It’s the Time and Effort That Count…

I’m not marching for women today. I didn’t even realize. Or I did and my brain was overwhelmed. It feels wrong not to be marching, because I still really care about this shit and realize that if we relax about the crap that’s going on, more of the bad crap will happen. And I don’t want that. Remembering a previous relationship where I got mansplained that it was all in my head (so easy for rich white boys to say). So I’m going to draw something…I’ve been doing lots of Earth Mothers during the years and started an Earth Daughter series (that only has two quilts in it, but there’s time for more). I had a plan to draw a few more of these for some upcoming shows that are paranoid about nudity…since the Daughters are usually just chest and up, it’s easier to hide the things that freak people out. Yes, that is a cactus…it just happens to be where nipples are. Can you see my snarky smile? So I had a list of Daughters I was planning to draw and just hadn’t gotten to yet. This morning in the shower, I came up with some more political ones…and even now, the Feminist Daughter will have two versions…with and without nudity. Is this violating how I normally make art? Well…yes and no. I’m aware of what I’m doing and of the power of getting my political/environmental work out there in a variety of venues without the nudity getting it thrown out. I might still get thrown out for politics, but then, realistically, I can’t put that stuff anywhere with stupid restrictions anyway.

Anyway, I’ll be drawing today. Drawing for women…harder to draw for everyone. I guess I pick my battles. Can I draw for everyone? Not really. I try to be more open to other issues or genders or modes of sexuality, but it’s not always obvious in what I draw.

I’m tired. I’m just gonna leave that there.

Kitten cleaning…curled up next to me while I was grading last night. Always grading…

They are related, that’s for sure. And sweet as hell.

I traced for about 2 hours…

I wasn’t very efficient. I was tired and spacey and lost two pieces for a while (didn’t really lose them…just couldn’t find them for a while…that’s a numbering issue).

I’ve mostly filled one yard and started a second one. I’m in the 200s. Hopefully I wrote that down somewhere.

Part of my tired is the puppy…barking at all the coyotes last night until probably 3 AM…and then a minor blood sugar issue around then. I was reading a chapter and eating popcorn at 3, and then finally got to sleep.

Man, I wish I were a cat…

They sleep so well. I suck so bad at sleep.

This is the tap root of the tree the boychild pulled out of a deep hole in the backyard. He’s been digging at it for at least a month, probably longer.

The tree is a volunteer/weed of sorts. Really invasive. We’ll use the hole for something that will block our view of the neighbor’s house. We have plans for planting we can finally start to implement…the trees are trimmed, solar is done and collecting precious sunlight, got the front yard marked for gas/electric and phone lines (which were in a confusing place). We have one lime tree from a friend who moved, and then are planning on a lemon and an avocado, some fencing, and some more plantings that will beautify, block overnight lighting from the neighbors, and keep UPS and Amazon from dumping packages at the wrong door. Big plans!

Still lots of cat interactions happening, all good. Makes us all happy.

OK, I have a ton of grading this weekend, doctor stuff, drawing, tracing, depressing TV (Chernobyl…good but hard to watch), hopefully some outdoors time, some art, who knows what else. Take care of the body, the mind, and Art Brain, but keep the day job from being overwhelming by tackling it and making boundaries around it. Almost a resolution there, but it’s where I’m always at, so not really.

I have two pieces in a show opening today in Ojai, California…the opening starts in 17 minutes. Whoops. No, I’m not there. It was too far. I couldn’t deal with it this weekend.

But it will be there until the end of February…debating my drive home from a trip in February that COULD go here…but it probably wouldn’t be open that day, so that would be silly. Never mind. Anyway, check it out. Beatrice Wood is open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 11-5 PM. Now I’m going to grab my sketchbook and go hang out at a winery or two with the man. Necessary stuff for relationships…time. Wine and art are good too, but it’s the time and effort that count.

Rampaging Cat Butts…

I’ve definitely used a significant amount of energy points this week. Labs with slogging bins of sand and water in and out of the classroom two days running, all day. Exercise twice this week on top of that. All the regular walking that comes with being at school. Today the kids research…I’m looking forward to some just-standing time. Maybe. I mean probably I’ll be in a chair at some table where kids can’t deal, but…it’ll be a chair and not running circles around the classroom.

I now have 17 bins of wet sand that need to dry, and it’s raining today. Cold and wet is not conducive to the sand-drying process…I do the weirdest shit for my job. I guess they’ll sit on the counter for a while. Evaporation is slow in a classroom. Hairdryer duty for a kid who needs a job? Anyway.

After the afternoon meeting I had signed up for, I was able to get out in time to kamikaze to the lab to get all my blood sucked out of me (it felt that way) to try to figure out what happened with my blood sugar the other night. I haven’t had any issues since then, except with my paranoia that it might happen again. Home to a few moments with the dogs until they left, and then the house was quiet and I was staring at my computer and stuff to grade. Like always. A short burst of productive time, interspersed with kitten shenanigans…blurry cats are the best cats…

Oh yes, that is a flying leap. We keep boxes for cat play.

They do like to play.

I was getting ready for pilates and got this weird thing going on with the three cats and the dog bed.

When the dogs are gone, there is a lot more interaction and play among the three of them.

But when I got back from class, things had settled down. Yes, that is my work bag.

Yes all the makeup work I need to grade is in there. Sit on, young ladies! Sit on! Can’t work. Kittens in the way.

And then they played some more…old lady got involved.

See Nova hiding by the table?

All that distraction makes it hard to concentrate. Actually, I’m pretty good at ignoring other things and still working. Years of practice. But they are fun to watch.

I started tracing the new quilt around 10 PM…

Maybe later. Yeah. Close to 11. I had finished grading one period of the hellacious assignment…only two to go. Ugh. And then piles of makeup work. It’ll get done. That’s what 3-day weekends are for, right? Double-ugh. They are also for artmaking…

I traced for about an hour. I can’t say how far I got, because I did through piece 84, and then I did all the car headlights, which were not in numerical order, but it made more sense to trace them all together so they could be cut out and ironed together, seeing as how they’re small, and there’s no point in making them all different colors of yellow or white. I’ll do the same with the exhaust pipes and clouds, but then the cars will be all different. That said, each car body is three pieces, and two will be the same color, so they can be traced and ironed together. That saves me time in the long run. I only cut them separately once, when they are on fabric. On Wonder Under, they stay together.

That probably only makes sense to me. And only barely, because I don’t even have one cup of tea in me. OK, buy donuts for the class that won last month, clean classroom, set up for the next assignment, hang out a little after school, come home and try to grade stuff (or nap, whichever seems more efficient). I need to iron and clean up the newest quilt for the photographer tomorrow. I’ve got work to do over the weekend and my doc is making me come in on Monday, where we will discuss her comment about my needing to eat balanced meals. (um. No duh. Stop assuming I’m not.) And maybe I’ll get some sleep. Hard to say with the rampaging kitten butts around here. Definitely going to be tracing more Wonder Under…maybe even finishing it up this weekend. It’s nice not to have someone else’s deadline running me at the moment. Although there is one I need to consider. Sigh. But not now! Now I need to go to work at the day job.

Drawing Done…

I was supposed to come home last night from book club and grade stuff. I graded during the 2-hour union meeting before that, which included a lot of words about the new contract. And by the time I got home from book club, it was after 9 PM and I wasn’t in the mood. So I didn’t grade. Sigh. I’m going to lose a whole day this weekend to grading…I know that.

What I did instead was finish the drawing (finally!) and number it. I need to be working on something artistic right now. The drawing is the hardest part, and I was so close to done. There’s a space where I look at it and think, there’s nothing else that needs to be on there. All the spaces are appropriately filled. It took 6 1/2 hours to do that…it’s about 36×48″.

Although I did consider a cat…

She is doing her cat duty by lying on what I’m working on. Seriously. That’s where I needed to be drawing. But this quilt is more about climate change and war than cats, so I left the cat out.

I added a few things up here, finished the top arm, put a sky behind part of it…

Added some burning trees…not here…but I really like these tumbling birds I drew somewhere and moved onto here.

I can’t always explain why I draw particular things. There they are…

The birds again…not the trees. It was hard to get any photos last night with the lighting right above. Oh yeah, and then I numbered it…

Only 804 pieces. Not bad. OK. It took almost an hour just to number it. I tried to do it logically. When I put the quilt together, we’ll see how logical that was. Tonight I can start tracing. If I am awake. You never know. It’s another busy day.

Ah kittens.

They’re sweet little beasts. Running late. As always…me, not the cats. They’re never late.

Sand and Water and 12-Year-Olds…

So no problems last night with blood sugar. This is good. Except I hate unexplained crap. Like Bigfoot. I want an explanation. My doc had the typical response she always had…Change the Meds! I’m like, no, chillax, it’s not the meds. It’s something else. I don’t know what ELSE is, but it is.

Anyway. Meanwhile, I’m carrying around glucose tabs and testing sort of obsessively, which is expensive, y’all.

Yesterday was the first day back with kids in the classroom. They were sort of gobsmacked by having to come back, but we did a New Year’s clear out your crap thing and then remember the vocab from three weeks ago? No? Then go look at it again.

Today and tomorrow are some high-intensity (read: large mess capability) labs, so we’ll be running around trying to keep that going. I had tutoring after school yesterday and sat with some kids and talked about the difference between erosion and weathering. Straight up, I had to go look it up to make sure I knew the difference, so I guess it’s a good thing that we are reviewing. Laughing. I don’t always know things. It’s OK. Somehow, the kids all thought that the sun was hot enough to melt rocks on the surface…which it is, but only if the sun is a LOT closer, in which case, we’re all crispy bacon. So yeah. Meanwhile, my doctor’s office is calling this morning and wants me to take today off school to come in. Oh yeah. Not happening.

So I got home and went to pilates (good choice, very relaxing) and came home and ate dinner and then graded all the late work that got piled on top of me yesterday (just get it OVER with) and then realized book club is today, tonight, and I had (I thought) one chapter left to read. It wasn’t one. It was two and a very long epilogue. But I read them. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep during some of it and I’m still not really sure what happened with the two gods at the end, but whatever. I finished.

While grading…Luna likes to watch computer and phone screens…from right up in my face.

Like could you be any closer. It’s sweet, yes. Very sweet. Not very conducive to grading.

And then while I was reading…the man took this picture…

I got Nova first, climbing up on my arm and perching there. As they get bigger, this will be more challenging. Who needs the gym when you are holding a cat on your arm? And then Luna, who can not be left out of things, wandered over and tried to figure out how to be in Nova’s space.

We are still putting them in the crate at night and when we’re gone during the day. It’s a safe space and they are inquisitive enough (read: have knocked enough shit over) that we don’t want to leave them home alone unsupervised yet, until they’re too big to cause damage? I don’t know. Until we feel OK with it. So they’re currently rampaging around the house while I write this…I need to leave in 10 minutes, so I need to find and corral them. Usually that involves throwing a toy mouse with rattles in it. They don’t quite come when they’re called (they are cats), but this is a close second.

Art yesterday didn’t happen. I was exhausted from not sleeping the night before and a long day at school. Today will be long too. And I’m already tired. I asked for a phone appointment from the doc…we’ll see if she can do that. Hopefully. She’s probably going to want labs, fasting. That’ll be fun.

Did I tell you we trimmed trees? Well I hired someone to trim three of the big beasts, and now there is so much more sun coming in on the back of the house. Pros and cons of that, but the solar panels are happy and so are the cats. Hopefully they’ll leaf out a bit by summer so we don’t die, but for now, it feels nice.

Off to work. Weathering and erosion labs. Lots of sand and water and 12-year-olds. Always good choices.

Need More Things…

OK, so I had a rough diabetic night with blood sugar randomly crashing and refusing to come back up. I’m running on about 4 hours of sleep, I need to call the doc, I already talked to the nurse who confirmed I did everything right (although I’m sure the man wishes I didn’t wake him up, but I needed someone ready to call 911 if I couldn’t). FUN. I love unexplained health issues the day before I get kids in the classroom. Well. Hours before I get kids in the classroom. I have a parent meeting this morning, but I’m prepared for the rest of it. Just not sure how to fit the doc in there as well. Honestly I think I need something more than “here, we’re gonna take all your blood and pee”, but whatever. I have food and glucose tabs and a meter at school and IDK what else to do. Scary though.

As with most people, I hate when things are out of control.

Yesterday, though, I got everything ready and it was all good. I came home and the trees were trimmed and there’s light places where there hasn’t been light and my solar is collecting all that lovely light and I can watch it on an app do all that, so nice.

I did my first Patreon video for January, all about the drawing I’m working on.

I’m pretty fast at the editing now. That’s a skill.

Boychild found me for this…

That’s a raccoon. Can you tell? He went up one of the trees eventually. That right there is about where the neighbor wants to put a fence. He wants to fence the whole property. I think they told him 12K. Well yeah, dude. So I don’t know how that’s gonna go, but maybe I’m not going to have to stare at a fence. And raccoons can go where they want.

It’s possible in my old age that we will have to move further out.

Then there was a lot of kitten interactions. See the blurry one? Yeah, lots of that.

And that…

And some play…

Plus dual tail bopping…

All good. Did I finish anything last night? Nope. Well, not true…one class of an assignment. Finished that.

And then I drew…

Almost there. She has a head now…

Needs more things. We all do. OK, blood sugar behave. Doc find a reason. Kids do their things. I’m exhausted. Good times!

There’s Ploding

OK, since I resized the photos and opened this blogpost, SEVENTEEN THOUSAND THINGS have shown up in text, my inbox, my brain, wherever. I hate the last few days of break. They implode. Or explode. There’s ploding. Of some sort. I literally can’t focus on anything, even my eyeballs are all floaty things and goo. Wait. Maybe that’s pinkeye. No. Why would I have pinkeye? I wouldn’t. OK, so I’m just tired and there’s too much looking at things going on. IDK how you go through life without looking though. I’m an observant person. Maybe I look too hard or too much. Whatever that means.

I can’t get anything done the last few days of break. I mean, I get things done, but things explode in time, like a pufferfish or those biscuits you break out of the cardboard tube or bread rising. Like one thing yesterday that should have taken not much time took forever. Well. In my head.

Anyway, so I should accept the time-wasting, the fast-moving (only in my head) clock. Just accept. Yesterday, I did manage to go to Dick Blick for fancy art paper. I didn’t need much…but it means driving downtown. Well, I drove to SDSU first and that was a mistake because mapping sucks AND it was closed for break. So I don’t like the downtown one because parking is hellacious. But I managed it and got the paper, because I’m making an artist book. No really. Not one you’ll want to read so much. Well, honestly, I just don’t know what I’m doing with it, but I needed paper I could make a box (or 17) out of. So it’s a good thing I took that class over the summer about paper building and boxes and embroidery, because now I’m gonna use it. Well. Maybe not the embroidery. We’ll see.

I also finally finished grading the huge assignment. Well. There’s another one. This one felt huge while I was doing it.

The next one probably will too. Although the fact that not everyone turned in the next assignment will mean it takes less time.

OK, so I’m still in this brain place that hasn’t started drawing the next quilt. I think it’s because I’m still doing a drawing a day. Maybe I should stop.

I like the birds.

I had some stuff that was copied and I taped one of them together…

But it won’t work for either of the two library shows (I sent an email for clear guidelines on what’s allowed, but I’m pretty sure nudity is out). And it’s not what I want for the next big one. I just need to draw it.

Maybe that’s today’s plan. Clear the light table, prep a big damn piece of paper, and start drawing it.

I’m still working on the binding…with doggie help.

Or not. This was around midnight. I finished the last side and started one of the sleeves. One finger is really hurting. I’m not sure it’s related to this…I think I pin-stabbed it. Whoops. Simba really just wants me to rub his belly instead of stitching.

I even got Kitten at one point…

The other kittens were out being treated for worms. Gross stuff. They came back and played around for a while and then got locked up in the crate for sleepy time.

Boychild has been digging up this Tree of Heaven (it’s a weed…a seriously fucking tree weed that goes to the center of the Earth and out the other side)…

He keeps finding glass buried down there. I’m pretty sure the newest pieces are vintage whisky bottle…

Fascinating shit out there…

Meanwhile…today…I need to get new hiking boots. I need to start grading the last of the hellacious things. I need to pull some quilt rolls out for a curator who’s doing a ‘studio visit’ tomorrow (my studio is the whole house…makes it difficult). I need to take a freakin’ shower! Seriously this day is kicking my butt. I need to make the other batch of scones before the ingredients go bad. I need to clear the damn light table and start drawing! Yes. That thing. OK. Well. Let’s start with the shower and see how the day goes. Or not. Because the boychild is still doing laundry. OK. Let’s start with the quilt rolls or the scones or maybe the light table. SEE! This is how it starts. I should write all the tasks on little pieces of paper and put them in a jar and then pick one to do first. Geez, even I am rolling my eyes at that.

I can only do what I can do. And realizing that the end of break is ALWAYS this fucked up should help.

We Have to…

I’ve been thinking about the risks we take as artists…first, there are of course the risks of making the work. A lot of us have another job that pays the bills and then we make art “on the side.” Someone actually called teaching my side job the other day and I laughed. Because it is…and it isn’t. It takes too much time to be the side job. I don’t think of EITHER of them as the side job…copyediting is the side job. Anyway, so there’s a risk there of not putting enough time into either to be good at either. Plus the work I do has occasionally gotten me in trouble at my job…although I am mostly protected, my district could probably come up with some reason to fire me for my art…other districts have done that to other artists. If you are a full-time artist, kudos to you, but that is also a risk…if you don’t sell enough, you are constantly trying to fill in your income with classes or teaching positions or books or some other way to pay the bills. We’ve all donated to a GoFundMe somewhere for an artist who got sick or injured and can’t pay the bills. There’s no insurance that covers that. Then there’s the risk of sending your work out into the world: the risk of shipping it or delivering it, having it hang somewhere else, having someone else be responsible for it, of having it damaged there or on the way there or back. There’s stories of work being knocked over, of bleach being thrown at work, of work being stolen. All these are terrifying to the artist who spends so much time and energy to make the work. And as my son reminded me today, a lot of the work we make is flammable…if this house goes up in flames, what’s left? Artists have faced that in wildfires, in bushfires, in single house or studio fires. It’s devastating.

So Why the FUCK do we keep doing this risky thing? Well, because we have to. We have a brain that requires the art to be made, that means we have to spend the time, the money, the energy, the risk, the threat of loss or damage. We have to. Hopefully we understand the risks and we do our best to protect against those…and I’m amazingly lucky that my quilt was found before I ever knew it was lost. Sure, I could make it again (would I? Probably not). I have the drawing. I have photos. One of my smaller older quilts was burned in the Cedar Fire. The owner contacted me about fixing it…or really, about preserving it. I sent her the information I could (eventually, over time, it will not last). That’s a survival story. Certainly with all the fires we have here and with what Australia is experiencing, I expect more stories of damage to art and quilts and lives. There’s even a bit of a link here to the President’s threats to bomb Iran’s cultural sites. Because that’s a threat to a cultural artifacts that doesn’t need to be made. But that’s a whole ‘nother issue, isn’t it? Sigh.

Reflection on the practice of art. I drew this on Saturday night…

Trying to escape all the shit in my head and destruction on my planet.

By Sunday night, I was done with escaping…

I still don’t see solutions, but I realize we can’t go anywhere. This might be the start of the next big quilt, although I’m staring at one of my older quilts on the wall, about the Japanese tsunami of 2011. And the themes are similar. Sigh. The missiles are new. Isn’t that fun?

I really haven’t done a good job of making art this break. I’ve full-on sucked at it. I figure there’s a reason. My brain isn’t there. That said, I finally stitched the binding on with the machine last night…

And now I can sit and sew by hand for a while. I also went through a bunch of drawings over the last two days. I have two shows coming up that will require no nudity, and I don’t have a lot of those right now. I’m going to need to make a few of those. But not next. I don’t think. I don’t know. I have a week left before I have to go back to school. I’m trying to stay on top of the to-do list, but honestly, I just start panicking. My weekend coming up is totally full, so I have to be proactive about school stuff. I’ve been working all break, a little at a time. But ugh. This view.

Sometimes I sit on the couch and do it while watching TV; sometimes I sit here. It doesn’t help. I have to get up regularly and do something else. I can’t grade less right now. These are assessments. They require me to pay attention and focus on real answers and feedback. I can’t just throw them out. This is where I realize that I didn’t teach the kids some things, or even that I DID teach them and they didn’t retain it. It’s frustrating. But it has to be done. And it’s time-consuming. There’s no real way to figure out what they know with a multiple-choice test. There’s three different ways for them to show me here. And some got perfect scores. Some didn’t.

So I need to finish those and another assignment. Even though it hurts my head.

Today is a lot of errands though. Gonna get them out of the way and hope for some gym time and a hike later this week. Plus I need to read the book for book club. Minor issue. And pick the next quilt to make. Either I’m drawing a new big one that’s timely (that’s what I’m leaning toward) or I’m drawing a smaller one with no nudity (eh. Later.).

We always have cute kittens…

Even when they’re rampaging around, destroying things. Which is something they do. When they’re not considering playing with the old lady cat…

It’s a work in progress, that…

There’s nowhere to sit sometimes because so many furry things are sleeping. Which is nice. They certainly help clear the mind sometimes.

OK. Speaking of clearing minds, I need Motrin. And more tea. Off to the vet and who-knows-where-else.

How to Make It Better…

So many people already saying Happy New Year…I guess that’s legit for Australia, but all you Americans just need to wait a bit. Europe too. Chillax. We’ve got the rest of 2019 to survive.

Speaking of Australia…all the fires and the animals and the people and the crazy fire weather, which doesn’t make the news here hardly at all…my heart goes out to you. Hoping there’s a resolution soon and people can rest easy…although the future weather/drought issues there will still be a problem. I didn’t realize there was such a huge coal industry there. It’s so hard to balance the needs of the world in general in terms of slowing climate change while also making sure people still have jobs and food and homes. It’s a huge mind shift…one that America doesn’t seem to understand either. Our core job needs to be taking care of people…not making money. So many politicians are ignorant (willfully or ?) of the science behind what’s happening and how we humans are making it worse.

Also on my mind…attacks on Jewish people…I hate my current government (because it’s not just the President any more) for encouraging this environment where people are emboldened to attack anyone who is different than they are. Have we learned nothing over the years? I read a friend’s comment about how we are raised to respect others’ opinions, but she was clear in that we don’t have to respect racist or hate-based opinions. I don’t hate you because you are racist…I don’t understand you. I hate your actions toward others. I hate your speech toward others. You are human and so obviously frightened of what is different or what you perceive as taking away from your rights (such an ignorant and limited view of the world). You don’t have the right to hurt someone else because of that…even if the President says you do. This last year has been hard to watch. So much anger and wrongness.

So that’s where I’m ending 2019. Sometimes when I’m drawing or making quilts, I think “this piece of art isn’t going to fix the government or racism or climate change or hate or anything else…” and I get disheartened about what I’m making. It’s not enough. I’m using materials that are causing more pollution, I’m using electricity, my privilege allows me to create art because I’m not trying to find food for my children or clean water…I don’t have tons of money to donate to worthy causes or tons of time to volunteer in worthy places. I try to educate my students about things when I can…there are times when I can’t be political because I teach in a public school…but I can be scientific. I make art because it helps me stay sane. It’s a drive I can’t turn off. I have been trying to be more thoughtful about fabric use in the last year or so…using up weird pieces that have been around for a while. I don’t have a solution for the world right now…I just know large parts of it are messed up and need fixing.

Tomorrow will be all about Happy New Year and looking forward. Today I’m in reflection mode. Ironically, I’m doing this program to help me reduce my school work hours, and they had suggested making monthly goals for school and other stuff, and I don’t know why that sounded like a good idea, but I set up the spread in my journal (which I do use daily…the journal anyway)…

And then. Well. Realized I’m not good at setting monthly goals. I set weekly ones, even daily ones, and ones that stretch out the length of a unit of teaching science (the next one is volcanoes and earthquakes, I think). Also ones that stretch out for the length of a quilt. Sometimes for summer or winter break. Not this break so much…but this isn’t working for me. I can’t get my head around it. OK then. I think I do OK on goals in general, so I’m just going to write this up as Tried, but Didn’t Work.

I did quilt for a while yesterday, the 2nd figure. I’ll do more today, I hope…though my original goal to be quilted by now so I could trim and bind today?

Not happening. So this will be the first quilt of 2020.

I’m still grading almost every day. I prefer doing a little at a time to spending entire days working on it.

This kitten is not at all helpful. Neither is the pup.

I did finish this assignment completely, and stayed up way too late doing another one, but now all that’s left is the three hellacious assignments. I’m just going to bully through one period a day, maybe more if it makes sense. Take a day off when it makes sense. Get through as much as I can. I have 12 days before I go back, and ideally I’ll be done. Which means more than one a day, I think. Sigh. OK. Good to know.

It’s also OK to do some of it when I get back from break. No matter what I was grading, there was always a companion…

These two eventually got off my lap…with some assistance from me.

Although Nova apparently thinks she is cuter than her sister, and should be in all the photos…

Eventually she sat on Luna. It’s nice having siblings…they are amusing.

I did my daily drawing…

This type of imagery shows up often. I was tired. Couldn’t think of what to draw.

This is one of the shows my work is going to be in, coming up in January…

That’s one of my two pieces…the art center is in Ojai, California. I don’t know if I’m going to the opening…it’s a long way for one day. Thinking about it.

OK, time to stop thinking and start doing. I need to put away the Christmas stuff, pack up some boxes to ship, walk the dogs, grade some shit, quilt another person, and IDK what else. Draw. But it’s New Year’s Eve, so I’ll get time for that while having to watch crazy TV. Ugh. I’m not a fan of all the NYE television, and I don’t need to go out and party. I do need to think about how to make 2020 better. Not for me…for others.

Can’t Be Bothered…

I hiked yesterday. I didn’t write because I hiked, so I was up early and then I came back and was exhausted. Plus I don’t know what day it is anymore. Neither does anyone else, so it’s all good.

Girlchild spent a lot of time spoiling dogs…

They love when she’s home…

Which is good for her too…

Although she put this one in timeout for barking too much…

Legit.

We had one family gaming night…

With kitten involvement…they were fascinated…

With laps and dice and little pieces everywhere…

I didn’t win. I really never win. It’s a good thing I don’t care about winning.

Girlchild left this morning. I’m trying to figure out when to go visit her in Boston. Maybe Spring?

Lots of kitten cuteness. I have no family pictures…just kitten pictures.

Lame. I know.

This morning, my cat (Kitten) ventured out and maybe attempted play with kittens…

Maybe. Hard to say. Yes, there’s a kitten up her butt.

It’s progress. We hope.

Yesterday’s hike was at Santa Ysabel Preserve West, out off the 78…there was ice in a puddle and a tiny bit of snow by the path…

It was beautiful…there were lots of cows…and the Coast to Crest Trail book is as always completely wrong about every hike I’ve done in there…

The mileage was right…just under 6 miles…

I’m just not sure how they calculate loss/gain of elevation, because they said 300 feet and I should have checked AllTrails instead, because I would have brought my poles for the mud alone and this beast of a hill…

Down was worse than up for me. The man will never hike this trail again. Only 1174 feet of gain. Or loss. Doesn’t really matter to your knees.

Snow on the nearish mountains…

Beautiful panoramas…and more cows…

Mama is staring at us quite intently. We did persuade her to go stand by her babies…the original trail went between mom and the calves. Not a great plan.

We visited our favorite dive bar on the way back for sustenance…and then collapsed for the rest of the day.

I quilted a little bit on Friday. Super slow progress…

I just have too much to do. I finished grading 4/5 of the larger assignments.

I’m hoping to quilt more today. I’m also hoping someone besides me will take the initiative on the grocery list/cooking plan today, but that doesn’t look like it’s happening. Basically, I don’t think we would go to the store if I didn’t plan it.

Sigh.

I have videos to compile for my Patreon today, plus a drawing to scan and clean up. But hopefully more quilting too.

This was Friday’s drawing…tech on my mind? Much?

And then last night’s…I started with kittens asleep over there…at some point, one headed for me.

It’s hard to draw with a kitten in your face.

But there it is. Join my Patreon for $5/month and you’ll get a high-res copy of the drawing for coloring or staring at or whatever. Just don’t sell it. One a month. Such a deal. At some point, I’ll make a coloring book, but not yet. Need funding.

The Patreon video this month is about my motivation to get stuff done at the moment. It’s lacking. So I’ll do some pondering and then figure my shit out. As always. Until then, maybe it’s sandwiches every night. Can’t be bothered. Welcome to the new year!

Fighting Broken Thread…

Solar guys are here early to hopefully finish the job. Did I go to bed early last night because I knew they were coming? Fuck no. I was too busy fighting broken threads on the current quilt to go to bed early. The parrots were also here this morning, migrating their asses all over my trees, squawking their green little parrot songs. Things I can’t sleep through: rain, wind, parrots, men stomping on my roof and screwing things down through metal. It’s actually a longer list than that…includes Calli licking her paws and Kitten cleaning her butt. Plus coyotes and TVs and light…can’t sleep when it’s light unless I’m dying of some illness…which luckily I’m not at the moment.

Every day right now is about how to get more energy and time for artmaking…and still get shit done. Yesterday was replacing the black boots that finally died…with the girlchild. Plus grading one class of the larger assignment. Honestly, though, if I only do one a day, I may never finish all the things I need to grade, so I might have to step it up to two a day. I don’t know. Sigh. Do you stuff a day full of grading? Or do a little bit each day? It’s hard to know which hurts less. Which annoys less. But at least one period will get done today. The girlchild needs her eyes checked, so that’s on the list. Continuing the drawing a day and quilting some more (hopefully with fewer breaks) is also on the list for today.

Kitten sisters love each other, but in a semi-violent way…

There’s a lot of play fighting that goes on here.

Calli only gets upset when someone tries to take her toy…

Calli was watching me grade stuff. Plus she was nervous about the weather, which is gone today! Beautiful blue skies…cold, but clear. We’ll take it! Tomorrow, we’re hiking…hopefully not in snow, but who knows? A lot fell in our mountains.

In the afternoon, post shoe-shopping and grading, I finished the stitchdown on this never-ending quilt, and then pieced a backing. I’m still using up what I have, best I can…

I ended up using some of the blue from the front and a piece of gray/black that I’ve had for a really long time…I think it was a hand-me-down from somewhere, but honestly, I don’t remember. I cleaned the floor just in time for the kids and dogs to leave…

And then pinbasted it…it’s not huge. I’m not sure what’s taking me so long right now. Best to let the brain do what it needs to do. Stop worrying about it and just do it.

I thought this was going to be an easy 2019 finish…but I think it’ll be the first quilt of 2020.

I generally finish about 6 decent-sized quilts a year…this one would have been number 7.

I still might finish it in time for it to be a 2019 quilt…but for show entries, it’s probably better to finish in 2020.

I need thread for the background…I don’t have that color of blue, I think. I will need binding at some point as well. And I need a decision about the next deadline.

I took a break for pilates and dinner and some TV plus drawing, which is hard to do with a kitten on your chest. But she was insistent…

So I dealt…until she started batting at the pen. Off my dear. Love you. Go somewhere else.

Bone garden…

The man went to bed…too many festivities, not enough sleep (he handles it by sleeping…a smart move, I must say)…and I started quilting. The thread broke at least 10 times in this little space. I changed the needle, rethreaded a million times, applied thread conditioner, changed the tension.

Then gave up and went to bed because who needs that? And sometimes it figures itself out overnight. I’ll try again today.

Here are my Instagram colors from 2019. That’s a lot of blue…

Interesting…because my photos are a lot of art and a lot of hiking and animals. That’s about it.

Plans for today? Shower. Ignore stomping on roof. A drawing, some quilting, grading an assignment, eye doctor with girlchild, thread purchasing, possibly Costco (is it too soon? It might be too soon…but I need stuff. Not a lot of stuff. It can probably wait until next week. I don’t like people right now. The grocery stores on the two days before Christmas were probably enough people for the next three weeks.). Introverting? Maybe. Might be at a show tonight, later. Just don’t know. Art though. Make art.