It’s OK. I Have a Plan…

Hello 2016. It’s nice to see you. You are bright blue skies and slightly warmer weather. You are currently quiet and peaceful (except for that crazy kitten racing down the hallways chirping at me) and I think you will be a good year. My biggest challenge for the year…at least right now…is money. And balance. It’s always balance though. The art brain wants more time. It always does.

With that, here are the 25 quilts of 2015…

Oh yeah baby. Nice job. Five major pieces, one freakishly long lady, three smaller works, and a host of small pieces for sale…still working on that part. One commission as well. And one ready to be finished hopefully in the next 4 or 5 days. You gotta love starting off the new year with a finish.

I already have plans for the new year of quilts…I have one I started drawing last night (more on that later) that has to be finished next. Then I have a plan for the next one, a la Earth Mother. And I’m hoping for a big one over the summer, like always. I don’t know if I’ll keep doing the smaller ones for sale. I’m going to toss them on Etsy and see how they do. I don’t want to waste time on them if they won’t bring in some extra money. But I’ll consider doing some smaller ones that are more Kathy style and see how those do. I have a lot of drawings I copied last year that I want to try…so this is the year, I guess.

Next week, I’ll be picking the work that will go in the Grossmont show…ironically, most of what’s in that collage up there can’t go to that show because it’s already promised out or traveling. But I have plenty.

So back to the drawing. I didn’t draw much in 2015. There were reasons for that, but I’m hoping to get past those this year. I’ve been working on it. So a week or so ago, I started this one based on those muses I posted earlier in December.

I’m redoing this. I don’t like the proportions on the middle female. And yeah, I’ll have to enlarge and then add legs once I’ve enlarged. But it’s a start.

But I know I have another deadline coming up and I wanted to work on that one last night. On New Year’s Eve, I like to ring it in with artmaking in mind…so I’ll either be quilting or picking fabric or drawing or something. I was watching science fiction (Ex Machina and then The Zero Theorem), but I had this idea with Kali, the Hindu goddess with all the extra limbs. I had read up on her, but didn’t want to just draw another Kali…and I’ve done multi-limbed women before.

This is another one that will need enlarging so I can add all the stuff that goes beyond the arms…remembering that the max width is 40″ (ha!).

No problemo. I can do that. It’s more detail than I wanted, and there’s another set of arms…or two more sets. I haven’t decided. In fact, I might just go copy it today like this so I can draw the rest at full size. Maybe. Enlarge 200%? That’s 28″ wide right there. Gives me about 10″ to play with. That’s plenty! (The part of my brain that draws is excited. The part that makes the quilts happen is a little nervous.) So a trip to the copy place today. And the grocery store for the boychild’s cake ingredients. Plus some grading. And a ton of quilting…because I didn’t do much yesterday…

I started…

I’m most of the way around the outside edge, but I really should have done the bird while I was there and I forgot. Whoops. And there’s a shitload more quilting to do.

It’s OK. I have a plan. Sort of. Balance? Yeah. Working on it.

Bathtubs

I finally made it to the best part of making the quilt. Well, besides the drawing. I love the drawing part, but I usually make quilts a really long time after I’ve drawn them, so that’s a totally separate endeavor in my head. My favorite part of making the quilt is ironing it together. I don’t make a master colored drawing, so I never really know what it will look like until it’s all ironed together. It’s all in my head up until then. My head’s a big place, apparently, with lots of colored drawings in it. And undrawn drawings. And piles of worry. I did try drawing last night, but I’ll need a redo. It’s OK…it’s a process…especially if I haven’t drawn for a while. I can get a little rusty. It’s harder to get what’s in my head out on paper. But it’s coming. Today I think.

Anyway, so you’ll see the not-so-good drawing and then the better one…I promise you. I hide nothing. Well, almost nothing. I’ve hidden how many cookies I’ve eaten in the last five days. But who needs grocery shopping? We have cookies! Breakfast lunch and dinner, there’s cookies. Yeah. I know. Whatever.

So I started ironing yesterday, just like I planned…I didn’t get far.

OK, I got a little further than this…started on the rug on the right side. But it was a good start. A pile of books, some scissors, some embroidery thread, and a hoop. Because yes, that’s what I have hanging around my bathtub. Just to clarify, I don’t have a free-standing bathtub like this. At all. I don’t even know if I’d like one. I do love baths but don’t take them often because the kids’ bathtub is not particularly comfortable. And cats like to walk the edges. Well, not all cats…just Midnight. And she’s a big ~~fat~~ fluffy cat, and occasionally she falls in. So that frightens me. Well, and taking a bath is such a thing…I used to do it in the old house all the time, especially pregnant. Soaking in warm water. It sounds quite nice at the moment, but I don’t have time. Maybe that’s part of what this series is about…taking the time to soak in the tub with all your things around you, populating the room. Yes, I am admitting now that I didn’t think out this series before I started drawing. Yup. That’s pretty much how I always work. Just start drawing. Sometimes there’s an idea or a spark or a phrase or a theme, but the bathtubs came out of nowhere. That thing I used to do to relax. Hmn.

Anyway, I’m hoping to iron for 4 or 5 hours today. Isn’t that what I said yesterday? Can’t remember. Yup. But I also said iron a few hours yesterday and that turned into about 45 minutes, because it took longer to pack stuff up to ship, and then I finally FINALLY finished the Christmas letter (it’s OK, I titled it Holiday Letter, and it’s still the fucking holidays, so get off my back) and printed it, and now all I have to do is address all the envelopes and put stamps on them and decide if the kids should sign them, and yes, it would have been smart to sign the original before I copied it, but here’s one OTHER thing I decided…sometime between now and the start of the next school year (that’s 8 months from now-ish), I’m buying a new color printer, because mine is crap. It’s seriously older than my divorce and it won’t print color for shit…and I’m done with it. So there. Maybe even in a combo with a scanner so I can get rid of that beast as well. Maybe. I have a small space in here. Because that would be cheaper than copying the letter elsewhere, plus I print color stuff for school sometimes.

So. I did that and I moved money for college, and that’s where my head went down a giant financial rabbit hole, because that’s a whole shitload of money I need to make in the next 5 months. OK. So there it is. I need an extra 1-2 K a month. Deep breaths. I can do this. Probably not if I spend a bunch of time in a bathtub.

Really it’s much better to deal with the short-term goals for today: shower (always a good plan), grocery store (for something besides cookies), clean up a little, maybe even start pulling quilts for the exhibit before I put everything away in my room, and then iron. I’m even going to grade some shit. Seriously. I am.

Bathtubs though. I’m thinking a big deep white bathtub somewhere in the house (is the boychild coming back this summer?). Or maybe just in my head. For now.

Making a Gift

I occasionally make quilts as gifts…I sometimes get hints from people that they’d like a quilt, but often that’s just not an option for me…whether I don’t have an idea for them or because my larger quilts are pretty significantly time-consuming. You’ve got to be a fairly important person in my life to have one of those, and it might be even more difficult now, because I did give one of my big ones away and now I wish I hadn’t. It’s hard to think about one of my babies out there where I don’t think they deserve to be…but that’s life. I don’t mind selling them…that’s a fulfilling transaction. But if I give you a $2000 quilt, hell, you better deserve it. That’s months of work.

Anyway, so I made one gift quilt this year. I was making those cats and realized someone I cared about would probably like a quilt of his cat…so I took some pictures of Satchemo’s squished little face…

He has a tiny nose and kind of a grumpy cat facial structure. These pictures were dark too, and I realized I had no full-body pictures, so I trolled Facebook to find this one…

Perfect for his body coloring and how he curls up. Then I spent about an hour trying to draw him…the first few weren’t quite right, but then I got his face right, traced it, and added it to a better body shape.

So if you’re wondering if I could make a quilt of your cat…well, probably. Because if you had a perfect picture, that would be awesome, but obviously I can take one cool picture (the sink one) and mess with it to make a straight-on quilt. Although maybe I should have done the sink too. Except then there was no way I would have finished it in time.

Tracing the Wonder Under…

That’s all of it…

And then cutting it out…

Satch has 40 pieces, so more than most of the small cat quilts I did earlier this year. Some stages of the quilt took longer than with other quilts, because I wanted to make sure the quilt looked like its namesake. So color choice and drawing were kind of time-consuming. I’ve found that people like the quilts to be in the $100 range, but with the style of quilt I make, that’s really difficult. That’s about 3-4 hours of work, not counting materials, and I make these in more like 5 or 6 hours. And yes, I know people who would work on something for 10 hours and charge $100. I won’t. I work hard to put my kids through school and keep my head above water (most of the time). I’m not working for $10/hour, because my 25 years of quilting experience has to pay better than that.

I had the sink photo up for the body fabrics on my iPad. The face photo was up earlier. The grays are always a challenge.

Here they are all ironed down. I thought his back end was too dark until I saw him sitting there again. He really is darker in back.

It didn’t take long to trim the pieces…although now I’ve lost my little scissors. No idea where they went…and that’s the second pair gone missing. I need to do a deep clean. There’s gotta be 50 pairs of scissors in this house.

Ironing is the next step…I did the head separate to make sure it all went together well…

Before I put it on the body. Faces are important. If it’s human, I iron the eyes together separately and then put them on the face, to make sure they’re not horrendously crooked.

Then to pick a background…can’t be too dark, because of the dark parts. Can’t be too gray or too light, because the lights won’t show. Has to be a color and pattern that isn’t too busy.

I finally found one…mostly blue with some green in it. Then I stitched it down and pinbasted it. Starting quilting with a dark thread around the cat itself.

DSCN2752 small

Then found the thread for the background, except it wasn’t anywhere near a full spool. Oh well. It’s a small quilt, right?

Oh yeah, I ran out. Oh well. I did a fairly good job of quilting evenly around it before that happened.

It does change colors in different light.

Then yesterday, in between cookie-baking, I trimmed and bound it…

Finishing the hand-sewing about 15 minutes before I was supposed to leave to meet the recipient (it’s OK, I had a backup plan).

I forgot to measure it though. I can do that later. But here’s the finished piece.

Satchemo took about 6 1/2 hours to make, not counting drawing time…in a commission, I would count that…legitimately. I think he looks like his namesake. That cat spends a lot of time on my lap, clawing the crap out of my thighs and/or boobs, so I’m prettty familiar with his face. And he was the 25th quilt I finished in 2015. I’m unlikely to finish another one by January 1, so I guess he’s the last quilt in 2015. Not bad. Now on to the next one…

There’s a Line

So apparently I was done with school last night, because I came home and made art for three hours instead of working. It’s unfortunate that I have to go back for two more days, but whatever. Certainly the headache that started yesterday morning is notice that I need some time off. Or it’s the weather. Or that crick in my neck. My chiropractor says I should get regular massages. Um. OK. But those cost money. It sounds lovely and all, but…I can pay for college or pay for massages. Suspect my kids would prefer the former. Speaking of kids, both bedrooms are clean and vacuumed and one kid comes home late tonight and the other, the girl, tomorrow. Her roomies will miss her greatly of course, because they will only be able to read her mom’s blog and not have the fun of harassing her. I’m being stalked by her roomies…it’s OK, I stalk them on Facebook and Instagram…and as soon as they send me photos, I’d be glad to make a giant-ass nude quilt of them, a la Botticelli? The Three Graces?

Or if they’ve been eating too much junk food, it might be a la Rubens? A sign of wealth, all that chub…

Or my favorite for simplicity (aka fewer drapey lacy fabric bits), Raphael’s Three Graces. The girlchild gets the butt view…y’all can fight over left or right.

Actually. That would be a cool idea. I did Crone/Mother/Maiden already. The apple thing is stupid though…are those even apples? They should be brains or heads or eyeballs. Seriously ladies, I think I’m doing this drawing. Good thing I have your photos off the web.

OK, enough crazy. I finished the fucking wine glass…it only took 11 fabrics. Here I was trying to decide about the color of wine. Red is often easier to do in fabric, but the glass is right next to the heart and I didn’t want to compete with that.

Now I don’t remember what color the wine bottle was. Oh well. The quilt doesn’t have to pass a logic test. Certainly I’ve put screwier mess-ups in my quilts before.

I used a whopping 102 fabrics…for a quilt this size, that’s a lot. Don’t know what to say about it, except that’s what happened. Some of it is because I took so long to work on it, I think…

The more stretched out the time in between picking stuff, the more I forget about what’s actually in there. When I was sorting the fabrics out by color for that photo, there were a couple that I didn’t remember using. I also had some fussy moments with the blues in the end because stuff I thought matched before didn’t seem to match now. OK then. Eleven hours and 24 minutes of ironing for only 770-some pieces. I started Dec 6 and finished on the 16. Not super fast. Eight days of actual working on it…most less than 2 hours at a time.

Bathtub 2 only took 4 hours to trim the fabrics. I’m already 4 hours into this one. I started on the 10th, but haven’t been doing it regularly.

Here was the pile I started with…

By the end of the evening, I was working slowly through it. There’s a few more hours of cutting there, to say the least.

Wish I could take it to school and just get it done, but I need to be grading stuff still. I have 8 assignments to grade, including the one due today and the three due tomorrow. Some are easier and less time-consuming than others. I’ll probably have to come by school on Sunday to clean my room up for the custodian and work crews, but also to pick up all of Unit 3. Ugh.

Looking forward to doing some drawing and ironing a quilt together, and even making a baby quilt, and a few things for Christmas, plus seeing my kids and not having to see the other kids (the ones I teach) for a while. Not looking forward to grading stuff and cleaning, which needs doing…my dad finally got the shelves up that have taken so much time and energy on all of our parts, thanking him for that, but now I have to get my act together and put stuff on them, which means going through stuff that’s been packed up for a year and a half. Obviously desperately important stuff. Not putting the CDs back up there.

I really do want to draw that three graces thing now. You can totally see me making that quilt, can’t you. Huh. Wonder what it will bump in line…because yeah, there’s a line.

It’s Time to Get Out of Here…

I made no art in the last 36 hours. I did nothing except some social stuff and grade crap. I went through three weeks of emails from students and Google Classroom, searching out all the last-minute work kids have been throwing at me. On Friday, I got through most of the F counseling, but there is very little change in grades so far. I will have to clarify that handing me stuff on Wednesday, when I have already printed out the list of special students who need additional work to prove they know what I have been teaching since August, well it will be too late.

It makes my neck and shoulders tight. It makes me grind my teeth. I’m going out to about 5 art openings tonight to make up for it. Of course, it’s dark and bloody freezing out there, and I don’t have my regular gallery companion with me tonight, so it will be a little weird. But I need to get my head out of my job for a bit. Because tomorrow I am going back to the endless grading and checking Google Classroom for their late assignments. (Dear Google…)

And hopefully I will be ironing tomorrow as well. Although my day is already looking semi-crazy. As always. The week before break just kicks my ass on a regular basis.

I don’t even have a picture for you. Hang on…

I was cleaning out the last of the stuff that was in the boychild’s room. I found some screenprinting drawings and mockups from probably the early 1990s…I think at some point I was considering making them into quilts…this one used to hang in the house somewhere…

dated 1994. Can’t remember the name…

And this one…this one started out as a Sharpie drawing on a 4×8′ piece of plywood that was partially painted in enamels (cuz that’s not crazy enough) and then I got rid of that, because it got termites. That painting was started in college. And then I drew it smaller and screenprinted it. This is the color mockup for the print…

You can see all the colors I was going to use on the left. This did get printed and hangs in my laundry room. It would make an interesting quilt. But you can see that I’ve always been a bit weird and the Christmas lights were in even then. The original was probably done in 1988 or 1989. It might even have been 1986. Actually, I just looked in the laundry room and it’s not hanging there. Not sure when that happened.

Well, and that explains the last ten years of my brain right there. Art openings it is. Now. It’s time to get out of here.

Desperately Grading Papers…But Home…

I think that’s the longest blogging break I’ve taken in a while. I managed to blog the second day I was in Seattle, but not after that. It was a little busy, and honestly, any time I had with the computer, I was desperately grading papers…which I’m still doing, unfortunately. It’s all so time-consuming. I even graded in the airport yesterday while waiting to board the flight. I have a ton of pictures, but culled them down of course. And I just got off the phone with my bank, because my debit card number was stolen…but they declined the over $500 at a GameStop in Chula Vista. Little fuckers.

Anyway, guess banks are better at catching the liars now. I’m glad. Because I had to pay college and didn’t need them rampaging through my already troubled checking account right before Xmas.

So I went to Seattle to have Thanksgiving with my brother’s family and my parents. I haven’t seen them in almost two years, so it was nice to be up there, despite the noise and argumentation levels. It made coming back to my quiet lonely house quite a relief…how ironic. I’m sure I’ll be tired of that by Monday, but last night, it was pure bliss. Except for the grading part. And the headbutting needy cats. And I must not have gotten enough sleep, because getting up this morning was extremely prolonged and somewhat painful.

Anyway, I guess this is like a photo essay of the holiday…well, actually, the first batch are my own kids. I flew girlchild to boychild in Ithaca and she cooked for him. I couldn’t afford to fly them both home for 4 days, and they’ll be home in 3 weeks anyway.

I miss the little bastards. Despite their obnoxiousness…

It snowed a bit in New York before she got there…

Yeah. So she’s back in Boston now at someone else’s Thanksgiving and he’s reveling in the silence. They hiked and went to an art museum and who knows what else. She made a decent Tday dinner.

Meanwhile, her mom did Seattle…here’s the middle cousin, my nephew…

We spent a few hours at a car museum…not my favorite, but I survived. I have about 700 pictures of grills and hood ornaments. I don’t know why.

We ate here. My bro and I are expert yelpers. It was good. And close to that car museum…

Plus around the corner from this cool bookstore where I could have bought everything on my Goodreads to-read list. If I’d had a million dollars. I bought one. There’s my mom, resting…

We came back and made stuffing and a Brussels sprout salad…two piles? Yeah, I did one and my SIL did the other.

Then we made mom over. OK, that’s a wig, but I don’t think it looks bad on her. She might consider a hairstyle/color change…

Then Thanksgiving morning was kickball in the mud, kids against adults. I should have stretched before that…

Mud yep. I brought some of that mud back with me in my suitcase. (p.s. do laundry)

Then we did Thanksgiving at my cousin’s house, whom I haven’t seen since she was a teenager. Now she’s married with 4 kids. Yeah, so that was interesting. They’re nice. There were a lot of kids. I had a long conversation with a Mormon feminist. It was interesting…didn’t I say that? It’s gotta be harder to be a Mormon feminist than an atheist feminist, that’s for sure. A good chunk of my family is Mormon, in case you didn’t know. It’s made for an interesting childhood.

Then on the airplane home, I did draw…

I kinda love that line. I knew exactly what it was going to be…

I was reading a book about dragons who can change into human form when it’s useful to them.

I did this drawing first…

I’m sure the people next to me were a little confused, but hey, they didn’t talk to me. So that was good.

Then I got home and made some food and sat on the couch and graded more stuff, mostly trying to finish out what I had done on the computer in Seattle. I still have 700 tons of grading to do…it’s not even funny. There are four piles the size of the one on the coffee table of science units that need grading. Then there’s the pile of tests on the right, on top of my work bag. Then on the couch, there’s the pile of warmups under the notebook. I did all the ones online in the Seattle airport, but some kids prefer paper, so those aren’t done…four more periods of those. The piles on the far left of the couch are all done. So it’s not like I didn’t do a ton. But there’s a bunch on Google Classroom too.

But I don’t think I can handle any of that today. I need to run some errands and hang out and be human and sociable with adults who aren’t stressed out. It was fun but exhausting. Thanksgiving is always a bit of that. I’m OK to be back where no one argues with me (until I walk into the classroom on Monday morning). My house is still a disaster, and now I have a deadline…boychild wants his room back in three weeks. I don’t blame him, but I’m not out of there yet. Not enough hours. At least I get to pick the music here. Oh yeah, and the bed needs flannel sheets. It was bloody freezing here when I got home. Funny considering I was in Seattle, but I got used to the cold there pretty easily. Their house was really warm at night, way warmer than mine. So unless you went outside, it wasn’t so bad.

So I hope y’all had a good feast and avoided the crazy shopping crowds. And you still have intact bank accounts. And you’re ready for the rush to Christmas etc. I’m not.

Haiku

So I ran into drunk Larry, my soon-to-be ex-neighbor, in the grocery store with some woman (girlfriend? I don’t know.). He saw me and made a beeline straight at me. “I was meanin’ to email you about your big dead gray tree.” Big dead gray tree? I don’t have a big dead gray tree. “The one near the road. It’s dead and it’s blocking the view.” It’s not dead, you idiot. It’s deciduous. I don’t use that word because I’m fairly sure he won’t understand it. It’s lost its leaves. For winter. “Well, we’re trying to sell the house and it’s blocking the view and I was wondering if you could talk to your dad about trimming it.” Because my dad trims trees. No, my dad hires scary big Gypsy guys to trim trees. I look at him and tell him I can’t afford to trim the tree; I have two kids in college. “TWO? Do you want 20 bucks?” You cannot make up this conversation. He actually reaches into his pocket like he’s gonna slap a bill on me. I said I needed a lot more than 20, but that trimming trees is not in my future. At that point, I had no food in my grocery cart. Drunk Larry doesn’t know that I am about to buy an 18-pound turkey for $8.74. It’s true. I named her Wilhelmina. He said something about going in on it with like your dad (the tree, not Wilhelmina). I say my dad is out of town, but I’ll see him Tuesday. He says how they need to sell the house to pay for his mom’s Alzheimer care in a home that’s costing $6K a month. OK. Whatever. His mom was always nice to me. I say I’ll talk to my dad Tuesday but we’re gone all this week.

Which means he will probably try to cut down my dead tree on Thanksgiving, so then I can sue him for the house, take it over, flip it for twice as much as it’s on the market now, and pay for the rest of college.

Oh wait, that only happens in the movies. The rest of it is true though. Even Wilhelmina. She’s in the freezer. The girlchild says I don’t need 18 pounds, and she’s probably right, but you can’t beat the price, and I can freeze the leftovers. I just wanted real turkey sandwiches next week. The girlchild’s roomie says I should buy Oscar Meyer turkey from the deli section, but that shit’s disgusting.

Back to grading and trying not to write haikus to my students…

Follow instructions

If you want to get an A

Otherwise you fail

Yeah. So. Too late.

I drew this last night while sort of accidentally watching Mockingjay Part 1…

It turned out entertaining enough…the drawing AND the movie. This is my 9×12″ sketchbook, the one I carry in my bag onto the plane. I bought a slightly larger one, 11×14″, for the trip to Seattle, because it fits into the smaller luggage I’m taking, borrowing from my parents because I had to throw mine out…old and finally unfixable. I should be able to put more detail into drawings on that size, but it will have to go in the checked luggage. Honestly, it’s a relatively short flight…I might not even have time to do all the things I have planned! Sad but true.

With that said, I think I have to go back to grading unfortunately. There’s way too much of it and I blew off a lot yesterday. I did go to school and finish the cell models and larger infographics today. Then I brought all the stories home and that’s when that haiku popped into my head. I think I might do it in a fancy font and blow it up and laminate its ass, and put it up in the classroom. Damn skippy.

My Lady Parts…

So it’s a school holiday, just one day, lonely in the middle of the week. Usually Veteran’s Day leans toward one end of the week or the other, so we get a long weekend, but not this year. It’s a nice break between two very frustrating days at school and probably two more frustrating days, unless I can get my mindful mind floating high enough over the stupid shit that it doesn’t drag me down. We’re nearing the end of a unit and there’s just a lot of crazy going on, both with kids and parents, and I don’t have the energy for it, I guess.

Part of that is art-related of course. I finished this amazing piece in September and it didn’t get into that show, and I fully realize there are more shows out there for it, and it’s a challenging piece and I shoot myself in the foot every time I make a challenging piece…unless it gets the recognition I think it deserves, and then it’s all OK. This last year has been hard for that, but I’m still making them, still drawing them, still entering them in shows.

And these cute little cat quilts…see, they’re easy enough to make, but I don’t love them. Well, I love Cat 6, but you can see why. And Cat 3 is sweet, sure, and Cat 7 is kinda cool. But they’re not really fulfilling. They’re a quick snack and I want a full meal. So honestly? I’m trying to finish them all as quickly as possible, which would be easier if I had my binding callus on my middle finger, but I don’t…so it’s sore as hell this morning after doing three of them last night. I will search around for those pads or one of the many thimbles I own, but I know from personal experience that I suck at thimbling…I just automatically switch to an unfettered finger, setting up new holes and sore spots there.

But first I had to go to the doc this morning, another MRI of my “lady parts” as they were called earlier today. That phrase makes me laugh. Because I’m so not a lady. But hopefully after fasting and lying in an incredibly uncomfortable position as magnets yelled at each other through my body, the scan will show my alien beasts (fibroids) reducing, disappearing, leaving me alone to suffer my uterus without them. I suspect one is still there, the big one, the one my kids used to kick during pregnancy. But the hundreds of little ones that populated my uterine muscle, I’m OK if they’ve left the building. I feel a little mean starving them of nutrients, but they were becoming ungrateful house guests who had outstayed their welcome. I was tired of dealing with them and their detritus. So hopefully it’s all good news.

Back to the little quilts. Sizes and prices are listed below. Just let me know if you’re interested in one of them. Shipping is included.

This is Cat 1…

11” w x 10” h, $120.

I do actually calculate prices from time spent and then add average shipping costs in. There are no fancy formulas on these. I’m actually debating giving Cat 1 whiskers…so she may look different tomorrow.

Cat 2…

13 ½” w x 10 ¼” h, $155. Might also need whiskers…hand-embroidered if so…

Cat 3…

13 ½” w x 12 ½” h, $180. Kitten sleeps in this position all the time.

And I rephotographed Owl 2.0 in the daylight…

17” w x 10 ½” h, $235.

So the rest of my day off will be filled with errands and cleaning more of the boychild’s room out, moving it back in here. I’m actually going to move another section of stuff in here out into his room so I can go through it easier as well…because it’s been piled on the floor for so long and I’m tired of it, but there’s no way to force me to get through it in here, so I just don’t. A deadline like a kid moving back for 5 weeks is a lot more motivating.

I love how I can psych myself out. You’d think I would catch on…

While I was cleaning stuff out, I found this body-part crazy quilt I started ages ago (no dates on anything)…I used to do crazy quilts. Still love the idea of them, love the embroidery, but don’t have the time for it. So I drew a series of body parts, maybe 12? on white fabric, and then crazy-pieced the rest of the square around it. You can see some I haven’t pieced yet on the left.

I didn’t do a uterus, but I did do some lady parts. Each part got one main color…that’s a knee, by the way.

A nose…obviously orange.

Eyeballs when you have blue eyes…a predominant number of the eyeballs in my quilts are blue. Some green. Very few brown.

Penis is obviously red…

That’s a strange elbow.

So I think what bamboozled me after that is what color do I do next? Do I do repeats? Obviously I can do green, but after that? I debated gray and black and brown and white, but didn’t like those options. So there are inbetweens, I guess, although I didn’t really censor the colors I used so far, indiscriminately using lights with darks in the color range. Or using colors more than once. Which is probably the best option.

I start these weird projects and my kids will find all of them after I’m dead, including the pile of 50 eyeballs on orange fabric, and they will wonder What the Fuck I was thinking. Sometimes I do too, if that helps.

Anyway, I have one cat left to bind, and then will have 6 to sew by hand, if my finger can handle it later today. If not, maybe I’ll take a break and trace Wonder Under for a while instead. I should probably take advantage of the time and grade something as well, but every time I think about grading, I think about the kid who complained yesterday that I hadn’t graded his warmup from last week yet, because instead, I graded the thing he needed for his study guide, but he didn’t actually turn that IN, so he currently has a zero. He thinks the warmup will save him, but even if he got 100% on the warmup, he’d average out to 50%. Math is not his strong point. It’s often not mine either, but at least I admit it and ask for help.

I really really really want to draw, dammit. Like right this second. Aargh. Set timer. Draw. Then go do cleaning and errands. Days off shouldn’t be wasted…they should be honored with artistic endeavors. And more sleep. And peeing whenever I want (ah, being a teacher often sucks).

Numbering Around the Cat Butt…

So first of all, I finished one of the little quilts. This is Owl 2.0, actually the 18th bird I’ve made.

Nov 6 15 003 small

She (he?) is 17″ wide x 10 1/2″ high ($235). These are for sale…would make great holiday presents. They have a sleeve on the back and I deliver them with a dowel with eyebolts for hanging. Shipping costs are included in the price, unless we’re going abroad, in which case, we may have to negotiate.

For some reason, I seem to be completing them in backwards order, which only matters to me because I list them in order of completion, and when it comes to the cats, they’re numbered in opposite order from what I seem to be doing. I probably could fix that though. Maybe. The owl has quite a few pieces in it, so besides Cat 6 (the one with the eyeballs), most of the other small quilts will cost less than Owl. I’ll post them as I finish them…and then put them up on my Recent Work page…or I’ll continue to debate having a page titled Small Work for Sale. Because almost all of my work is for sale…but I guess most of it is not small and relatively affordable.

Anyway, so that was my achievement for yesterday…except for this one. Do you know how hard it is to number a drawing when the cat is sitting on it? And I moved her about five times, then started sliding the drawing around with her on it until she got a clue and moved her furry butt.

I’m actually quite pleased, because it only has 773 pieces in it, and that’s not so bad.

So I just went rock climbing in the boychild’s room (no, I haven’t moved everything back in here yet…I’m trying to go through it and I was too tired to do any of it last night) because I wanted to find the drawing for Bathtub 2 to see how many pieces IT had, because I know how long it took to make (the cats love watching me kamikaze through his room, because apparently everything I really need is on the bed, which means holding onto the dresser to maneuver around the chair and then walking on the back of the bed after climbing up onto it). Well damn. I thought it was 800-some pieces, but it wasn’t. It was only 568 pieces and took about 64 hours. So. Hmn. I think I need a database of my quilts that includes number of pieces and hours to completion and size, and then maybe I can come up with a formula. Ventura was 891 pieces and took 89 hours. So I think I’m looking at about 75 hours total. Before the end of January. But really, earlier than that, because there’s another one I want to get done by the end of February, and it doesn’t even exist yet.

Yeah. There’s some crazy in there. I still need to finish all these little quilts; they each have about 2 hours left in them, maybe. So that’s about 17 hours right there. That’s a lot more than I thought. Sigh. OK. Hunker down. Figure it out. Grades are due. Life doesn’t stop because you feel like you’re hurtling through the days. You just have to take deep breaths and keep working. You can do it. It’s all possible.

Whether It Makes Sense or Not…

Interesting thing happened yesterday. I did grade like a banshee and I made risotto from scratch (high five! by myself! without the girlchild to do all the adding of liquid and stirring!)…in fact I did both of those at the same time for a while (see comments about risotto stirring), but it was taking way too long. And I went through all the books that were in the bookshelf I had to move out with the hot-water heater death, putting away what I wanted to keep and piling up the rejects. There weren’t many because I went through it about 10 years ago and I haven’t bought a lot of books in the last 10 years. Then I moved all those books into the bookshelf. Does the boychild’s room look better yet? Fuck no. And now I can’t quite remember how all the furniture/storage shit fits in that space, so I’m kinda freaking out. I think the stuff I need to go through next is what’s on his bed, and I can’t actually get to it. Minor issue.

So I did pick up the car, give blood for my pre-MRI evaluation, so they know they can inject me full of stuff again without hurting me, and then enlarged the drawing I had decided to do next, one of the Bathtub series…number 5 in fact. I wonder how it feels to be one of the Bathtub rejects. Like I jumped numbers 3 and 4 and went to 5. Are they butthurt? Are they sad? Do they know I might come back and do them? Actually, I will never do 3, because it was a superfast drawing and kinda sloppy, and 5 is a redraw of the idea, so I don’t need to do 3. And I picked 5 over 4 because 4 is really depressing and I like 5 better moodwise. Don’t even ask about 1. It’s currently headless. I did enlarge it, but it needs work.

After all the grading and cooking was done, I only had about an hour and a half til bedtime, so I could have come in here and put binding on at least one, maybe two of the small quilts, but I’m tired of them. They don’t ring my bell. Whatever that means.

So I went back out to the living room and starting cutting the copies and taping them together…

I enlarged the original drawing 250% on 11 x 17 paper. Then I try to fit them together. I hate copiers because it’s never exact enlargement. There’s distortion. But this is the cheapest way to do this…less than $5 for this one. And it works most of the time.

The reason I had held off on this one before is because it didn’t feel finished. It was unbalanced. This top left corner was too empty for one. So I gave it a bird. Birds show up pretty often in my drawings.

I actually penciled him in first because I wasn’t sure how to fit him in the space. I was pretty close the first time. I just didn’t want to fuck it up.

Once I enlarged a drawing and wanted to add a head to the figure in the drawing…it just had the bottom part with the chin and lower lip. I drew the whole new head…and then cut it off. Taped a new piece of paper on there and did it again. Got it right the second time. I really don’t think of my drawings as precious pieces of art…they’re a means to an end.

The other part that bugged me was the bottom. I thought about just cutting it off under the bathtub, but it felt really unbalanced to me. I stared at it for quite a while.

And then I drew some books and embroidery stuff…

Which made sense to me when I looked at the rest of what was on there. So I did the original drawing in April of this year (fast turnaround!), more drawing last night, and now I’m ready to number and trace.

But the most interesting part was how I FELT while I was drawing and afterwards. Wow. Way better than putting a binding on a small quilt that I’m making to sell hopefully, but I really don’t care about. I realized that since the beginning of October, I’ve been working on stuff I don’t really care about, and it’s silly. I mean, I need to do it for financial reasons, but I really would rather mentally be making the art I care about, these big beastly many-numbered pieces that kick my butt while I’m making them, but allow my brain a level of peace. Of balance.

So speaking of balance, I still need to finish the little beasts, and grades for first trimester are due Tuesday, so balance is the name of the game, but I think I’m officially starting the next big quilt. Like as of yesterday. Whether it makes sense or not.