and I’m so tired these days. I would have liked more time on Saturday, but chose a hike instead, plus a trip to Home Depot so I could prep quilts to ship them out for shows. So Friday night, I did absolutely nothing. I was so exhausted after the field trip…

I stayed at work until almost 5 to get stuff done, went to the chiropractor, got home, and then cooked dinner. Wasn’t much brain power left after grading for a while.

I did iron Saturday night for a short while…

The box is filling up…and then last night, I got into the arms. They’re all sand.

Lovely sand fabrics.

I’m pretty sure I’m more than halfway. I still have more than half of the 600s left to iron, but I’ve done a bunch of 800s, 900s, 1000s, and 1100s, as well as half the 1300s, so I’m getting there. It’s just not fast. Grading all this week (grades due next Tuesday), slogging through the last project unfortunately, and then copyediting a final run through the book I worked on over Winter Break. No pressure! Stressful though.

I finished all the unit packets Saturday morning with help from this doofus.

And this one kept rubbing her head all over the papers…they must smell good.

They smell like middle-school backpacks. Yuck.

I packed up one quilt, the smaller easier one, and then we walked the dog…

He was quite happy to get out. Too much war for him too.

I came back to my ex and the boychild installing a camera on my tree…

A year ago, they installed an owl box (it was my Christmas present). We’d heard owls and disturbed a barn owl the other day, so I guess they wanted proof there was one in there.

There are two actually. Very cool.

I’m excited.

We went out to dinner and I managed to finish a drawing I started in Phoenix…the food came really quickly so I didn’t get it done.

Lots of chomping on things.

Well there’s this…

Same goes for being a teacher, I think. Today is pretty chill…notes and demos. Tomorrow is a bit more chaotic and we’re not quite ready for it. Hopefully between a teacher’s aide and two of our prep periods, we can get it ready. Can’t grade anything though. Never time for that. Too much prepping labs and panicked copying of papers and dealing with kid stuff. I’ll be glad for the end of the trimester this week…getting rid of a group of kids that are mostly fine, but a small group is driving me bonkers. Will not miss those kids. Nope. I might get them again next year, but for now, let’s hope they grow the fuck up by then. Ugh. Focus on the kids who are awesome. Focus on the kids who are awesome.

Staff meeting though. Lots of crazy shit happened last Friday. Stupid shit. Dumb adults and dumb kids. It’s done though. It’s 6 weeks until the next field trip. I can do that, because I get Spring Break after it. This job. It’s hard right now, really hard. That said, it’s not as hard as having a foreign country invading you in a dick move. So there’s that.

New Growth…

It’s Monday. It’s Monday but it’s a holiday for me, which is like a gift of love all by itself. Yea through the piles of work and giant-ass to-do list I do wander with an extra day off to prep food, grade things, panic about taking one freakin’ day off this Friday, and try to pull a weed or two. Oh yeah, and it’s V-Day, which I don’t really do. My mom made me a card, which was nice. The man and I will avoid today’s crazy entirely and go out to dinner tomorrow night, because he’s been backpacking and tonight is not a hoop we want to jump through. But love to all of you, unless you’re an insensitive jerk who doesn’t have an alternatively neuro brain, in which case, I’m probably going to cut you a break.

The pro is that I started ironing the quilt to fabric, which might be my favorite part of the quiltmaking process. It’s long sometimes…this one definitely will be, because there are a lot of realistic living things in it that I want to be their real-life colors, so I’m using a lot of photos to help me do that.

I hang the full-size drawing up so I can refer to it…that’s where all the pieces are numbered. Then I lay out the first 100 pieces in groups of 10 on my table to make it even easier to find the pieces I need.

I do sections…all the creosote at one time…

This is all of the bighorn sheep parts.

Slowly I get through the tiny animals this way…they are all at the bottom of the quilt, mostly.

I didn’t get much ironed on Friday…had to finish cleaning up, plus bordering on exhaustion.

Saturday was a little better…

And then Sunday night…

Mostly earth tones, which will be true of a lot of the quilt. Blue skies, brown everything else with hints of green and some floral colors. This will not be fast. But that’s OK.

I hiked Saturday…lots of new growth popping up…

Amazing that after so many years, I can still see new things on the same old hike…

It was hot Saturday, 87 degrees at 4 PM when I left…

But as soon as the sun popped down under the ridge, it cooled off a good 10-15 degrees.

I’m debating exercise today…go to the gym now (cooler) and finish my book (need and want to do that) or wait until later and hike (pup needs exercise). Not sure I have time for both.

Sunday’s hawk yelling at me. I think it’s out there again now.

I warned the dove in the nest that she needed to build further into the tree for safety. Last year, the hawks definitely found the nest.

Simba wanted to lie in the sun, but Luna isn’t that fond of dogs, so there was a minor issue.

So what else do I need to do today? I managed to make lunches and breakfasts for the next two weeks while grading and setting up posts for this week and part of the next. I leave Friday morning early for QuiltCon, so I need to do some prep for that, both in terms of packing and writing sub plans. My sub got canceled, so I have to assume whomever is in my classroom won’t know diddly shit about art or science. Science is an easy plan…do these three things, be quiet, don’t bug the teacher. Art is never an easy plan. I told my co-teachers that if they got stuck in that class to bring backup. I need to set up a septic pumpout (fun stuff) and cross another host of shit off the to-do list. Plus finish my taxes and decide if I will ever have enough money to get the trees trimmed. Let alone anything else. Probably not.

Well bless the neighbors for being quiet today. Or gone. Whichever. I appreciate it for whatever reason. No screaming children, no lawnmowing, no sawing or drilling or other noises of industry. Just a quiet Monday listening to the birds, including the one I just ID’d with a new (to me) app recommended by a reader: Merlin. I have a loud and boisterously singing Song Sparrow (what a name, eh?). Good to know. OK. Book calls. So does the laundry unfortunately.

Let the Day Surprise Me…

Oh my. Yesterday felt like a Friday without the relief of it. I’m a little frightened of today, but am willing to let the day surprise me. I’m lucky to have a 3-day weekend here, especially since I still haven’t caught up with all the work from two weeks ago. I’ve found out that the way you tame boisterous and loud 6th graders is by handing them a glue bottle (it’s weirdly fascinating how quiet they get…before they start doing other stupid things…unfortunately it does not last long). I’m mostly done with adults at the moment…I have some I like, and some can just fuck off. I need some quiet time with my plants, my book, my fabric, on a trail, eating ice cream. OK that last one is in response to our almost-summer temperatures this week. Dry hot windy dry yeah. Hair loves it. Eyes love it. Head loves it. That’s sarcasm.

So I finished sorting all the Wonder Under…usually takes about an hour…sometimes more, sometimes less.

Basically I lay out one box for every 100 pieces and then stand there and sort all the little fuckers. It’s not fun but it makes the next part easier. From here, I will sort each box of 100s one at a time and iron them down. The drawing helps me figure out what’s what…unless I forget to number one…

It’s OK. I know it’s a lizard leg. I just have to figure out which lizard. I think this quilt has two or three of them. It should be obvious when I start ironing.

To iron, I need to clean up my studio. Sometimes this is quick and easy. Sometimes I have made a huge mess of it. Guess which time it is? Ah yes. The mess. Mostly because I’m doing some weirdo quilt-along thing where I use up stash on blocks I normally wouldn’t make. I had some half cut out but then didn’t get any further (hello Day Job), so on Wednesday night, I picked some fabrics for the third part of the blocks, and then rejected them last night, but I did get the rest of the chaos cut out.

It’s highly possible that this is too much chaos for one block, but there’s only one way to find out. That’s 6 blocks laid out by the way, in case you’re having a small heart attack. Well, continue to have it because they will all be in the same quilt top. Need something for the bed. Want to see it from a distance. It’ll be fine.

After that, I went after the piles on the floor from the last quilt and from winning my guild’s fat quarter game…

Sorted them all by colors and then started putting them away. I didn’t finish. It got late fast. Well, I did go hang out with friends and do some stitching in the evening. Finally got the pekinese stitch done on the fourth set of flowers.

The dark blue ones are what I’m on…so there’s three more stitches on each of those, and then two more sets of flowers to finish. I will never finish. That’s what it feels like anyway. I’m sure it will happen sometime in 2022.

I did rescue a stuck cat at one point last night…

She randomly gets her claws stuck fairly often…the other one does too occasionally, but she was more in sleep mode.

So tonight, hopefully I will finish clean up and then start ironing for this quilt. I might piece a few of those crazy blocks first, but I suspect it’s better to do that NOT at the end of a long school week. I’m already exhausted from all the meetings (literally ALL the meetings were this week and I still have one more) and not enough sleep. Plus frustrating students and more frustrating adults. I could do without all that.

Luckily the house (and TV) are mine this weekend. Although honestly I will probably be in here, in the stash zone, for most of the free time. I do still need to grade three thousand things and plan for another thousand, but the book calls, exercise calls (it’s been a shitty week for that too), and hopefully the weather will calm the fuck down so hiking isn’t horrendous. Ironically, as everyone else in my household is hiking this weekend without me. Ah well. Alone time with the cats. And the fabric.

Magically Get Better…

I’m currently trying to type with a swollen pointer finger covered in a bandaid and Neosporin to try to counteract the weirdo infection under my nail. Don’t even ask how I did it. It involved sourdough starter though. Yeah. You figure it out. Trying to avoid urgent care…can’t get doctor’s appointments any more.

It’s Monday again. I realized there was a bunch of stuff I should have done to get ready for teaching art this week, so it will all have to be done during a short prep period today. Ought to be interesting. We’ll see if I can pull it off. Our staff meeting has been turned into a required 1-hour attendance at the staff-student soccer game after school. While I appreciate the disappearance of a staff meeting, I’m so buried in work that I don’t like the idea of just standing around for an hour and not getting anything done. Much as I love my principal, I’ve got a shit-ton of work to do and I need all the minutes at school so I don’t have to do as many at home. Which SUCKS. By the way. Hello school districts. Get a clue.

Saturday, I did manage to get up to the California Center for the Arts to see the California Fibers show…

It’s a great space and we fill it well. Here’s my corner of the exhibit…

Looks good! When we were leaving, we were mobbed by a group of fans, which was fun albeit a little terrifying in the beginning. They had good questions and were appreciative, which is nice.

Afterwards, we headed out to Daley Ranch for a hike…

It’s going to be warmer this week…we could definitely tell…

Four miles in the bag…dinner out afterward…

It had been a few weeks. He’ll be gone this coming weekend, backpacking on the PCT (short trip) and I’ll be gone the following weekend for QuiltCon.

I’m still cutting pieces out…this is Friday night…

I think I did most of 2 yards…then Saturday night…

Was almost another 2 yards…and last night, just 1 more…

I’m pretty sure there’s only 2 left to do. So another couple of nights? Maybe? I can’t always do one in an hour.

I did some other things, but only briefly…

Got one more flower to go around with the incredibly time-consuming Pekinese stitch…

There are always animals requiring attention…

That one wanted me to move all the cutting paraphernalia off my lap. I gave her a leg.

So yeah, prep a bunch of art stuff with a damaged swollen finger (nice), hope it gets better by the end of the day, sit through 4 soccer games or so, then hopefully DON’T go to Urgent Care, but home to cook and cut more things out. That’s the plan. And then hopefully sleep much better because I won’t have a throbbing finger all night. Ha! I just know that Urgent Care will mean sharp pointy things and I don’t want that. I just want it to magically get better. As do we all!