Good Things…

So lots of good news yesterday…the 8 exhibits of quilts that were missing reappeared (it’s like magic!), so they’ll be winging their way home. Lost out on two exhibits. Oh well. Then I found out that Work in Progress made it into ArtQuilt Elements, so it will be in Pennsylvania at the Wayne Art Center from March through May.

It’s nice to get into a show again.

And most important of all, so I don’t have to deal with 7800 wet towels and no hot water, I have a new hot-water heater…hallelujah. Yesterday’s shower was a little more intense than I like on a Monday morning.

And my morning starts with the dog at 5 AM finally figuring out that she needs to pee. Didn’t need to at midnight last night, nosiree. Now would be the time. Ugh.

So my evening was a little discombobulated by car trading, a car that was refusing to start, a plumber still installing a water heater, and dad wandering around the house. No walk, no gym. Unfortunate. Because then I couldn’t get motivated to do shit for a good long time. I cleaned up a little, started laundry, ate some food, tried to focus. I spent all day at school mostly unfocused. Not sure why. But I swear I have a kid who is stealing piles of paper off my desk. I know that sounds like an excuse, but these are piles of blank assignments, maybe 20 sheets, and this is the second time a pile has gone missing from that area after that class. That’s too much of a coincidence. So I’m gonna leave out a dummy pile and watch her like a hawk today. Yes, it sounds just about as crazy as it is. I’m pretty good with piles of paper. And I had just used it that period. I’m feeling a little nuts.

I finally gave up on trying to grade and came in here to deal with emails and bills. Then spent 20 minutes trying to sort through all the crap that was in here before and is now piled in the boychild’s room. It’s a little crazy in there too. I can’t move stuff back yet, because the water traveled under the whole wall and a little up it in places. It’s warm here, so it should dry out quickly, but I want to give it a fighting chance, so nothing goes back for a few days.

Then on to the quilting…except that’s where I sit…

I moved her back a bit and perched on the edge. She’s not interested in the other chair at all, because I’m not in it. This one will do nicely thank you. Eventually, she left, but not until I was on the second quilt.

This is Cat 2…

Yeah, I gave her something to lie on. I think if I redo that one, I will give her an actual fabric thing to lie on. Maybe.

And here’s Cat 3…which is so obviously Kitten.

She sleeps like that all the time. They each take about 30-45 minutes to quilt. I suspect Cat 6 and the owl will take longer, because of the outlining. I do that first with a darker thread, and then background quilt after. It makes the cats pop up off the fabric nicely.

So yeah, progress. And lots of good things happened yesterday. I’m OK with all that. So the universe kicks your butt with a leaky water heater and then rewards you for…for what exactly? Oh yeah. Because that’s not really how the world works. It’s all just random shit, partially predictable (like it was an old water heater; it was bound to do this some day).

I’m not looking forward to putting everything back. I just hope I can find a way to get rid of some of it…I already found some books I know I don’t want, but I couldn’t get rid of them before…maybe they just get donated. I used to buy a lot of quilt books when I was learning to quilt and finding my way in the fiber art world. Now I buy mostly catalogs of shows more than anything else, and a lot of those early quilt books are completely useless. So I should get rid of some of them. Might as well do it now, before I move them back into the room. Same with all the other quilt and fabric stuff. I found a whole drawer of my hand-dyed fabrics that I didn’t even know I had. Gotta remember that stuff. Access is part of it. This is a fairly small room and there’s a ton of stuff shoved in here.

Anyway. School calls. I think I need a lot more caffeine to actually DEAL with school, but that’s a whole ‘nother problem.

A Slow Drip…

My dad called me about 3 three weeks ago and asked me how old my water heater was. I read all the stickers on it and told him I didn’t know. He said it was on there somewhere and I just wasn’t seeing it. Generally I’m a pretty observant person, but whatever. He sent the plumber over (who was replacing my garbage disposal, which died about three weeks ago, coincidentally) to look at the water heater. He’s a nice guy, so he admitted he had to look up some code to see how old it was. But 2000. Yeah. So 15 years old. I told dad I thought it predated the divorce, and I was right…because I distinctly remember it going last time, water everywhere, having to dry the carpet and the pad underneath, plus my studio being watery, and I was a copyeditor then, so piles of paper everywhere on the floor. Not enough desk space. Just stacked manuscripts vertically.

So dad said he would schedule a replacement. He’s in this mode where he fixes everything before it breaks. Me, I wait until it’s catastrophic and I can’t live without it, right? Which is why we lived without a stove for two weeks last January. My house is at the age where everything breaks and falls apart. And I can’t afford to fix it.

So yeah, yesterday morning, the water heater was leaking. Luckily it wasn’t a fast leak (isn’t…because it’s still leaking). By the time I found it, the water was halfway across the studio floor, but almost everything in there is in plastic. I learned from last time. Very few piles of paper on the floor. The water heater is in a closet that backs up onto the studio, and instead of inundating the laundry floor with water, it goes under, into the studio.

So I got all of one wall of crap out and deposited it in the boychild’s room…

Then I sent him that photo and promised it would all be gone by the time he came home for Winter Break. Settin’ myself some goals! That’s 8 weeks, by the way. And now that it’s out, I’m going through it and culling. Because I can. I was kind of shocked by how much stuff was in such a small space.

Here’s Kitten exploring before I got the bookshelf out of there. It’s in the living room. All the stuff that was in it is in the boy’s room, though. It was full.

When Dad came over, he said something about replacing the floor. Well yeah, it has two holes in it, but NOW? Now is not the time. I can’t handle it right now. I can’t even handle THIS right now. Except I am. Because I just have to.

I had to clear out part of the pantry so they could get in there to replace the water heater, which is happening this afternoon…which is why I had a cold shower this morning. I could get the gas off, but couldn’t turn the water to the heater off, so it’s still dripping. Faster. But it’ll be OK.

The towels in the basket are sopping wet. The washer is full of more of them. I’ve used every beach towel and big towel that I have.

And I pushed everything else into the corner. It’s kinda dysfunctional in here on a good day.

Today is not a good day. But in true Kathy fashion, I cleared enough space to quilt last night. Because the presence of drippy water and leaky water heaters and minor disasters in the home should not stop you from making art. Seriously. I could have started going through the crap in the boy’s room last night, and when I finished grading, I surely thought that, but fuck no. I already had a significantly stressful day, and I need the wall to dry out anyway after they install (thank god for unseasonable warmth in San Diego over the next few days), so I’ll start tonight. Set a timer and do 30 minutes, and then move on to grading or quilting. I did grade a ton yesterday so I don’t feel bad. And Saturday. I did my duty. Plus I can’t move the bookshelf back by myself, and I won’t have help until Tuesday. So it has to all stay outta there.

Here’s Cat 1. She’s small and sweet. And quilted.

I did finish stitching down (obviously) this one and Cat 2. Then I quilted. Tonight I’m hoping to quilt some more. I’m also hoping to have a hot shower tomorrow morning and be able to do laundry tonight, because otherwise, I gotta go do the laundry at my parents and their wifi sucks. I’ve got too much work to do right now to not be working for 2 hours or more. And cold showers suck.

All this after I spent about an hour on Saturday calculating and moving money around and divesting college funds and texting kids about money in their accounts, just so I could make two college payments by the 1st. So I made one, calculated it out, decided not to make myself broke completely this week…gotta eat, although boychild reminded me of the large bunny and raccoon population (is eating raccoon a thing?), plus my well-stocked cupboard. I can eat! OK, really, I went to Costco back in August and bought a bunch of meat, so I’m using that up, and whenever it’s on sale, like yesterday’s BOGO sale at the store, I just buy some for weeks like this, when there isn’t much money, but I apparently still need sustenance. And then I made him pay for part of this month’s college…”made” isn’t really fair, because I just stole it out of one of his college accounts and he said OK, because what else is he gonna say? Same with the girlchild. I still need $8000 though. That’s more than I thought. If I think too hard about that, I might cry.

It could be worse. I’m still quilting. The water heater is a slow drip…not a rush of water like last time. The sky was pretty this morning. I’m not eating the raccoons yet…saving them for later.

Even If I Suck at It…

So I think my head is exploding. Probably because I’m being so efficient. I’m sure that will stop soon. Surely tomorrow is a clusterfuck of scheduling, so I should remember that. I shipped all the Halloween stuff and birthday presents I needed to get out of here. A miracle. Four packages to four different cities…four different states even. Made it 16 minutes before the post office closed. It’s really NOT convenient to those of us who work during the daytime, by the way. I was at school until 5:30 last night with a parent meeting. I came home and worked. Then I did some more stitching down of things.

I made it through three of them. I was tired last night; I’m still tired right now. I know I slept long and hard, but it doesn’t make up for the rest of the week, I guess.

Here’s the black and white kitty. I could do any of these in black and white, I guess. Yes, these will be for sale, soon I hope. And I could take any one of them and redo it in another color scheme. Last year’s owl was done in grays, then in purples, and finally in browns.

This is the orange kitty…kinda foxlike in some ways.

And I think this is my favorite, because it’s so obviously Kitten. Plus curled-up kitties are just cute.

There’s two more to be stitched down, and then I can start quilting, binding, etc. Some of them will need whiskers and eye bits that will be hand-embroidered. I wanted them all to be done by Halloween, but I think that’s unlikely. I am going to go through my drawings and pick one for real soon, for the next big project. I think I have some already enlarged; maybe I should pick one of them. I’m hoping to get more grading done today and tomorrow. I have a meeting tomorrow, but I often grade right through it.

In other news, the SAQA Oasis exhibit that was supposed to be in Palm Springs and at PIQF in Santa Clara is lost at the moment. There were 8 exhibits on a pallet that all disappeared from the shippers’ warehouse before they left for the first show. It’s over a hundred quilts estimated lost. Insurance has been contacted, videos watched, people notified. All we can do is wait. They’re somewhere. I know that. Meanwhile, this quilt, Part-Time Oasis, can’t be entered anywhere though…

It sucks. I’m crossing my fingers. This shit happens.

Plus you can buy the book! From here! Currently $12.99, free shipping with Amazon Prime. I really do think these will have to show up at some point. They’re in a warehouse somewhere stupid and someone thinks they’re part of something else and haven’t even looked.

(Neighbor is up on the slope coughing up a lung…putting the music back on)…

If you didn’t know, I’m an INFJ…

Does not matter how many versions of this thing I take, I get Introverted Intuition Feeling Judging: The Advocate! Rarest on the planet! Less than 1%! Famous INFJs include Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Mother Teresa. OK, that kinda makes me laugh. Way to make me feel inferior, guys. But yeah. I’ve had people argue that I’m not an introvert before, and I’m like, wait WHAT? I totally am. I need to recharge on a regular basis. I unfortunately have a job that fully sucks up all my energy. In fact, I use this as my excuse for not doing lunch detentions at school. If I do those, I want to kill people. In fact, tutorial often makes me feel that way too. Sigh.

So I still want to draw. I keep running out of time to do the things I want to do, because NEED is such a fucking asshole. October has been just as much of a clusterfuck as September. I have not figured the whole balancing-time thing out, despite kids being gone. I seem to be more buried than ever. I’m finding it incredibly frustrating. I keep trying to get a handle on it.

I don’t know why Doctor Who is fucking around with Clara, when I obviously need his help, like now. Time machine? Really? Get your ass over here, Doctor, and help someone with some real time constraints.

So I’m going to go sit and watch some stuff today and try to bang out some major grading this weekend, even if it kills me. Plus finish a story, stitch down the remaining two quilts (two or three? There’s only two left. Did I say three up above? Damnit), get ready for school this week. Major crazy lab prep this week. And money is super tight, with two college payments coming up on the first, both of which I’m trying to pay, at least some of each anyway. Boychild reminded me that I always have a fairly well-stocked pantry though, and he’s right. I have frozen meat in the fridge and pasta and rice. I shouldn’t need much to get through the week. Milk and veggies I think…thinking it through.

Will draw. Even if I suck at it.

I Hope I Put It in My Phone

I’m never really sure what throws my brain in a hole. It’s stuff that happens all the time, but then my reactions are different for some reason. Like a switch flips up or down and that’s it. There’s the hole. I’m in it. I often blame hormones. But who knows if that’s really it. I had a really successful weekend. I got a lot done. I went to an opening where I won an award. I don’t know what the deal is. Hopefully it won’t last long. Usually being around middle-school kids all day has a tendency to banish the blues. And calling it “the blues” is kinda lame too. It’s just a bad place my brain goes, a place it’s been before, and apparently a place I’ll never forget how to fall into.

With that, here’s what I got done on Saturday. Kitten was the model for this one…

She’s cute. Another quiet one.

Then the second owl…this is pulled from one of the bathtub drawings…in fact, it might be the one I’m going to make next into a quilt.

I haven’t decided for sure yet. I tried him on multiple blues, but this one worked best.

I finished all of that before going to the Interpretations opening at Visions…where I won the Director’s Award. Which is cool. Never won an award there before…me with my giant boob. The show is open until um…January 3. Long time.

Several people asked if it was me in the story…and yeah. I dealt with about a year of excessive mammogramming and ultrasounds and twisty pokey stuff, and then they proclaimed it a normal dark spot. I did actually see it on one of the scans. It’s been there for over 7 years now and hasn’t changed. It’s the alien in my boob. Much like the aliens in my uterus. Who might all be gone now. Who knows.

So that was Saturday. Sunday was filled with errands and getting ready for school, sending emails and fixing the website and trying to organize the week and get caught up on grading (I will never be caught up).

Then I came in to iron. It was late, but I’d been fighting that mood for hours and there’s no way to make it go away, but making art helps it feel less awful. So I ironed the last of the cats. Yeah, this is the weird one.

I drew it during a staff meeting…or a union meeting. Can’t remember which. The woman next to me kept watching me and it was annoying me, so that’s where the eyeballs came from. Anyway…I’m not really expecting this one to sell (although someone bought the eyeball bird last year, and it was a weird one). I like it anyway.

The next step, hopefully tonight, is to start sandwiching all of them, getting them ready for quilting. Progress…slow but sure.

So I was getting ready to go to sleep last night and looked up at my bedroom ceiling…

Yeah, so I had to get a stepstool and a tupperware and some cardboard and then he kept running, but eventually I caught him and set him free in the front yard. My biggest freakout with this is How do they get in? Because there was the baby lizard on my pillow a few weeks ago. I feel like there’s a lizard family living in my bedroom. But Kitten lives in my bedroom. You think she’d be aware of these things.

There’s also this…

I needed a fried egg in a circle. I was actually fascinated by the patterns of the oil in the tin foil. I once painted a whole 3×4′ painting of tin foil. It’s in the garage somewhere. Ah, the things you do in college. There’s also a 4-foot green penis. And another one of a tin can. That one’s cool. It would make a great quilt. I did it as a screenprint too. I was talking to one of the artists at the Interpretations exhibit about all the stuff I want to try and how I don’t have time, and she just straight up said I needed to retire. Then I would be able to do those things.

Oh. OK. I’ll get on that (excuse me while I roll around on the floor laughing, because I won’t be able to afford to retire until I’m dead).

Meanwhile, I make art in the middle of the night. I draw in my head while I’m in the car. I compose quilts while sitting in meetings. I color them in while I’m grading papers. I get ideas while I’m teaching (I got one the other day and yelled it out, and my students were amused. I don’t remember what it was now. I hope I put it in my phone. I usually do.).

OK. With that, I need to go earn a living.

Music in the Morning…

It’s Friday morning. Usually I sit at my computer, drink my tea, read a bit, and write, and it’s all in dead silence. Some of that dates from when the kids got up after I did, so I had to be mom quiet to let them sleep. But then when they went to high school, that was less of an issue…they were up well before me. I’m not quite awake this morning, so I just turned the music on. It might help. Certainly there’s no one here who cares but me and the cats and the dog. And the fat black cat just wandered in, so apparently she’s not offended by morning rock ‘n roll.

I had quilt class last night, but I was crocheting. Long story. It will eventually end up on here. I’ve always known how to knit and crochet; was taught at an early age. I used to sit in high-school history class knitting scarves so I wouldn’t fall asleep. I find history classes kinda boring. Probably means I never took the right ones.

I came home and ironed after eating. I let Rubio feed me last night. Never met the guy, but he saved me from cooking.

So the plus with these little guys is that they iron so quickly. The minus is that because they iron quickly, I have to make fast, repeated decisions about backgrounds…which is hard. But I did it anyway, until I was too tired to stand. Then I sat and did some school stuff instead.

So first I iron the whole thing to a teflon sheet with the drawing behind it…

That’s some brightly colored cat there. Then I pick a background and iron it to that. Pretty much it takes less than 30 minutes per cat…some were only 15 minutes.

Easy peasy. And the ones with a lot of white in the same range, I will outline shapes with a dark thread, almost like drawing on the quilt with the thread. So those features will pop. This one is little…the littlest, I think.

Much happier on a background. I debated green, but there’s a little green in the background and she looked funny on the green. I actually pull a bunch of backgrounds and drop the cat on top of each one until it looks happy. Not washed out. Not lost. But happy. This one made her happy. The green did not.

I did a black and white bird last year, and the patterns made it kind of fun, so I wanted to try it with a cat.

This cat is a little perkier than the last one. All these cats are numbered so I can keep track of them, but I’m not doing them in order any more. Dammit. Because the boxes were piled up in no particular order. Wish I could tell you which one this was…maybe 5?

This is 3…and I used an actual cat as a model, although I changed the coloring. So calm.

Deserving of a calm background. She’s pretty. At some point, I’m going to run out of that fabric I love, the batik with the wispy cloud lines across it.

OK, you’re gonna laugh, because I had this sudden bug up my butt to troll the internet for that fabric, and realistically, it’s probably 4 or 5 years old, so I couldn’t find it, but I found three others that are similar that might give me as much joy. And utility. So yeah, I just bought them. The internet is such an enabler. It’s also amazing with all the fabrics I have that I always need new ones. Not quite the right shade or whatever. But I do try to use stuff up…I haven’t bought anything else for these cats. The background above is from my second mom, who died in June. The spiral blue is the leftover from another background on a larger quilt…can’t remember which one. Would have to go back and search for it. I think the other blue is also a leftover piece.

Anyway. So that’s what I do in the mornings before work. Troll the internet for fabric I need? Well, no, I don’t usually do that.

Tonight, I’m hoping to do another 4 or so…I have only 5 left, but I think 4 of them are the harder ones…more pieces, more complicated. So keep your eyes open.

These will be for sale, if you didn’t realize. I meant to do them over the summer and got sidetracked, but if you’re looking for a holiday gift for a loved one (or yourself!) and you see one you like, let me know. I won’t hold you to buying it until I have it completed with a price. I just keep a wait list. They’ll probably all be between $100 and 200, except for the owl and the weird cat. They’re way more complicated. Last year’s owl was $235.

Which reminds me, there are three small bird quilts from last year that never sold. The top two don’t have a binding or a sleeve…they’re finished with a satin stitch and have two small plastic rings on the back that they hang from…they’re each 8×10″ and $100 (cheaper because less finishing time). This is Dove 2, Bird 11…

And this is Diving Bird 2, Bird 13, same size.

This is bound and has a sleeve. It’s Purple Bird, Bird 8, 18.25“ w x 14.5“ h, $205.

And then I’m working on 7 cats, 2 hearts in hands, much like this one…

But not exactly. And a different owl than last year’s…coming up in the next week or so you’ll see them all ironed down. Actually, I wrote this part last night, and I’m hoping to see them all ironed down in the next 24 hours. We’ll see about that. I do have to grade papers too.

And I will be at the Visions opening tomorrow night…posing with my quilt? Who knows…

A Brightly Colored Cat…

So yesterday was a giant time suck of catching up on everything that didn’t happen on Saturday…because I really did go to a baby shower and then found a coffee shop and graded and then went to an amazing opening of Bhavna Mehta’s paper-cut work. The exhibit is called Gush and it’s currently at the Oceanside Museum of Art.

I have more photos, so I can write a post for our group’s blog. I saw Bhavna’s work years ago, well before she joined the group. It’s amazing stuff. Her brain works in these incredibly intricate ways. And I’m so glad she’s in our group now, because that means I get to see her work all the time.

Actually, before I got in the car, I managed to finish cutting fabrics out for the weird cat…because I was already halfway done.

That’s a lot of fabrics for such a small quilt.

After the museum opening, I kamikazed back to my home town, where I did this drawing in a bar watching a band play.

Then Sunday, after de-installing the 17-foot woman, going grocery shopping and to two other errands, taking the trash out, dealing with laundry, cooking for the whole week, and grading a bit (all that took until 9:30)…then I finally got up, stood up, stopped staring at screens (there were three of them)…and made it into the studio space for some real stuff. I decided on Saturday to trace this one again and make a brightly colored version. I really wanted a brightly colored cat. What can I say? I cut the Wonder Under out on Saturday too…so last night, I got ready to pick fabrics.

There’s the selection! Yup, it’s a little crazy.

I was in a mood apparently.

It doesn’t take long to do these little guys.

And even to cut them out.

I got another two small quilts cut out last night as well…

It’s fast…but I still have two more to go.

Hopefully tonight I can get those done and maybe start ironing these together. I’m already tired, though, and it’s still supposed to be hot today, although it’s not so bad right now. Plus I need to get exercise back into my regular routine. My life is kicking my butt at the moment. I know y’all are like “OMG how does she get so much done?” but I’m like holy hell, why am I not more efficient? I do need to do some major cleaning tonight after the mess I made last night, but at least I have lunches for the week and one dinner in there already made. That’s the shit that saves me during the week. Then I’m aiming for two days at the gym and one hike with the dog if it cools down. Plus ironing all those beasts down. Plus catching up on grading, whatever that code phrase “catching up” means.

Every year, I donate to SAQA in the form of buying one of their small auction quilts…this is what I bought this year…

It’s even nicer in person, a silky organza-type fabric that shimmers a bit. It’s by Daniela Tiger and is called Let’s Chat. Soon it will join the other pieces hanging around my house. It’s hard for me to simplify enough to work small. I appreciate others who can.

Melty Brain…

I swear the hot weather sucks my brain out of my head and spits it out on the ground, where it sizzles and bursts into flames. We took 140 kids to the zoo and it was over 100 degrees. Significantly hotter back at school even. By the time I got home, I just wanted to sit, and then I napped. And that’s how you know you’re old. A nap on a Friday afternoon/evening. But after that, I graded papers (took way too long…couldn’t focus). And I finally got my act in gear and headed into the studio…

I didn’t get very far…

So this is the weird cat. You can’t even see all the weirdness in this photo. But it’s weird. But I like it. So worst case? It’ll be mine.

I started ironing these pieces down and then I hit the mental wall of exhaustion…for like the third or fourth time in one day.

Man, even the camera was tired and couldn’t focus. Ugh.

I’m not a whole lot more awake this morning, unfortunately. Boychild texted me for a turkey burger recipe, girlchild is at work, bored stiff, and I’m trying to wake up enough to deal with leaving the house for about 12 hours straight. I have two events up in North County, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, so I’m just going to take my grading with me and find a coffee shop in between and sit in air conditioning, instead of the heat I have at my house. Then I come back down here to a show. Somewhere in there I need to eat a couple of meals maybe? Or maybe survive on baby-shower food and art-opening snacks? Probably not going to be enough.

And hopefully by tomorrow it will cool down, because I have to go take down the 17-foot woman, and it was incredibly warm in that space last time. I should remember the ice water this time.

My goal for the small quilts this week is to finish ironing Cat 6 (above), finish trimming all of them (5 are done, 4 to go), and then iron them all together and down to backgrounds. The bird backgrounds were obviously blues. Not sure about the cats. And I kinda still want to do one crazy-colored cat, but I did them all normal so far, so I’m considering retracing one and doing it in crazy bright colors. However, I don’t think that’s happening today.

I guess it could, but I’d have to get my butt organized. Saturday mornings are not my strong point. Hell, mornings in general aren’t my strong point.

OK. Focus Kathryn. Get up and do stuff. Yes, it’s still hot. Your brain is still in your head. Get on with it.

Walking in the Dark…

I took the dog for a long walk that ended up being in the dark last night. Apparently she doesn’t like to walk in the dark. I don’t mind. It’s cooler. The cars get annoying on certain parts of this walk, but that’s only at the very end. Most of it was fine, except I had to put her back on the leash, because she was way too interested in the bunnies, who were coming out with the waning light. I had spent all day with people, trying to get them to do work or listen to me, so it was nice to not have to talk to anyone. Just walk. Just look. Just listen to music. OK, I had to talk to the dog a few times. She gets nervous sometimes. If and when I’m ready to hike with other humans again, I will. For now, I need the silence.

Then I came home and I didn’t even sit down. I cooked from scratch and THEN I sat down. After food, I graded papers, because I’m so far behind. Again. Still. Hate that. Hate how it feels. But I tried to be efficient. It takes 2 1/2 hours for me to grade one medium-sized assignment. The Unit 1 journals that I’m grading at school? About 2 hours per period, so 10 hours. I had a couple people tell me that my job is not hourly, that it’s salaried, so I can’t complain about all the extra hours I do, but I know what salaried people get in terms of salary and perks, and I don’t get that. So it’s not OK. And I don’t get paid during the summer, which is hard. I work as a teacher almost every single night, every Sunday and many times Saturday, and almost every holiday. Sometimes the workload weighs on me so heavily, I wish I could be a barrista…just make coffee all day on my feet (I’m already on my feet all day) and then come home and slough off the job and not have to BE my job for another 3 or 4 hours.

Which is why the art is so important. It’s where I get that sense of peace that I need to get up the next morning and sometimes drag myself to school, to yet another meeting where they will take 90 minutes to say in one sentence what we want to hear: Yes, we will help this needy child by providing services. Holy god, yes. Say that more.

I ironed well last night…not long, just well. About an hour and 10 minutes on art…I ironed the more complicated heart in hands…

It had quite a few fabrics because the hands had fingers. What the fuck was I thinking? Simple? Not quite.

They’re ready to be cut out. Trying to decide if I’m going to take these to my stitching meeting tonight or just take grading.

Because either I’m going to grade there or I’m going to come home and grade. I can grade there and then come home and cut stuff out, or if I have enough energy, I can iron the last one, which is bigger and more complicated.

Then I did the owl…

I did three owls last year, but they were all the same pattern, just three different colorways. This is a different drawing.

We’ll see if he’s popular.

Kitten was in there the whole time, my inspiration for most of the cats in my quilts. Before her, it was Juniper, also a calico. Apparently I have a calico personality. Friendly, but a little feisty…known to bite or attack if provoked.

Here though she is kneading my batting into submission.

OK, another early start. Tomorrow is a field trip. I’d like to say I’m going to the gym tomorrow after school, but I suspect the field trip is gonna kick my ass and I’m going to come home and grade stuff until I can stand up again. At least this time I will have leftovers in the house if I need them.

One more to iron, and then I can start cutting them out. I’m hoping to be ironing them together next week.

Just a Thought…

I have not achieved school/work/life balance yet this school year. I’m either grading or working on some freelance job or making art, but it seems a decision to do one means I can’t keep up with the others. And I tend to prioritize the freelance stuff first, because…deadlines, and then grades and then art, or sometimes art and then I’m horrendously behind on grading (like I have been the entire school year so far). I come home too tired and then have to cook or deal with crap and then I look at the clock and it’s holy-fuck-o’clock and I need to think about sleep. So I might desperately spend a whopping 26 minutes doing art stuff at night (literally, that’s how much time I had last night).

I did the next cat…

Decided to make her a ginger. Not quite a tortoiseshell…not dark enough by far. But more like Rusty, a rescue cat we had years ago, back when we let cats roam. She was a coyote dinner at some point. Too bad. She was a sweetheart. I don’t let the cats out any more.

Rusty had more pieces than I was expecting…

So I did a gray, a black, and an orange kitty, and a couple of calico-types.

Some blue eyes and some green eyes. I think there’s only one more cat, and it’s a weird one. A Kathy quilt for sure. And there’s an owl and another heart in hands. I would have done another smaller one last night, but the last three aren’t small. They’re complicated. So I knew it would be another 45 minutes and that was well past midnight, so I stopped. I have another freelance job I’m working on this week. I’m trying to get enough money together to make the first of about three college payments I have to do for the boychild. I think if I spread them out instead of trying to do three months in a row, I’m going to be better off. It’s just too hard for me to come up with that lump sum in one go.

This is another early morning arrival day for me, unfortunately. I have 21 minutes until I need to leave for school. Yes, I try to write every day before school. For a while, I did it at night because it cleared my brain and I could actually sleep, but this seems to work better now. I can set goals for the day and try to wake up (I really don’t morning well). I eat my breakfast and drink my tea while I write. I try to reflect on the last 24 hours, on what I got done and how I feel about it. Ugh. I feel tired. And stressed. And overworked. Progress reports go home tomorrow and parents will start to panic. One parent yesterday wanted to know why we didn’t contact all parents when a kid didn’t turn one piece of work in (um. Lady. I like to sleep occasionally.). And then proceeded to tell us how busy she was, too busy to check her kid’s grade. Really? It was an interesting meeting. There was another one after school. Another one today. Don’t get me wrong; I love when parents give a shit. But give a shit and take some responsibility yourself for your child, and then at the age of 12? Make them take some too. I will make these kids more capable in the classroom. Or I will die trying.

So. When I get home from what is likely to be a contentious, stressful meeting today, I will hopefully have the energy (and time before dark) to take the dog for a walk, and then quickly do dinner, and do some grading, because I need to. And then I’m hoping to iron the last three quilts. It’s probably 2 hours of ironing, so I should start by 9:30. Just to be safe. There’s the schedule I need in my head. And honestly, if I have that? I am a million times more likely to actually DO it.

Just a thought.

Would Have Been Nice…

I need to leave for work in 26 9 minutes. Early day due to a parent meeting and having to be on duty every day. Ugh. Hate duty. So I should be writing faster than I am at the moment.

Yesterday, I met the other artist who will be in a show with me at Grossmont College in January. He has some paintings, but mostly sculptural work using brightly colored tin…very colorful and cool…kinda like a tin equivalent of my quilts in terms of color. I think the two types of work will go well together. You’ll have to come to the opening. There will be lemonade and cookies (it’s on a school campus…no wine). So I have to start thinking about what to put in it. She wanted to know how many quilts I had, like 5 or 10 (um. I have 90. Some are traveling though.). So I’m fine for content. I just have to choose. I have some time for that though.

So I spaced out for a little bit after all that last night…tired. But then managed to get some of the smaller quilts ironed down onto fabric. These don’t take long. I think the fabric ironing on this one was maybe 20 minutes, and that’s because I waffled about one of the fabrics. The harder part is deciding what kind of cat coloring it should have. I might do one all in bright colors, now that I think about it. But not this one…

Then there was a simplified version of the heart in hands I did last year…there’s actually a more complicated one as well, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s got about 25 pieces, compared to the last big quilt with almost 1900 pieces.

Even then, though, I do take my time to find the fabrics I want. You can see I have the other quilt pulled up on my iPad, just for comparison’s sake.

It’s not exactly the same. But I did use that weird lollipop-looking fabric again.

This cat is all grays mostly…and a little white. Like Limbo, back when he was alive. I tend to make calicos for some reason. But I’ve had cats of all colors.

Here’s the grays. She got blue eyes.

Then this one had to be a calico…too many color spots on her. She’s got a whopping 38 pieces in her.

So a tad bit more complicated than the first, which had 23 pieces.

I think these were hers. Not sure now. It was late. I was sorta fascinated with the piles of fabrics I’d used. I don’t always think clearly when it’s late and I’m tired.

I was going to give up before I got to this one, but I’m glad I didn’t, because my brain kicked in and reminded me how I liked the little black bird last year. Hey. Cats can be black! No way (I have a black cat sleeping in my red fabric drawer right now. She would prefer the blues, but those are still closed because I haven’t used a lot of blue yet in the cats…strangely.).

So a black kitty with lots of patterns in her…

I guess they could be male. I just think of them all as girls. Weird cat sexism. Here’s all the cut-out pieces.

So three cats and a hand/heart combo were cut out last night. I didn’t actually spend much time last night, just under two hours, in case you’re keeping track. And I had to really push to get the second hour out of me. It was a long day. It rained and the dog was a mudball when I picked her up, and then after I dried her off and cleaned out the car where she deposited mud everywhere, then she went in the pool, so she was dripping wet again. All before I had to drive downtown and find parking and act human. Hard at the end of the day, honestly. Plus that whole thing where I have to cook for myself. Ugh. I need a wife. Or an assistant. I hate that being a wife has that connotation: the one who takes care of everything, cleaning, house, cooking. Because I’m not married, haven’t been for years, but I’m still the one who takes care of everything: Christmas presents, flights home, paperwork, tax forms (12 texts from the girlchild this morning, as she gets ready to start work for the first real time). Sometimes it just wears you down being the “wife.” I’m not even a wife. And I’m OK with that part, don’t get me wrong…but it would be nice to have someone else do the cooking once in a while. Or go to the grocery store with you. Or dry off the dog, because you have to go downtown for a meeting. All those things would have been nice.