The Goddess of Something…

So I have two quilts in Daytona Beach right now…with the AQS circuit. So enjoy Fully Medicated…

And I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…

I keep forgetting about the pieces traveling with all the quilt shows. I have a real shortage of work in house at the moment. I know, it’s an elegant problem to have, unless you have shows to enter and nothing with which to enter. I have two coming up where I think I just can’t enter. That kind of sucks. Oh well. I made decisions about what to enter where, and this is what happens. It’s kind of a bloody miracle I’ve gotten the last two pieces done in time for the shows I figured they were made for. So there. Keep making work. I love the chaos of the Lifejacket piece. Should remember that for the next big one. Maybe blow off the themes that are coming up and just MAKE something.

You’ve got a few more days to see the exhibit at Grossmont…we’re pulling it down next Saturday. Hoping to get a little more press out of it.

And I got photos back from the photographer of the new piece…

Her name is still in my brain, working its way out, so just know it’s the Goddess of something, I’m not sure exactly what yet. Possibly everything. Just like me…I’m the Goddess of something…of cleaning up cat puke. Of coupons. Of paperwork. Of Google Classroom. Of the bougainvillea. Of multi-tasking. Of blueberry oat bars. That seems like enough.

And I worked a bit on the drawing…

Hard to see anything, because I’m still in pencil, because I don’t wanna fuck it up. I think the male figure is almost ready for ink. Then I’ll need to turn it upside down to do the other female…and figure out what’s going on with the hair. And the empty spots. Probably should figure out the main figure’s hair before I draw his wings. You know, like you do.

I’m really annoyed by empty spots. I like to fill everything in. I blame Richard Scarry. And Dr. Suess. OK, maybe that’s just how my brain works.

I saw this last night. There were two, but there was a guy in the way of the second one. Please sir, move so I can photograph the scary faces.

And Midnight is in her standard place.

I’m buried in grading. I have a ton of yardwork and housework. I still need to finish taxes and start financial aid. I can’t deal with any of it right this second. I’m too tired. Sad! That said, I got up at a reasonable hour, finished grading tests and another assignment, then did yardwork, drew, ate, and I think I showered in there. I think I’m going to spend an hour trying to draw some more and then give up for the day. Because. Because I have to hang out with humans for some period of time or I go a bit bonkers. More than I already am. There’s a fine line between the bonkers that keeps me going and making stuff and the bonkers that throws me down the hole. I’m staying above ground right now. Need to keep doing that.

Slow Percolation

First of all, I’m not getting much sleep lately. I’ve had something (probably animal) waking me up every night around 2 AM and sometimes I’m so hyped afterwards that falling back to sleep is just troubled. Last night it was the mockingbird…the one that visits every year. Last year I was lucky and he (she?) hung out at the neighbors’, just far enough away that I could hear him while I was falling asleep, but not like when they live in your yard. Last night, he was in my yard. Move on, you bastard!

Then I woke up with a start at about 4 AM…someone kept saying “low battery.” What the fuck? Oh yeah, the smoke alarm. Pillow over head again until it started that loud horrendous screeching that I will appreciate only if there ever is a fire or…well, my house is so leaky airwise that there will never be a carbon monoxide leak big enough for me to have an issue. So at 4 AM, I was switching out batteries. The dog was mightily confused by the timing of all of it. And falling back to sleep was not easy.

I actually took a nap yesterday evening. Just 20 minutes. Power mom nap. Yeah baby.

My counselor is trying to graduate me…I get it. I’m not clinically depressed any more. That’s a good thing. But I still want balance in my life and we went through and listed everything and work has to give. It’s the only healthy thing. Can’t sleep less or exercise less or art less. Work is the time suck. Like I didn’t know that.

Moving on to the art stuff. I did grade last night, so I didn’t start artmaking stuff until almost 11. I started with the easy stuff, the cutting and taping. It’s rhythmic, meditative. Cut. Measure. Tape. Cut again. Measure. Draw a line. Cut.

So the finished size on this needs to be 16×24″…I measured the paper at 15×23″ to give me some space for a binding, and then I’m going to try to stay about a 1/2 inch inside. Maybe. Maybe not.

Damn thing is tiny. Anyway. I then stared at it for a while, trying to have a vision. It is kinda like that. I stare at the paper until what needs to fill in the space appears in my head. There’s some little elf in there, or a gnome or something, that’s drawing on a white board while someone else erases, trying to find something I like, because sometimes I’ll get picture after picture and almost shake my head like an Etch a Sketch (you would laugh to see all the words I just typed into Google because I couldn’t remember the name of those things). And then one will stick and I’ll draw it. It’s a slow percolation process. Nothing fast and furious.

I gave up on the staring and started to tape the two larger drawings together. This is Bathtub 6, I think.

It’s the creepy one. Some part of me wants to draw more around it, but the minimalist in me (which rarely surfaces) says it should stay the way it is.

Then I taped this one…tentatively named Heart-Shaped Box. It needs a lot more drawing…more room on the bottom. I think. Anyway, it’s there for when I want to work on it. You can see how much bigger it is because the first drawing is up in the top right.

I have another huge one that will probably be a triptych just so it’s not overwhelming to quilt…maybe that’s something to draw during Spring Break, since I will have hours and hours of alone time. Huh. Not looking forward to that…except I am. Difficult. This will be the first school vacation where I’m not visiting someone else or having the kids come home. I need to do yardwork like every day. Ugh.

So I finally picked up a pencil! (Sion is happy now…) Because I didn’t want to fuck it up.

Good thing really because I had to redraw the lower figure about 5 times. Still not sure what to do with the heads. Gotta let the gnomes do their white board thang. Will have to get back to you on the heads. Even hers needs something. Hair? Who knows. Why keep it so simple? Oh yeah, because the pieces are gonna be freakin’ tiny. I’m not enlarging this one. Need to remember that so I don’t go crazy later.

Cut and Tape

Tired morning. Sleep is messy. Whatever woke me up at 2 AM didn’t bother the dog. The cat was as alert as I was, but she gets to sleep all day, curled up in my laundry. (Doesn’t that sound nice? I should have been a cat.) Me? I’m a little on the edge of irritable and crazy. Nothing new there.

I was so efficient yesterday afternoon. Walked the dog…three miles uphill. OK. The whole three miles is not uphill. But the hill was easier than it was on Saturday. This is good. Then I came home and ran errands and talked to girlchild, who was trying to figure out insurance crap.

After dinner, I finished grading one WHOLE assignment (OK, I had 2 out of 5 periods already done, but whatever) and then I worked on some fabric hobby stuff, something I’m not allowed to show you, but Sue Spargo wool embroidery stuff, which really just gives my head a place to rest sometimes when it’s all over the map, wanting to be creative and stitchy, but not able to focus on that for whatever reason. So I traced freezer paper for two blocks and cut out the freezer paper, and now I can move on to the next step. It was enough to calm the brain down and let it focus. Unfortunately it was then also really late.

Sigh. Yeah. I know why I’m always tired. I don’t sleep enough or well. Really, I never have. Even as a kid. Not sure about as a baby. But never a deep sleeper.

So I did get up off the couch and try to deal with the stuff I’d copied. At least some sense of artistic achievement most nights, right? That’s what keeps Kathy happy and sane?

So I copied the one from Tuesday night. I stood there debating for a while if the part I cut off (on the left) would make a cool small art quilt all by itself.

Yeah. The composition is kinda cool. But I don’t want to make one that looks like the other one. So I recycled it. Now I need to add paper to this, measure the final size, and decide how I’m going to do the rest.

Then I had my smaller sketchbook, the one that travels with me. There were three drawings in there that I thought would make interesting smaller quilts. I enlarged them 200%. Honestly, with all the detail, I could have gone to 300%, but then I wouldn’t be in the smaller quilt range. I taped together all the pieces to get the one I was going to do next…

Sort of a reminder of Earth Mother for Ventura in some ways. No boobs! Technically no nudity. I couldn’t enter my local SAQA show this year because I had nothing small enough with no nudity from recent years. Guess that says something about me…and my local SAQA show. Oh well.

These all started in a sketchbook that’s about 9×12″, so these are about 18×24″ or so. Here’s the second one…

She looks like she’s related to the one above. One was done on the plane home from dropping the girlchild at college in Boston. The other was done either on the way to or from Seattle for Thanksgiving. I guess planes are my new sketching arena. Too bad I don’t spend much time on them?

This last one was drawn while watching Mockingjay. So there goes the plane theory!

It’s a reminder of another older one, although it doesn’t look like it at all…just a vague reminder. These spiral-shaped women often show up in my drawings.

So that’s three smaller ones plus the other one that needs to be done by the end of March (should get my butt going on that one).

I also copied two larger ones, out of the 14×17″ sketchbook. They’re both older…

One is the most recent of the bathtub series, a kind of creepy one…I can’t find it at the moment, although I know it’s filed somewhere. Oh well. And the other one is something I started drawing a long time ago but it wouldn’t fit on the paper. So I enlarged it to be able to draw the rest. No rush. Maybe it’s the next big one. Maybe not. We’ll see.

It’s a start anyway. I have some directions to go once the next have-to is finished. It would be good to have some smaller art pieces around this year I think. Don’t worry. There will be a big one. I just haven’t decided which one yet. Or whether I’ll draw a new one.

So tired still. Work calls. It’s kind of a whiny bitch, but I can’t ignore it.

White-Out Is My Friend

I have this crazy-ass dog (it’s my daughter’s dog) who likes to go in the pool. She just wades in up to her belly and wiggles around a bit, but then wants to come straight back in the house, which means a 5-minute struggle with a dripping Golden Retriever and a towel. Most days she just goes in once, but some days, it’s 3 or 4 times and all the towels are wet and I’m going a bit bonkers, because she’s like a big smelly 2-year-old.

I have this wacky cat who started out by finding all my hair scrunchies (yeah criticize all you like…I’m not and never will be a fashion maven) and dropping them all over the house. Once every couple of days, I find all of them, pick them up, and deposit them in the bathroom so she can start over. She’s recently started doing the same thing with pairs of socks and apparently with one flipflop (would have liked to see that in action).

The other cat, also the girlchild’s, has recently become overly needy, wanting to knead your belly into submission, which would be fine if the claws were not part of the process. She’s very pushy about her needs, biting you if you don’t continue the never-ending petting. She’s also a fat beast of a cat, so that doesn’t help.

Some nights I come home and feel like I am needed more here than at school…and after a long day of whiny stuff at school (from the parents, no less), it’s nice to sometimes have a break from the three furry creatures. Last night was not one of those nights. It’s OK. They love me (most of the time) and need me (way too much). Right now, I only have two of them in here with me, so I’m doing OK.

I graded for a while last night…I’m trying to do a bit every night so I don’t get too frustrated, but last night, about halfway through one minor assignment with only one period, I was about to chuck the computer through the wall. I’ve taught what organ systems are…multiple times. I even showed a short reminder video before we started the assignment, so they would know what the systems were…again…because I’ve taught them multiple times, but I realized I was having to repeat my instructions over and over. “Organs work together in a system. Name one of the systems? Yes. Cardiovascular is a system. Digestive is a system.” And this is my highest-level class, so it should be fine, right? Oh holy heaven, some teacher goddess must be out there for us, because I needed support. There were multiple kids that were so far off that I wanted to bang my head on the desk…so far off, I don’t even know how they found the answers they did (because they will say, that’s what the internet SAID! And I will scream at the top of my lungs and run flailing out of the classroom into the street some day when a kid tells me that…because I’m not allowed to simply say…”Bullshit. Show me where you found that.”). I bullied through though, because honestly, if a kid can’t figure out (after I modeled the first one even) what I’m asking for, and doesn’t have the guts to ask me (OK, I might have gone off if he had, because like I said, already TAUGHT you this multiple times, why aren’t you freakin’ listening, is it because you have a hearing problem or I’m not speaking clearly or what the fuck?), then they deserve the F they just earned for not doing what I asked them to do.

This year has been so frustrating so far…we are almost 2/3s of the through and I don’t know how I am going to survive the last trimester.

This is why I stop the working part at some point in the night and move on to less crazy-making shit, although last night, even that was an issue. So I had an idea for what I wanted for the next piece, which isn’t very big, so I have to watch how crazy I draw…nothing too tiny (I think I’ve already blown that). But I started…the main figure was fine, but then I tried to decide how to add the secondary figures, and that’s where it went all to hell…

That is so not working.

It happens…especially when I haven’t been drawing regularly for a while. And yeah, people are like, look you crazy woman…you’re drawing with Sharpie, not pencil…what do you expect? I get this flow with the Sharpie that I never get with a pencil. I like it. And my drawings aren’t the final product, so I don’t care if I mess up and have to use white-out. And I rarely DO have to use white-out.

The bottom arm on the left was fixed…but the rest of the body just wasn’t working. At all. So I got rid of the whole body.

And then I drew a face.

Now you can see the body under her arms is gone (but that one boob is giant-looking in this photo)…I’m actually going to go copy this to size and try to draw the rest. I might even use pencil to start. It happens. But I’m much closer than where I was before, so that’s a good thing, because this whole coming home and NOT having a project in progress, where I can just pick it up and do the next step or continue what I was doing…well, I’m not liking that. I’ve been pretty much booked solid on projects for months now. And it’s not like I don’t still have a deadline. I do. I just don’t have the next step ready to go yet. When school is this frustrating, I need a nice outlet in the evenings. Really. I do. Every night.

So I’ll copy this one and another one that I think will make a good quilt if I enlarge it and draw the rest. And another smaller one, so I should find that sketchbook too. Letting my art brain lie fallow is not a good plan. Especially if the only other thing I have is incredibly frustrating student work that makes me want to throw my computer into the pool. After the dog. Yeah. Bad plan.

Pen on Paper…

I’ve had this idea in my head for days and finally last night after school and the gym and dinner and then grading stuff, where my mood slid from acceptable into dark and grim (actually, that might have been after completing the FAFSA), I drew. Finally. But I don’t like it. And that’s OK. I mean, it has its moments and it was something to do with the pen last night so hopefully I can get my head where it needs to be for the drawing of the next quilt.

I have this book I’ve owned since before I was divorced (so officially a million years ago) of mastectomy nudes. I can’t even remember where I got it or why, but the scar has been in my head. It’s visible maybe. So many scars aren’t. The drawing isn’t done, but I’m not sure I will finish it, because the next one is niggling at me and that’s the one I need right now. Plus another one is tickling at my amygdala. Man, that’s a hard word to spell. Maybe I should just draw every night this week. Don’t worry about fabric right now, although damn, there was a quilt top that was squealing at me last night, like a teenaged girl who just got asked out for the first time.

I think my moods are full-on hormone-related, because my body is confused as heck about what it should be doing and they hit like a random summer storm…no warning, just BAAM. And you’re out. And down. And wow. Seriously? I did not deserve that.

In response, I made a Starbucks fake of their blueberry oat bars and they are so damn good that I had to freeze 3/4’s of them so I wouldn’t eat them all in a week. Seriously. These things are good. Now I just need to rework them so the calories aren’t so heinous. It’s fine if you just eat one. I want it to be fine if I eat two.

More pinups below…then I have a parent meeting. Ugh. I didn’t sleep well. I couldn’t fall asleep. Stupid brain.

By Marea Korea…

Jacki Geary…

Lauren Grant…

Chelsea Wilde…

I can’t explain why I pick the ones I do. But there they are. There’s more…but I have to go do my job.

Sleep Is Not My Superpower

I have a sleep app on my phone that tells me how long I slept (notionally…because I can be pretty still when I’m not sleeping) and how well…more movement meaning I wasn’t sleeping deeply. It also has an alarm on it, which is useful. I started using it years ago to try to figure out why I was so tired in the morning…and here’s where all the people who know me personally start cracking up, because they think I don’t sleep. I DO sleep. For about 6 hours a night…I don’t go to sleep early because I can’t fall asleep early, and there is no damn point in lying in bed, flopping around, praying for sleep. In fact, the insomnia specialists advise against it. Go to bed when you’re tired. So I do. Well, sometimes I go to bed earlier than tired because I know it will get ugly the next day. I think I had a whole year there of 4-hour nights, but that’s depression for you. But now I’m back to 6-hour nights, which works OK for me. And yes, I do exactly what I’m NOT supposed to do on the weekends…I sleep in. I like that lie in. I look forward to it, especially after 13+ years of soccer games early on Saturday or Sunday mornings, or sometimes both days. I like waking up slowly that morning, hearing the world around me but not getting up yet, reading a bit, or rolling around with a kitten cleaning herself by my head. Well, as long as it’s not at 6 AM. Sometimes she starts then, and that is not a good thing.

My sleep app last night, on a night where I went to bed early (for me…before midnight) and had a chance for a lie-in…says I slept at 50% efficiency. Now I’m normally a pretty efficient sleeper. I spend the right amount of time in light and REM sleeps. But last night was a flopping clusterfuck. And I’m glad the app backs me up on that. I am sick. That doesn’t help. But I’m not THAT sick. I wasn’t coughing or moaning or anything. So what the hell? Weirdness. I don’t usually have that bad a night ever. Oh well. Moving on. I’m used to functioning somewhat like the walking dead. No change there.

But really, even when I was a kid, I wasn’t a great sleeper. I read under my blanket with a flashlight until well after midnight when I was in elementary school. My boy is the same way. But we both know as adults that we have to sleep at some point. So we do.

I worked last night. I’m incredibly behind on grading. I finished two assignments. I figured that was enough for one night. Then I cut out little pieces of fabric…

I’ve got about 5 hours in. I’m probably not going to finish today. I have too much else to do. Because there’s probably another 4 hours in there. And I need to do other stuff.

I folded fabric and reunited the binding fabric (now clean, no chemical sizings) with the quilt. That’s on my plate for today…put the binding on.

I also have a pile of work to get through…school and other job. I got an email yesterday from a company I applied with back in early November. They apologized for the amount of time that had passed, but had me upload info on their database. I honestly don’t know if that means they’ll use me or what, but I did it. It’s science education materials…so I’m highly qualified. But I think a million other people probably are too. I don’t need a lot of extra work…there are only so many hours in the days…but I do need some. I’m short a good chunk of money for the kids’ college in the next three months. More than a month’s salary short. It is what it is. I will figure it out. Somehow.

Someone said yesterday that I’d be done with my tasks (ironing or cutting or whatever) if I didn’t write this blog. Except this blog is what keeps me doing everything at the pace I’ve adopted. It’s motivating knowing that every day I’ll be telling myself (and apparently you, but know that I rarely think about you when I write) what I got done and reviewing how that made me feel. I felt pretty good last night. I was bloody efficient and I was able to check a bunch of things off the list. I needed to be able to do that this week. The writing also clears my brain…I can dump all the shit I don’t want to think about here and then walk away from it. Also, you have to understand that I write really fast. And I don’t think very hard about it. It was painful to watch a former boyfriend edit his Facebook status over and over again, torturing himself with whether that one sentence was the best possible combination of words, editing it over and over…I don’t roll that way. There’s no time for that constipated verbal shit. It’s here in my head and I vomit it out on the screen. There. Done. Now I can move on.

I will do some art thing today. I know I’m at a show tonight for quite a long time, and my sketchbook will be my trusty companion. So expect drawings posted in the next few days. I LOVE to draw. I’m looking forward to it. I’m hoping I feel better by then too, but if not, there’s cold meds for that.

Less Molasses and More Lightning…

Oh My Lord the molassesness of it all. I have this to-do list that is miles long and I’m trying to get through all the things on it, one at a time, and then other crap inserts itself into that, like writing teacher recommendations with 6 essay questions that I can’t answer without interviewing the child sometimes and that means I have to find time during teaching to do that and THEN write the rec as well and administrative crap is burying me and everything takes so LOOONNNGGG. Girlchild’s phone has worked fine for months and now that she’s back in Boston, NOW it’s acting up again. Not even sure if I can handle that thing, because she might have to take the phone in (it’s an AT&T insurance thing now). Plus grades and college money and writing a new genetics test because the other one won’t work and managing science stuff in general and don’t even throw my family into that mix or the boychild who will probably have his flight cancelled tomorrow morning. Hopefully before we have to get up at an ungodly hour. And taxes and FAFSA and financial aid are all hanging over me as well, because it’s almost the end of the month.

I will get through. I went to the gym yesterday and worked out and it was glorious. Plus I got to read my book. Which was also glorious. More of that please.

Girlchild owes me $20 for making me sign her back up for the gym for a month and then never going. But the guy there saved me an additional $5 a month by changing my membership from family to single until she gets back. How am I going to spent that $5 a month? Oh joy, I do not know. Who can I hire to help me at $5/month?

I graded last night. I also spent time on the phone dealing with family stuff. So I didn’t get as much ironing done as I wanted, but honestly, I would have had to stop there anyway…I did all the stuff on the rug…a mug, a cat, and a book…

I had done the rug the night before. So at this point, I think I was up into the 50s. Pitiful amount of time for that many pieces really. I’m moving like molasses. Too tired? I don’t know. Too stressed maybe.

There’s the not-very impressive pile.

The reason I had to stop there is because the next batch of pieces is the human figure itself, which honestly is most of the quilt. I need to pick all the flesh colors at the same time so I don’t forget what I’m doing…which basically means picking about a run of 10 fabrics on this quilt from light to dark and then going through each bin and pulling all the flesh pieces, because they’re spread out from piece 60-something to 900-something. Yeah. That’s gonna be a bitch. I’m going to start tonight and finish who-the-fuck-knows-when. If I knew I didn’t have to deal with grades or flights or baby quilts or other shit in the next few days, that would be awesome, but I know none of that. Or I could come home tonight and grade for hours and be done with it (I’m never actually done with it) and then pick fabrics tomorrow. I may decide to do that. Sunday is already a goner, so I’m wiping it off the list of available days. I don’t think I can get all the fabric ironed this week. Realistically it’s not gonna happen. Not even this weekend.

Sigh. I’m aiming for Monday night done now. If I can get all the fleshy bits picked and ironed by the end of Saturday, then maybe I can pull it off. There’s a lot of non-flesh bits in there (hearts, hair, rockets and the like), but I don’t think they’ll take me long if the flesh is done. I just need to be moving faster than I am. Less molasses and more lightning.

So I was looking at this mug that’s on the quilt and thinking to myself, I drew a pizza slice on the mug. I often draw things on the mugs, although usually rainbows…very 80s. I don’t actually own a rainbow mug. I mostly use mugs I painted myself, although I’m down to one. Which sucks. I have others people have given me that fill in, although I usually drink milk out of them instead of tea (don’t ask…it’s just what I prefer). But there’s a pizza slice on that mug.

Pepperoni. I drew this on New Year’s Eve while watching sci fi. I was thinking (yet again) about being a woman, a mom, a teacher, trying to do everything and be everything to everyone because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and then I remembered last Friday, after my first week back to school, and I tell the boychild I’m ordering pizza because I can’t handle dinner and he says “I figured.” Because I’ve been his mom forever and a teacher for as long as he can remember (he was maybe 7 when I started teaching…or 6? Can’t remember.) and the first Friday back to school after a break is almost always pizza delivery. So it makes total sense that the pizza slice is on the mug. Sign of a busy mom.

It’s all gonna work out. Some things won’t get done or will get done late. And that’s how it always is. I should probably find time for meditation though. Because not doing that is kicking my butt. Gonna calendar it now.

Lots of Pieces…

Rain does one good thing for us, besides soak the ground and fill the reservoirs (I guess those are pretty good things)…it makes us stay indoors. Now honestly, on breaks, I’m kind of a hermit anyway. At some point, I don’t want to leave the house at all, because there is art to be made. And lots of it! So I do that. And I like it. Even if the weather is lovely out…which it’s not.

I have a leak in the roof…it’s been dripping very slowly through a light fixture (ever so safe, water and electricity). I suspect half of Southern California has a leak in their roof at the moment, honestly. Luckily it’s over a tile floor in a relatively unoccupied section of the house, so I’m politely ignoring it and hoping I can deal with it later…because accessing that section of the attic means pulling my studio apart. Not thinking about that. Might think about it tomorrow.

Otherwise, we’ve had 2.6″ of rain where I live…I’m such a weather geek that I have a website linked to a local weather-info-gathering station about a mile away.

And yes, in Seattle (which was sunny yesterday), this is nothing. But our annual rainfall has been as low as 3.3 inches before…our annual is somewhere around 9″/year. So getting almost that in 2 days? Roads underwater, rivers running through sidewalks, standing water everywhere. Plus no one knows how to drive in it, so when girlchild’s friend asked her to come over yesterday in the worst of it? I said nope. No. Not driving anywhere right now. Sure enough, people had to be pulled out of cars etc.

A damn good excuse to stay home and sew, if you ask me…although I did do a lot of grading too. But that’s just a survival thing. I’ll do it again today. I finished grading another assignment…and one class worth of the big unit that they turned in…just two more classes of those. I’ll do one today and one tomorrow. When I finish that one, I only have 3 assignments left to grade, and one is posters that three kids worked on, so do the math…I only have about 50 of those to grade instead of 155. Not that everyone turns in their assignments anyway. I should probably knuckle down and finish the torturous one that I did one class’ worth and then quit. Sigh.

Anyway, besides grading, I finished the drawing for the next quilt. Now this is for a deadline that I may very well not make. But I’m going to try. So it has to be within a certain size…easy enough for me to do. It needs to be a smaller quilt so I can get it done in time, right? I start the drawing…y’all have seen the headless woman with way too many arms…and then I added more.

She has 10 arms total and 3 heads (way more than anyone really needs). Each hand has an object associated with it as well.

DSCN2833 small

The drawing is about 30″ wide by 42″ high, so a finished size of maybe 40×50″? Same as the last one basically.

And I know I have about 7 weeks to finish it. With a major installation and school starting back up and grades due. But there are three 3-day weekends in there! It might not matter. I did finish one quilt in just under 6 weeks during school (well, with Thanksgiving and Winter breaks, so not really just school)…but I think it had a lot fewer pieces. Because I numbered it last night. And I was a very bad girl. I drew a LOT of pieces. As I was doing it, I was thinking to myself…that’s a LOT of pieces, Kathryn. But I did it anyway. Because it asked for them.

OK, the one I did in 6 weeks was 768 pieces…this one is 980. Big-eyed stare. OK. I own that. And I will figure it out. Either it will get done on time or it won’t.

I am one step closer to that happening though. Tracing Wonder Under tonight? Maybe.

Most of the afternoon, I spent piecing blocks for a baby quilt…

I was given the colors…cheated a bit with the one on top. Oh well!

I don’t make baby quilts often, and I always use the same pattern.

It took about 2 1/2 hours to make 20 blocks, and that’s because I was being careful, not fast.

I don’t piece particularly accurately unless I pay really close attention. Now I can lay them out…although I might wait until my parents’ dog is gone again. It’s hard enough to keep the cats off it. It usually takes about 5-6 hours for me to do one of these. Not hard. And it’s for a good person. Hopefully the baby won’t be too early, because I think she’s due in less than three weeks. It’s OK! I got this.

The post-it with tasks on it did not get much crossed off yesterday, mostly because what’s on there is huge things like “fix bookshelf” and “prep Grossmont show.” Which I really should start to do today. Like now. Except I need to grade too. AARGH. Too much. I got a lot done yesterday…and it still feels overwhelming today. Gotta work on that…the FEELING. Because the lots-of-stuff-to-do? That never goes away.

More Do

There’s a day during vacation (and this really isn’t a vacation, people…it’s way too stressful) when you realize you have to go back to work at some point and you have 700 things that still aren’t done. Yesterday was that day. Actually, it kind of feels like Every Single Day of Winter Break has been like that, where I’ve looked at the calendar and tried to parcel stuff out amongst the days and completely failed. I actually went old school yesterday and wrote the to-do list on a post-it. And then crossed stuff off as I finished it. But every time I walked past it, I wrote more stuff on it, and that’s just not helpful. I crossed off 4 things yesterday. I worked on three others, but didn’t finish them, so I can’t cross them off. And I did three or four other things that weren’t on there, but I should retroactively put them on there so I can cross them off, right? Sigh. Sigh!

Meanwhile, all of San Diego is underwater. I did manage to do my driving errands yesterday in non-rain hours (it happened)…well, except for groceries, which were flood-level hours, and that was just in the parking lot. Today is supposed to be worse (I should probably check on the garage…it gets wet in rain). I did sweep leaves out of a drain that wasn’t…well…draining…and in fact, it needs to be done again (I can see that one from this chair). Haven’t seen any roof leaks, so that’s good…it’s a relatively new roof. But it gets gloomy and cold, and I don’t want to run the heating and turn all the lights on unless I have to…too much money. So I rummaged through the firewood and started a fire around 3 PM that (due to the monster-sized pieces of wood from trees that have fallen on my property) kept going until well after midnight. And warmed up that part of the house and looked nice as well.

Artwise, I didn’t finish the binding. Dammit, I need to email the photographer (write it on the list). There are 15 things on the list for today. I need kid assistance on some of them. Artwise, I cut and taped the headless drawing and then started working on it…this was the after-3PM activity, with dinnermaking and some grading tossed in for variety.

So I knew I wanted to add some width, although not a lot, to this drawing, and it definitely needed a head, so some height. Maybe more than one head. She’s already got 6 arms. Again Kali is where I started…I always think of moms as Kali, many-limbed destructive forces, but still earth-mother-like. Earth Mother doesn’t always have to be nice. Nature isn’t always nice. And that’s kind of where I stopped drawing Kali and started drawing something more in the mom range. We do many things, multitask (have post-its with too many things on them), and yet we’re juggling all those things in a not-so-healthy way sometimes. I read somewhere this morning about the purpose of marriage (or partnership) not being all the religious, societal stuff, but just to have a partner to help with all the crap in life. You aren’t the ONLY one emptying the dishwasher and cooking the food. You have help.

Oh My Lord. And there it is. Because I think that’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’ve spent years without it honestly, even with grown-up kids (they’re gone a lot), so many tasks have to be managed or directed or whatever. And I’m so tired of that. Just walk in the house and do what needs to be done. Someone walk in and fix the stuff I don’t have time to do…take a look at that post-it and cross something off of it (because you did it…not because you’re being a smartass).

Anyway. So I added paper to the sides and the top.

Then I started adding arms and a head…I did start with pencil at one point…just to make sure I didn’t screw it up too badly at this stage, although I’ve cut off the additional drawing before and started over, so that’s always an option.

And I kept going. There’s a lot of time spent staring into space or at the blank parts of the drawing, figuring out what fits there. I remember one college painting professor getting mad at me because I don’t draw all those iterations…I do them in my head. He wanted 30 or 40 sketches for each painting. I did one or two. And then argued with him about the waste of time to put them all on paper. They were in my head. He said I wouldn’t be able to do that forever. Well. OK. Maybe so. But I’m still doing it now.

So that tree took a while to appear. I am timing this part of the drawing process…

I don’t usually keep track of the time I take doing drawings in the sketchbook, but I do on the enlarged drawings because it’s usually the harder part, and I like to know how long it takes. HOURS. It takes hours.

And at some point, my brain craps out and stops looking. Hence the liquid paper on the left arm and thumb. Walked away after that.

Granted, it was late. I’d been drawing (well, or thinking about drawing) for an hour and 20 minutes. At some point, it’s diminishing returns. I’ll finish today. And number it. And then figure out a schedule. Can’t really do that without a piece count. This one will be tight. I might not make the deadline. But the quilt will still be a good thing. So I’ll do it anyway. And I already have one in line behind it. Aack!

Because of the cold rainy day and the fire in the fireplace, I had cats…

Any time I sat on the couch, there they were. In fact, Kitten is sitting on the quilt that needs its binding done. You can tell I grade here too, right? Notebook, 17 colors of pens (I might as well enjoy the grading with pen color choices, right?), piles of papers. Ugh. Need to do more of that this morning. In fact, it’s the next thing on my list unfortunately. Which is why I’m still writing. Procrastination.

View of the driveway during some of the worst of it.

It’s a giant pool of water. Yes, I know it rains where you are…but like I said yesterday, when we get our average annual rainfall in one week, we all freak out. Strangely, it’s sunny right now. It wasn’t 10 minutes ago…it was raining. But there’s another inch and a half coming in the next 24 hours…after flash-flood warnings yesterday. So if I had errands that needed driving, now would be the time…except I’m missing the kids, and they’re the ones I need to errand with today. Ugh.

OK, grade, draw, cut, organize, prep. Those are the things I need to do today. Less worry. More do.

Not Ready…

And there isn’t even a major holiday for me to be not ready for…

I did not reach my goal of having the binding on the quilt yesterday. I ran out of time. Now I could have blown off all social engagements (which would have included dinner and cake with my son for his 20th birthday), but I remembered I was a human and went and did ALL the things, and now I am about to go to school for professional development, so it’s early and I’m tired and I’m not quilting. I could have quilted last night, but I got home relatively late from a stitching thing and potluck that was fun and nice, so I vegged around on the couch (yes! I do that!) and then went to bed with a cat, a dog, and a book. Maybe tonight. I hope. I really only have about an hour of quilting left, around the very edges. Then I need to trim it and bind it. I also copied the next one, but it needs more drawing. Luckily, San Diego is getting rained on for days, which just reinforces my hermitlike tendencies, so I can get stuff done. But also…baby quilt, figure out what’s going in the Grossmont show and prep all of them (iron, dehair, hardware), and grade stuff. So not a stress-free relaxing week. It’s possible that I don’t know how to do those. I admit it.

I did get my holiday photo of kids and animals…

Calli refusing to look at me, both cats pissed off, and boychild refusing to smile. Oh well. Nothing new. Actually, he used to smile in the past. Kitten being reluctantly held by boychild and Midnight looking like a black blob being held by girlchild.

And then girlchild with her dog…who just went in the pool even though it’s cold and raining…

That dog drives me nuts. Notice Midnight trying to get into the photo on the right.

So that’s done. And the tree is divested of its ornaments and just needs sawing in half, which we decided against doing in the dark at 11 PM last night (but only barely). Because once Christmas is down, you just want everything put away as quickly as possible.

Anyway. So back to the goals…because if I can keep them clear in my head, I can maybe achieve some of them. Finish bathtub quilt in the next day or so…quilt and trim tonight? Maybe get binding on depending on exhaustion/frustration level (I really should grade stuff). Tape together enlarged drawing for next quilt (which has to be done very quickly, so remember that as you’re doing the rest of the drawing). Finish drawing it. Number and start tracing onto Wonder Under…OK, here’s the problem with that. I was going to use the light table to pile quilts that were prepped for Grossmont. Rethink that plan. I can’t wait to start tracing until after I install on the 18th. Stack quilts in office until done with Wonder Under? Yikes. Keep thinking. Has to be somewhere the dog can’t lie on it. The cats are going to be a whole ‘nother management level. Start baby quilt. Baby is officially due in like um dammit, I don’t have a 2016 calendar next to my computer like I always do so I don’t have to pull up an electronic calendar (I’m a visual person…it needs to be Right There). I was using the My Owl Barn artists calendar, but they don’t seem to have done one this year, so I will need to be more creative later. Not now. I think I have 3 weeks and a bit before baby is due. Almost 4 weeks. No problem. I should start cutting this week though.

See how vacation is eaten up? Yeah. Me too. OK, off to work in the rain. Not ready. Ugh.