Oof. Well we got rain. Good thing, because that fire is still out there south of us. Definitely more in control with the rain and humidity coming up a bit. And we needed rain. Hoping it wasn’t so much that there were mudslides in fire zones. Just enough to give the plants some water and help put fires out. That would be good.
I wanted to be done with stitchdown last night, but I spent a bunch of time on school stuff yesterday instead of art. It needed to be done. This week is a little chaotic and it’s easier for me to do some of the grading with a clear mind, not muddied by exhaustion or kids talking. So I started it Friday night after finishing the ironing down to the background…here’s the whole thing…
Then the stitchdown start…
I did about three hours on Saturday and another hour last night…
I just have the head, that visual disturbance stuff, and the space cat. Not much…not even an hour’s worth, I think. Tonight though. Then sandwich and pinbaste and quilt.
In other quilt news, there’s my piece on the far left at Form, Not Function, where it won Honorable Mention.
And here’s one of mine on the banner of a show that opens next Saturday…
Now that’s cool. A boob out in public.
I’ve been glazing some little animals I’m going to try to make into pincushions…
This is going into the glaze fire with a clear satin coat.
I still have one that’s going into the bisque fire; its tail may not last. We’ll see.
The reddish one is the girlchild’s trinket dish. Hopefully the glaze doesn’t run too badly.
It’s actually supposed to turn out a blue green with a hint of brown. Glaze colors are weird that way.
And I’m just stitching wool down for another Sue Spargo quilt. Neverending.
My fault. I enjoy making them so I keep getting more. This tree one looks fun though.
This was Friday’s sun through the fire’s smoke cloud as it floated over us.
I drove a little bit west and I was out of it. But it smelled like smoke, like fire too. Like I said, that one is under control and I’m sure they’ll get it out in the next few days. More rain is headed in today, although not a lot.
OK. Today the kids will need to take notes on their own (ha! That’s funny) while I grade stuff. We’ll see how that goes. I’m tired still. Ugh. Not sleeping well again. Meetings after school, although I’m supposed to have a team meeting and all of my team except me are in another meeting. So yeah, IDK how that’s supposed to work. I will meet by myself? Probably. Then home to finish stitchdown. Oh yeah! The bees have mostly left the owl box; we moved it away from the post yesterday. Hopefully sometime this week we can put the new owl box up and invite owls to stay there (owl airbnb?). I’ve heard barn owls recently. I hope they didn’t already pick somewhere else. I hope they’re lurking around and waiting for this one.
Also, I’m back on FB and Insta…not ready to let the fascist tech overlords take over everything. I’m still on Bluesky though…I’ve got people on there too, so I’ll stay there unless it seems like a no go. We’ve had a bunch of different apps pop up and disappear over the years. You never know what will stick.
This day. Man. I was sort of hoping for news that the swearing in didn’t happen. I don’t even care why…like I’m voting for aliens from a distant solar system at the moment. I’m off the Meta socials this week. I considered not doing it, because my dad always told me if you want to change something, you need to do it from the inside out. And why are we letting them control where we are and why? But then someone said that there’s ad revenue and that gets them where it hurts…so I changed my mind. I’ll be here on the blog, and I’m over on Bluesky (@knida.bsky.social), posting there instead. I’m a picture/visual person, and Bluesky is more like Twitter, where I never really hung out. So yeah. We’ll see if it changes anything. I don’t trust a rich white man farther than I can throw them, and I don’t throw well at all.
Some guy is out looking at my shed right now with my dad, and I’m sort of listening. I’m not sure I care about the details of how to fix the damn roof right now. I’ve got too many things on my to-do list. I did finish grades yesterday, and then, like a crazy woman, I sent 72 emails to kids/parents about specific missing academic assignments, so when they see their grades, the kids won’t be able to lie about the teacher not letting them turn late work in. Today? I plan to not to school…except I never graded the warmups yesterday and I need to do that. Or I could just do it in class tomorrow. Maybe. We’ll see. I’m aiming for day job sanity and having a hard time getting there.
Quiltwise though, things are going better…I got the visual disturbance part done…
Those are the things I see…not all at once, but one at a time. Swirling around in my visual field.
Saturday night, it took almost 2 hours to do the words…which do fade into the background and they’re supposed to…
Like I’m yelling about these things and no one is listening. I’m a little concerned that the arm is not quite reaching where it should, but I can futz with that when I iron it down to the background.
Last night, I got a good chunk of the tree done.
Plus all three owls…
The three has all four seasons on the branches, so I have a few hundred pieces left, hopefully today.
I lost Kitten on Friday…couldn’t find her anywhere. Usually when I call for her, she comes out. She has some very specific hiding places, but the actual kitten, Bowie, has been harassing her. He doesn’t understand that she’s old and sick, so he tries to chase her. He’s really curious about her. So she’s been peeing up in her safe spaces. I finally pulled all the batting out and replaced it with pee pads…which she hasn’t used. I also carry her out to the litter tray twice a day. Hopefully that will solve the problem. Anyway, I was searching all over for her and finally had a guess and went outside…there’s a glass sliding door on one wall that is essentially not accessible because of the sewing machine table…and there she was, hunkered down behind it…
Snuggled under the quilt I’ve been working on (which she did NOT pee on, thank goodness…it now has a towel covering it). I’ve found her there twice now. I think her hearing is going. Poor baby. She’s old but not in pain. She still purrs when I pet her, snarls at Bowie for invading her space, eats a little food, and goes back to sleeping. Sigh. It’s hard to deal with elderly animals.
We’re trying to use up our stash of restaurant gift cards, so Saturday night had us in Little Italy at the Princess Pub & Grille, which had pretty decent British food…
I drew…it was really loud (football!)…
Need to remember to stay away from sports bars for a few weeks I guess. I don’t actually know if we’ll be going out at all for a while. Long story. Been here before.
Hey, there’s my quilt in the background! At Form, Not Function, where it won Honorable Mention.
It’s the only photo I could find of it in the show.
OK, I need to leave to get my hair cut, rescheduled from when I had stomach flu. I was going to go to ceramics afterwards. Not sure how I feel about that right now. I’m tired. Nothing new there. Got some art to do, some cleaning to do. Need to make lunches for the week. Hoping to still be able to retire in 2029, but who knows what the fuck that idiot is gonna do. If I can’t afford to retire, then it’s gonna be rough to stay in teaching. We’ll see where we’re at in four years…hopefully somewhere better.
Ugh. So the last three nights of not sleeping well are starting to hit now. It’s not something I choose to happen…it’s just either my brain overthinking shit or the Man and the cats and the dog taking up space in many ways. I’m sure I’ll hit exhaustion level again soon and be able to sleep through cats leaping over me at 3 AM and dogs rearranging themselves perpendicularly to me in the middle of the night so there’s nowhere for my legs to go. Not quite there yet. The morning meetings don’t help; having to lose that last 30 minutes…that’s hard. Ah well…no more of those until next Thursday…knock on wood. Definitely feeling it this morning though. Yesterday, I could still bully through. Today? Ugh. No. Would like to go back to bed. Still fighting the sinus stuff…my doc is out this week, so the sub doc (who may or may not have reviewed my file…wanna take bets?) said to use Flonase and Sudafed. Um. Yeah. For like weeks now. It’s fine. It’s better…just exacerbated by talking all day. Just like my knees are aching from walking all day. We’ll all adjust.
Cool art news…My Body. My Choice. got into Form not Function. Over 350 submissions and only 20 got in. Glad it was her.
She has traveled well. Maybe she continue. She’ll be at the Floyd County Carnegie Library Cultural Arts Center in New Albany, Indiana, from January 16-April 12. May that go well.
The ironing stage of this quilt has been slow. I mean, I’m doing an hour every night, but I’m not very fast about what gets done in that hour. This was poison oak and brain parts, I think. Oh, and a string of Christmas lights…
Last night was the esophagus, arteries, the heart minus the flower bouquet inside it…
And the cloud parts on the leg, but not all the stuff inside them. I still have stuff in the 300, 400, 700, and 900 boxes that hasn’t been ironed. Plus all the innards where the belly is cut open. I have one intestinal fabric chosen, but the rest is still an unknown. You can see the colors are piling up…the cardiovascular reds. That green/yellow mix is what I picked for the esophagus…I’ll try to repeat some of that down in the digestive system. Reality is not really where I roll. So I’m not halfway done…still. Getting there? Slowly. Tonight will be a challenge…there’s a lot going on. There’s a pottery tour this weekend and I’m hoping to put a couple of ceramic pieces in. We’ll see if that happens.
I’m still slogging (happily) away on this one…
The clay (and I) were being slow and sluggish last night. I basically did the ribs and another fish on the foot on the right. I need to do the other leg, add a few more details, and then figure out the top half. Or third. I might have to do this in three pieces…not sure the head will fit otherwise. I can’t get up to the highest drying shelves (not tall enough), so I’m trying to figure out how to make it in pieces again. Like the last two, but bigger. And odds are, I’ll use underglazes on this as well, so that will be time. I can move it to the drying rack for that though. I only have a smallish space for storing stuff. The racks are really full right now (pre-holiday rush?).
We’re doing electricity in school right now. I was trying to demonstrate static electricity with the balloon sticking to the wall…it only worked 2/5 times though.
Frustrating…last year, it worked every class. My exhausted self…this one bright kid…what are we supposed to write if it didn’t work? Well here’s why it didn’t…something is not neutral or not enough electrons transferred to make it work. It’s all invisible, so I have to figure out why it didn’t work when it should have. The wonder of science. Maybe he’s not cut out to be a scientist? The current academic thing I’m grading…I can get through 11 assignments in an hour. I have 128 kids. The easiest ones to grade are the kids who didn’t do any of the academic parts (but almost all of them did something because they started in groups) or the kids who totally got it (2 so far). It’s interesting that the things we teachers think should be easy, the kids flail on. Makes us feel like bad teachers sometimes. Although we know WHY they fail…and it’s usually a combo of laziness (just wanting to copy things) or a lack of problem-solving or reading instructions. The average reading level at our school is 2nd grade. So everything has to be so obvious. So far no one is failing, but there are a lot of beginning-level answers. I’d rewrite it for next year, but I won’t be teaching 8th grade next year. I won’t be back to 8th grade until I do the combo year again in 2027. Hopefully the other teacher will have made it awesome by then!
To continue on Monday’s commentary about the 10 commandments. That wall is there for a reason…
Sigh. No news from my district about teaching sex ed this year. Who the fuck knows what that will look like. I expected to hear from the committee people about how we were going to meet again, yadda yadda. Nothing. Radio silence.
This amuses me.
Too real. Also I need to get my act together on the gift stuff. Ha! Not sure when.
I love this…
It’s my angry self…the part that just wants to finish my book this morning. Not happening. Gonna go sit in a meeting instead. Not cutting heads off with swords…yet.
OK. Meeting. Then teach…static electricity labs today. Some possibility for yelling there. Depends on the ability to listen to instructions. Confetti and salt are involved. Plus balloons. Then pilates. Home briefly, to ceramics meeting, home again for dinner. I would say grading? But I don’t think there will be brain power for that after all that. So let’s just say ironing will happen? Hopefully. Get those damn intestines done.
Well we’re back; told you it was a short one. A short one with limited cell service. I’d be sitting in camp at night and 3 texts would ping in but whatever service had brought those in whisked away with the wind. It was all good. Nice to not be tethered to all that for a few days.
The landscape, as always, was gorgeous, as are the animals and the stars and the moon (although we lost that the last few days due to the landscape). I do get tired of eating the same stuff and having to clean up at bear level (better than having bears in camp though). And if I had to camp for more than three days with no shower, I’d probably shave my head because I can’t stand my hair anymore after that. Last night’s shower was a delight. Usually we camp for a while and then get an AirBnb for a break, but because this was a short trip, we skipped that part. Which is why we got up yesterday morning and drove all the way home (from the Eastern side of Arizona). We needed a bed, a fridge, and a shower. All good.
We stop at weird little parks to eat lunch while we’re driving, just like I did when I was a kid and my parents drove me across the country to see every historic landmark in the US.
This mural was in one of those parks.
By the way, the landscape described as “high-density cactus forest” that is Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is absolutely gorgeous in spring…all flowery and green and weirdly amazing. Totally would go there again, even though the daytime is hot. They say April is the end of the hiking, and I would agree, unless you are hiking at night. Warm. Some shade, not enough.
I’m not really a desert lover…it’s hot and dry and often flat, but this was beautiful.
We were lucky to have gotten one of the few campsites with a ramada, which gave shade at certain times of the day, mostly the hot times.
You had to keep your car hood up and start the car at least once a day to keep pack rats out of the engine. I never saw any, but I did see a lot of hoods up.
Mostly flat desert makes for really nice sunsets…especially when there are some clouds out there.
We went to one of the ranger talks, about the moon, which I just finished teaching about.
No fire pits, but we managed fires in the grills. Good thing…the Man can’t stand camping without the requisite staring into the fire and managing the fire. It’s fire TV. I do a little staring myself, but mostly it’s my drawing time.
The moths were particularly happy about my headlamp on the first night.
It was warm enough to not even put socks on for a while. It’s been a while since we’ve camped anywhere that warm. And of course, that means it’s even warmer when we’re hiking, which is harder. But hike we did. The Arizona parks have a Hike for Health thing going on right now where you get a pin if you hike at least 5 miles in the park (proven by photos), so we did that in both parks. But honestly, we’re out of shape after a particularly un-hikey winter (health plus work plus weather). Normally we’d be in for 10-15 miles a day, but we did less.
We did Victoria Mine, which was close to 5 miles when we finished; we should have started two hours earlier to beat the heat, but we didn’t. The ocotillo was just starting to leaf out, so some had flowers and no leaves, some had new reddish leaves, and some had green leaves.
It’s a fascinating plant. I keep trying to simplify it for the quilts I make, because making it realistically is a very time-consuming thing. If I JUST made a quilt about one ocotillo branch, that would be doable. Anything else would be nuts. Says the woman who regularly makes quilts with over 1000 pieces.
I do love me some ocotillo though.
In Organ Pipe, we had pretty good cell service, so my Seek app for identifying plants was working. Since I just made my Desert Mother quilt last year and had researched all these plants, many of which I’ve seen before but never ID’d, it was cool to go around and see them in real life…the Organ Pipe cactus themselves…
Plus all the different chollas…
Saguaros of course…
So many saguaros…
I’d never seen the inside of one…
And some of them had fascinating growth patterns…
Lots of flowers because…Spring…
Spring is such a short season that I often miss the blooms that happen.
By the time I have a free weekend to go down to Anza Borrego, it’s done.
I called this Introverted Cactus.
Stay the fuck away cactus. It’s actually some thorny spike cactus (like no duh, look at that thing). In bloom, nonetheless! This was on the kamikaze half-run up a hill to see the sunset. We didn’t time dinner perfectly, so it was a bit of a rush.
The mine itself had these weird little ceramic sculptures that the rangers said they’d found elsewhere too.
Not original to the park probably.
Requisite photo of us, me looking very red and sweaty (’twas warm!) so we could get our pin.
It was a fairly easy hike, in terms of elevation etc. Just warm.
So that was almost 5 miles…then we rested for a while, cooled off, I took a shower with their solar collectors, so warm sometimes, sometimes not.
Then we realized how crappy our cooler was (seriously needed daily ice infusions, which was a pain)…so we drove into Why, Arizona, to get more ice plus drinks plus snacks.
Lots of cool mural stuff at this convenience store…with a quilt motif!
Pretty amazing…
And fun.
We tried a drive, but the ‘better’ dirt road was enough to persuade me that the 21 miles of ‘not so good’ dirt road would be a pain. The other drive was closed for repairs, unfortunately, but reason enough to come back.
Camp was fine. I had a book, cold water, a chair, and shade. I also had friends…this trapdoor spider by the water spigot…
A round-tailed ground squirrel who came up to my feet until I jiggled them.
Then a run up to the sunset…
Another proof picture…where I force that smile…
Yeah well. Still warm.
But beautiful…
Drawing on the second night…
I had actually started another drawing (I’ll post better photos of these once they’ve downloaded off the cloud), but couldn’t get my head around it. Something about protecting unborn children more than the actually born ones. And guns. And teachers. And banning medications for women, but not men. It was frustration. This second drawing is better and has the potential to be something. When I’m traveling, I just draw to draw, not to potentially be a finished quilt. I usually focus on the landscape around me, which is how this started, but I couldn’t get past the other crap going on in our country.
Which hello…this truck was in one of the campsites down from us…
I finally got all the way around it…
Nice sentiments…
Beautiful. I hope she was safe as she drove. I hope no one made it unsafe for her. Because that’s our existence too, more than half of the nation: women, LGBTQIA, children, people of color. Not safe for any of them. And it should be. I’m not sure when the politicians will realize they are outnumbered. I hope it is soon. As I make my work and it becomes more and more relevant with time instead of less…which is what I want. I want the problems to go away, for the world to be better, and it’s not going that way. It’s getting harder for all those groups and that’s just wrong.
OK, with that happy finish! Ha. Oh wait, I did start working on this on the road…
Just so you have a comparison to later. I always take too much stitching, and that’s OK. No one ever wants to run out of something to work on when you don’t feel like drawing or reading.
Today we are going to a concert, They Might Be Giants (my Xmas present to the Man), and are staying near the venue to make it easier for us old folks, so I need to get a bunch of stuff done, laundered, put away, etc before we leave. Early. Because we are old. Plus school stuff and other stuff…like shipping a quilt to a show! I got into Form, Not Function with The Way Out…
So that’s cool. More politics. Nothing like a Nida quilt with a uterus AND a giant vagina with a landscape in it. Originally made for a show called Portals. So there’s that. Good news all around. I have some work to do this week; even was quilting last night, despite being exhausted, so more of that today as well. First to make sure the pool guy put everything back after trying to flood my house, then another delightful wonderful shower, and then stuff to get done. It’s still Spring Break for 5 more days. More about Chiricahua and the second half of the trip tomorrow. Or Friday. We’ll see.
Well it hasn’t hit a high temperature yet for today, although yesterday broke records at 114 degrees F. Not a fan. I’m not a fan, I mean…I had fans running everywhere. Right now, my office is only 94 degrees…it was hotter than that yesterday. After my quilt guild Zoom meeting, I put my legs in the pool to cool off and read my book. The pool is in the sun for a goodly portion of the day, though, so I can’t even be out there until later in the afternoon. Plus I had a bunch of stuff to do yesterday…still do today. These 3-day weekends at the beginning and end of the school year are amusing…they just give us time to get caught up on work, I guess.
That was yesterday before the guild meeting.
I did grade stuff during the quilt guild meeting. It was mostly listening to bylaws and all that anyway, so I multi-tasked. Got me some of this…
I am taking a guess…what? And this is what happens when we Google shit, children.
Pretty sure I didn’t teach that. Maybe should use your notes y’all. Plus some of the kids put “Ireland” as their answer, and that’s related to that panel. So weird. I guess Wednesday will be a short discussion of “I don’t grade Google. I grade YOU.”
I still have a ton of grading to do…it’ll get done.
Yesterday afternoon, a fire started up east of us, about 20 miles east. It’s fire season…
It was scarier at night…
The smoke smell this morning was strong…
And as the day went on, the wind moved that smoke around and a few more distinct areas popped up. We’ve been watching this fire map…
The fire switched direction after I screenshot this…now it’s heading southeast, which is good for us, because we’re the black dot on the left. The fire would have to burn through a lot of residential area to get to us, though…in fact, I think all 5 of our senior parents would have to evacuate first. So we’re good. Just hot and smoky. It was over 4000 acres the last I saw…and that was this morning.
Hoping no one gets hurt and they save as many animals and buildings as they can.
What else? Because my brain is fuzz in this heat. My quilt I Can’t Be Your Superwoman won honorable mention at Form Not Function. Did I mention that? Can’t remember.
There are three of us in this show who live about 5 miles apart, and all three of us won awards…Marty’s piece got Best of Show and Linda’s got an Award of Excellence. So we met at Marty’s house and had a socially distanced toast of champagne, thanks to Marty.
It was nice to be in the same space as other hoo-manz. Besides the grocery store. Now back to making art.
I had no energy Friday night for artmaking, but I had two blocks for my quilt guild’s quilt for their annual show…so I did those. One was easy curves and one was not as easy…
I had to rip the curve on the right twice, but the one on the left was easy peasy. Kind of annoying.
So those are done and I delivered them yesterday. When the whole quilt exists, I’ll post a picture. It’s the Modern Quilt Guild, which I mostly don’t do. But they are accepting of me, and I knew I could sew these, so I did them.
Then Saturday morning, I cleaned this beauty up and labeled her and made hangers for her and packed her up and shipped her to my Patreon patron.
She turned out well, although she’s bigger than I had originally planned. Learning for next time, I guess.
And then last night, I finally had some energy for cutting things out. It’s too hot to think.
Still plenty left to do on that one. Maybe tonight? Hopefully. I’d like to be ironing her together at some point this week.
When I was out shipping the Patreon quilt and dropping off the quilt guild blocks, I got an email to come pick up some clay. WHAT? You said clay? I said clay.
My art group is building a labyrinth thing in 29 Palms in November. I need to build a thing for that. I explained how I was going to build it and how big it would be, and she handed me this. I’m excited…although I’m going to wait until it cools down a bit to start. I don’t want it to dry out too fast. Maybe next weekend. I have until October 1, so plenty of time. I’m really looking forward to doing this. I used to do clay in college and for a little while after…it’s been a long time. It’s a very soothing process.
And remember the bread that I completely fucked up on following directions?
It’s the best loaf I’ve made…
Just further proof that my mantra about reading the directions and then finding your own way (unless you’re a student in my class and your version of ‘finding your own way’ is to not do anything) is the way to go. With bread? The girlchild says I can’t totally ignore the science. I didn’t! I just fucked with it. And it worked. I can’t repeat it. That’s the funny part.
More cats in class…
Apparently trying to knock computers off a desk is a thing.
Nova was below the light table, but behind me…
And Kitten settled on the back of the couch.
When I’m the only one home, they all want to be with me.
They’re mostly sweet.
Yeah. Glad to have a job. Glad to have accommodations for my job. Glad to have a roof over my head. Glad to have the animals and people around me. Wish it were cooler and I slept more and felt more like I could make art right now. Instead, I will take the dog in the pool, breathe in more of the smoky air, and grade something. My office just hit 97 degrees with two fans on me. It’s only 108 outside. Oh good…could be worse. Stay safe, stay well…
I’m not sure when I thought I would write this blogpost. Back in the old days, I would get up around 6:30, take my shower, get dressed, feed the animals I’m responsible for, grab a cup of tea and something that approximated breakfast, and I’d sit down at the computer and bang out a blogpost. I did that almost every day, Monday-Saturday. I took Sunday mornings off most week and the occasional other day, but pretty much this was how I cleared my brain for the day and dealt with any lingering anxieties from weirdass dreams and the previous day’s existence. Then I’d brush my teeth, take my meds, pack my lunch, and drive to work to teach all day. Come home, repeat the next morning. Work was a separate place you went to and although as a teacher, it’s really hard NOT to bring it home, at least it was at a different location and sometimes you’d treat yourself and leave the pile of papers and the work computer AT WORK, where they belonged. Permission to take a break.
Ah, no longer. I basically live in this one room of the house, venturing out only to pee and heat up my tea, with the occasional walk down the hallway just to move my legs. And here I am, at 10:30 at night, writing the blogpost I was supposed to write this morning. In the same place I sat all day. School starts earlier now, so I get up 15 minutes earlier, and granted, this was the first day of online school, so maybe I’ll get into a routine and there will be less morning panic about whether or not I have everything set up right (we didn’t. I was retyping a Google Question at 8:09 AM for a 9:25 AM class, which isn’t actually THAT abnormal, but I don’t like it). Two computers, three monitors, this is before the boychild brought in two pieces of wood that go across from the left desk to the printer shelf, notionally for the mouse…
Or also for a tripod that holds my phone, which is dialed into the Zoom class so I can show the chemistry demo.
That’s calcium chloride, cornstarch, and baking soda on the red plate. Don’t get excited. I didn’t blow anything up, although we had color change, gas, temperature change, and odor, all created in one fell swoop. Fun stuff. Totes would do this lab in person. Maybe in 2021.
School…exhausting teachers everywhere, every August and September, but especially in 2020. Rumor has it my school will be back in person on September 9. And my guess is that it will take about 3-4 weeks before at least one cohort is quarantined. Ah well. It is what it is. Kids will learn something this year. They will survive. I don’t subscribe to the theory that this is going to put them all behind. It might even drill some resilience into them. Some of them. It’s worse for the kids in schools that already struggle to bring kids up…losing a year when they’re already a few behind…but I believe some kids will still get it, they’ll still find a way to learn in the chaos of all this. And it’s not like we did this on purpose, invited a pandemic into our midst. Oh wait. Maybe some people are making it worse. Sigh. Vote dammit. Vote vote vote. Like our lives depend on it.
What else? I did iron the small Patreon piece together on Monday night…
Making small things is sometimes fun…
It didn’t have a lot of pieces and went together fairly quickly, in maybe an hour…
I got it ironed onto a background…
I’m hoping to get it finished this weekend.
I sold two pieces on Etsy, so that was also nice. I figure it’s about 30 decent bottles of wine.
I’m joking. I don’t need that much wine. Not yet. Give me a month and I might change my mind.
Then last night, I cleaned up and set up to iron the new Daughter quilt together. This drawing hangs in the background of my school Zooms, so I have to remember to pin it back up every day before school starts.
There’s boobs on that thing! Oh my. My office isn’t huge…I had two fans going last night, but it was still a million degrees in here.
The ironing board gets moved around and out of the way on a regular basis, then pulled back to the middle of the room for this stage. For reference, the desk setup I showed you earlier is to the right of the top corner of the ironing board. Like RIGHT THERE.
I got just about the first 100 pieces ironed, most of the first human figure.
I’m totally exhausted tonight and not sure I have the energy for any of it. I’d LIKE to iron. I just don’t know if I have the energy. It took about an hour after school started of just sitting there before I could think straight again. And then I did Pilates and book club, which is part of the tired, but they were both things I needed.
It’s still hot here…
Which explains the prostrate animals everywhere.
I think it was actually a tiny bit cooler today.
Definitely cooler out on the deck in the late afternoon…
But also buggy as shit and I was so tired, I needed a cup of tea to do Pilates.
The first week is always exhausting, wherever you are. My team ate lunch in a socially distanced matter, with my being dialed in on FaceTime. We talk about kid issues during lunch, so it was useful. I’m still glad I’m not on campus. I miss everyone, I miss my room, I miss my materials and my setup, but I don’t want to be there right now.
Getting used to early mornings again.
At least the sunrises are occasionally pretty.
I made this Monday. Still not airy enough.
But it tastes good, better than what I get at the store.
This is not the lizard that belonged to the tail from the other night…well, first of all, it’s a gecko, not a lizard…
Second of all, the lizard was tiny and this is not.
I have a fan who lives near where Form Not Function recently opened at the Carnegie Center for Arts & History in New Albany, Indiana. My piece I Can’t Be Your Superwoman is flanked here by Helen Geglio’sWisdom Cloak: Invisible Visionary on the left and Tracy Taylor’s The Distance Between Us on the right…
Definitely prime real estate on that wall…
Wish I could’ve seen it, but these pictures help…
She won an Honorable Mention, which is nice. Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll get my act together and post pictures of the two newest quilts, one of which has been done since March or April, but it’s taken me and the photographer a while to get our acts together.
OK, let’s be real…it’s after 11 PM, I’m exhausted after my first day back to work, and I get to do it all again tomorrow. It’s OK if I don’t iron tonight. Tomorrow is another day. I really want to iron. I enjoy this part of the process…but this is also one of the hottest rooms in the house with the lights on…it’s possible I might be able to replace the bulbs in here for cooler ones, which will help, but also it needs to be cooler tomorrow (it won’t be, I don’t think). Ah well. It will be cooler eventually. And I will get used to the schedule and rally sooner. And more often.
So Thursday is for artmaking and Wednesday is for survival and then sleep, which is where I’m headed now…completely backwards to when I usually write. And Friday is just Friday, part of which is Not Here Yet. Man I’m tired. Peace out. See you later.
Progress on all fronts! I finished grading one assignment (of the 3,000 I have left. Not really. It just feels that way). I made it to the post office after tutoring with 3 minutes to spare to mail the embroidered piece off to the buyer. I laid around on the couch feeling half dead (that’s the part that stayed up too late) for a while. I finished my book! For May’s book club meeting, which already happened and which I didn’t go to, and I really didn’t like the book, so there’s that. But It’s Done. I like done sometimes.
I forgot to say that Womanscape won an award at Form Not Function, the Inspired by Nature award given or funded by Juanita Yeager. I used to read her blog all the time…I was fascinated by her flower quilts. That was a million years ago, I think. I’m not as good at reading blogs any more. The piece was also featured in this article from Insider Louisville about the show…that’s it in the middle.
She looks good. I really like that a quilt about women’s rights won an Inspired by Nature award. It seems right to me.
Anyway, here’s an artsy photo of me getting ready to iron down the image of the current quilt onto the background. You should be able to see it sometime in July. I think. It may not even get in. I think it’s cool, but that’s just me.
I did get it ironed down and started stitching down last night. It’s not huge, so it shouldn’t take long. I’m hoping to get it fully stitched down tonight and then maybe get it pinbasted? We’ll see.
I’ve been having a hard time getting my brain to shut down late at night, so I’ve been trying to draw a little. This is for my Patreon…it’ll hopefully be scanned and emailed out to them tonight…
I may have to stare at it more and decide if it needs more. Well art brain will tell you it always needs more. But does it really?
After that, I think I’m going to put it up to the Patreon as to which smaller quilt I work on next…since I can’t decide and I have end-of-the-year brain. Maybe. I like to have control of things, so that might throw me. Or not. Delegate decisions! I should do more of that. Anyway, I have a bunch of drawings ready to go, so I think I’ll do that.
Awww. What a sweetheart. He was upset because the boychild bopped him for biting while the boychild was trying to pull those nasty twirly twigs out of his butt fur. This is his sad face. He got pets later, so he was fine.
OK, off to work…today is menstruation and sperm production. Oh yeah! And gender. It’s a fun day. Really. It is. Just tiring is all. It’s getting near to the end. That’s a good thing. I’m looking forward to some artmaking time. Seriously.
I have a piece in Form Not Function, which opened last night…Womanscape…
I got a couple of comments last night from people who had seen the show and loved this piece, which I appreciate. I loved making it. It started as a drawing way back in 2010 or so, then turned into what I thought would be a really long triptych (in my head), and then last summer, I redrew the parts into this. And it didn’t get into a variety of shows I entered it into (as always), and then it got in here. And that was good. Really, it’s not about where they go…it’s about the fact that they go.
So I’m staring at this piece and the comments and trying to figure out what the big piece of summer 2019 will be. Summer 2018 was remarkably unproductive on the art front. Having jury duty for an entire month hanging over your head does not help you make work. Or me at least. I’m thinking I will do a smaller piece when I finish what I’m working on, because I don’t have a drawing for a larger piece yet. I have a bunch of smaller ones. Plus it’s good to have some smaller pieces on hand. It’s also good to have some smaller pieces with no nudity in them, but I don’t think I care about that right now.
First though…I need to finish this one. So last night, I cut the last of the pieces out.
Here they all are, with the trash I save until I’m done ironing it together…
And then I found a bunch of boxes for sorting…
And I sorted them…
Total cutting time was 10 hours and 10 minutes. Sorting took a whopping 40 minutes. It always feels longer.
I want it all ironed together by the end of the weekend…maybe even into the stitch down. I do have to grade stuff. But I already did one thing last night…
That’s me grading 51 videos with furry assist. I actually stitched and cut stuff out while watching these. I don’t think I can iron and watch though. I have another 50 to go.
I need to finish that drawing for my Patreon, plus a bunch of other stuff. I need to wash and iron the finish embroideries and send photos to the official peeps. I need to grade more stuff and clean up around the pool and clean floors. I need to buy some frames and some art supplies.
School was rough this week. We did reproductive anatomy and puberty, plus two days of testing, all on very little rest and relaxation. So this card in my box after school on Friday was needed and appreciated.
I love you too, guys…even when you’re being jerks. You’ll grow out of some of that. Next week is more puberty, plus menstruation and ejaculation and pregnancy. Woo! Oh my. Right now, I’m going to take my shower and then make another cup of tea and come in here and start ironing things together. I want to do that. So I’m gonna.
Kathy Nida 