You Will Keep Making Mistakes…

Hey. Halfway through the work week. Woke up out of a dream that I don’t remember, but I do know I wanted to finish it. That said, I want to finish the bad ones as much as the good ones, because I want to know how things end. This is how I end up reading the next book in a series even when I’m not really that into it. I’m not sure it’s a useful trait, but it’s the one I have.

I’m tracing Wonder Under this week. It looks pretty boring, but there is always a cat involved.

She starts out lying on everything and eventually gets annoyed with my moving her around and leaves.

Mostly I’ve been tracing a lot of big background pieces with the occasional burst of tiny mushrooms.

See? Side by side. The big pieces take longer to trace. I always like to get 100 pieces done in an hour, which is the amount of time I have most nights, but last night, I only did 90 because they were big pieces.

I’m in the 200s…I won’t be done until early next week. But there’s always progress.

Here’s one of the quilts that went to the photographer. It actually has a name, Interminable Wait.

Hand embroidery with light threads, so easy to photograph! Ha.

This one’s name is percolating. I have a potential…I’m mulling over it.

It’s coming. I’ll post both of them on my New Work page in the next couple of days with details of size etc. Nice to have real photos of them.

I’m exhausted from work and the heat…it’s so hard to sleep when it’s hot. The windows have to be open, so it’s light (full moon coming) and loud (cars and nature and the neighbor’s roosters…drive me nuts). I need to clean the kitchen and laundry room floors soon…here’s the natural detritus on the floor of the laundry room telling me how it feels about contributing to the dirt in there.

I did it right before I left on my summer trip. I haven’t done it since. TIME! I don’t have enough time. I come home and read a chapter of my book and then grade stuff and then deal with food. Yesterday I had a meeting that I thought would be 15 minutes go to an hour and then I had to drive to pick up my quilts, so I didn’t get home until 5:45 and I was half dead. I still feel half dead. Not sleeping enough. Plus we did a lab yesterday. Those are also exhausting. You know what else is exhausting? The world. One of my school board members and his wife do videos every week and last week, we saw a clip where she is claiming teachers are evil predator communists who turn kids into the opposite gender.

Lady. I just want your kid to wear deodorant, not lose all their papers, charge their Chromebook, come to school, and have a pencil. What the everloving fuck are you talking about? Please don’t vote for the two Project 2025 ignoramuses (ignorami?) in our district. Text me or email me for names. I’ll be canvassing against these sweethearts in September.

This was too true…and then Dolly Parton died. A good person. Instead of the other 80-year-olds who are performing evil predatory things on our country.

Reality is that we DO have to go to work and pay the bills and pack lunches. Plus this…

I made a quilt about that.

Meanwhile, this is me.

Always.

OK. Work. Finishing up all the lab writing stuff and starting to talk about how to write claim, evidence, and reasoning. Again. There was a minor bit of stupid behavior yesterday but no one was sent out. A couple people were told to stop touching things. Ever. Always. Never again. And the principal violated one of the safety rules. Good teachable moment there. Then pilates after that. It’s hot here; did I mention that? Then home to grade and cook and maybe clean a floor, if I have the energy for it (unlikely). Then tracing into the 300s. It’s all planned out. I need to make at least one video today…without my co-videomaking partner. Awkward. Bringing a tripod instead. Can’t replace her really, but it’ll have to do for today. Need to make some copies for later in the week too. Like maybe for tomorrow. Should really figure that shit out. Missing half my science teacher brain…I minorly messed up the lab in Period 1 and revised for the following periods. Glad I did that at least. Learn from the mistakes. Sometimes you can avoid making them in the future. But realistically, you will keep making mistakes all your life and you will need to do your best to fix them, and the sooner you become comfortable with that, the better.

Signed Up For…

Weekends feel so short. I mean, I work for 3 or 4 hours every Sunday, so that doesn’t help. But if I don’t do that, I can’t keep up. I’m already behind, and we’re in the 2nd full week of school. Welcome to the next 10 months. I did manage to keep Saturday work free, but then Sunday, I got an email about the upcoming school board elections and how I will need to give up 9 hours to canvassing in the next 2 1/2 months. Sigh. I signed up for that job. I know it’s important. Just losing those hours hurts my art self. My sleeping-in self! Which I need. I didn’t sleep last night. Too hot, too noisy (windows open due to hot). It was over 100 degrees yesterday, cooler today, then the surface of hell for the rest of the week. Fun times. Eventually I’ll sleep because of exhaustion. Rough way to start the week though.

So artwise, I finally made it to the ceramics studio on Friday; I’m going again tomorrow. I picked up these two pieces from the class I took in June. They fired well.

I’m just sticking them in the yard. They were fun. I might make more. Yes that’s a uterus.

I also did the 2nd and 3rd underglaze brown layers on this…

I really wanted this to go in the bisque fire before I left on the residency, but I spent 5 or 6 hours glazing those other two, so that didn’t happen. I also ran out of one of the browns and the local store didn’t have it, and it shipped after I left.

Surprisingly very few cracks, no breaks. Needs a lot more underglazing, but I’m getting there.

In new quilt news, I finished drawing this (although I added a spaceship later).

Saturday night, I numbered it…

I’d like to say that Scribble is helpful, but she really isn’t.

I thought it had 848 pieces but then I added the spaceship and found another chunk of pieces I hadn’t numbered, so I’m in the 860s somewhere.

And last night, I started tracing…

With the help of Scribble, who kept lying on the drawing.

She’s mostly easy to move. And then she left. But not until this happened…

I didn’t get very far. Big pieces take longer to trace. With a cat in the way. Not helpful.

I spent most of Saturday dealing with some of the dyed paintings, doing final washouts. I had issues with the last one…I washed it out in a hotel sink and the brown skin color completely washed out, and then I couldn’t get the blue to stop washing out. I’m not unhappy with the blue…it was meant to be lighter, less intense. The blue in the body was mixed in with the brown that didn’t stick, but all the other colors mostly did. I think the brown had been contaminated by the soda ash on the fabric transferring on the brush. So I’m going to redo the brown.

I ran a test on the dyes I brought back to see if any of them were still good. I forgot to wash it out yesterday, but I’m hoping these weren’t contaminated so I can just do the skin tones sometime this week…whenever that might be. Ha! Yeah. Work? or Art? Or whatever else?

I washed another out and there’s one head that needs more, so I’m going to try Inktense on that section…it’s pretty small. I have two long skinny ones I did on purpose for an upcoming show. So I spent a couple of hours dealing with dye paintings, which was nice. I have some blog posts I have to write for art groups; I started one. I’m a little annoyed by the other one, but whatever. Obviously I’m the only one who writes posts for them, even when I’m not there and didn’t get into the show. I did get into one locally in October though, so I’ll be there (more info to follow) and the big FIG show is still on in Oceanside; I’ll be there Saturday for 5 hours, so come visit.

While I was gone, Nova (probably) puked on a lot of things, including a ceramic frame I hadn’t hung up yet with a photo of my niece I liked…honestly, I might like it better like this.

I washed it. Yeah. The ceramic frame fared better than the photo paper.

The old man slept in on Saturday. Nice.

No boofing at me at 6:30 AM.

Saturday date night…

I did not buy any fabric this weekend. In fact, I haven’t bought any fabric since mid-July. No hiking Saturday…too hot. Miss that. Want to do that.

It’s OK; I probably will soon.

Good science meme; but my students won’t get it.

I did name one of my loaner computers Marie Curie.

As we get ready to go over appropriate AI use in the classroom (I’ve already seen a bunch of it).

Unfortunately, middle schoolers often don’t have the prefrontal cortex development to understand this graph. And why it matters. And it’s why all my tests are on paper now. Can’t use AI if you don’t have your computer. God knows they’re using it everywhere else.

OK. Today…is kind of a mess, but I think it’ll be OK. We’re doing an observation lab…followed by another more complicated observation lab tomorrow (am I nuts? I might be). Staff meeting after, but the boss has been super vague (which is kind of their thing) about the meeting after. He’ll tell us right after probably or ignore it completely. I have book club tonight but I don’t remember which book it’s for (whoops). I’m pretty sure I read it. Then I’ll be tracing on Wonder Under. I should grade somewhere in there too…in the heat. Ugh. Yeah. OK. I guess I have to.