Tag: dogs

The Red Is Too Bright…

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.

Head-Clearing Events…

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.

That’s What Summer Is for…

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.

Damn Society and Its Norms

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.

Something on That Magnitude…

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.

Thread Change, Foot Change…

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…

Hope Is Good…

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.

I Will Wash Dishes…

Is anyone besides me getting a certain satisfaction out of the simple task of washing dishes? There’s hot water, there’s the order in which to wash so that the greasiest dish doesn’t destroy the water. There’s stacking them in the dish rack (mine is ancient and disgusting, but apparently nothing else will fit my sink) in some sort of logical manner, there’s the soap bubbles, there’s the satisfaction of things being dirty and then being clean. It’s so simple. Distracting. A thing I can do successfully that doesn’t just become something more all of a sudden. OK, it’s true that sometimes I’m annoyed by the dishwashing, but it seems in these pandemic days that dishwashing is one thing I can do and do relatively well, and if I fuck it up, I can just wash that dish again.

I am still so tired these days. I’ve been off school a week and usually it takes me two weeks to get into summer…plus we built a fence, which is why I’m late writing this. We were hoping for like 2 1/2 days and it took 3 1/2…although we still need to clean up. This was at the end of the third day…

We ended up being 4 boards short, so I had to make a run to two different stores yesterday. Of course.

My concrete footings are stupendous. Really.

And then a day later, when I’m sneezing randomly, I wonder if I now have COVID thanks to Home Depot.

OK 24 hours is probably not realistic. We did actually finish up the last bit after this photo. Fifty feet or so of new fence. We still need to get rid of all the old wood. And then build a privacy fence in the front yard. Later. In July. Seriously. I’m fenced out.

I’ve ironed a little bit…Tuesday night? I think?

Yeah, I think that’s the night I stayed up way too late. Angel number 1 in progress.

I have a quilting meeting in 13 minutes. I’m thinking I’ll work on this. Is the skin color good? Dead angels? I was trying for a dead look. We’ll see when I get the heads done how it really looks. I’m liking the dots though.

I’m still doing these, albeit very slowly.

I’ve got 10 done, and 2 more cut out and ready to sew…

And the fabric ready for two more. Then I need to prep more stuff to do the next 11. It’s OK. I’m on time. I think.

And dots! Monday night was the one to the left of the pink ball.

It had lots of colors in it.

And was pretty fun to do.

It’s more colorful than that in real life. All these nighttime photos.

Then Tuesday night’s…I didn’t have the energy to make the tool for it (out of card stock), so I just winged it…just under last night’s…

It wasn’t hard, just a little fussy because I was too lazy to find cardstock and cut it.

It turned out OK anyway.

And then last night’s…to the right of the pink spool…

I had to go bead hunting again.

And a cat lay upon it for a while…

Note cat hair. I think there are 3 left. Then I can work on other things as I try to figure out how to hang this. And where to hang it.

What else? It’s interesting…I don’t really leave the house much, but I do feel weird about leaving and being out. California’s viral numbers are going up. Damnit. Well. We’ll see where we’re at after 4th of July. People are stupid.

Ah yes, I walked on Tuesday…it was nice…

Weird seed pods…and cudweed on its way out…

Someone is still painting rocks.

I have one at school that says Be Brave…that one on the right was there before…now it has a friend.

I’m not sure what the friend is supposed to be.

There were crows on my walk…all on the path and then started hopping up to the fence…

Then the tree (I missed when there were 10 up there)…

I couldn’t see anything on the path that looked crow-worthy, but what do I know?

Last thing, I often order little stitched things I like (and then hoard them, because IDK what to do with them), and saw this one from Mixed Color, a talisman (we all need more of those)…

The Guardian. Now I need a plan for all these embroidered bits I have from all over. Really. I have some very nice ones, a good variety. Crazy quilt blocks? With more embroidery? I like that idea. Will work on that this summer. First I will need to find all the bits, but I can start with this one. Calli approves.

We made wontons again last night. Girlchild leaves Monday, but I have this recipe. I could make these on my own.

Calli did not get wontons. Poor Calli. Looks like we are dealing with cancer on this sweet girl.

She’s not in pain. We see an oncologist next week to see what’s best for her. She’s a good girl though.

OK, I need to do some ironing and sewing and ffs sleeping at some point. Be good! Be safe. Wear your mask (I’ve lost two in the last week…no idea where they are in the house…but they are somewhere in the house). Stay healthy.

To Build a Fence…

Hey. So we’re building a fence here. Hence I am exhausted. Why are we building a fence? Because there wasn’t much between the fence standing up and falling down. It was time. This was after the boychild and I removed the first section on the left, waiting for the man in charge (my dad) to show up.

Thing is, dad is almost 80 and has had heart issues, so we’re all masking up while doing this. No need to get anyone sick over a fence, right? Damn bushes have been pushing this thing over. We’re trying to take that back. Did some major chopping. They’ll come back. They always do.

We had hoped to just replace slats, but apparently with lumber mills being shut down due to the pandemic, those are hard to find. So we adjusted…

The lower yard needs work. It was a jungle for years before the boy went out and attacked the lavender star flower bushes. The one on the right is pretending to be a tree. We want the others to be more bush like.

We didn’t mean to start on Fathers’ Day…dad just misread my email. It’s OK…the first day, we put in three posts? Maybe four…

The first one took three hours because…it was the first one.

Today was the second day, and we got all the posts in. I was in charge of making the concrete on the top slope away from the posts. Well that’s definitely four posts in, three to go.

I don’t feel bad for the neighbors…all they do is construction. You can’t see the new playhouse to the right of this picture, or the pool in progress in the ground down there. It’s a lot.

We’re putting metal poles on all but one of these…just for sturdiness. The one without…it would have been a pain to get one close enough, so we didn’t.

Hopefully the rest of them will hold the fence up.

As of this afternoon, all the posts are in, top stringers in, and about half the bottom stringers…we needed concrete to firm up before doing more, and one section of wide slats is in. Tomorrow we finish, hopefully. So we can let the dogs out NOT on a leash. That will be nice. Plus I’m tired. It’s hard work in the sun and all. Kudos to those who do this all the time…if I’m out in the sun/heat for any period of time, I get dizzy. So then I drink more water. Probably bending over for 20 minutes, trying to make a concrete pyramid structure with a pointy thing that has a name that is totally not in my head at the moment (trowel…there it is) did not help.

Anyway…tomorrow, more stringers and lots more rails. Then done! Cleanup will take a while…lots of boards that need to have something done to them…either made into firewood or cut for the dumpster. We’ll see which.

Meanwhile, I ironed a little bit last night…

OK, it was actually two hours, not a little bit. Got her head done and the background stuck in behind her…and started on the skelly in the background…

All this with a large Golden Retriever to step over…

We’re waiting on test results for the old lady…she’s got a face swelling that could be an infection and could also be a lymphoma. She’s doing fine though, no symptoms, so hopefully it’s an easy fix. We’ll take antibiotics for the win!

I had some time before dinner yesterday to piece some more fabrics for the Abstract Arcs quilt…

I also cut out pieces for the next two blocks but didn’t get around to sewing them together yet.

This is the easy part, right?

I’ll probably need to make a few more combinations of these to get enough blocks for the whole piece.

This is in the evening light, so everything is very blue-toned…

The backgrounds are all actually white and black. Here they are with dog for size…

I sat outside and tried to read for a while with the girlchild…really, after working all day, my brain was mush for quite a while.

She’s been reading like crazy these days…

With puppy assist. I’m a little jealous of both those things, but know I’ll get some in a bit.

Dots! I finally caught up…Saturday night was the octopus…

Fun but time consuming…

All those legs…

And then I caught up on the acorn, which was Wednesday’s? I think? Can’t remember.

The acorn…

Someone did one with bullion knots on top, but in the end, I found a thread that worked.

And then Sunday night’s abstract…

They all start to look like flowers or microbes at some point…

This was a quick one…

Tonight’s is not. We’ll see if I finish.

Kitten has found her summer spot…where she will probably lie while I am trying to copyedit later this week.

Ugh. Sweet cat. Bad location.

Here’s Nova, also sweet, but not in front of my computer.

And with Luna…

Last…for those who don’t follow my Instagram. This dragonfly was around and then hung out for a while.

Amazing color…

So. Tomorrow? More fence, hopefully done. Although we need to build a new fence in the front yard. So that’s later. Then cleanup. Tonight? Dinner. Sew a dot. Hopefully either iron or piece some blocks, maybe both. Then a good night’s sleep. Sounds lovely. And happy birthday to my younger brother, who is smart and hires people to build fences. Actually, I’m pretty sure he’s done this with dad as well. It’s a thing.

Hello Summer 2020…

I’m moving slowly today. Mentally and physically. School is officially out. I might have actually slept normally last night (after a 10-minute meditation app in bed, trying to persuade my brain to shut up), although I definitely remember parts of that repeating dream I have about being in a huge airport and trying to keep track of all my stuff, going back and forth to find things I’ve lost, tons of people, no masks, just weird-feeling. I’m three days behind on the Sue Spargo dots for the first time ever (I’ll catch up this weekend, no worries), I feel like a train hit me, and I’m trying to negotiate with my copyediting job and failing miserably. It’s OK…he wants to give me more work and I guess I can do it, and it means more money for tree-trimming, but I’m feeling like I need a break between school and more work, and I don’t think I’m going to get that. Oh well. I’ll do what I can.

Hello Summer 2020! Aren’t you a fucked-up mess! My summer plans include reading, hiking, quilting, building two fences, planting shit, drawing, embroidery, and sleep. Also there will be multiple school-related meetings and stressful emails, and a copyediting job or two. It will feel much shorter than normal summers. There will be no travel or weekend shenanigans, except within the confines of this house. My god! More of this house. Hopefully there will be a lot of quiet, but when you’re surrounded by little kids, it’s unlikely.

I do plan to finish this quilt in the next few weeks, although there are many hours still to go. I ironed this Wednesday night, putting me over the 50% mark. I’m hoping to get more of it done today and tomorrow.

Sunday is the start of fence-building, so that will take up a chunk of my time and energy.

I’ve also been working on a stitch along with my guild. I know I don’t usually piece, but I do know how…

This is improv piecing, and then after that…

We move onto the piecing an actual block…

The pattern is Abstract Arcs by Cotton and Bourbon. As of yesterday, I’ve made two whole blocks.

It’s OK…I’ve made the improv fabric for about 6 more, if I get around to piecing those today. I’m doing two blocks (so far) in each color run. There’s some plan to what I’m doing. I think. I won’t have enough blocks if that’s all I do, but I’ll go back and do something to get the remaining however-many-I-need, because I can’t count and so I just do until I have enough.

I also finished this during a meeting…

And started this one of my own design…

during online graduation yesterday. We also did a drive-thru graduation at school…

Masks on, supposed to be 6 feet apart…so many feels about this…

(sign says, “The year shit got real”)…so as 7th-grade teachers, we usually don’t get to be involved with graduation at all, so this was a nice change to see all the kids, even though they were in cars. But also, some people not wearing masks and not distancing appropriately…that stuff makes me feel really weird and anxious. I suspect we will see some illnesses coming out of this or out of all the drive-thru graduations. San Diego is on the border of having to shut down (at least partway) again. We’ve had too many community outbreaks in the last week, but still they open nail salons and massage parlors today (oh man, a massage sounds ideal for my completely trashed neck and shoulders). So I guess we will spend the next two weeks wondering if we’re sick or not. I hope not, but every time I do something that seems borderline risky, I come away thinking, oh hellz no, not doing that again. Except I work with these people and teach with them, so there’s only my own stuff I can control.

Things I can control over summer? Hike time…although we only took the little boy dog…

The old lady is having some issues…

Great weather for a hike though…not too hot, but nice and bright, although smoke/haze in the distance…not in this picture, though.

Afterwards, he needed his body checked for spiky things and ticks…

The old lady has something growing on her face that might be cancer, so we are worried…

She is old and lumpy as it is…hoping it’s just an infection and easily treatable, and she has no noticeable symptoms, so we are enjoying her dorky self still.

The old lady cat got herself stuck in the strings from the balloons I brought home yesterday.

She ran with the balloons after this. Pretty funny. I didn’t mean to bring balloons home. It just happened. It was safer than letting them go.

While I was ironing the other night…

What’s she staring at? This guy…

Gecko house. It’s very exciting for the cats.

She’s currently waiting for me to get out of this chair so she can sit in it again…

I left for two minutes. Seriously.

OK, also a woodpecker! Can you see it? Crappy through-screen pictures…

OK, I have pilates today, although I am still conflicted about that. It’s helping my back and neck though, so I’m dealing with it. Hopefully we can all stay healthy. Also plan to read my book and piece some more and maybe iron some stuff. And sleep. More sleep. Ugh. No school though. That’s a plus for right now. Nice to have a break, reflect on things that worked and things that didn’t, consider the things we won’t have control of over the next year or so, and figure out how to accept all of that.