A Place to Start

Empathy: a friend sent me an article this morning by Alisa Golden about empathy in art (you can read it here) and I was thinking about maybe that’s what the deal is with the quilters who want no politics with their fabric. Why do those of us who make more political quilts get upset with them? I don’t like to just write off a whole group of people with the “stupid” or “ignorant” label, but what I really think they may be lacking, or maybe just AVOIDING, is empathy. Putting yourself in the shoes of a mother who has been trying to get her children away from drug dealers and violence. Feeling like you need to find a better world to raise children. How is that hard to understand?

I had a student this last year with gang connections and lots of family pressure regarding that, and I said more than once, if I were his mom, I would pick him up, put him in the car without telling the rest of the family, and I would drive him far far away and not tell anyone where I was going, and I would raise him somewhere that those influences were not available. Because he’s 12. And he deserves a chance to grow up without having to fight a rival gang member or be surrounded by drugs and violence. And I realize mom probably doesn’t have the ability to do that financially or supportwise. It would take a lot of courage to walk away from everything you know and some of your own children to make that happen. So if I were really her, maybe I wouldn’t do it. But I do think about being her and being the mom of this troubled kid and how I would solve that problem.

So empathy. We certainly don’t have an empathetic president…or government in charge. If I listen to any more white men explain people of color, immigrants, gays, trans, or women to me…I try to avoid them, but occasionally their rhetoric slips through. I don’t have a lot of empathy for them. When I try to get there, I just feel their fear of change and loss of control and power. Geez. Find something else to get you excited then. White supremacists? I have a hard time with empathy. They probably have a hard time with me too. But this is what we need…to feel the humanity in all of us and to help people through the hard stuff without the NIMBY attitude. Ask them why they need to believe what they believe. Explain it to me.

So what does this have to do with art? Well, I guess that’s how I do the empathy thing…I put mine out there and hope it speaks to someone. It’s what I know how to do. Golden wrote: “Art is not just about the message. It is not only about the meaning or feeling or mood. It is also about getting outside of yourself and your own game and respectfully touching base with someone, somewhere else.” So if we can do that with our quilts, that should be a good thing.

I am incredibly lucky and pleased to not have jury duty this week…I’m even more pleased that they told me I had the whole week off, because I was all stressed out about gas in the car, food in the fridge, stuff to take with me, planning for something that might not even happen. I don’t do well in those situations. I like to know what’s coming. I handle uncertainty all the time, but every day? Yikes. No. So this week is free…which is good, because I already had 3 things planned and now I have 4. I would have canceled or moved them if I had to, although the two medical appointments are not so easy to schedule…so it’s a good thing I don’t have to.

One of the appointments is with a diabetes educator, because that’s the way I get to figure out how to use my new medicine. I went through the diabetes classes when I was diagnosed 16 or so years ago, and I’m pretty good at paying attention to what I should be doing…but my body is changing as menopause decides whether or not to be a thing (certainly yelling “Make up your damn mind, uterus!” has absolutely no effect on the situation), and I’m convinced by what I’ve read and understood about the whole thing that it is the hormones that are causing the majority of my issues right now. I am not exercising enough, that’s true, but nothing else has changed. I’m hoping the education comes with some sanity, because I’ve had some crazy thrown at me over the years…and when I try to say, um, no, diabetes is not caused by eating red meat…I get lectures or incorrect information. So I am trying to keep my mind open and not be cranky about being educated. Perhaps there is new information and they won’t just lecture me about my stressful job and my shitty sleep habits. Or not. They told me to bring my new meds too, but you inject once a week and I don’t want it to be on a Tuesday…it’s one of my busiest and most stressful days of the school week. So we’ll have that conversation. Show me without actually doing it. I feel like that could be a thing.

Boychild is still in Mammoth…there are worse places to get stranded, although this is one of the more expensive places to get stuck…

Apparently his dad and grandpa are on standby with a flatbed truck to go get him and the car if necessary. Sigh. Poor kid…finally decides it’s time to come home, and he’s stuck 6 hours away. Hopefully it will be an easy fix.

So I worked on this a little last Thursday and last night…on the wild dog in the center.

He’s a little blurry, but I did needleweaving over the brown dots…

I should find the instructions for those silly flowers…I know they’re in a different month. That’s why I haven’t done them.

After dinner with the parentals, I came home and quilted for a good long while…enough to get the dark outlining done. I started around the sun with a yellow…

Then I’ll do the stars with a golden orange, the background of the sky etc with a variety of off white and beige colors, and then finally the border in green. It’s not a small amount of quilting that’s left, but I might finish today.

When I got tired of that (I set a goal and met it), I came out to work on the drawing. I cut out the bottom of this viewpoint, because I wanted it to obviously be a penis, so it wasn’t long enough for the size I drew.

Fixed. That was easy.

I can’t get all this immigration bullshit out of my head, so it’s now in there too.

This quilt is more about women’s issues and women’s rights, but it seems like keeping one’s family together should be a right. I should put an American flag tattoo on the arm.

Then I drew the next of the pregnant women. She might be the last mostly full figure…we’ll see. The drawing is changing in my head as I draw (and watch the news…maybe should turn that off). I don’t know what her viewpoint is yet…

Still working on that. Added a cat. Like you do.

You can kind of see how it’s going here. I really am trying to keep it simple…ha!

Yeah. I should stop saying that. It’s not completely true. So I’ll keep working on this today.

So what’s on the table for today? Hope the boychild’s car gets fixed quickly. Go to the gym. Pick up the other dog. Hopefully finish quilting…I wonder if I bought binding fabric? Probably not. It was how many years ago that I sandwiched it? Two? I’ll go through the pile and see if I can figure it out. Then work on the drawing after dinner again. Let it percolate all day so I can make decisions. Have empathy for someone. Or lots of people. It’s a place to start.

Art on My Mind

I forgot to mention yesterday that I was watching and rooting for all the marches yesterday. I’m hoping that we as a country find a way to be more accepting and kind to all humans, no matter our own political bent. And I really hope that (a) we stop separating children from their families and (b) we reunite those kids who are separated. I don’t care about what the law says right now or which president we want to blame for it…just fucking fix it. Stop blaming people who are trying to escape shitty situations. Let’s help them. Take responsibility for humanity. The days of this country against that country really do need to be over. We are one world community and what we do and say affects others. It’s like watching your worst period of the day in middle school, the one that may even be your smallest class, but the least functional…listening to them bitch and moan and gripe, reworking every classroom behavior tool you’ve ever used in your life to try to manage them and get them functional again, even sitting in circles and singing to each other (dammit, sometimes that works…if you’ve never taught, then be quiet). We need to do that; we need to be that. No excuses.

So there’s that. Wait. That applies to the quilt world too. We all have quilting and a minor (or major) fabric obsession in common. Maybe that can be a way to make the rest of it better…for kids, for families, for the disabled, for the disenfranchised, for the groups who need help, need food, need shelter. If you are in the privileged party (hello y’all white folks like me), you need to be part of the solution…making it better, easier, safer. You don’t get to ignore it because you don’t think it’s about you, doesn’t affect you, you don’t believe it actually happens (I listened to a Mexican woman tell me children weren’t being taken away. I was confused by that.). Sigh. This political existence is stressful. It’s easy to try to ignore it…it’s hard to see solutions that work for everyone. A friend from high school just commented that he was willing to give up ICE if the Democrats were willing to give up the Department of Education. Well. Hmmm. Maybe he doesn’t know what that department does? Or maybe he’s rich enough that his white boy children won’t need federal aid. My kids got federal aid to go to college. A whole lot of people could never afford college without that aid. Pretty privileged idea…although honestly, with DeVos in charge, it’s hard to see the good in the department. Tell you what! I’ll give you DeVos in exchange for ICE. She can go. She’s mostly useless. But the department serves a purpose.

Sigh. So there we are. Don’t even get me started on the Supreme Court. Maybe my whole existence is political right now. I know many people where that’s true and they don’t even get a choice…refugees, immigrants, people of color, the trans community, anyone who doesn’t fit in the box.

Satchemo staring at me. I don’t remember what I was doing. Organizing shit.

Definitely drinking tea.

So I went around and around in my head about this drawing and how to take what I liked in two drawings and move shit around and get what I wanted. So yesterday afternoon, in between lunch and dinner, I taped two big pieces of paper together and started tracing the original woman from 6 or 7 years ago…because I liked most of her…

Then I was going to revise the uterus and the eyeball thing (viewpoint?)…and maybe move the arm on the right, because there was now more space…so I put the newer drawing up there so I could see it.

And I redrew the uterus (much better). That’s kinda where I left it last night when I went band-watching.

At the venue, I drew with one of the fam…she drew me…I’m the one at the top of the page (wearing my Rebel shirt)…she had her Sharpie going.

Eventually I started drawing too…

And finished that one…pretty good…

And I started another one…I was too tired to get up and dance. I was perfectly happy just sitting and drawing.

It forces me to do that. Being somewhere that I can’t work on cleaning house or yardwork.

So then this morning? No this was last night, I worked on finishing up the tree with the leaves. I might still revise the viewpoint thing.

The next solution to this drawing was to move the second figure further down a hill. So I turned the drawing underneath until I got the second figure at the angle I wanted, and I started drawing her…well, tracing anyway. Mostly.

I liked her…I just needed her to move. So this is as far as I got…

She still needs leaves and there’s this lamp in the middle of nowhere and then the hill and whatever is going on next. That’s a little bit more complicated.

Meanwhile, boychild’s car broke down in California somewhere…not close enough to go get him, but he may be hanging out in Mammoth for a few days. There are worse places to end up. Hopefully he didn’t totally kill the car. Sigh. It’s been one car problem after another in the last month.

So I’ve got a plethora of things to work on today…hopefully I will be able to continue tomorrow (knock on wood that jury duty doesn’t start tomorrow). I know I’m going to forget to check the website or call at some point. I need to calendar it. Just know that art is finally totally on my mind…so I don’t really feel like doing anything else.

Might Be Over Now, but I Feel It Still*

My definition of a break is different from vacation. Vacation is when you get in the car or on a plane and you travel somewhere and hang out there and it involves not sleeping in your bed and possibly eating weird food. Vacations are cool. I went years without vacations because I couldn’t afford them, and as it is now, I don’t do them a lot (still money), but I try to do one a year for a week and then a few smaller ones. This year, I’m going to Boston (excuse me, Waltham) to visit the girlchild in November. It’s really hard (for me) as a teacher to take time off during the school year. It’s such a pain in the ass to create good lesson plans and hope a guest teacher won’t completely fuck it up and teach the kids something completely incorrectly (sigh…it’s way too common) and then I lose days when I come back, trying to correct their misconception AND deal with behavior. So I avoid it.

I rarely get to travel during summer, because of that lost paycheck. It’s hard to plan to spend a chunk of money when you know you won’t have any more coming in. I currently have a list of things I need to buy but will need to wait until September (or whenever the credit card cycle starts that will bill in September…teachers, you all know what I’m talking about). I would love to vacate right now. Really. I would. We tried to set up a weekend camping trip, but we waited too long and all the campsites are booked. And I can’t plan anything in July during the week because of the silly jury duty. August is already a disaster schedule-wise.

So no vacation right now. Staycation? OK. Go see some music, maybe hike a bit, possibly kayak, go to the zoo? I don’t know. Something I don’t do during the school year very often, because I’m so buried. But maybe that’s my resolution for the 2018-2019 school year? More weekend things that are less about work and more about being a relaxing human. (I suck at relaxation, you may have noticed.) This is a break though…a break from the job and the kids and all the other crap and that in itself is a good thing.

Anyway, my car window got fixed yesterday. I was worried that it would be the wrong window or something else would go wrong, but it worked out and the gardener who accidentally shattered it with a rock ended up paying for almost all of it. So all that turned out well. I was expecting to have to spend more time and energy on the issue, and I didn’t have to. So that sort of freed up my brain all day to do a bunch of different art- and fiber-related activities. I think it was the first day since school got out where I felt like I was on break. Because no school. No doctor. Only two errands and they were done early. Nice. Need more of that please.

So I started out with trying to finish the ironing on this…another cat! Shocking.

And some tiny sewing implements…

Then I started ironing it onto a background, but I needed to go to my fiber-related summer social meeting. So I packed up some bits and pieces and headed out. I cut the Wonder Under for the two small quilts…

These lunch containers work well for keeping pieces separated…the sandwich one doesn’t though because the divider doesn’t go all the way up.

So those are ready for fabric choosing.

Then I finished sewing all the wooly bits down on this, September’s blocks.

I also pinned October’s pieces down to that blank block, but that was when I got home…and I stitched a little on (I don’t know what month I’m actually on? July?) the bigger piece. I’m getting closer to done on this. I didn’t photograph any of that.

Then I ironed the rest of this down. I like her. She’s ready to be stitched down.

I’ve been trying to keep doing yardwork, but mostly in the evenings because it’s too hot otherwise. Last night, I was entertaining the dogs while whacking at trees and bushes that haven’t been trimmed for a million years. I lost the puppy for a while in there, and Calli kept bringing me half-chewed sticks to throw.

I will probably never finish back there.

So I can’t do the stitch down on the skinny quilt until I finish quilting this. I don’t want it to go back in the pile. So I quilted for an hour or two, until I was almost out of thread.

It’s not hard. It just takes time. Thread purchase on the list for today. I didn’t want to buy more unless I knew I needed it. Now I know I need it.

So after all that, running out of thread, I decided to try drawing. It’s always hard to get back to drawing if I haven’t done it for a while. It’s like my hand stutters. I have an enlarged old drawing, I have this original drawing from 2011 or 2012, and then I have this cat on my lap. Huh.

Anyway, so I started drawing the righthand figure again, but now I have an issue because I like parts of the old drawing better than the new and I like parts of the new drawing better than the old. Aargh. So I think I’m going to copy both real size and then put them together? Or maybe I’ll copy both enlarged and put them together?

I just don’t know. Or redraw it again. Sigh. Maybe that. The shape of the old one is better but what’s in the belly of the new one is better. Fuuck. OK. Well no decision there, eh? Nothing new. Indecisive brain for two weeks now.

OK, so today…buy thread, make some copies (decide at some point what I’m copying?), pick up the ceramics I painted last week, go watch some music and grab some dinner. Easy. Not too bad. I can handle it. I might even feel relaxed by the end of it!

*Portugal. The Man, Feel It Still

‘Cause You Don’t Have to Rush*

A reminder that working all day does suck up brain time and make art difficult. That said, I do it. I used to only really make art on breaks…so Winter, Spring, and Summer. I finished about one big quilt a year and a few smaller ones in between. I didn’t do nothing during the school year…I just didn’t do a lot. It didn’t help that I had little kids and they had homework and soccer and piano lessons and a whole host of other things that I graded through and sometimes embroidered or appliqued through, but that was mostly hobby stuff…not the real artwork. Looking back, I’m not sure how I got anything done. But I did.

Yesterday? Not so much. I mean I did get some stuff done, but it was a lot of tiredness mostly. Because when I got home, I made dinner and then walked the dogs…

No nature last night…because it was late and I didn’t want to deal with coyotes. I did want to get exercise, because sitting all day in a training feels exhausting as well. Although I did find a place that makes and sells (important!) tea. Oh hallelujah. So that got me through yesterday afternoon. One more day today and I’m done. I can honestly say that National Board Certification is a lot of work…but I think I will take it on…just not this year.

On the walk, there was a kid who was walking, but when he realized that the dogs and I might be walking faster than him, he took off at a run. Like he couldn’t get passed up by the old lady. He’s way up there in the picture…you can’t see him, but he’s walking again. Lame. Nice big old field though. Everything is dead and brown already…no rain for a while.

Calli appreciated the walk but was tired and hot afterwards…

Simba also appreciated it, although he appreciated less my picking the sticks and foxtails out of his fur later. And Satchemo didn’t get to go. He does go out on a leash, but I don’t deal with that crazy. Cats on leashes. Yeah no.

I realized I wouldn’t be able to stand to iron for an hour or more…too tired. Feet hurt. Even though I sat all day…the irony! I usually stand all day. And I didn’t feel like stitching on balls. I looked at them and rejected them. So much for three a night, eh?

Oh well, so I have to do these two small art quilts by late July for an exhibit in the fall, so I’ve been carrying around these 5×6″ pieces of paper I cut for that purpose. So I drew. And then as I drew, I realized the boxes are horizontal and I had drawn the first two vertical. Duh. So I redrew one of them (and changed it), but now horizontal…

And then I decided I like the one in the top left, so I scanned it and shrunk it and printed it out again. So it will be that one and the bottom right.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to keep these little pieces after the show…maybe toss them up on Etsy.

So that’s what I did instead of finishing the ironing on this quilt that needs to be done. I also thought about (but did nothing about) the big drawing…mostly because I think I decided I would need to be standing to do anything about it.

I can’t decide whether to start with a drawing in the big sketchbook and then enlarge and add to it, or whether I know what the parts are already…just cut a big piece of paper (I have a HUGE roll of paper I bought a while back and it lives in my living room and no, you can’t have any…ok that sounds mean, but you know how when people find out you have something or you can do something? And then they want it or they want you to do it and you’re like wait but get your own. Do it yourself. OK, I’m obviously in a mood. Never mind. Something about a comment…”is anyone an artist?” came up when we needed to make a poster.). Cut a big piece of paper and start drawing on that. That decision (and action) was more than I could deal with last night. So I didn’t. I’ll get to everything. I hope. I committed to a piece of art that goes with a poem…picked one of my old poems, the one that sucked the least (damn, some of my old poetry was really awful). So I need to draw that too. Maybe tonight? Ugh. Maybe. I want to draw. I’m just tired.

Too much thinking. Need more art, less thinking. Perhaps more sleep too.

*Kate Nash, Navy Taxi

I Like a Plan

A Sunday without planning for school. Again. So delightful. No school worries. Although I’m in teacher professional development for the next three days, so that’s not really no school. But they will feed me. And hopefully it will be informational and useful and not just annoying overachievers. We’ll see. I think I use up all my people skills (what few I have) on my students all year. I need to rebuild those reserves. Maybe hanging out with teachers I don’t know for three days is not the way to do that…but who knows? Maybe I’ll be totally reflective and motivated.

Right now, I think I need a nap. The mockingbird is back. He’s been all over the neighborhood, but last night was in the tree outside my bedroom again. It makes me crazy. I slept with the pillow over my head. Drowning out noise with fabric and feathers. Ironic that. Bird drowning out bird. Very philosophical this morning.

I have this drawing I’m contemplating. I started it years ago, 2012? And it grew, but I’m not sure it grew logically, and it means something different to me now. I was going to just go with it and maybe add to the bottom, but now that doesn’t make sense to me. I thought about just using half of it, but every time I look at it, I see pieces I like and pieces I don’t like, that don’t go with the story as it is now. So I think I’m going to redraw it but move pieces around…make it less horizontal too while I’m at it.

It’s going to be my epic summer quilt. But first I have to tear this apart and redo the whole thing. No Biggie! It’s taken me a week of contemplating it and deadlines to finally make the decision. So redraw it I will.

But let’s go back…it’s been a busy two days. I had a voucher at the local ceramic painting place that was expiring, so me and a million moms and kids headed to the same place to use them up. No one would sit at my table…which was fine by me…but I got side-eyed by about a million people for painting nudes I guess…

These are before firing, of course…who knows what they will look like fired.

Well, we all will next week when I pick them up. I make about one mug a year…I tend to break them. Overuse them. All that.

I also made a uterus bowl…like you do…

With a lot of symbols on the outside.

And then I made a sign for Saturday’s march to keep families together. But that was once I came home and made dinner…I didn’t do that at the ceramics place.

San Diego had already scheduled a march for the 23rd and then the national one came through for the 30th. I already have stuff going on the 30th, so I’m just doing the one march…hope the second one pulls enough people to make a difference too.

I saw this cool sculpture walking to my meeting spot…

And then lots of speeches (too many speeches, honestly) and a short march to the federal building…

It’s frustrating to live in a time when we have to yell and stomp so much for our government to hear us…and they still blow us off. Sigh.

When I got back, my brother was texting me pictures of the boychild with his cousins…going tree climbing.

My kid is the biggest…so far. The others are getting taller every time I see them.

Mine is the long one in the middle…

Looks like fun. I wanna do that. I kinda miss those summers when I would drag the kids up to Seattle to hang out for a week.

Anyway, boychild will be leaving Monday apparently to head south. He should be here in a week or so. So that means cleaning his room. It’s not too bad. I piled the worst of it in the girlchild’s room last year when my guy moved in here and I hadn’t finished cleaning up stuff in my bedroom. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with stuff. I’m not sure if I need it or not and I hate throwing things away. I threw a lot away last summer with the garage clean out. I think I reached a limit at some point.

Anyway, that’s next week. And sometime in July, when I panic about the girlchild coming home.

Meanwhile, my office is always a disaster…but especially after I’ve picked all the fabrics and haven’t cleaned up yet…I leave everything out in case I lose a piece (I found a lost one last night)…there’s a cat in this photo…

There it is. Kitten on Mt. Batting.

She spends a lot of time there. It’s safe from the other kitty and it’s comfortable and in the room where mom spends a lot of time.

So at some point yesterday I felt awake enough to iron for a while, up into the thighs. The sun comes in here in the afternoon and makes it hard to see stuff.

And then I took a break for a while and went to dinner and then came back and worked on the lights and the squeegee and the uterus…not all of that is ironed down though, because stuff is supposed to go behind the top part of the pelvic girdle…

Kitten came down to visit (and watch Supernatural apparently)…she sat on the chair that is hidden there for a while, until the other cat came in and got territorial. Sigh. At this point, I had cleaned about half the papers that were piled on my desk…I still have the other side and then the desk to the left. School sucks up so much time that there are balls that just drop…and cleaning the paper crap up is part of that. So I lose shows sometimes in the paper piles. I forget about them. I try to be logical, but I’m not always good at it. I want to try a different organization plan in here, but I need a new stacking file thing…the two I have don’t fit into each other unfortunately. So that’s a trip somewhere. Organization has been my issue my entire life. I like it when it happens, but I keep changing how I do stuff to try to get MORE organized, and then I wait to see what sticks. I’ve reorganized in my office/studio about 3000 times. I have a plan for hopefully next summer (need money) to do a remodel of the whole room…but I’m not there yet.

Anyway, I was ironing the gingko leaves separately, because they had a lot of tiny pieces and I needed to see the pattern before I ironed them onto the belly fabric.

There they are…

And then I put them on the belly fabric, but folded the leaf itself down until the stuff above was done…first a stomach, liver, and intestines…

And then the ribs and abs…then I could iron the gingkos all the way down. I still need to add a bunch of detail bits in there, but it was just after midnight at that point. I took a break in the middle because the library emailed me that my book was due soon, so I finished it…plus my feet hurt from standing, so I gave them a break.

I’m officially more than halfway done now…lots of complicated stuff still to be ironed. You can see all the bottom bits are rolled up at the bottom. I decided to just keep going instead of ironing the parts separately and trying to fit them together at the end. Especially with the hand that will come down and hold the squeegee…I wanted to make sure everything meets up.

Oh yeah, I finished all the red balls on this quilt and started doing the embellishment of the fuschia balls, which are only a slightly different color than the blush pink balls (there’s one of those on the top for comparison). The stitch around the fuschia balls is fairly easy, but requires going around twice. I only did one…I took time Friday night to finish the 4 red ones that were left and start the fuschia, which is why I got no artmaking done. Plus tired.

I made up for it by doing no ball stitching last night…but I figure if I finish embellishing 3 balls a night on average and there are 80 (79) left to go, then that’s 26 nights. So sometime in July. Plus I should be quilting the other wool quilt, but I have to finish the cotton one that’s under the machine, and ain’t none of that happening in the next three days. So there.

So there’s finishing ironing, maybe quilting, getting prepped for tomorrow’s teacher PD, groceries, maybe a dog walk…if it cools down enough. Maybe some cleaning or organization. We’ll see. Yardwork that’s never done. EVER. One week of summer break gone. I hate that feeling. Then I have to persuade myself that there’s a ton left, everything will be fine, don’t panic. DRAWING. I need to draw. That’s a plan…I like having a plan…

At Some Point, You Run Out of Hours

I slept. I went to bed well before midnight. I slept. And the dog barked. And I slept some more. And the cat bit me. That pretty much got me up and moving, but obviously I needed like 10 hours of sleep. Like don’t bug me sleep. Like let me just lie here and grow roots into the bed sleep. It was a rough week. I had to be up early every morning and then I wasn’t going to bed early, because my brain doesn’t work that way. Until it hits exhaustion. Hoping to repeat again tonight into tomorrow morning, so I can make it through all of next week. There are nine days of school left. Grades are due in a little more than a week. I can do it.

Really, what helped yesterday? I found out the deadline for the show I’m trying to get this quilt finished for got moved. To September. Oh holy hallelujah, what a weight is gone. I can do that. In fact, all of a sudden, I can do everything. Well. The grading part is still a load of work, but I was able last night to sit down with all the art deadlines I’m looking at for the next 6 months (well, I forgot one, but that’s OK)…and kind of start to get my head around my summer and fall. Artwise that is. It felt a lot more relaxed and sane. I needed that. For some reason, for about 2 years, I’ve been going like crazy and I needed to chill out a bit.

I need to add the other one here and do measurements for the one I just wrote down, but now I can get my head around what next. What order? How?

So that’s good.

Yesterday was our awards breakfast…here’s our amazing English teacher making pancakes. I was on the other griddle doing the same.

Well I had to move to another plug after we blew that fuse, but whatever. Why the library doesn’t have more robust fuses, I don’t know.

Taught about birth control all day…then a walk with just the one little dog…

This walk is one I really like, but I no longer like doing it alone…

We didn’t do the whole three miles…puppy was tired, but here he is pulling, wanting to keep going.

Here’s why it makes me nervous to walk here…there’s two adult coyotes and then two kits out there. The trail we come out on is right next to the green belt…the kits saw us and ran back to their den, but it still makes me nervous to come by myself with the dogs. I can carry one small dog, but it’s hard to protect both if needed. Especially if there’s an overprotective momma coyote around…

Came back and had dinner…Satchemo likes to sit right underfoot. The pattern of the rug with his fur seemed really interesting…

Here’s the drawing I did on the plane on Monday. Not too exciting. I was pretty tired.

So part of the art I have to do this summer is two tiny pieces to go in these boxes…for a show that will open in September…

The next step on this quilt is to iron the Wonder Under to fabric…before I can do that, I need to clean up in here…I need to put all the pulled fabric from the last quilt away, plus I really should try to fix the one green drawer.

It’s broken and I can’t find a correctly sized replacement. My long-term plan is to replace all this section with shelving, but that’s expensive and not happening this year. So the drawer is a pain in the butt, and I need to put a brace in or something to keep everything from falling out.

A little bit of clean up here, mostly getting stuff neatly back in drawers and off the place where I lay out all the Wonder Under.

The sewing machine table is doing OK…just some paperwork on the right that needs managing…

I’m not buying a new background…I need to use one of these. I often buy more than one background when I’m not sure what will work…

Although as I’m thinking about the size…I may not be able to get away with not buying more. Huh. Thinking. Mathing in my head is a mistake. I’ll do it later, after a shower to clear the cobwebs from my brain. Anyway, I’m going to grade some and then clean up some today…then we’re going to an artwalk for the rest of the day. Seriously need a break, so that will be a good one. Depending on how I feel tonight, I might get some work done on the ironing. We’ll see. I’m OK now if I don’t. I was seriously looking at having to do about 4 1/2 hours a day and I couldn’t see how that was going to work…because that’s on top of maybe 9 or 10 hours of schoolwork as well. At some point, you run out of hours.

Anyway. It’s moot now. Moving on with my much-more-relaxed weekend. Also trying to ignore the sore throat…hoping it’s from overuse yesterday…and not some viral crap that some sneezer kid gave me.

Nobody’s Right If Everybody’s Wrong*

As far as I know, the girlchild is currently on her way to Kenya…she should make it back to Boston by sometime tomorrow morning, our time. What is that, 29 hours? Something like that. She has one friend flying the whole way with her, which is good…better to have them with buddies than on their own. If you are Facebook friends with me, you can see the 250 pictures (or so) that she posted yesterday…well, assuming you know her name. The cat just put her belly in my morning tea. Gross. Anyway, I think girlchild had an awesome and appropriately difficult time and she’s coming back to classes, a job (or three), no real home for at least a week, a car that needs service, a computer that needs service, and toilet paper. Those are all manageable. Really.

Meanwhile, I tried to make art, lots of it, yesterday. I’m feeling the deadlines breathing down my neck. I’ve had this drawing lying around for a while…the last time I worked on it was April 15…then I switched over to the one I’m working on now, because it has an earlier deadline. Plus I had these empty spaces and I wasn’t sure what to do with them. I wanted this to be a comprehensive history of what Kathy is as an artist, and I’m not even sure I can remember all that.

So yesterday, I felt like drawing and I added a bird…

And the sun and a cloud up top…because most of my quilts seem to have those things. I forgot to put an alien ship in…maybe I’ll add that.

Long and skinny…

And then I numbered it, but sort of randomly at times…I decided to add fingernails here because all the other hands had fingernails and probably no one but me will ever notice this one hand without fingernails, but it would’ve bugged the crap out of me, so I added them. And had to use letters to number them, because I was already in the 200s somewhere else.

Oh well. It wasn’t the only place I messed up. It’s 904 pieces plus about 5 or 6 lettered pieces. The little dots on the film are going to be embroidered or painted or something more sane than cutting them out of fabric.

After I numbered, I kept cutting out on this one. I have almost 10 hours into the cutting since Thursday. And I’m not done. I’m not really even close to done. So much for my estimating. You just never know. There’s not a ton remaining in the lefthand box, but there’s more than an hour’s worth.

So maybe I’ll finish tonight? Maybe? Who knows. I should be ironing sometime this week though.

When I was getting ready to go to bed, I realized I had 3 out of 4 animals in the living room with me…

The other one was on Calli’s bed when I got to the bedroom…in the dark…

Calli wouldn’t get on her bed until Kitten moved…apparently cats are scary.

I need to drive a ways this afternoon to pick up a piece from a show. Then hopefully walk the small hyper dog. Then cook and consider my options for the night…I think I will continue cutting, but maybe I’ll start tracing too. We’ll see.

*Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth

Tomorrow Gets Me Higher*

I’m very much in my head these days, with one quilt in progress and another drawing that reappeared on the light table so I could finish drawing. My brain is trying to schedule everything else around the artmaking so I can get two quilts done in the time it takes to make one. I still don’t know for sure that I can do it, but I can try. The drawing is rolling around in my head, because I know it’s not done, but I don’t know exactly what it needs. Something came to me the other day, but I was driving, so that’s not the best time to record ideas, and though I thought I could totally hold onto that idea (and in reality, it’s stored in my head somewhere), I lost it in the moment. It happens. It will probably come back. I do a lot of drawing and coloring in my head. It’s like art brain is at an easel in one of the cleaner corners of my brain, pushing the to-do lists aside, ignoring the demands of my job, and it draws…colors…stares at the paper for huge chunks of time until something is decided.

So somehow my art brain thinks it can work on both of them…and I’m not sure it’s wrong. I know at some point last night, it hurt to stand any more (a lot of standing happens in my job), so I sat…if I had the second project at a sitting stage, I could have gotten another hour of artmaking in last night.

After grading and making dinner and then more grading, then into the disaster area that is my studio. I have a plan for fixing this corner, but it requires a chunk of money and time that I don’t have at the moment. There is a cat in that photo though…can you see her on Batting Mountain?

I think the other cat was in there too…he tends to stalk Kitten a bit. He has a few places he likes to be in here.

I picked the first of two flesh runs. The two old people will hopefully be more beige or gray. This is the younger figure, the one on the rug.

I ironed for a couple of hours…and got about 200 pieces done. Way more efficient than the night before…

I didn’t add much to the pile…just flesh tones and the rug…which ended up being dark green.

I have about half the 200s to iron down, but that was the next figure, so I quit. That’s a big chunk of time to do the next figure. My feet hurt, I was tired, and I need to finish my book before the library ends my digital loan again. Without even asking me. How rude. So I read for a short bit and then gave up and went to bed.

I have to cover the pieces I’ve laid out when I’m not ironing, or I will come back to a cat lying on them, with Wonder Under stuck to their fur and chaos everywhere. The top right box is what I’ve ironed down. Not enough…

Gotta keep going. So much standing today in my future…

It’s a crazy week. But this is progress, and I like progress. I like to report on progress. Really, this blog is just to make me do stuff every night. It’s my motivation.

Calli has hurt her foot…she’s limpy. I don’t get home early enough from school this week to take her to the vet. I’m hoping her grandpa figures out his work schedule and takes her, or it will be Saturday. She’s sad about it.

She did this last year around this time too. Foxtail? Arthritis? Sprained not-ankle because dogs don’t have ankles? I just don’t know. Poor puppy.

OK, off to school for an early meeting that will inevitably be frustrating because of a certain staff member who’s definitely not in it to help kids, and then teaching website stuff and plastics all day…we moved the tables in both science classes yesterday to try to deal with some behavior issues. My 8th period pretty much freaked out about it. So the rest of the classes today should probably do the same. Exciting stuff.

Then home to ironing…

*Queen and David Bowie, Under Pressure

Move Through the Room Like Ambulance Drivers*

It has been pointed out to me that I am in a crappy mood. I agree. I am. It’s true. I do my best to counteract such moods: spending time reading my really interesting book, trying to draw every night, exercising on occasion (I’d like to do more of that), and messing with student brains. I had a kid write “Nida your a bitch” on one of the desks. OOOHH…that’s original sweetie. I have to agree as well. And right back at ya. So I erased it and then started a conversation, although I’m fairly sure this is a different kid…

I’m pretty sure I know which kid this is and which kid thinks I’m a bitch (the one I called out the other day for constantly trying to copy the people at her table, which is why I moved her to a different group this week. HA!). Can you see me rolling my eyes from here? Yesterday had a lot of fun components (not really) that ended in a load of stressful crap that better not show up in my class today…or tomorrow. All I can say is that at least they have bad aim, so I didn’t get hit.

Then I drove down to a show I’m in that I haven’t been able to see yet, because the gallery was supposed to be open late, but it wasn’t. So that was annoying, but I took it in stride. Because what else are you gonna do? Pitch a fit? Nah. Drive home, make a cup of tea, read a chapter. I graded a little bit. I’ve been unfocused on that shit lately…hard when you have to babysit in class after you’ve assigned something, stand over them until they make a start, stand over them so they don’t hurl epithets about Your Mom. Your Mom wants you to get to work, you sweet little dear child, not pick a fight with some other 12-year-old.

My patience is worn thin.

Dark dog…

After dinner, I finished the drawing…eventually I started numbering it…

I knew it was not going to be just a few pieces. They never are.

There’s the thing I put in the bottom corner…the backpack.

There’s the 1000th piece. I’ve never ended exactly on 1000. Yes, odds are I missed a number or didn’t number some piece. I find myself transposing numbers as I write them. I think 783 and write 738. I hope that’s not some form of advancing dementia.

It’s not huge, but it’s not small. Maybe 36″ wide? I’m not actually sure I can finish it in time. But you know me…I’m gonna try.

Besides, it’ll give me something else to think about…because I’m finding school very frustrating right now. And I’m still low-key fighting this illness. And I ate jellybeans at school all day yesterday because I was that stressed. The right eye is twitching, but not constantly yet, so I have plenty of stress levels left. By the way, if you live with a teacher, and this is the first year you’ve experienced the End of the Year Syndrome, have patience. They give us the summer off for a reason.

Here’s Simba in one of his favorite sleeping spots. He really likes that pillow.

He’s cute. That’s another thing you can do when you’re stressed: Pet the animals. Or try to comb out all their winter fur blobs. It’s satisfying.

*Beck, Where It’s At

Relief

So I moved the jury duty to July. No plans for July, I guess. Day by day. Sucks. I guess I will hope I don’t get called on the days I already have stuff planned. I’m still really irritated that the one single month a year that is usually NOT stressful will be stressful on a daily basis. I will have to set up some sort of prayer circle each night before I call to see if I have to go in. Burn some sage over the phone, sing to the goddess of teachers on summer vacation, trying to replenish the patience that gets us through the year (I don’t have much of it left right now).

Meanwhile, I think my body is trying to fight off the nasty-ass cold from hell that permeated my house last week. I have been fighting the scratchy cough, which I thought was from having to talk too loud in class, but last night it was more than that, and this morning I have the baby beginnings of a migraine. I don’t get migraines. Seriously, I’ve had two in my whole life. I know, bless me, but this is way back behind the bones and it’s vibrating like a mofo.

So stay away, weird illness. I don’t need you. I got shit to do. Yesterday, we didn’t even sit down to dinner until almost 9 PM (see notes from yesterday, this week is not working well)…and then, while letting Dirk Gently make me giggle (I really do love that guy. And Farrah. And Amanda. And maybe even Todd.), I was working on BALLS. Still with the balls. With Satchemo’s help…

OK, dude. Not really helping. “I want to touch the quilt.” “I know. I don’t want you to touch the quilt.” “I’m going to touch the quilt anyway.”

Sigh. Yup, he’s still there. Touching the quilt.

You realize that after I get all these bastards sewn down (which has taken me over a year, because I didn’t really do it for a long long while), I will have to embellish every goddamn one of them? Yeah. Me too. It’s OK. I got this.

After I did that, I considered grading, but I did tutoring after school yesterday, which was work, hard work, it’s so exhausting, so I didn’t FEEL like working. I get to a point where I just fight it. Too many hours already. So I didn’t. It was after 10 PM.

I stood up, went back to the light table (biggest piece of furniture in my living room), assessed my day, wrote a to-do list for the evening (evening! Ha! It’s night now, baby.) and the next day, and then started to draw. Fireplace done…and then the figure in front. So what’s interesting about this drawing is that I started it July of 2014. I did the two main figures and then realized there wasn’t room in my sketchbook for the rest of the vision in my head. So I enlarged it 250-300% (don’t remember which…it was a while ago), taped it together, and then put it on top of the piano to wait. Or percolate. Or something. Because honestly, what came out last night (and the few days before) was almost line for line exactly what has been sitting in my head for the last 3 years and 9 months, minus 8 days.

I can’t remember my phone number sometimes. I can’t remember what month it is. I don’t know if I made my lunch or where I left my damn keys, but I remember that picture in my head. That’s crazy. It was a relief to draw it…seriously, a like-Ima-gonna-cry relief. Weird. I still need to do something in that space around his feet, because the empty is bugging me (that’s really what my drawings are about…the empty space bugging me until I fill it)…but as I was trying to fall asleep last night (at 12:18 AM, way too late), things were popping into my head and trying themselves out in that space.

Anyway. That’s cool. I have a ton of stuff to do today, but hopefully I’ll get the last bits of this drawn tonight and maybe have time to number it. It’s a relief to get it done. I keep saying that word. Relief. That’s not the name of the quilt. Yet. It does have a name…it has from the beginning.