I was trying to add a title to this but WordPress wasn’t having it. I get it. You don’t want me to post it? Ah well.
Beautiful skies this morning after a rough night. It’s November! As I look at the calendar, which says “Oh fuck, it’s nearly Christmas.” No joke there. It’s that crazy rush time. At least there’s some time off coming.
The weekend still had a lot of school work. I need it mostly done before I take the weekend off for an art/hiking retreat. I did cut more stuff out on Friday night…
And then finished it up, 10 hours in, on Saturday night…
And last night, I sorted all the pieces out by the 100s…
Tonight, I’ll need to clean up the studio, put all the fabrics away from the last quilt (which didn’t get into the show I made it for, ironically…or normally…however you look at it).
I do like this next stage, picking all the fabrics. It’s more creative than the last few stages, but still meditative. Lots of standing though.
We did break up the grading for a 4+-mile hike on Saturday, the other side of the Helix Flume hike that we did a few months back.
We really need to leave earlier if we want to meet in the middle…the parking lots all close at 6. There’s El Cap.
It was warm at the beginning, but cooled off nicely.
Once you get up to the level of the flume, it’s mostly flat. It’s the climbing before that which is a bit much. Starting on the El Monte Park side was easier…I think.
Definitely has been some fire damage up here, but a while ago.
Creative fence building. We only saw one group of people on bikes…otherwise, we were the only ones on trail. The only wildlife this time was birds and bugs. And fresh coyote poop, plus possible footprints that weren’t there when we went through the first time. It’s good to hike. This weekend, we’ll be hiking in Joshua Tree National Park.
The cats were glad to see us. Or maybe perturbed.
Nova looks perturbed anyway.
We tried the silly hat on Calli.
She goes to the vet today to suss out her tumor on her side. The one on her nose is the one that will probably kill her, unfortunately. Inoperable. But the one on her side is supposedly benign…just has opened up and is rather disgusting and smelly. Sigh. Poor baby. It doesn’t hurt her at least.
This was Saturday night’s dinner drawing…
They don’t get finished because someone brings the food. I don’t remember if I posted last week’s drawing…
This is about the only drawing I’m doing at the moment. There just isn’t enough time for all the work and the art and actual sleeping and stuff.
Old timey photo of the kids, circa 2005.
Back in the day. The neighbor kids yelled “trick or treat” from the driveway, where we left the candy in a bowl in the wheelbarrow full of dirt, a skelly arm, and a pumpkin. I wasn’t ready for 23 kids coming up the stairs to the door. I live on a tiny street without traffic, but the neighbors invited friends over. We don’t really have that many kids on the block. It just sounds that way.
Well it’s a short week for me, but I’ll need to do sub plans for Friday. Then next week is even shorter because of Veteran’s Day. Then one full week on and a full week off. Work to do before all that. Grades are due next week…which is difficult. Ah well. I did go to school on Saturday and get one art assignment out of the way…there are two due Friday though and I won’t be there to collect them, so that should be interesting. Bad timing on the retreat, but I didn’t pick the days, unfortunately. OK. Off to work. It’s time.
I’m glad I’m an artist. I’m happy that I can come home and not think about how the floors need vacuuming and mopping and probably someone should empty the dishwasher and there’s a load…no…shitload of work from the day job to do, but you know? I’m home so I get to do some art. I actually want to finish my book as well (working on that…it’s been a shit month, y’all)…but I make time for the art because I feel like crap if I don’t. If I didn’t have that, if all I came home to was the dirty floors and the full dishwasher, I think I’d go bonkers. It’s like a whole ‘nother planet I can go exist on for a while, so that hopefully I can go back to work the next day without losing my mind. Or crying. Which is where I was at about 10 minutes ago. Then I sat down and resized the THREE whole pictures I have from the last two days, and realized I get some weekend time (flu shot, hike, lots of grading, mopping floors, watering the plants, maybe other shit, IDK at least I don’t have to be AT school because school is exhausting)…and that is a good thing.
I’m cutting a bit out every night…
On top is the rest of the 3rd yard, the part I haven’t cut. Then last night, I was on Zoom with friends for a couple of hours, so I managed more…
Got the third yard cut out and a goodly chunk through the fourth one, because it had lovely large pieces on it. I’m almost 8 hours in at this point. I do clump pieces together that will be the same fabric, like all the letters on a sign, so that saves cutting time at this stage. They don’t really need to be cut apart until the fabric stage. So there’s progress. I might be done by the end of the weekend. We’ll see.
I have a piece in this show, opening Friday, November 12, from 3-7 PM.
It’s at the San Diego Mesa College Gallery. Looking forward to the opening, since I have the day off. I might make an artsy day of it…there are a couple other shows I want to see that I haven’t been able to get to.
Girlchild sends costumes for Simba. He never really likes them. Apparently we need better lighting. We also need a dog who likes wearing the damn things. Speaking of costumes, I will be donning my Slytherin robes in a minute for school. I don’t know why we have Slytherin robes and it’s supposed to be warm today. These things are heavy as hell. We’ll see if I can keep them on. I also have a loaned Porg, since we are supposed to be doing Disney and I don’t love that. Oh well. What I need to do now is go to work and bang out 6 (I think it’s 6 now) contracts for kids out on pandemic concern (6 in one day…hopefully one will go away), make at least 2 videos for said kids, and do about 17 other things in a short amount of time without losing my mind. It’s not a safe bet. But classes are shorter today (those long block classes are more tiring for me than the shorter ones…I don’t know why)…so that will help. So will sleeping in a bit tomorrow. And cutting more things out tonight.
Today I am efficient and on task. I finish many things. I make sure I leave my Friday classroom ready for Monday morning so that is not as stressful. I come home. I maybe exercise my dog and my self and maybe even another dog. Because we have an extra one at the moment.
What a dynamic group they are. It’s actually really hard to get them in one photo because they are all needy and jealous of the others. This was as close as I could get so far.
School is…sometimes fine, often overwhelming. I like teaching in person better. The kids and rocks…you know, rocks seem pretty boring until you listen to a bunch of 12-year-olds try to describe them and figure out what they are. We do a ton of hands-on stuff that our official adopted curriculum doesn’t even attempt to do. Hence our disdain for it. All that is exhausting on our part, though…prepping it, managing it, putting it away. So I’m kind of looking forward to a week when I don’t have to do all that. Well, until I’m in the middle of that week and a whole class is waiting for me to give them the answers. Then not so much. But hopefully today will be OK, fairly chill. Do this, finish that, do this other easy thing. We’ll see.
Teaching art is more of a challenge. I wish I could go watch the other teacher and see what she does. I feel so disorganized and ineffective. But then they do some cool stuff and I think, well, it can’t be THAT bad. Yes, some of them are just talented (and some aren’t), and some work hard and that gets them close (and some don’t). Just like science!
Anyway. It’s October now. Still a chance of hellacious temperatures (supposed to be over 90 degrees today), but hopefully all the beginning-of-school stuff will calm down. Wait. Except I have 5 or 6 pandemic contracts to do by Monday. And three kid meetings next week? So not so much. I was hoping for a week without a positive case, so I wouldn’t feel like I had to shove COVID testing into an already tight schedule. Yah no. That’s a no. Got tested yesterday.
I did finally photograph this.
She needs a name and a label, and then I’m mailing her to my patron on Patreon…hopefully this weekend.
Also this weekend? Starting a drawing for the new quilt. I stared at a bunch of artspeak statements and titles last night and was decidedly uninspired by two of them. Whatever. I will have to write statements that explain how I met those themes at some point, but not today. Today I can grab my sketchbook and just draw for a while. Hopefully. Looking forward to that.
Woke up. Good plan. Should learn not to check email until I get to school. Yeah right. I check email right away. Hence school stress as soon as I got in the shower. I am so behind. What should I have done last Saturday? Graded all day. But nah, I quilted. I know it was the right choice, but right now it feels like I can’t balance the day job and the art, let alone things like watering plants and getting the cat’s meds. If I could remember/find time to make the phone call, someone else would go get them. I set an alarm on my calendar yesterday and totally didn’t see it. Ah well. Again today. But waking up and into an impending sense of doom is not helpful. Deep breaths. I will be efficient today. I was efficient yesterday…I just had more to do than I could get done. And 20,000 steps by the end of the day without a hike/walk.
The pro is that I got into another show with two pieces going to Chandler, Arizona in November. I shipped the piece to Quilts=Art=Quilts…tight turnaround on that one, so I stayed up late on Monday getting it boxed up. Should of done it over the weekend. Ah well. It will get there. I’m entering another couple this week, if I can get my act together. Plus this quilt is almost done…got the binding sewn on Monday night…
Calli has been licking her legs, so she got coned.
Last night, I pinned the 308 inches of binding and sleeves down and started the hand-stitching.
Because it’s awesome to have a quilt on your lap when it’s 98 degrees during the day. It will cool down tomorrow, but I’ll be almost done by then, I think. Photographer is set up for the weekend. I made the deadline. I didn’t think I would, but I did. Fucking miracle. Damn day job is kicking my ass. Yes, it has been for over a year now.
This picture of Haitians coming into the US (or going back into Mexico…could be either) just kills me. Yeah, I saw the horseman chasing the guy too, but seriously.
Why are we not the country that just opens our arms and takes care of people? Why do we suck so much? I’m so not OK with my country at the moment. Dumb policies. We are humans. We should take care of other humans.
Sigh.
OK, so I also watered everything last night in the almost dark. I’ve been looking for these guys on the lemon tree, because we had them last year…
Yeah, those are little baby ones. Here’s the ugly big ones that turn into Swallowtail butterflies…
Yes, they look like bird poop. Weird but true. Also, my lemons are growing!
Hopefully my first crop of them on this tree. Exciting.
So today is more labs, more running around, more trying to catch up. Then some actual exercise. And then a lot of hand stitching. And grading, honestly…I gotta do some of that. Sigh. It will get better…it always does. Knock on wood. I just have so many things I’m behind on…and I need to get caught up.
OK, so I thought I was tired last week, but I’m so sore from walking around class AND exercising yesterday that this morning feels REALLY tired. And it’s only Wednesday. I’m sure I’ll walk it out pretty soon and start to feel more human and less like a zombie (um, maybe?). Today is that wacky day when I teach four different things and my brain partially explodes. It will be fine. Getting used to this schedule is going to take a few weeks (months?). Getting used to all the moving parts…need a different bathroom pass for art because they don’t get the same one as 7th grade does. OK. Making enlarged copies for one kid because of his vision needs. OK. Not actually sure what to do about that for today…it’s OK. I just wrote some stuff on a post-it so I’ll remember it when I get to school. I’m not sure what I would do without post-its…they save me.
Yesterday was long…I had duty before and after school, and then interviews for a new science teacher. I forgot to eat in between, and I ate lunch at 11 AM because of the block schedule, so by the time I hit home and was getting ready to walk, my blood sugar was somewhere well south of where it should have been. I was supposed to eat during prep, not lunch. On Tuesdays, my prep is right after lunch, so it makes sense to eat later. I forgot. So still getting used to this…yeah. I have pilates today after school, so will have to eat before I go. I’ll get used to it…it will just take me some time. I need a post-it telling me to eat maybe…although I’d ignore it. Sigh.
Anyway, as always, that level of tired from getting home late, leaving to hike at 6 PM, coming back and prepping dinner and eating…hard to get off the couch and do anything at that point. But I did. Not much though.
The night before, I got organized and sorted all the pieces…
Interestingly, they are sorted by number (by 100s), but the last four boxes look like they’re sorted by color. All the sun is in the last box. The sky is in the two boxes before, then the green of the mountains is the two or three boxes before that. Then the browns mostly before that. Usually all the colors are mixed up in all the boxes.
Anyway, that took about an hour to do, and then last night, honestly, I spent about four whole minutes sorting the first 100 pieces into piles of 10s.
And then I went to bed. Sometimes I’m really organized. I swear. Lots of rocks in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and then into path and dirt. I’m really hoping to start ironing things together tonight. It’s hard to keep standing for another hour or so when you’ve been standing and walking all day. Really hard. But art is absolutely what keeps me sane and happy and like I’m doing something that matters. I know teaching does that too, but I’m not there yet with this year…I don’t know the kids enough yet (although we are getting there…you know, it’s really hard when you see them all day with masks on and then you do duty outside and the kids are unmasked and saying HI and you can’t match them up with the masked face in the classroom.). I have some sweethearts, some nonstop talkers, and some kids with giant chips on their shoulders. Just like normal. Some get angry or butthurt super easy and some are terrified to ask questions and some email you at all hours of the day or night and some never stop asking questions. Pretty normal. Working toward balance though…haven’t taken home grading, although I have done some school stuff on computers at home.
Oh yeah! We have our first official positive COVID case (not one of mine) and a few out on “pandemic concerns,” which just means they have symptoms that might be COVID but we don’t know. I’m going to get tested once a week or so, just to be sure I’m not bringing anything home. Yeah, we’re all vaccinated, but I have family that is immunocompromised and so am I. I’m not a fan of not knowing. I also have students with health issues and I don’t want to be the asymptomatic person who gets them sick. So add that to the post-it note.
Yesterday’s hike/walk (mostly streets) with amazing lenticular clouds that don’t show up super nicely in this photo…
Funky though. And an owl house!
Kitten keeps sleeping on my magazine AND stitching, so I can’t finish either. Also too tired (me) to finish.
Simba is a dork.
He is staring lovingly into the boychild’s eyes though.
OK, going to school with my pink to-do post-it for before school. Going to do Advisory, Science Block 1, Art, then Science Block 2. If I remember what all those things are. Which I might not. Then exercise, then art. Yeah. OK. A plan.
Hey Friday. Nice of you to show up. Appreciate it. I’m back to that world where I look forward to maybe sleeping in on Saturday morning (dependent on neighbor noise and animal incursions). I do already have stuff to grade. Ugh. How did that happen? Oh yeah. My own fault. I’m still trying to get my head around this crazy schedule we have. Mondays and Fridays are normally all the classes, but Monday is shorter. Tuesday through Thursday rotate through blocks of four classes a day, so some days I will have four different things I’m teaching and some days, I will only have two. Today I have three different classes and no prep period (because today is not a normal Friday because we started on Tuesday, don’t even ask, I honestly have a headache about that), so that sounds exhausting. I needed to pee after two classes (they’re LONG) yesterday…three in a row today might be an issue. Certainly, having art at the end of the day with 6th graders is difficult…that’s three days a week. I’m just tired from science teaching and then have to switch gears, from science brain to art brain. Art brain is like, what? I’m tired. Leave me alone.
But it’s nice being back in person (when I don’t think too hard about COVID exposure)…because we can do the things!
Ah science and art in person. What a concept.
Prepping for art is different too…it’s hard to know what they can do in person because I taught it all online last year. So lots of decisionmaking going on in my poor tired brain.
That said, the first week back is almost in the books, and (knock on wood) no one has been sent home yet. It’s a miracle, considering the number of kids who can’t keep a mask over their noses or mouths…
Artmaking has been OK this week, despite the tiredness. My goal is an hour a night, and last night, I managed two plus (because I was in a Zoom meeting for part of it). I’m still cutting things out…this is Wednesday, with Simba’s help…
I also did some embroidery on the Social Justice Sewing Academy block…still just getting everything attached.
My plan is some decorative embroidery in the letters, but I need to do a stethoscope too. Need to mark that this weekend.
Last night, I had a Zoom quilt meeting and cut out the Wonder Under for the one Patreon reward I have left.
So I can iron that to fabric this weekend. And then I cut a bunch…
Both on Zoom and later…
The middle box is getting emptier; the bottom box is getting more full. I watched some news…still trying to get my head around Afghanistan. I feel like I’ve spent 20 years trying to get my head around the Taliban and people like it. I have classrooms full of kids who fled regimes like that. I’m OK with that…they’re hopefully better off here, although sometimes I wonder.
Kitten shows a side view…
Yeah, there’s still a lot of pieces in that box. It probably won’t get done tonight…but hopefully this weekend, I’ll get them cut and sorted, and be ready to iron together next week…more standing after all day of standing. Well, it’s better than too much sitting, I’ll tell you that. Ironically, I still need more exercise at the end of the day; maybe today will be a walk. Tomorrow will definitely be a hike. Plus art. Plus grading. Plus IDK exactly what I’m teaching next week for art. I should figure that out. Plus I have a million posts to put together for classes…hopefully can get those done in class today. I’d like to keep weekends clear of work. I know it won’t happen, but I’m trying. Ha!
Today, I gird my loins and conquer my classroom, which is an incredible disaster. I also figure out what the hell I’m doing tomorrow in class and make sure I have all the shit to do that. I might even sleep before tomorrow…certainly, hopefully, more than last night. I have never been so unprepared…wait, no, the year I started two weeks in because we were waiting for a background check and they wouldn’t even let me on campus…that year was worse. It’ll be fine. I’ll remember how to do this in person. Last year will stop clouding my brain. It’s PTSD over the workload more than anything. Ugh.
So I’m at school today until it’s done…or I collapse from exhaustion. Which might be by 9:30 AM. That’s what tea is for, yeah?
I finally organized all the fabrics for the current quilt. This is my documentation of the 185 fabrics I used…
Lots of earthy stuff.
I started cutting out Thursday night…continued on Friday…
Friday was fairly exhausting. Then Saturday, the neighbors have a wall being built, so there was jackhammering and Mexican polka. I had a headache most of the day, unfortunately. Tried to do some schoolwork and just couldn’t get my head around it (see distractions above) and ended up cutting out pieces for hours…
Seriously, like 5 hours of bingewatching and cutting.
I also drew a Patreon reward…
Numbered it…
I was trying to make it less complicated than last year’s…failed. Oh well.
And then I traced it on Wonder Under…
And then kept cutting out pieces on the other quilt. I’ll cut these out sometime this week and get going on that.
Then last night, I kept cutting.
I’ve been cutting trees for days. Seriously.
I finally got to some different stuff late last night. I might be halfway? I might not. It’s just hard to tell. I’m sure you’re looking at these and going, yeah, can’t see it. It’s not until I see the bottom of the box peeking out that I think I’m almost done…and I can’t see that yet. That’s about 10 1/2 hours of cutting there.
But it’s progress.
I also washed the dyed stuff out. I like the backgrounds, but I’m not sure what I will do with them.
Because I don’t want to cover any of it up.
Maybe I will have to draw something specifically for it. To fit into the background.
I think I missed one…there should be four, I think. Ah yes, my favorite.
The best thing in the world is ironing these and seeing all the interesting little bits of dye overlap. Anyway. We’ll see what happens next with these. I also did socks…
I need to clean out my sock drawer so they have room to breathe in there. I’m a bit of a sock whore. Ironic since I don’t wear even shoes for a good chunk of my existence. Anyway. I have socks.
I finally photographed all the January and February Homegrown blocks too…
Embroidery that keeps me sane in stupid meetings or on nights when I can’t deal with anything else.
Gophers killed one of my milkweed plants and I found this little guy wandering around on the dead one, so I moved it to the living one.
I have a bunch of baby milkweed plants that I’ve been trying to grow in a shady space, away from the bunnies. They won’t be ready for this caterpillar though. I hope there’s enough food.
I need this in a poster.
It’s been hot.
Petting animals is helpful for back-to-school anxiety…
We got up early Saturday and walked before it got hot…so many sidewalks were marked up.
Some sort of abstract art.
So many of the apps we use for school are not up and running yet. Ironic.
I have to be up and running, but with none of the things.
This is accurate.
Seriously accurate. OK. I have to go to school. I was going to meet with my principal in person and I was debating masks. He’s vaccinated but he has small children. So many decisions to be made. I might just stay masked all year. But now his kid’s class is quarantined (yeah, that shit is still happening), so we are doing it on Zoom. Then get keys to the art room (and supplies!) and meet with the art teacher. Attack my room with some sort of plan. Make lists. Eat lunch. Counseling. That’s necessary. More room attacking, more lists, possible shopping post school for the shit I don’t have. Probably not sleep well another night. I should put a walk or trip to the gym in there somewhere. Then tomorrow is the first day with kids. Oh yeah, I should cut more stuff out. Always.
Well. It’s been a morning. And into an afternoon. I’m not sure where the days go sometimes. We got up early to hike and then the Man didn’t feel well but then he was OK and then we hiked, but two hours later than we’d thought we would.
The plus is that physical therapy seems to be going well. We upped the mileage to almost 6, but still mostly flat, road walking instead of trail. Slow progress. No pain. His plan right now is to finish the two pieces of the trail he missed in the desert section due to the boulder that is now gone in the Idyllwild area and a now-open fire closure near Lake Hughes. But with all the fires up north, it doesn’t make sense to try to pick part of the trail to do before weather starts to be an issue, so that might be it for the PCT this year. Next year, another 4 months will hopefully finish it. Sigh. I know he wanted to do it in one year, but he did the Desert section! All 700+ miles! So there’s that.
Meanwhile, I’m still working on the current quilt, although my brain kind of gets tied up in knots by it. Usually, let’s say I’m doing a dirt section that needs a run of 4 fabrics, light to dark…then I pick the 4 fabrics, lay them out, and put the pieces that will be ironed on each fabric on top of it, checking the drawing for what numbers go where. Cool, right? Easy peasy. But now I shoved the female figure in there. I want her to show up but not drastically. So I pick a second run of 4 fabrics that are similar but not the same, and then when I check the drawing for level 1 (the lightest), I have to do a second check on whether it’s the body or the ground. It looks like this…
Yes, there’s an extra fabric above…there’s a reason for that.
Here’s the same idea but with the rocks…
I honestly don’t know how it will turn out. I hope it will be OK. Hard to visualize though…even for me, and I do this all the time. At one point yesterday, I had a run of 6 fabrics twice, a total of 12, and was trying to find all the pieces from the 100s through the 400s that were part of that section…meanwhile, pulling out all the pieces that were a rattlesnake, a Garmin, or a couple of deer. Confusing as hell. While on two Zooms…at least those weren’t at the same time. So I still need to do the snake, the Garmin, and the deer, plus a bushy stripe that went through the dirt areas, and then some water in the middle of it. It’s not going quickly, but the day is.
Here’s where I was Wednesday night…
And then, after 5 1/2 hours of ironing yesterday…
Lots of browns and grays so far. I’m going to do more today, hopefully get up into the trees. Which are mind-bogglingly complicated.
Meanwhile, we finally have a master schedule for school. Everything hurts my brain and we haven’t planned anything and we are back next Thursday. Yes. I am panicking. About everything. I did get some new masks that seem comfortable, although I haven’t worn them from 8:30-3:30 yet, so ask me how I feel in a few weeks. My neighbor finally is putting in a fence, and I’m not happy about looking at it or where it is or how it will block my light once they plant shit, or that they are considering planting bamboo (the clumping kind, at least) and I’m just irritated with all my neighbors. So there we are.
Tomorrow is a quilt guild meeting and an art group meeting…that one in person. And I got into another show, a SAQA local show, Domino Effect, which will be at The Studio Door in Hillcrest from September 2-26. The artist’s opening is September 4 from 6-9 PM. My piece is the recently finished A Losing Game…
Kitten was upset that I took away the blue fabric drawer, so I gave her the lid to the paper box…
In other animal news, Simba is a dork.
He had to have his teeth cleaned, and they put the IV/catheter whatever in his leg, which he cannot leave alone, so now he has the not-cone, but pillow of shame.
Yeah, it’s under his mane.
And Kitten keeps following me wherever I go.
She’s a good kitty.
I drew at dinner last night…
I don’t think it’s done. But it’s a thing.
OK, I’m tired. I need more caffeine. I need to not think about school for a while, because I won’t get any more info about next week’s schedule until Monday. They really are pushing everything to the last minute again this year. I’m still burnt out from last year. I do not feel the normal, oh hey! school is starting! This is cool and interesting! feelings that I would normally have. I have apprehension and panic from not having anything ready. Fun stuff. I’m going to quickly order some stuff I’ll need and then get ironing for a few hours. Meditative artwork.
This is my last full week of Summer Break. We go back next week. Never ready. I’m not ready to teach…our site hasn’t even picked a schedule yet for next year. We get that Friday. We can’t plan without a schedule, although I’m guessing which one I think will pass the vote (shorter periods…all the others are over 106 minutes per class, which is just crazy cuckoo). I’m not ready to be in an enclosed space with multiple people for a long period of time. I haven’t done that AT ALL in 18 months or so. Well, except the gym. But even that’s not all day. Doors open, windows open. I’ll get used to it. The block schedule also screws up my blood sugar until I get a routine going. Four hours with no bathroom and no food break…welcome to our world. Last year was easier…I could get to the bathroom in my house in a really short period of time. Not so much at school. Plus getting kids out of the classroom on Zoom is a single button click, which is much easier than in real life. Then thinking about art supply storage and how to move materials between science and art classes. That’s complicated.
Adjustments to life are gonna happen. I’m hoping that planning is easier than last year. Certainly my co-teacher and I can do the same things again, and I don’t have to make everything digital access. I think. With quarantines still happening, the district hasn’t really told us their solution for how to get those kids curriculum. I think they believe the science curriculum is an easy digital source, but it’s not. So much supplementation and creation of assignments had to happen last year. We’ll see how that rolls, but local schools have quarantined kids on the third day of school, so it’s not like we can wait a while to figure that plan out.
That said, this week is NOT school. I do need to think about some of it, but hopefully more art time than school time will be happening. I have an electrician coming next Tuesday to do a bunch of things I’ve put off for months, nay, years in some cases. One of them may involve attic access, which is in my office/studio. In the closet. Which is filled with fabric. To get access, I have to remove half the fabric and one of the shelves so they can even get up there. So that needs to happen before next Tuesday. I’m currently trimming Wonder Under. The next step is to iron all the Wonder Under to fabric. It would be much easier to have everything done and ironed before the electrician comes. See? Now I have a deadline. It’s totally arbitrary and I could adjust, but this is the one I’m following right now.
I started cutting out on Friday during the Quilt National talk, and then finished a second yard that night…then cut another yard out on Saturday night…
It doesn’t look much different. Sunday’s yard was one of the most complicated ones. It had all the trees in it, so fussy pointy pieces.
So that’s what four yards of trimmed Wonder Under looks like. I have two to go. Today. I have a talk I’m listening to this morning, and hopefully can start cutting the easier yard; then I’m going to try to get the other yard done before nighttime, so I can sort tonight and maybe clean the studio today as well. We’ll see how that goes. It’s been hot, and that often sucks energy away from doing the things. But I have a plan and that helps. I’ve been cutting for about 7 1/2 hours so far, but some yards are more time-intensive than others. I’m assuming 3-4 hours of cutting today.
The girlchild was home for about 10 days, but working every day. As always, she brings home clothes that need fixing. This one was a bit of a pain…needed darts and had a lining and all that.
But it turned out well. I hope. The others were slightly less time-consuming. Certainly she should learn how to hem her pants when she rips out the hems. She left last night on a red-eye for home…
Boston at 3:30 AM our time. Yes, I was awake. I don’t know why.
I volunteered again for the Social Justice Sewing Academy embroidery, and got this block on Friday…
I volunteered in June 2020, so it took a while to get to me…there are some embroidery suggestions provided by the artist as well. So I’ll get started on that once I have all the Wonder Under cut out. Emily Lang made this block, and says “My block is about Ableism, how society seems to attach value and love only to health, thinness, and ability.”
I also got the Olga Norris quilt finally. Her husband was kind enough to mail it to me from the UK, and we watched it wander all over the US before it got to me.
It’s beautiful work…I need to decide where (and how) to hang it. I have a couple of pieces that need homes on the walls.
We walked on Friday, not too far, just a couple of miles. Still aiming for flat.
It was hot and muggy. Walking is hard in this weather.
Calli is hanging in there. She still wants to chew on pinecones that she drops in the pool.
She needs a little help with it. But it’s hot, so the pool is probably good for her.
So I have a plan that might get thrown by the weather, but hopefully it will work. I won’t think about school. I lie. We have three hours of training videos (bloodborne pathogens, pest management, sexual harassment, mandated reporter, etc.) that have to be done before the end of September. I always try to get them done before school starts. I’ve done the three shorter ones so far today. I can do them while doing other things, luckily. Annoying to do them every year, but whatever. Looks like I need to go down to Visions Art Museum too and see the exhibits there. I’ll add that to the list…along with fixing the sprinklers. Maybe I’ll think about making a syllabus after that…surely that won’t take long. Ha! Art. Make the art.
It’s the 12th. In a month, I go back to school. In person. To a room that I haven’t worked in since March 16, 2020. Where, most importantly, I don’t know where anything is because I didn’t have time to put it away logically. This actually doesn’t worry me. I’ll find it all eventually. I just found a cord they probably need in order to use my doc cam. It was under something. I can spend all year searching for stuff, and hopefully have the brains to throw out some stuff I don’t need any more. It’s hard not to hoard! Teaching lends itself to having a stash for when you decide to do some weird lab at the last minute.
I go back to school, though, in a time of ‘do we still wear masks?’ (In California, yes. At least for a while. For me, yes.) Critical race theory…to teach or not to teach? OK, so here’s the thing. Those people (and politicians, who may or may not be part of the human race) who are screeching about what we should be able to brainwash kids about in the classroom have never been in a middle-school classroom. I can’t persuade the flat-earthers and the God-made-all-the-animals-and-humans-aren’t-animals kids (most of the time) that what their parents and/or YouTube taught them isn’t true. It takes years and lots of brain growth and exposure to scientific concepts that disagree with your core beliefs (hey, that’s some brainwashing) before kids start to think…oh…wait a minute…that shit doesn’t make sense. And we don’t set out to teach about racism or sexism or gender or penis size (yup. Big worry amongst the 12-year-old male). It comes UP (OK, did not mean that joke about up and penis size). One boy is talking to the kid next to him about how girls can’t do science because they don’t have the brains for it (yeah, this kid did not come up with this idea on his own…please imagine where he got it from) and then I need to redirect. Strongly. With evidence. Racism? Same deal. Gender? Absolutely. And it was a good almost ten years ago when I said to a kid, “why do you care whether they are a he or a she or something else? Are you gonna date them? Then talk to them first.” This is not new. This is what we do. We facilitate conversations. We provide facts and evidence (y’all, I’m not making any shit up. I teach science, not faith.) and then let the kids go places with it. And then they LEARN TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES. That is my ultimate job…guiding them toward their own learning, showing them how research works, modeling appropriate discussions (unlike what our politicians do; Marjorie Taylor Greene, I’m talking to you). If they can’t do it in school, then where the fuck do you think they should be doing that? We encourage kids to take their ideas home and talk to their families (and then their dad calls me to tell me I’m an idiot because he personally saw the pig with a human face, so he knows humans and pigs can reproduce together) and figure things out. Would you rather have me say, “Sorry, the government won’t let me talk about that…” when it comes up in class? I do worry that some teachers don’t do this…don’t encourage thinking. Certainly, I draw the line when kids want to answer every science question with “God did that.” Explain plate tectonics. God did it. Explain photosynthesis. God did it. Well, OK, you have faith. Great. Move on. Let’s do science.
So yeah. I’m going to keep teaching kids to think. I’m going to keep encouraging them to talk about stuff, as long as they aren’t making someone else feel like shit while they do that, although sometimes that can be difficult. I’m pretty sure that kid who said girls can’t do science didn’t feel great that day, unfortunately. I’m hoping he eventually saw the light though. These conversations were harder to have on Zoom last year…they did happen, but not as often as they do in person. Sigh. School. Not ready for it. It’s a good thing I have another 30 days. I do need more masks though.
Meanwhile, the artmaking has been walloped by my sewing machine being a total asshole. I did most of the stitchdown on Saturday…
The tension was fine for the entire bottom section and half of the top section…
And then it randomly went to hell. I cleaned everything out, rethreaded, and then prayed to the Goddess of the Machine. Because it wasn’t going to behave. The needle kept moving further and further to the left. I would turn the machine off, let it rest, cool off, and then it would keep doing that or nesting thread on the back. Completely random shit. Tension that made no sense.
I’m thinking this machine is reaching the end of its useful stage for me. I did finish one big quilt since it went in to the shop in March…but only one.
I managed to bully it through the stitchdown, and then pinbasted the quilt.
I’ve had continuing problems with the machine, but as long as I take it in once a year and have it cleaned out and adjusted, it mostly works for me. Now it’s not even lasting four months with one quilt.
Then last night, I started the quilting…I was hoping since it was in a straight line, the issue with the needle moving would stop (it has). But instead, the thread keeps breaking.
I think the thread broke about 17 times in an hour. I rethreaded, cleaned everything, replaced the needle, adjusted everything, it’s not the damn thread…it’s the same thread that was just fine in the last quilt that I just finished. I don’t have time for it to go in…there’s a waiting list and I need this quilt done for a deadline. My other machine won’t behave either. I’m frustrated. There’s still things wrong…the feed dogs won’t stay down; they keep popping up, which affects the tension. I walked away from it last night, but will try again today. Unfortunately, sometimes the solution is to keep going and then it randomly and magically starts working. I don’t need a machine that is random and magical. Sigh. I need dependable and consistent.
So that was the weekend, with some other stuff interspersed, like my phone issues are still happening, after doing all the Apple things…so back to the Genius Bar. Sure, I’m lucky to have a phone and a sewing machine…well, I do work a time-consuming job to pay for those things, but not everyone has that opportunity, but if I have paid for those things, I would like them to work properly. None of that is going on at the moment.
I did some wool sewing last night. Just messed up the tree trunk, but let’s say it’s meant to be crooked.
Walked that little beastie with my parents’ dog.
So today. I have errands and I’m going to try to sew. I’ll switch out the spool maybe (although again, it worked fine on the quilt I just finished). I don’t know what else to do, so I’m just going to hope it works. I don’t want to learn another machine to quilt this thing…although I may have to. Mom’s house is just down the road. Although the last time I tried hers, it was impossible. Not sure why. I have a definite way I quilt and the machines are not always in agreement with that. They should be. There is a learning curve. Not sure I have the patience (or time) for that. This is not as stress-free and relaxing a summer as I’d like. I might just grab my book and go take a nap. Or something. Argh.
Kathy Nida 