There’s a cat butt keeping my keyboard from being in the right place. She squeaks every time I try to shove it further toward where it’s supposed to be. Man, I’m tired. Yes, I stayed up too late. Why? Well, ostensibly I was working on art things, but also was watching the end of the second season of Hidden and wanted to see the end. Way too fucking late. Bad summer behavior.
First of all, I FINISHED THE DAMN QUILT. There was a lot of binding.
And I did all of it. And then dropped the whole quilt on the couch.
I haven’t figured out the time it took yet. But I did email my photographer for the last two quilts. Hopefully he’ll be OK with that.
So there was about a 24-hour time period in the last few days when I was going to be teaching an unknown elective for this school year, but then that went away (oh good). I suggested social-justice quilting and pole-dancing, but since my principal was too scared to actually even contact me and tell me about the elective, I also thought he wouldn’t go for either of those. No worries, all, I would have just taught art. I’ve done it before. It would be hard with the online aspect, but not undoable. Just busy as shit. But it’s OK now…that’s gone.
But because of that, I needed a hike in nature…even though it was by myself.
Sweetwater Wildlife Reserve…with its vernal pool that is quite boisterous this summer.
It was hot…
Always happy to see the flowers…
I did 3 miles…
There’s a bunny out there…
Dear School: Knock it off. Seriously, so many of my hikes are because of outside stress. Yesterday included 3 hours of an online union meeting about what is coming. So stressful. Other people can work from home, but we teachers are lazy? Ah sigh.
What else? I’ve got Patreon things I’m working on…the last embroidery…needed a different transfer color…
And also worked on the quilt pieces…Calli was helping…
The Wonder Under was traced and cut out, and I needed to iron it down…and then I cut them out.
I was doing this well after midnight.
So all three are ready to be ironed together and onto something. That’ll be this afternoon.
I also cut all the backgrounds for the Tattoo quilt and ironed down the pieces for the first block.
I’m doing hand applique. I don’t know why. But I am. And then I added the borders to Folk Tails…
There are a bunch of squares and rectangles that need to be appliqued on and then embellished. And then I’m done with this one. Done seems like a good thing.
Hey, do you do Pilates with animals? I do.
Simba loves his dinosaur…
And here he is, getting involved in Pilates…
So I realized last year that I posted a bunch of meme things about stupid shit the President said last July. So I’m hoping if I post all these now, then I will hopefully see them a year from now and life will be easier. Or different. Or less Trumpy.
Maybe I won’t even remember any of this because of the crazy stuff that will have happened since then.
That one too. And then in a year, we’ll have more data about this…
Maybe DeVos (hopefully) will be gone by then.
And this. Will we still be wearing masks in a year? I suspect so. I hope not.
Well there’s that. So I think that’s all I have for today. Oh wait! The girlchild now has a blog, Reformed Veg, where she writes about food and gives recipes. And she has a podcast with her friend Alessia about…um…well, I’m not sure what it’s about, but it’s currently on Spotify and some other platforms and will eventually make it to Podcasts on the i-devices. It’s called Rideshare. I’ll try to figure out how to share a link to a podcast here before the next blogpost. If you follow her on Insta, it’s in her profile. That might be easier. There’s the Insta…
OK. The day disappears as I get all this stuff done. And now I should do more. So there. I will also need to study more CPR before tomorrow morning’s actual test. Usually we don’t have to do a test like this, so I’m nervous I’m going to forget something. Plus it’s early in the morning because I didn’t get to pick the time. Which sucks. So I will NOT stay up until 1 AM tonight. Or later. I won’t. First I’ll eat lunch.
Hey, Portland…I like your style. Now the veterans have shown up. Keep being you. We need to be able to protest wrongdoing, especially by the government. Hey, y’all, I’m deep in the summer teacher head of panic and lack of focus. We go back to school in THREE WEEKS. By back to school, I mean on a computer with a bunch of kids I’ve never met. With internet that is rampantly bitchy and flighty as hell. With who-knows-what curriculi. Yeah, I know that’s not a word. I just like it. It’s all good! We will survive. Hopefully. I mean, I say that, but there’s a pandemic on, so some of us (the larger Teacher Us) will not. Hopefully those I know and love will survive…and I’m already pissed off about those who have died and those who will die. I noticed that one of the teachers my kids had is retiring (probably early, probably because of all this)…I didn’t think she was much older than I am, if that…but if she’s been teaching since she got out of college, that would make sense. I’d walk away from it if I could afford it. I can’t though. So there we are. I love many things about teaching (and hate a few too, but mostly those are administrative)…and would totally miss it, but I don’t want to die because of it. No one does. And hospitals are much cleaner environments than middle schools, so don’t use that excuse. I think we should have pandemic-trained staff from a local hospital come train us on cleaning. I know I will be cleaning more because I won’t trust anyone else to have done it well enough. I want to do it well and right. In my spare time. In between planning and prepping and grading. Oh my.
OK, so enough of the worry and anxiety that is following me around like a fly on a scab. I didn’t get much done in the last 24 hours, except delivering a quilt and gaming for a few hours. We survived that…iffy wormhole and all. I stitched during gaming…it helps me concentrate when I’m not rolling dice and throwing out random suggestions for tractor beams and transporting to a fluctuating vehicle.
Green row done, started lighter blue. Hopefully I’ll finish tonight. I’ve got two more to do.
If you look back through my posts, you’ll see that I liked a foundation paper-pieced quilt called the Tattoo quilt, by Berene Campbell of Happy Sew Lucky. I briefly considered paper piecing the damn thing and quickly realized that my sanity is worth more to me than that. Don’t get me wrong, according to those making the quilt (there’s a group going on FB), Berene’s patterns, explanations, and videos are totally what I would need to do an awesome job on this, and the group is very helpful. I actually read a lot of the helping posts, because I like to know how to do things, but I just don’t have the patience for this right now. Plus it’s huge, and the last thing I need is another huge quilt in the house. So I got crazy and decided to do hand applique instead (I’m good at that) and to also shrink it to 50%. Yeah. I told you it was crazy. I redrew all the blocks at 50% for applique…last night, I finished up the last few…
And did the center block, which is larger…
And then inked and numbered all of them…
This one has 100 pieces, but most of them have a lot less than that. Plus yeah, they’re smaller…
Now I just need to see what I have that will work for a background for all of them and start picking fabrics. I do other people’s patterns all the time. It’s the vacation/hobby for the art brain. So when I’m flailing all over the place and can’t focus, this is what I can do. This is easy. So many people don’t understand why I don’t just make art all the time. I can’t. I need a break…sometimes I just need something that someone else designed. Despite my redraw for applique, this is Berene’s design, totally.
My bullet journal font for next week was totally stolen from someone else, and then I messed around with it, because I only had three letters to go from, and then they had a lot more space, so I had to adjust. I had some time this morning and just needed to doodle.
Today is all fabric. And a walk. Plus dinner and a movie. Here. In the home. Where there are no virions rolling around. Hopefully.
So no real quilt work yesterday. Too tired. Dealing with other things. Katie (my parents’ dog) is still here, and although she’s been pretty chill (except when the fire alarm went off to tell me it had a low battery), the kittens have been extremely wary.
Mostly Nova is hiding…
But see that wide-eyed stare? That’s because Katie just came in the room.
Luna’s stare is a little less psychotic-looking, but not by much…
Up high is safe. Today Katie is visiting the ex’s house for a 24-hour respite for the cats. Even my cat hides from Katie, but now they are all out and hopefully relaxing. It’s OK…Katie goes home tomorrow, but she’ll be back in August! Oh boy! Hopefully the cats will get used to her…eventually.
OK, I have a ton of watering to do today. I also need to pick fabrics for a bunch of small quilts and put the binding and sleeves on the big quilt. I should have plenty to work on while watching the movie that has not yet been chosen. I also think I’m supposed to make bread today. Or tomorrow. I think today or I will be hiking and that will be an issue…OK. Plans made. Do float test on starter. Pick some fabrics. No. Sew binding on first. Do the yucky things first. I hate the machine-sewing part on a big quilt. It just takes forever. The hand-sewing part is relaxing. I’m OK with that taking forever. I’ve got some couch time coming up…that’s a good thing.
Sometimes it may seem that I am not paying attention to current events or politics or major issues in the world, but I surely am. They are sitting right there in my pop-up Google Glass brain, playing on repeat. I’m trying to process the images and ideas into work, mostly, or into sense, which is difficult. Portland, for example. Not Portland the city…Portland WTF is the federal government doing there. Like Albuquerque. I’m sure there are some terrified or politically different folks who are glad to see unmarked vans trolling around their city (a few blocks of it anyway) and grabbing those dangerous moms and dads of Portland or shooting tear gas at them to try to control them their singing and chanting of peace and love and change from the stupid practices that kill innocent people or even people who should have more rights, but I’m not one of them. I’m pretty sure my government is totally not my government at the moment. I’m glad to see Portland being proactive, both at a person-to-person level and at a governor-mayor-attorney-general level. And I’m sure you know this, because you read my blog, and IDK how you could if you were of a wildly different political persuasion than I, but Breonna Taylor’s killers are still free, they’re cops, they should be charged with murder, and those protesting her murder and the freedom of her killers were subjected to a lot worse than those cops. Which is so incredibly and amazingly wrong. Dead wrong, to be clear.
I honestly have a hard time watching or listening to much of the news these days. It hurts. And then I think, must be nice to be able to watch it from here, where we have no feds (yet), no cops breaking into my home, no fascist dictators (well, arguments to be had there)…I can vote, I can walk around and not be harassed by police (unless I go to Portland apparently), and no one is usually asking me for my ID in a park. It’s true. It is nice. And I want it to be that way for EVERYBODY. Including those who don’t politically believe what I do, but I’d like them to come over to our side too. Really. Let’s do this, people. White is not great. White is not right. White doesn’t even exist biologically, which makes it even stupider. More stupid. And yet the racism is there, the bullshit is there, the discrimination is there. No, I still don’t have an antiracist quilt drawn because I barely understand the people for whom I would be making it. I don’t know how to talk to them. I don’t know how to address their fears, because they just sound insane to me. Sad and crazy and insane and just plain wrong.
Keep it up, Portland. Chicago, Albuquerque, New York…be strong. White people…dayum. If you’re with me, cool. If you’re not…please explain. Because all I see is fear. And that’s not how we should be living our lives, making decisions that affect lots of people, pushing out hate and different and wrong. Oh yeah. Science! We should science more. And harder.
OK. So the last few days. The fence is kind of on hold. We’re waiting on wood slats…
They’re saying up to 2 weeks to get them, and then we get to plant. And be private? Well, who knows. This is from the road…and here is our little friend the praying mantis…
And another view…
Anyway, so more of that will happen.
This cat…
And the dogs…my parents’ dog is here…
My poor SIL and family are in a tire store in the middle of California after they blew a tire. They just called me to complain about California roads and Sacramento weather. I don’t envy them that part. I am jealous of the trip itself.
I spent some time Wednesday night just cleaning up, because I was tired and couldn’t think straight. I put all these away except for the pinks…
And I traced some stuff and cut it out for the small Patreon quilts.
I’m having a hard time with motivation. I’m tired and unfocused. I write down a to-do list every day so I can just look at it and cross things off. I should write a more specific one for these so I can get them done. They’re not hard…I just can’t focus. Although I’ve been working on this…
In meetings mostly. Zoomy meetings. She’s getting there.
Yesterday, I persuaded the boychild to hike Hollenbeck with me…
I’ve been doing shorter neighborhood hikes, but not my normal summer once-a-week bust-em-out hikes. This is still under 6 miles unless we add on…
Which I would’ve done if (a) it stayed nice and cloudy like that and (b) I didn’t have a shitload of other things I needed to get done. California horny toad there…
A little one…
There’s a hill hiding back there.
And then this thing that looked like either a fuzzy beetle or a landed bee…hard to say.
It was weird bug day.
It did get a little warmer, but not too bad for summer…low 80s.
Lots of woodpeckers and bunnies, all of which I did not manage to photograph…plus one coyote from a distance.
It was a really beautiful day.
Definitely worth it. Would recommend.
Then came home and trimmed this beast. Luckily it was pretty easy. I think I fixed three sides after the first cuts, which isn’t bad.
All while kneeling on that damn scabby knee from Monday. Ouch. Please remind me that this is too big. I should make things that are smaller than this. Really. She’s 78″ wide x 81″ high. She big.
Then I tested the binding fabrics I had…the green works…it does…
But the red makes the COVID virions, the angels, and the blood vessels pop…and that’s better…
In the end, the brighter red worked…I found a bunch of another darker red, but it doesn’t work as well. So the bright red it is.
I cut all the binding and sleeve fabrics Thursday afternoon, and then got too tired to sew them all together and on the quilt itself. Hopefully today?
We’ll see. I’m currently waiting for a really badly timed focaccia to finish cooking…
It rose nicely. I’m constantly confusing 12 and 24 hours. For whatever reason. Honestly, I’m constantly confusing a lot of things. It’s a late-afternoon focaccia instead of a dinnertime focaccia.
And I already delivered a quilt to the Oceanside Museum of Art for a show we might not be able to see. Sigh. It’s funny that the woman who works there (who I’ve worked with before) recognized me with a mask on. I’m always so impressed that she knows who I am. I got to see artist Katie Ruiz‘ rainbow of pompoms, albeit, on the floor and not on the outside wall…
But still nice.
OK, the day has disappeared, as always. I have a tree guy coming later, I have gaming tonight, the focaccia is good, hopefully my SIL and family (which, yes, includes my bro) make it to Yosemite tonight with tires complete, and maybe I’ll even get something done later. You never know. These summer days that kick you upside the head. Woo!
Ah summer 2020. You are a pokey sharp thing and not in a good way. So much stupid and stressful and not right. So many people who either don’t understand viral transmission or willfully ignore it. I so need a mountain cabin vacation on another fucking planet right now. A lot of us do. Honestly, the doctors and nurses get to go first. I know what I want for me, but then I think that’s selfish and there are so many other people who need it more.
So I try to do the things here that make me feel better. I had let the daily exercise routine slip a little. It was hot. I don’t like to exercise when it’s really hot. But I’m back to walking and the stationary bike, and my Pilates studio is doing online classes, so I’ve signed up for some of those. My real workout the last two days has been building the privacy fence though…
Although I think that’s just because I’m old. And doing a lot of bending over mixing concrete in the heat is uncomfortable…
That said, all four posts are still standing and seem to be level. And last night, I finished up all the tops so the water will hopefully swoosh away from the posts themselves.
“All the water.” Ha. It’s full summer here right now. It won’t rain for real for at least 6 months. Maybe more. But when it DOES rain, the water will swoosh away. We got the wood for the stringers yesterday. Buying wood lately has been a pain. The big fence companies swoop in and buy it all before I can even get there. I’m hoping to get slats in the next few days, although it might be two weeks. A lot of the lumber companies have shut down because of the pandemic, plus I think a lot of people are doing work on their houses who weren’t before. So there’s a shortage. It’ll get done eventually though. The slats are the easy part. This was the hard part. Although the stringers being parallel might be hard too. We’ll see.
So that’s been my days, mostly. That and taking this sweet old dumbass into the pool…
She’s waiting for me to get the broom so I can push the pinecone back toward her so she can get it. She used to swim way out, but she’s too old now. She still likes to be in the water and fetching the pinecone, though. I do it about 4-5 times and then she has to come out. She gets too tired. Usually we dry off on the deck for a bit while I read, but her skin is bad, so she needed a bath with the special shampoo.
She does not like that. Yes the wall is peeling. My remodeling fund is coming along, but we’re a good year plus out from being able to remodel the bathrooms or the kitchen. I just keep pulling more of it off.
My parents’ dog is here…Katie also needs a bath.
She’s making everyone a little nervous…
New dog. New cats. So stressful. It’s only a few days. We will all survive. I think.
Speaking of survival, I planted these cuttings from my parents’ house a month or so back. They seem to be doing OK…
The slope used to be covered with a groundcover that started dying all around here. I have very little of it left. Not sure why. So we’ve been replacing it in sections with other stuff.
So quilting…when I get to the background, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
Dark blue at night. Good choice!
I have not had good luck with buying lighting to go on the machine…they don’t last or they just suck. I’m not sure what to do at the moment. Maybe just buy a standing table lamp and put it behind the machine.
But for now, I just suffer through it. I spent the last two nights listening to the Scene on Radio Season 2 podcasts on Seeing White. They’re good. Oh yeah, and quilting. I finished last night…18 hours and 17 minutes…
Not bad. I was thinking 20 hours again. Now I need to trim it, which means cleaning the floor again, and then pick a binding. When I bought the background, I picked two possible binding fabrics. Honestly, the red is too bright. The green might work, or I might need to raid my stash. I don’t think I have enough of any red that would be dark enough, but I might be able to piece it from multiple fabrics. We’ll see. If it needs to be red, I’ll figure it out. So close to done! Although it’s a month later than I thought it would be. I’ve had other shit I’ve been dealing with, though, so it’s OK. It has to be OK, because it is what it is.
I also worked a little bit on this last night. I really do need to do the other small quilts too…
I’m behind on the Patreon rewards. Need to get caught up this week. But I needed that quilt off the sewing machine to do that. So maybe today is trim big quilt and figure out binding, get it on, and then I can start the smaller quilts in the next couple of days. I need to put a label on a quilt that should be delivered Thursday or Friday, so there’s that too. Aack. Plus the fence. And worrying about school…
Yeah. Exactly. OK. I have purpose. I have tasks. I have not showered.
The big old lady dog is currently harassing me because she wants to go in the pool, but the pool guy was just here today and dumped chlorine in there, so it’s a no-pool day, lady.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will throw the pine cone in and you can fetch it. Four times, because more than that tires you out too much. This is the joy I give you in your last months, old lady. Water. Pine cones. The occasional piece of bread. Enjoy.
So Saturday was a tense day. I couldn’t get my head out of school. I finally went out on the deck and drew for a while…
This is the place where I should spend more time sitting. I forget. I was honestly feeling too tense to even draw. It was slow. I was pulling it out like extricating a tick from really juicy dog flesh.
I gave up at one point and went for a 3-mile walk. Hike. Not sure what to call these.
Head-clearing events. Came back, we dealt with dinner, which is more and more annoying. No, I don’t want more takeout. Sigh. Takeout it is. So I worked on this for a little bit.
Not hard. Just time-consuming. And then went back to the drawing, because I didn’t have the energy to quilt.
It’s pretty good, actually. I’m not sure what I’m doing on the other side, but it will be bad. I think. We’ll see. It took the walk for me to decide what needed to go on the top.
I also managed on Saturday to adjust sound to a portion of a video clip, the part where the dogs started rampantly barking.
Oh yeah. Them’s some barks. Success! This program is not always easy to use. Thanks to Google and YouTube for always having the answer. Or at least directions.
Last night, I did more of this…with the little boy.
He is sad that the girlchild is gone and mopes in a variety of places.
I also finally started quilting the background last night. I did one whole long side, plus a goodly chunk of the background at the top, on one side, but not above the angels. If that makes any sense at all.
I can’t say that I have 2 sides done, or even 1 1/2, because mostly I did stuff in the middle, but not all of it. If you get what I mean. There’s more. Lots more. Possibly no end in sight. No, not really. This is a good place, because the end is just right THERE. After three more sides and some more crap in the middle.
We keep finding dead things on the property. There was a dead baby bird. I don’t know where it went. Then this dead baby rodent, probably mouse or rat…
And this poor dragonfly…
It’s funny, because most bugs are yucky, so why aren’t dragonflies? Why are they so not yucky? Are they really that much prettier than a beetle? I just don’t know. Neither does Simba, but he was happily rubbing his head on the dead rodent before the boychild removed it.
So much for dog tastes.
The milkweed has gone to seed.
I didn’t see any self-seeded plants pop up from last year’s batch. Too bad. I wonder if I should collect and plant some? Or just let it all be natural. I’m inclined toward the latter. It’s easier.
I posted this on the SAQA So Ca/NV Instagram.
I was looking around at my own purchases. I’ve bought mostly online. I’ve been in two stores, one for the background and hopefully the binding on this beast. We’ll see. I haven’t tried them yet against the actual quilt. Then the siren song of fabric near my Pilates studio…masked and hand sanitized. I don’t usually buy very much fabric online, so that’s been different. That’s probably true for a lot of us though.
OK, so it’s late in the day. Boychild and I put two posts up for the privacy fence we’re building. I then ran errands, returns mostly, couldn’t get the wood and concrete I needed, so I came home. I’m doing a Zoom Pilates class, which is a little nerve-wracking. I did them from recorded classes before, but never live. We’ll see how it goes. Then off to buy more concrete so I can finish the two posts tonight and we can do two more tomorrow. I’m tired now. I also did a full klutz trip and fall in a parking lot today. Scraped up one knee. Got up, realized an entire car of older ladies was watching, so I did that arm thing they do at the end of a gymnastics routine. I’m sure there’s a name for that. No scores were posted. Yes, I am that weirdo. Hopefully quilting tonight. I want to be done. I want to do something new. Something smaller too.
Ah yes. It’s late on Friday night. Well, not super late, but late enough that many of you have said goodbye to Friday (if you even know it’s Friday at all) and some are well into Saturday. Or Sunday. I can’t tell. Australia, you are crazy with the days and hours thing and it could be August by now for you all as far as I know. Plus it’s winter and that just blows my mind. In fact, I think I want to live there just for a year or so, just so I can come back and NOT think that August equals hot and February equals rain, but only a little bit, because we are Southern California in a drought for all eternity.
Why am I writing so late? Well, there was a chance on Wednesday of going to the zoo, and that didn’t happen, so today ended up being the only day available forever more that wouldn’t be a weekend, and when you’re trying to avoid people, weekends are not the way to go, so we got our butts out of bed at a reasonable hour and went to the zoo. More on that later, but it was a better social-distancing experiment than I think school will be, although there were times when I thought, oh yeah, this is JUST LIKE what school will be like, and it was mostly when I was around either people or primates. Wait. We’re primates. So it’s the damn primates. We don’t do this well. Although really, I’d rather hang with the orangutans. Not the baboons. Them’s vicious bastards. MORE LATER.
So I wrote on Wednesday last, and Wednesday night, I did some stitch down…
And I kind of got to this point where I said I would use the two meetings (both social, online) I had on Thursday to finish the stitchdown, because I had other stuff (sewing stuff) I had to finish and I needed the machine for that, and I hate switching needles and thread, so I just went for it…
It’s been hot. I have two fans I’m using in here.
And besides having to be the expert on whether or not we should open schools next month [um. If you won’t open a restaurant, why the fuck would you open a school? Because you hate teachers and want them to die? Don’t even ask me about the kids who will get sick and potentially die (none here in the age group I teach, which is great, but won’t continue if we open schools), and worse, take the disease home to family members.]. Wait, I was in the middle of a sentence. Besides having to be the expert on opening schools (no. don’t.), I just stitched.
And at 10 hours and 7 minutes…
I was done. The batting will be here tomorrow, but I had other things I had to get done, so my backing isn’t pieced yet…hopefully Sunday.
My quilt guild had a stitch along for the last 4 or 5 weeks (I can’t count. Please don’t make me.), and I needed to be done by midnight tonight. Yesterday, after finishing the stitchdown, I trimmed all the blocks…except one was too small.
Yup. That red one. I added a strip to make it work. And then I laid them all out again, and because I’d seen some other people spread them out more, I got a stupid bug up my butt and pulled 5 of the blocks out of the center bit, added more white/black, and pushed them into the border…
Because why make it easy? In fact, I have no need for an abstract quilt on the wall, so this needs to be even bigger. IDK what I will do about that, but I did piece the whole center together last night.
And then put the borders on today, after the zoo.
Looks good. All I need to do is decide how I will make it bigger, sandwich, quilt it, bind it, and then toss it on the couch for cats and dogs to sleep on it. Right? Sure. The point is that I finished it on time. The pattern is Abstract Arcs by Cotton and Bourbon. Look! I pieced something.
I’m still trying to finish all the grass on this, Folk Tails, by Sue Spargo. I found another spool of green thread and jokingly said I knew I was done with the grass when I’d run out of green thread. Um. No. So this was after Thursday’s second meeting of the day…
At this point, I think I’m done with the bottom three rows, but when I look at it like this, I see stuff that bugs me…so when I sewed these two blocks, they had the grass already on them, unlike the bits I’ve been adding. But it’s so obvious that it stops at the edge of the block that it bugs me…
So I had to go in and add more grass over the seams to make it look less like straight lines. Taking photos of this stuff helps see crazy things like that, which will drive me nuts if I don’t fix them. Then tonight during gaming, I kept going on the grass…yeah, I know there’s a cat on there, but I might be close to done with grass stitching.
I’m seeing maybe one or two places that need more. “MORE”, because if you look at her photo of it on the website, she added a gazillion more bits of grass from the pattern, and I don’t have that kind of patience. So the next step is to put the borders on. Wow. Another almost finished Sue Spargo Block of the Month. Well done.
So I also drew two more of the tattoo quilt blocks…
Again, these aren’t mine. I’m taking a paper-piecing pattern by Happy Sew Lucky and shrinking it and turning it into applique. I like the images, but I don’t like paper piecing. I also need to draw some stuff for the next Patreon rewards. Maybe that will also be tomorrow. We’ll see.
If you’ve met me more than once or twice, you know this about me.
Strangely, it does not translate to my on-video self.
OK, so the zoo. We were there for about 2 1/2 hours, and at the end, we were mostly done with people. There were more and more who were either lame as fuck about social distancing, or wouldn’t move out of the way so everyone could see the animals, or would get in our personal space, or flat out weren’t wearing a mask. That last category was pretty small, actually, which is a good thing. I feel like all school year, I will be saying, “Mask ON. Six FEET.” T-shirts to come. That said, it was outside and a walk and the baby animals are cute as hell…
The baby orangutan playing with the baby siamang.
They were adorable.
There were lots of sleeping cats…
It was a warm day.
Honestly, even mine sleep in this heat…
Except this guy…
A new dad who kept coming over to this fence to check out mom and babies…
She was, in the way of all new moms, fully into Fuck Off, You Did This to Me, and hanging with the babes.
So the baboons were yelling at each other and chasing each other around the enclosure.
Let me be clear, the ones with penises were chasing each other and everyone else was just running around either trying to figure out what was going on, or trying to avoid it. Just like in real life. So many things to feel about that. We never figured out what was really wrong…also like real life.
This baboon had the best hair.
I mean, I know they groom each other, but my hair NEVER looks that good. I was jealous.
Yes, this is a photo of a tapir peeing in the water. Not because it was peeing but because the pee was making this crystalline pattern in the water…
Which you can sort of see here, but it was much more impressive in person. Me wondering about the chemical properties of tapir pee. Really.
Secretary birds are just weird.
Some guy walked by and said they were ugly. Nah. Just fascinating.
I don’t find many animals ugly. Humans? Well, that’s another story, but it’s really the insides and not the outsides.
Lots of funny little birds to be seen.
This is hanging down bird…
And its twin…wait…it’s still a hanging bird, but this one is doing it wrong…
Or maybe it was called an upside-down bird. Can’t remember. That was its name though…the assumption that it was always upside down.
The flamingos are probably the most photographed bird at the zoo…
Because they’re bright and flashy and right up front.
Otis the hippo was born in 1976, I think.
He’s very still.
This tiger was finding food in hidden locations…
Kudos to the zoo keepers for keeping them hunting…
It was a nice morning out…well worth it. And I felt less violated by people than I do when going shopping, so that was a plus. I’d do it again.
Calli’s not sure.
I took her in the pool for a cooling-off swim…
Yes, Luna is even squishier than she was last time.
I don’t understand this.
We still have monarchs on the milkweed…
Always nice. Oh yeah, and I made blueberry cobbler to use up the berries before they went bad.
I think I like a crisp more than a cobbler, in case anyone is keeping track. There are more berries coming. I’ll make the crisp next week.
OK, it’s late and I’m tired. I’m going to do the dishes I got dirty and then go to bed. Tomorrow, I’ll finish the copyediting and go to the quilt guild zoom, and then see what else I have the energy for…maybe nothing. And that’s OK. I have been working pretty steadily all week. It’ll be nice not to be copyediting or doing school for once. But then we need to do the other fence…so that’s a different kind of work. And more art! I need to make more art. That’s what summer is for.
Yo. I started this a while ago, but boychild ended up on the roof and tools were involved and somehow I was also involved. That’s all you really need to know, except that the cable is now attached again and the palms are mostly trimmed. I also probably have a lot of dirt in my hair, which is awesome, because I had already showered and I have a dental appointment today and no, I’m not showering again. I also have about 17 million errands I need to run, which is nerve-wracking, because you know, virus from hell abounds. San Diego is a mess and I’m kinda glad I sent the girlchild away, because at least she’s in a sane place where people are not dumbasses about masks and sheltering in place, like WTF the beaches on the weekend? Anyway. Sigh. So there’s that.
I did drag the pup to the vet this morning too…he has to get his teeth cleaned so we don’t have to pull more like we did before. Brushing teeth isn’t really successful with him for so many reasons. He was sure we were going for a special mommy-doggy walk this morning…
Poor baby. So sorry. He cried when we pulled up to the vet and then climbed into my lap. I felt horrible. First I ship his favorite person to Boston, then I put him in the crate to sleep last night because the bed isn’t big enough for all the furry beasts who want to be on it, then I don’t feed him breakfast this morning, and then I take him to the vet. I am pure evil. I will give him love and treats when he returns.
So the 4th was pretty quiet here. I copyedited a bunch, and I made my first loaf of sourdough…
Just when most people have given up on it or have truly gotten into their bread groove, I’m just starting.
It needed about 5 more minutes, but it tastes wonderful toasted. Plus our parchment paper sucks, so I’ll have to work on that. Better parchment paper or more flour. Parchment paper is mostly edible.
I also went for a long walk on the 4th…locally, not in the wildlife reserve…although that might have been smart. It was super hot though…
I haven’t tried going back to the gym yet. They opened with limited times and slots last week.
For now, this works. I could go use the machines and then go across the street to the reserve and hike, instead of doing the cardio there. I still need a better face mask for exercising. Working on it.
It was a bright and beautiful day.
Really, I just needed to get out and walk off the week’s stress. After that, we ate dinner and drove over near my parents’ house for a better view of one of the few sanctioned fireworks displays…not that the neighbors didn’t set off a bunch of illegal crap. It’s a good thing nothing burned down. Everything is so dry.
Yesterday, I watered the dog…
I only let her swim a little bit. She gets too tired. But it also cools her off. And then we sit on the deck together (and even the little boy comes out to be a guard dog for all the bunnies on the property)…
It’s all good. Last night, I took some time and stitched while watching the last episode of Unforgotten, Season 3. I got the stuff stitched down for these two blocks, from Sue Spargo’s Homegrown Block of the Month…Kitten did not help. Yes, my windows are crooked.
I’m OK with that. This is mindless stuff, but also achievable. I’m into that right now…stuff that doesn’t take a lot of brain power.
Even this is like that…I stitched down for a couple of hours, with the fan pointed directly at me. Which reminds me, there are two fans in this room. I should plug the other one in too…
This room just gets warm. I should replace the sliding glass door for something more efficient. It’s old and hard to move. I have to go outside and fuck with it and then come inside, and worry about the cats getting out. Sigh. Anyway.
I got all of Figure 3 stitched down, and just need to do the landscape where the gravestone is and up behind her. Plus then finish Figure 2 and the two angels and the skelly and and and. There’s plenty left. I don’t think I’m halfway through yet.
Well, my dental appointment just got moved up two hours because people are canceling…interesting that it’s all last minute. And my laundry needs folding and the palms need trimming and I still have those 17 million errands and I haven’t copyedited anything today. Plus lunch…WTF am I going to do about that now? Sigh. OK. Well, it’s better getting the dentist over earlier and going to get my TB test right after, and then we’ll see what I can handle today. I’m tired as hell from not sleeping well last night (it was hot and I was anxious…welcome to my summer experience). I’m going to go make more tea, put a bra back on (damn society and its norms), and then figure out how to get shit done. Hopefully there will be some copyediting and artmaking at some point. We’ll see.
Well, it’s been a rough week. Hopefully next week will feel better. The girlchild is finally in Boston, the sourdough starter and I have been close and complicated, and I have 9 new boxes of fabric. The boxes are new to me, the fabric is new to me, none of it is actually new.
Before you do anything else, watch this video. It’s the 4th of July, a weird one, to be sure, but this is video of Frederick Douglass’ speech about what the 4th means to him, read by his descendants. And it’s hard to hear, because so much hasn’t changed…but they all still have hope. I have hope. Didn’t mean I didn’t cry to hear the words, because honestly, it’s hard to know how to fix it all (burn it all down! and start over…). But watch them. It’s only 6 minutes of your lives. You can give them that.
Yeah. Told you they were awesome. In youth, I see hope.
So. It’s Independence Day. It’s warm, there will be fireworks, but we can’t see them from here, and we can’t gather…so we’re gonna take a drive to my parents’ house and see if we can see them from there. I spent yesterday mostly copyediting…I’m going to do more of that today. I set a goal to be done next Saturday, so I’m sticking to my 4-5 hours a day. Nothing else really needs to get done, although exercise would be nice.
I did finish all the blocks for the Abstract Arcs quilt on Thursday…
They all need to be trimmed and sized…
That’s next week.
I’m not great at piecing accurately. I don’t do it a lot. I did lay them all out and stare at them and move them around until I got this…
I’ll have to stare at it for a while and decide if that’s it. Right now, it looks mostly OK. My real goal was to get the piecing done so I could start the stitch down on the big honking thing that was on my ironing board…
You wanna talk meditative? It’s pushing and pulling this thing under the machine, stitching down every piece. And I did a good job attaching everything in that four hours I took, so it’s been really easy and trouble-free so far (knock on wood, because that’s not always the case).
I am running out of thread, though, and I haven’t considered the background. I don’t really WANT to go to JoAnns for thread (or anything), but it seems we’ve moved past the “only buy stuff online” stage that I was at with the last quilt, and now we are in the “you can go to stores, but be smart about it” stage. There’s probably another 7 hours of stitch down to go…
I am going out more now than I was 3.5 months ago. I don’t necessarily like it, but I try to be careful. I have something right now that needs to go to the post office, another thing where I can go to the post office with it or go to the actual store to return it. They warn that mailing it will take 4-6 weeks to refund. Hmmm. Then I need a TB test for school, which is two trips…one to get poked, one to get the poke seen. Maybe the second part can be a video call? Who knows. They were jerks when I called, so I will find out when I go in. Plus I have dentist next week. And today, I drove to a friend’s house…she’s moving and downsizing her fabric stash. So I benefited…
Oh yeah, that’s exciting. I really do like adopting other peoples’ stashes. I tend to buy the same types of fabrics, and this is a way of infusing my stash with another person’s eyeball. Stuff I never would have bought gets incorporated into my quilts. Now finding room for all this will be a challenge, but the boychild and I were talking about some of the stuff in my office that I never touch that could be boxed up. So now I need some big plastic boxes for the garage, I guess. Summer is all about organization.
It’s also about breadmaking. I started with sourdough starter back in March; then the girlchild came home and took over (I’m pretty sure she tossed my starter and started over). She’s kind of awesome and obsessive about cooking, whereas I am mostly lackadaisical. That’s probably not a great trait for baking bread. Many people have sent me links to easy recipes, but I’m following the one my daughter liked, which is A Beautiful Plate, her artisan sourdough. No, it’s not easy. But I have an expert I can text at any time.
This is useful to me. Plus there’s videos. Here’s my starter after being fed yesterday. Then I incorporated it into the autolyse…
And then I stopped taking pictures. I did a bunch of things to the dough yesterday afternoon and evening, and then it went into the fridge overnight, where it still is…doing its thing. Hopefully later today, that thing will be baking bread that is tasty and has the appropriate number and size of holes in it. We’ll see how that goes.
Anyway, it’s a thing I’m doing. Better than this…
Although that might be a stress reliever of sorts.
Calli needed pool time, so that’s up to me or the boychild now…
She’s old and now gets all the treats. She’s eating a pine cone and just happens to be lying on a plant runner that really should get trimmed the next time I sit out there with her.
She’s a good girl. I keep telling her that. She’s another thing that makes me cry this summer. Ah well. Lots of pets and dips in the pool and maybe even bits of bread, because she really likes bread. A lot.
Luna has picked a box and will be in it. Her feet are the best part.
All the cats have their spots. Kitten has claimed this green fabric drawer.
No one may have fabric from this drawer. Only her.
Here’s the bunny who lives under my front deck and thoroughly irritates the little dog and the cats with its presence.
It’s cute. Watch out for coyotes! We’ve got those, for sure.
OK, so the internet was an asshole while I was trying to write this, so I did some other things, like eat lunch and find the ricecakes the girlchild left here and no one else will eat. I might feel that way about the raisins too, but I’m willing to listen to the boychild on that. I really want to do some creative fabric things right now, but I’m being a responsible adult and will (a) process the video for my Patreon July post, and then (b) do some copyediting. And then we will figure out the whole dinner-on-a-holiday thing and drive to my parents’ house to see if we can observe fireworks. Then back here for sleep and all that. It’s not exciting, but it’s relatively safe, so there’s that. Next week, I will figure out how to buy thread and organize fabric and do all the things I’m supposed to do. Happy 4th for those who celebrate, and if you don’t because you are an American and it doesn’t feel very American, I’m sorry. I love fireworks and staring up into the dark blue sky to see them explode, and I hope you get to enjoy something on that magnitude.
Well the news is good and my brain is fuzz. Not that the brain is fuzz is anything new, right?
Girlchild got a negative test result, so we all rejoiced and she ate toast and sat outside (this is a thing if you are stuck in your room) and then booked her a new flight to Boston at holy fuck in the morning tomorrow.
These were flight faces. Because American and United Airlines are dumbfucks who just got rid of social distancing. And our original carrier, JetBlue, had no cheap flights left, so it’s Delta…which is social distancing, thank you, Delta. She’ll have to self-quarantine for two weeks when she gets back, but so will half her apartment, so I don’t know what that looks like when there’s no food and someone didn’t clean the bathroom for three months.
So my brain has been fuzz. I wanted to finish piecing these blocks for my quilt guild before I did the stitch down on the big quilt, because once it’s on the machine, it’s a pain to switch back to normal stitching. Thread change, foot change, pain in the butt change. So on Tuesday night, I pieced some things…
I used the same templates but switched where I put the sections in color and the sections in black and white. I also added some brighter yellow (it’s the same fabric…just a different section of it)…
Because the other one didn’t seem bright enough. That got me to 18 blocks.
Then yesterday, I had an online union info meeting for an hour and a half, so I pieced 2 more…
A brighter blue this time…
Ah yeah, I need to square these suckers up. And cut 2 more in the purple…
Ready for my online stitching meeting today. I have 20 blocks…
Only 5 to go. Hopefully done today so I can start stitch down. I think I’ll do two more green blocks with a different green fabric and then IDK what the last one will be. Whatever’s left? We’ll see what it thinks it needs. LISTEN to the quilt.
This is one of those things my brain does at the beginning of summer, when I’m still in recovery from school. Plus copyediting is sucking up some valuable brainspace, so that’s not a bad thing.
This baby girl. Well, she’s 11+. I spent time on the phone with the oncologist yesterday. It’s not good.
But she’s not in pain and not having breathing problems, so we have some time. She gets lots of treats. And she’s a good girl. She wants to be wherever I am most of the day, so that’s cool.
I had to do the drawing on Tuesday evening for my Patreon…
It was fast and furious. Sometimes they are. It would make an interesting small quilt (not quite that small). Those root things are a pain in the butt in fabric. But they look cool.
Anyway…
Summer Nova. Makes me want a hammock.
It’s Thursday. I type that so I will remember. My new best friend (besides Calli) will be my sourdough starter. With the girlchild leaving, I am going to try to be a big girl and make bread. It’s fucking complicated, so I will have to spend more time with dough and starter than with any other human on the planet. It already feels that way…friends are far away, and with some of the stuff coming out about school, even the teacher friends will be far away and not necessarily on the same schedule as me. Go eat by yourself! Teach by yourself! (well, we always did that) Plan? You might be able to do that with someone 6 feet away. Book club and stitching and quilting? Nah. Still far away, on a Zoom call. I will miss my kid, for sure.
Today? I need to copyedit for a while, then finish the 5 blocks while on a social Zoom. Then IDK what. Stitch down? We’ll see. Moody today. Hopefully that will resolve. Maybe if I talk to my quilts more it will…
Hmm. One of the things about life that being a mom and teacher have hammered home is that whatever you THINK is gonna happen, might happen, but just as easily could go sideways and into a ditch. Welcome to yesterday, when the girlchild was supposed to fly home to Boston and I was supposed to start copyediting for realz, and instead, she woke up with COVID symptoms, we canceled a flight, got her tested (waiting on results; will be incredibly OK if it is just a summer cold/flu and we overreacted. Honestly, more of the world needs to be overreacting right now), masked up, washed my hands a million times, became a cook for the cook (always hard…she has high expectations and I don’t cook that well…I’m a subsistence cook.), finished one part of the copyediting (the part I needed to finish), and tried not to think about what the next two weeks might look like if she tests positive. Meanwhile, San Diego is shutting bars and wineries and breweries down again unless they serve food, and won’t open anything else up until after August 1. Apparently our need to shove ourselves into drinking establishments after three months makes us all stupid. Oh yeah, and then my work needs me to get my TB test renewed in the next 30 days. Again, hopefully the test will be negative, we’ll rebook her flight, we’ll go buy sugar because we forgot that in the last grocery shop, and I’ll get my TB test done, plus take the dog to the vet etc.
You do have to wonder how many people just get on the plane anyway, because it’s true this option is a pain in the ass.
Anyway, at some point, I looked at the to-do list and freaked out, because there were many things on it, including a video for my Patreon (due like today…I usually would have done it over the weekend), and I kinda flailed. I finished an organizational read on the book I’m editing and sent it back (it’s sitting back again in my email right now, but I have other things I need to do first). And then I realized I could record ironing the quilt together for my Patreon. They’ve seen small bits, but nothing like this 80″-square monstrosity. Let’s do it! This is not a small time commitment at this point. I started with sewing the background together…it’s just over 80″ square. Then I ironed the whole thing as nice and flat as I could get it.
Then I mopped the entryway floor. I need a big flat (clean) space for this. The ironing board is not big enough (I’ve done that often). The floor in here is not big enough (also done that). So the entryway is as big as I can go in one piece. I had the main sections ironed together: the figure and background on the left, same on the right, and then the taller standing figure in the middle. There were some loose foreground pieces that couldn’t go on until the other three parts were ironed, and then there were the two angels, three COVID virions, a skelly head, and a weird hand thing. So I put the background down on the ground, the drawing propped up where I could see it (and cats could hide under it…honestly, this process is cat heaven)…
And then I ironed it all down.
Honestly, that makes it sound so easy, but it was four hours from sewing the background together to getting it totally ironed down. I got the main portions tacked down on the entryway floor, and then put it on the ironing board and steamed each bit for 30 seconds and then moved the iron slightly and steamed again for 30 seconds. That last part was at least 90 minutes…I know because I got through almost two episodes of Unforgotten. I still need to cut some pieces that disappeared on one of the COVID virions, but that won’t take long, and then I’ll start the stitch down. The total ironing took 25 1/2 hours.
I made a video for the Patreon of my placing the larger sections…and then I made a fun timelapse of my ironing…I’ll release that one to the public in the next few days. You can watch me crawling on the ground with an iron…in case you think this is all fun and games (I do often wonder how long I will be able to keep making the big ones because of that).
This quilt is not being made quickly. There’s too much other stuff going on for quick anything right now. But it will be good when it’s done.
OK, so what else has been going on? Well, I finished the damn Sue Spargo dots…Saturday night, I stayed up and took about 4 hours to finish the two dots I hadn’t done and two more I added…the first one was the abstract next to the lion.
It was Friday’s dot…
I was supposed to make the spokes go out farther past the dot, but I didn’t realize that until too late, so oh well.
It certainly wasn’t the first mistake I made on this thing.
Then Saturday’s dot was a bird…that thing took a long time.
The trellis stitch is not quick…halfway?
An hour later???
Just fit on the last dot…
And then I stitched down two more wool circles for the Black Lives Matter dot and my signature dot…
All copied from other people. The only creativity of mine in this thing is 1. I changed all the colors and didn’t do a grid. and 2. Fixing my mistakes.
So that’s 93 dots total. I need to figure out what size to make it, sandwich it, quilt it, and decide how to hang it. Oh yeah, and get all the cat and dog hair off of it. Ha!
What else? I’ve been embroidering my drawing…
Actually, I’ve done more than this, but it isn’t photographed. I worked on it at the Social Distance meeting my quilt guild had on Saturday, then at my parents’ house for a Social Distance dinner the night before the girlchild was supposed to leave, and then Sunday night a bit more.
We are outside and 6 feet apart, although it’s hard to get everyone to remember to stay away or mask up. We are trying. Boychild is hiding behind me. We also had all the dogs together…my parents’ Katy or Katie or Katey. I just don’t know. She answers to all of them.
Calli with her lumpy nose…
And Simba, who apparently has a thing for citrus…
Which is a strange thing for a dog…
He was definitely tired out after all that social distancing…
The cats don’t travel or social distance well…or maybe that’s what these two are doing?
Hard to say.
Cat in a box. Cat on a chair.
Not the same cat. OK, well, so we sit and wait for a phone call. They sent the man home from work (they’re essential) until results are in, so the house is full of people. I was not prepared for that…the grocery run was light this week because I thought I’d be using up things and not feeding a lot of people, so that has been interesting. Luckily last night’s and tonight’s dinner plans could be stretched to accommodate more folks. After tonight, it could get iffy.
For the rest of today, I’ve got some videos to process, a drawing to do for my Patreon, plus copyediting. The girlchild is feeling OK today, just really tired, although she rallied yesterday and then went downhill at night again…just like you do with any other illness, so there’s hope it’s not the COVID. For now, hope is good. We’ll just hold onto that until…well, forever really. Hope that we find a way to bring numbers back down, hope that everyone we love stays healthy, hope that change keeps happening with regards to being an antiracist planet, hope that nothing else pops up and slams us upside the head, as a family, as a state, as a country, as a planet. Like don’t even talk to me about that other swine flu thing right now. I can’t deal.
Kathy Nida 