It’s Friday. Pro. Con? We’re dissecting eyeballs today, which is cool, but I’ll have no voice by the end of the day and I’ll feel like I need a shower after touching all the gooey things. With gloves, sure, but it still gets old after all day. Also, the weekend sounds great, but I’m still buried in school stuff. It’s not fun. Trying to manage all the assignments for kids who were absent, make sure they have everything they need, make sure the kids who are in the classroom are caught up? The end of the trimester AND the end of a unit…make me want to scream, honestly. Sigh. Ah well. I will survive it, as I always do. It’s a frustrating job and becomes more frustrating when you have very little support. And as much as I appreciate days off (I worked during both though), it’s hard coming back. It’s like the work doubled while you were gone. Today will be nuts. I’m hoping to get to ceramics in the afternoon, but it’s entirely dependent on my exhaustion level.
Wednesday, I got borders on the littlest of the dye paintings I’m working on now…
Then pinbasted it…
And stared at it…and decided it needed some body parts in there to make it make sense. So I drew them out on paper…although, on the right, you can see my edit with my fingernail in the fabric below.
Then last night, I cut those out (edited) in freezer paper and appliqued by hand…
Better. Tonight, I’ll start quilting all of them. Mostly outlines and then the backgrounds and borders. Then hand embroidery after that. I might bind before the hand embroidery. Kinda backwards from what I normally do.
I also remembered that Stitchpunk (the SAQA exhibit) will be in Grants Pass, Oregon, this summer, and I originally had a plan to go see it. This is the closest it gets to me, at least so far. Fierce Planets goes to New Mexico in 2027. Also a plan (Winter Break road trip?). I’m planning my drive up to my artist residency, which is in Eastern Oregon this summer. We had planned on Lassen National Park and Crater Lake; and I think we can pull off Grants Pass too (just don’t tell my partner yet? He’s gonna be stressed about the driving I think). Bend is where I put him on a plane home before I drive southeast to the residency.
Busy trip. Gotta get up to Lassen too, which is no small feat. Gonna work on that trip this weekend, plus hopefully start my taxes…fun times. Plus grade shit and work on the burgeoning greenery of my yard in spring.
Today though…today is eyeballs and chaos and clay and fabric and maybe reading my book a little bit. I need to finish one by Wednesday, so I should get on that, but it’s an old actual physical book and the font is tiny and crowded and annoys me. Ah well. I’ll get through it, all of it, enjoy the sunshine, playing with fabric, petting a cat or two and maybe a few dogs and then realize there’s only three weeks until Spring Break and I might actually survive that. Maybe.
This week is messy. Mentally. Not really. I had a training thing on Monday, which lasted 12 minutes and then we spent the rest of the day planning the next three weeks before Spring Break, so we wouldn’t lose our minds (good plan) and starting a plan for after break. Then I gave a test Tuesday. Then I took today off to deal with my knee evaluation for physical therapy (we have a plan! Finally!) and to do an art group Zoom. I also graded half the day, which catches me up somewhat for the end of trimester, which is coming fast. It is ironic that I have to take time off work in order to get caught up with work. Is that ironic or just stupid? Hard to say. Anyway, all that to say that I am totally off on writing today. It’s nighttime. I write in the morning. But I had to be at school this morning for a meeting (and then race back home for the Zoom).
Sigh. Anyway. I’m still working on the dye paintings, trying to get them all bordered and then sandwiched to start. I finished the second one…but I had been trying to get the wrinkles out and cut the borders but then decided to rewash it and see if the wrinkles would come out (they did). Oh wait, first I sandwiched and pinbasted this one.
Then I cut borders…
Then the next night, I sewed them on…
And pinbasted it…
That’s three so far, one to go (tonight). It’s the smallest.
I also made it to ceramics on Monday…spent two hours finishing the upper torso and doing one shoulder and one arm.
I’m going to cut a hole in the chest once everything is a little dryer and more solid.
Not entirely sure how I’m handling the rest of the arms. I’ll figure that out as I go. It’s already almost too tall for my shelf, but all the bigger shelves are full, so IDK what my plan is. Head separate? Owl definitely separate. Although both will have issues for standing up in the kiln then. Sigh. I meant for this to be smaller. Apparently I don’t do small.
I have two pieces in this show and will be at the opening on March 15.
Come check it out. Looks to be a fun show.
I love these quotes…
There really is a feeling of oh well, this is what I have, although trying to make all the parts work better is definitely always a goal. But not what it looks like. Just how it works. Here’s another side to that.
I guess I never really conformed. And I don’t really consider beauty something to aim for…but being comfortable with oneself is a nice place to be. And when I’m not comfortable, being self aware enough to do something about it, whether it’s physical or mental.
But the world we live in now doesn’t really want us to think that…especially if we are young and could have babies.
It is exhausting. I suspect this would help.
But hey, gas is cheap and so is food? Wait, no it’s not. And we’re not going to have durable medical equipment suppliers? WTF. I’m just so done with the inability of others to make sense. Across the board.
This is what stared at me from the bed this morning when I was trying to find the landscape fabric (don’t you keep yours in the bedroom? I do. Long story.).
And if I rotated left…
Obviously I interrupted their daily meeting. Whoops. Sorry. Leaving now.
I did take some time today to read a little (good book), plus move some stuff on the deck (plants) and to where the veggie planter is going, plus move the tarp that was covering the septic pumpouts when it rained like crazy. Put that tarp away. Recycled some papers from Christmas and threw away two pens that didn’t work. That felt like a lot. It wasn’t.
Every few days, I see these two, together, in exactly this place. If I go out the door to get a better picture, they leave.
So this is through the screen in the kitchen. It’s such a weird place to regularly hang out. They must be friends, right? Do geckos have mates they stay with? I don’t even know. Also, do Podocarpus trees have males and females? And if so, which one has more of the seed pods? I know, I could Google those things, but I need to put another dye-painted quilt together so I can start quilting them and then handsewing stuff on them. Soon.
Tomorrow is more eyeball stuff and Friday we dissect eyeballs. Fun times. It’s supposed to be like 90 degrees on Friday; meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to wear in Virginia if it’s still in the 20s at night when I go. Freaky stuff.
I woke up this morning having an internal argument with a student about an email they sent last night, then realized I am not in the classroom today because after teaching sex ed for over 23 years (maybe more), I need to be trained in how to do that. For the third or fourth time…fourth. It’s the fourth. Don’t blame my school district; blame my school board. It is their fault. Good times. Luckily, we will get time to plan, which we desperately need. Not for sex ed, but for the upheaval in lessons caused by having to teach sex ed in the middle of April, before state testing, instead of after it, like normal. If anyone at the district says to me, “It’s only one year” again, I will punch them. And hopefully get fired, so I can stop doing stupid shit because adults fucked up. Well, probably not. It’s not like our government isn’t equally idiotic.
SO. I still have to go to school, make sure my sub shows up, set up my classroom, blah blah blah. Listen to an hour or so of stuff I already know how to do (I was on the committee that designed the damn curriculum) and then work. For real. Then hopefully ceramics afterward and come home and grade and I have a book club Zoom tonight, plus work on some fabric stuff. I delivered the newest quilt to the photographer on Saturday, and then started working with the dye paintings I did last summer. I have a show coming up that has to be no nudity, and I had four of those dye paintings with no nudity, so good start…
I had bought some border fabrics a few weeks ago. Originally I thought I wasn’t going to use borders, but they needed some space before the edges. On Saturday night, I bordered one of them…
There’s going to be embroidery on this thing…and then last night, I pinbasted it…
And bordered the next one…
Two more to go…
They are very different from what I normally do, so we’ll see how I feel about the embroidery part later. But I’m hopeful that I’ll still like them. Never know. That’s the whole point of branching out, experimenting…to see if different things appeal. I still have a drawing copied that was supposed to be the next quilt after the quilt two quilts ago…when I got sidetracked by deadlines. So it’s ready. It’s not political though…yet. So with politics all up in my face constantly, it’s hard not to make something political.
I saw a lot of art on Saturday…drove around to a few shows. This is the downtown library…Helen Redman has a small exhibit on the 2nd floor.
Cool drawings of babies. Then upstairs, in the 9th-floor gallery (where I had to wait for 20 minutes for someone to come open it up, after opening time)…it was FINE. The M(other) Tongue show is up there…totally cool. Here’s one of the paintings that was up there…
By Leila Khalilzadeh Aghdami. Beautiful painting…this is Invisible Identity 2. Lots of fiber stuff up there too. I also went to the SD Pottery Guild exhibit at the Coronado library…hard to get good photos inside cases, but definitely worth a trip out there.
Then at night, we went up to Oceanside for the Ace Gallery opening of Counting Threads. There’s some great stuff up there, but it’s a tiny space and it was claustrophobic (too many people) and hard to see stuff. Still worth it if you’re in the area though…this is a detail from Elly Dallas’ Story Quilt.
Fun embroidery sketches. We then tried to find somewhere to eat that had what we needed (clean tables, not a lot of screaming children, and beer and wine, plus something we could both eat). We got two out of the four things…and the pizza was really good, but not good enough to go all the way back and survive the noise…
Plus ET looks like a penis in that photo. Maybe he always did.
I hiked on Saturday afternoon…it was warm but not too warm; nice after all the cold and rain we had for the last week.
In a few weeks, those yellow daisies will be everywhere…
Yesterday, I ran all the errands I don’t have time for during the week plus graded for 5 hours, which sucked.
We had a squirrel infiltrate the bird feeder…
Remarkable picture through a screen for that. We moved the solar panel in hopes he would not be able to figure it out (he will; we know).
Some comparisons here…
You know, I lived in the UK for a year, married one of them for 13 years. They’re slow to respond sometimes, but I’m impressed by all this.
Whereas my people are fucktards. So there’s that. Speaking of fucktards.
Sigh. Idiot. People who don’t have to pay for stuff or who have so much money, they don’t know how much a loaf of bread costs, shouldn’t be making financial decisions for the rest of us.
And then there’s this. I’m not sick, knock on wood, but I have a fractured, possibly cracked tooth that needs surgery…
And may explain all the sinus crap I’ve had since last summer. Last Summer, y’all. Yes, I went to the dentist. More than once. And now that they’ve told me what’s going on, NOW I have pain up in that tooth. Now I know what that is. Damn. Can’t do the surgery for another week and a half. It’ll be fine. Motrin comes in big bottles.
OK. School to set up. To the district office to be edumacated on things I already know. Then planning. A professional adult lunch (not rushed into 15 minutes of shoving food in my mouth and running to pee before I teach again). Then ceramics. Joy! Then other stuff. I think I read the book for book club. Not sure I remember it. Will read a summary before the meeting starts. Then pinbaste the next quilt and border the third one. Good place to be with that.
So for the last week, WordPress has been using a tiny ugly font on the posts on MY end, but the posts you see are the same. This seems like a little thing, and it’s strangely happened before, more than once, and then eventually goes back to something bigger than 9-pt type. It’s weird and it bugs me, but it is possible that everything bugs me at the moment. Today, we’ve got what looks like Santa Ana winds (wind advisory, plus it’s going to be 90 degrees…in February), which notoriously messes with my head and my hair and my sinuses. Super dry, too warm, pressure changes in the atmosphere. Makes for a head that doesn’t function normally. For some definition of normal. It’ll be gone by tomorrow (the weird weather, not the general malaise).
Meanwhile, I got the whole image ironed together on Monday night…
Which took a little over 11 hours…and then last night, I ironed it to the background (which I had sewn together the night before).
Note Scribble. She posed with it. Sat right down next to it for the photo opp. Now this is at night, with me standing on the fireplace hearth again (I’m short). There’s a ton of details that will get quilted in and that don’t necessarily show up in a photo like this. I guess, that’s normal for me. I will start stitchdown tonight and hopefully get it sandwiched and quilted this weekend. This will most likely be at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA, in April…and then will travel to a few shows. Which is cool…more about that later, when it’s actually done.
I started a new artsy ceramic piece on Monday. I had a vision (very vague) of what I wanted to do back in December, but was trying to get the bowl done first…there’s only so much room on my shelf for building. And the studio drying shelves were super full; it was hard to find a place to put the bowl last week, so I waited until Monday and found a spot. This is not a very exciting start, but it’s a start…
Hopefully it won’t take a year to finish.
I need to get past some of these quilt deadlines so I can finish the last ceramic piece (which needs a tiny quilt). Not sure when the deadlines will chill the fuck out. The Man will say I need to say NO more often, but that’s hard to do when exhibition opportunities come up. Pros and cons: I love to have my work exhibiting, but it becomes a pressure that sometimes makes it difficult to work on what I want to work on.
Scribble is still adjusting to the nearness of a dog. Simba doesn’t freakin’ care…he wants to be next to me.
I try to come home from work and read for a bit every day. I usually get some sort of fluff to sit with me.
This is Nova while I’m trying to grade.
She was on my leg earlier (when I was reading). She sticks a single claw into my leg over and over again. Makes it difficult to concentrate.
OK. Union meeting this morning, finishing up the EM spectrum in class (hopefully all on task and focused, although one class…ugh…there’s always one class). Then pilates…I got in even though I only signed up two nights ago (I had to wait for the 3rd to be allowed to…did I sign up at 1:30 AM? I did.). Then book club…boom…boom…I finished the book last night at the gym. I finally made it back to the gym, where they have new equipment…took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get to the programs. The screens are sliding by; one of them could have instructions. Really. Yes, I’m old. I do read instructions. Gen X thing. Then grading in there somewhere, hopefully also at school; I’m behind again. Then stitching stuff down and going to bed and not having to get up early tomorrow. Inevitably Scribble will start playing with the strings on the blinds at 6 AM anyway. It’s funny how she’s matching Bowie’s kitten energy, the things he did that he grew out of. Poor Bowie…still freaked out about coming out of the room when anyone but his dad is around. Not sure why, but it makes me sad not to see him stomping around the house like normal. Hopefully he’ll come out soon. Weird times. OK, off to school. Hot and crispy day.
Hey. Early Monday, too many things going on, too many things need to happen. I need to come up with a title for the piece I’m working on, and I don’t even have an inkling (no, I don’t want help…I just need headspace). Usually I stare at the picture, read some online stuff about the topic, stare at it again, go heat up my tea, stare at it some more, look up quotes, shake my head, go out and plant something or sweep something, pretend it’s a normal day, go to bed, and just as I’m falling asleep, it comes to me, and hopefully I’m smart enough to document it somewhere. But often not. And then I have to wait for it to wander back into my head.
Yeah. Fun times. OK, fast and furious here. I didn’t iron Friday night because we went to watch a co-teacher dance in a local performance.
I got home super late and went straight to bed, pretty much…and then spent 22 minutes finishing my book. It was good. What can I say? The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. Because this…
Too true. Saturday, I ironed for about 4 hours…avoiding most other tasks. Dude, I’m on a deadline.
There’s a certain stage when you’re ironing tree parts and freeway interchange parts when it is pure overlapping chaos.
Scribble in the room! Also, all those random things piled on the ironing board are weights to keep the rest of the piece from sliding off.
It’s heavy at this point. And still chaotic.
But getting there.
Then last night, I almost finished.
I just have the owl on the top right and then need to iron it onto the background. And come up with a title. No, I still don’t want your help. Thanks.
Sigh.
I hiked Saturday; the wildflowers are starting to bloom.
It was nice, except for the ebikes.
Annoying. No engines in nature, y’all. Unless they’re rescuing someone or something.
I think I need more hikes. I used to hike after school…ok, not in winter. It gets dark too early.
OK, I scrolled a lot in between grading and ironing.
Not surprising. And here’s Charlie Kirk on it all.
We’re there. The tyrannical part.
Humanity is the least humane thing out there in the US right now.
Please…arrest more people so we don’t notice how many rich white males are on the Epstein list. Take them all! Jail them all! I don’t care about their politics or what they do for a living. They belong in jail.
Yeah. I’ve been saying white men are the problem for years.
Sigh. So if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you may have noticed we’ve got some family stuff going on, trying to find the Man’s sister. She’s in danger. If you live locally and you see her, please call 911 and reach out to us if you can. I know it’s unlikely most of you will see her, but just in case…you never know.
I have an early meeting (hate Monday meetings), then I’m teaching the electromagnetic spectrum, and going to a physical therapy evaluation for my very cranky knees. Then hopefully to ceramics, but also have to pick up a handle arm thing for the toilet that broke last night (couldn’t break Saturday so I could go to Home Depot over the weekend, could you?), plus pick up meds that got sent to a local pharmacy instead of ordered online like I asked, then not sure what else. Maybe grading, definitely reading to dissociate, then ironing an owl. Good times. May the world be a better place by the time I get there…or at least not a worse one.
Today is the shutdown. I’m with you in spirit, but as a public middle-school teacher in a Title I school, I’m going to be at school with my students. Also, Friday subs are the hardest to get for anyone, and we’re doing a lab, so I would have had to make up some filler assignment, because you don’t leave a lab with a sub unless you want no materials at the end of the day. And a friend is performing tonight, opening night, and we’re not blowing that off either. Need to support teachers in their life-affirming activities, like dance and art. But do we need to hit them where it hurts? Yes. Absolutely. Target sent me yet another “we’ll cancel your Target card” letter (the third so far, each with a 2-month deadline, which I ignore). I’m just avoiding them, Amazon as much as I can, anything else that seems dodgy or billionairy. Not a word, I know. But there are small, independently owned businesses going under right now due to tariffs and people just not having as much money (um, the grocery bill is still bad, y’all…it’s not great here), and it’s not OK that the tariffs are singling them out. Just trying to get art quilts to shows here from out of the country or vice versa has gotten so much more complicated.
Sigh. Things aren’t changing in the right direction fast enough.
In quilt news, the ironing is going well…
Well, as long as you don’t mind a kitten climbing on it (I do)…
She also tried to run off with the safety pins, so those are closed up again. I keep this door closed most of the time right now, because I don’t really trust her in here. It’s chaos and thread and pins and tiny pieces and not very cat friendly.
So that was Wednesday’s progress…looks slower because it’s a lot of smaller pieces.
And here’s last night’s progress…
I’m in the low 300s at this point…the body parts are next and that’s complicated. I have a thing tonight so odds are I won’t be ironing until tomorrow, but I’m hoping to spend a few hours tomorrow. The deadline looms.
I also went to ceramics last night and put the last two colors on the bowl, underglaze anyway.
I also did the fingernails and filled in the mouth areas.
That looks better.
Right now, it’s drying so I can put it in the bisque fire. I’ll clear glaze the outside and then find some shiny glaze for the inside. Realistically, I can never make anything in clay to sell…this already has over 10 hours in and it’s not done. It’s a good thing I’m not doing it for the money.
There’s competition some nights for my lap.
Simba was hesitant, but submitted that belly rubs made it OK. Scribble is unsure…
Really unsure.
The crazy shit that comes out of the government’s mouth is sometimes mind-boggling.
That and Kyle Rittenhouse and that crazy fucking couple with the guns. Like it’s a different story every time. And some people are excusing it every time. I’m hoping the reps start to stand up and yell more, prosecute, fire people, refuse to pass bills, demand for change, quite honestly, get that dumbass tested publicly, transparently, because no way he’s competent to be president right now. That said, neither is Couch Vance. I’d love to hear some of the conversations he and his wife of color have about some of the shit he says.
I read this and went, huh. Yeah. Ugh.
And then I read this one.
OMG yes. I guess that’s too much to ask? Certainly it doesn’t make as much money for the already rich.
Sigh. All I do is sigh and try to hide in books these days. Can’t hide unfortunately. My co-teacher and I had a short discussion of what to do if ICE shows up at school if we’re on duty (grab all the kids and throw them behind the gates). We can’t call our local police; they’ve been told by the mayor to support ICE, to help them. Fuck that. You’re not dragging middle-school kids out of here. Or their parents. Not OK. We are not OK.
Today. We’re doing a lab about light, mostly UV to start, just an exploration. Then duty (no ICE hopefully) and going to watch a friend dance with a bunch of people, then probably home to sleep honestly. It’ll be late. Then art tomorrow, and a hike, to try to get this blood sugar under control. It’s still whack and I still don’t know why. Sigh. SIGH. At least it’s Friday and more art time is near. I can do that.
Yes, I’m writing late today. I took the morning off to attend an art-related Zoom that is usually difficult for me to go to, due to that lovely day job, but the kids are walking to the high school today in the morning anyway, so I’m not missing a lot of instructional time; I’ll be back to give a test to my afternoon kids, which totally thrills them, let me tell you. So I slept in (a little bit, because let’s be honest, my body thinks I should be up at 6:30 all the time and so it just wakes up and I don’t fall back to sleep easily). I’ll shower in a bit. I might put a second coat of paint on the deck wall (I was working on the deck and plants last night in the dusk light and it was not easy, but it needs to get done and it’s always dark when I get home these days). I’m definitely inputting grades…yes, taking time off from work and still working is what teachers do; why do you ask? And hopefully I can start grading that other academic assignment…I’ll be coming home from work and doing that for sure. Unfortunately.
Luckily, there is progress on the quilt front. It took 11 1/2 hours to trim all the pieces…
And then I sorted them the same night…
Scribble was not particularly helpful in this process. As you might imagine…although she eventually chilled out and just watched.
Nova was chilling on the couch.
Then last night, I started ironing the whole thing together.
I did almost 100 pieces in an hour. Pretty soon, it will all be small pieces and progress will look much slower. I’m not expecting to be done quickly, but I’m hoping to get some big chunks of weekend time in the next few weeks. I need it all ironed together and to a background by February 15, then finished ASAP. Ha! OK. Doing it.
I also made it in to work on the bowl…mostly underglazing at this point.
I think I have two more colors I want to put on there, but also, I wish I had painted inside the mouth. I might just do a tongue and not worry about the background, but it looks weird now, so not the best decision I’ve made this week.
Also probably not the worst, y’all. And it’s only Wednesday; there’s still time for worse decisions. I am liking the bowl though. It’s fun.
I’m finishing up teaching digital and analog signals this week, and found this mix tape in the box of cassettes I brought to school.
Yup, my brother made that.
Trying to explain to these digital kids that you made a tape to share your music with your friends or a relative and it was like a gift, and how you thought about them when you made it, and then when you listened to it, you thought about the person who made it for you. They don’t get it. Sad. But things have changed. They share TikTok videos and memes. Maybe it’s the same?
Yesterday, I left school quickly and came home to work on the deck in daylight. I have part of the house wall that really needs paint, and I wanted to do that before I started pushing plants back up against the wall. So I did a little sanding and one coat of paint last night, as the sky turned into this.
My eucalyptus tress still look sad. Hopefully they’ll be fluffier by summer. I have too much of a view of my back and lower neighbors’ yards at the moment. I could do without that. But the sky was nice. I moved three plant shelves back toward the railing, but also realized I don’t remember where everything goes. I’m sure it will be fine (she says). I’ve moved a few anyway that needed room or to dangle. Some things need some major pruning or replanting, so that’s a different issue.
I’m thinking about using this when we teach natural selection…but then the kids will think it’s a choice.
Honestly, I don’t know how much natural selection we’re going to get to this year, thanks to the school board fucking up our schedule. So frustrated with this year. I can’t even look at the calendar for April without stressing. My blood sugar has been super reactive this week. Not sure what changed except everyone around me is sick and I’ve definitely been fighting something off since Saturday, but I’m not sick…and my blood sugar is an asshole. Things that normally don’t shoot my blood sugar high…well, they are. So it’s just gonna be high this week I guess. Sigh. I have pilates today; hopefully that will help. I don’t feel more stressed than last week, so who knows what else it could be. Random shit…brought to you by my body.
Discombobulated is one of my favorite words.
I never considered what bobulated would be.
I try to do this every day.
It helps.
This thought also helps; but it’s also depressing.
Economic shutdown Friday. I can’t skip school; it’s not fair to the kids. There aren’t enough subs. I already have plans for Friday night to support a friend; the money was already spent, though. We are going out after, but I’m pretty sure it’s an independent place. Not a Cohn-owned monstrosity. I’ve got my eyes open for what’s happening Saturday. One rep emailed back. I don’t actually need to hear from them. I need to see them vote and start yelling. Get Noem out. Get out of Minnesota. Get out of everywhere. No ICE.
This is boggling.
So unsustainable. Then again, our need for money and power always is unsustainable.
This is an issue.
And frustrating, because they think we don’t think too. SCIENCE! I didn’t even post the measles graph for 2025. Measles cases went from like 238 in 2024 to over 2000 cases in 2025. Thanks RFK for being an ignorant dickhead.
Imma leave you with a sleepy kitten.
She’s a good baby.
OK, I need to shower, set up some stuff for school, get on a Zoom, maybe paint a wall, grade some stuff, input some grades, then go to school and give a test, go to Pilates, come home, grade some more after reading some of my book, and then iron. Busy day. Even “taking time off” (whatever that means). But art is in there and that matters.
I know, I know, it’s late. I had stuff to do this morning. I made wontons. I took a shower. Really that’s it. Oh, I talked to the girlchild. That was nice. So no, I didn’t blog this morning. Honestly, I love a 3-day weekend, but I’m not sure what the hell I do with the extra time. The bathrooms and floors still aren’t clean, I didn’t finish grading stuff, I didn’t finish inputting grades, I certainly didn’t finish putting everything back on the deck. My to-do list is still a shitshow. My green pants still aren’t wearable. This is crucial. I hope to fix this tonight. And the grades inputting. Maybe…no, I’m not doing a floor…c’mon, it’s almost 5 PM and I have a 6:30 Zoom? OK, maybe a floor or a shower. We’ll see.
Meanwhile. MLK. I watched a couple of excerpts of his speeches…man that man could talk…so beautifully. Made me tear up…especially in light of Minnesota…and Greenland…and Norway…and Venezuela…and another ICE killing. So did I do right by MLK today? Probably not. But I did talk to the plants I was moving about how the new pot would support them better than the old one. More about that later.
In the quilt realm, I did OK though. Friday night, I managed over 2 hours of ironing (I stayed up late).
I got the fleshy bits ironed down. Scribble was still not helpful.
She’s a sweetheart actually. After ironing the fleshy bits, here’s all the stuff that goes ON the fleshy bits…eyes and hearts and veins and lungs and trees.
OK, trees is weird, I know, but there was also ivy and a snake.
Saturday was my deck/ironing day (no school!), so I ironed for over 4 hours and got most of it done…all of it except the sun and the owl.
Sunday, it took another hour and a half to finish the ironing…156 different fabrics.
All in a bin…
So I can spend the next few days (few???) cutting all the pieces out. Usually that’s faster than picking fabrics…less brain power, less thinking. So now I’m hoping to be done with the cutting out by Saturday? That might be ambitious. The Man has a show Friday night that I’ll be at, and I have a meeting Saturday afternoon, and two meetings Sunday. But maybe if I hope to be ironing it all together by next week…because I need an ironed-together quilt top by February 15, but if I could get closer to done before that, it would be awesome. I will not be done by February 15, just to be clear, but I will definitely be ironed together by then. Total ironing to fabric time? 15 hours and 17 minutes. Longer than normal. Lots of little decisions to make.
I also did some underglazing on the bowl on Friday after school.
Clay is SLOW. I mean, I guess my version of quiltmaking is too. So there’s that.
I hiked Saturday afternoon…3 miles.
It was delightful.
The weather has been strangely warm. But nice. Spring is in the air…yes, it’s January, but it’s also Southern California, so the weeds are proliferating and the yard is a jungle and I could do yardwork every day for 8 hours and never catch up.
Speaking of yardwork, so the boychild and I replaced the deck railings, which were disintegrating. We replaced one of the railing posts too. So I had to move all the plants away from the railings. It’s been on my list for over a year to go through all the plants and repot things that were falling over or out of control, and to just generally clean up the space. But as I do that, I find more things to do. That space under the window…there used to be a planter that hung from the wall, and I don’t remember if we installed it or if it was here when we moved, and I don’t know why two of the slats are missing. I do know it all needs painting. So I pulled everything away and washed it down, and tomorrow, when it’s dry, I’m going to paint it.
Before I move the plants up against it. If I were really good, I’d replace those slats, but IDK what wood that is and it sounds more like hard work, considering the planter is going right up in front of it. So that’s a delay.
Here’s the long view toward that area…
All those planters were up against the railing before, but a lot of them need help. That plant in the front is leggy as hell. I’ve trimmed it before and it does well, so I’m going to do that again.
So basically, in two days. all I got done and set up was this small section of the deck…
Which is all the Man and the dog care about, so that’s fine. I’ll do the rest as I can. Or I’ll get tired of it and move it all back without cleaning it all up. We’ll see which Kathy wins out. I do like plants, but I run out of time.
This was funny…this is Instagram.
Almost 12 years, y’all…I didn’t know Insta had been around that long, but I guess it makes sense. They suggested I add a reel a week. A reel of what? Me talking to my plants? Scribble biting my hand? Yeah. Maybe.
Now for the screenshots that talked to me in the last three days…this one, for sure.
Although maybe I am a very hungry caterpillar. Hard to say.
W.T.F. I am boggled. Fuck the EPA.
Sigh. Why do people think this is OK? How do you live in this world and be OK with this? I guess it’s OK when it’s not you and your family being affected by it? Except they all are. Now we all are.
I could totally get behind this (I am actually part Danish)…
But this thing worries me…
I just looked up my insulin and it’s from Malaysia/India…which explains the emails when I had an issue with one of the pens. But I don’t wish death on the other insulin users, and I don’t want to worry about shortages for insulin users. Plus didn’t that orange fuckup tell us the meds would be 150% cheaper? Waiting on that too.
More people need to think about how this works…
Ecosystems include humans, even when we’re stupid and think science doesn’t matter.
I love this too…
I hope it goes away before it destroys the environment…although it may already be too late.
OK, well I go back to school tomorrow…teaching geese and canaries (sound waves and wave energy), then digital and analog signals. Spent some time with that today. Wrote a rubric that I remembered about at 2 AM. Thank you, school brain. Spent some time today finding a bunch of analog and digital things to show students (records, old video cameras, old cameras, cassette tapes in big wooden boxes). Fun times. Tonight, my local guild has a Zoom with Jane Sassaman, which sounds lovely. My book is due to the library Saturday and it’s for book club on Monday (a week from now). I’ll finish it; it’s good too. I have three Zooms this week (it’s a lot) and who-knows-what-else for school that hasn’t come to the light of day yet. Deep breaths. My neighbor above me still has their drippy icicle Christmas lights up and I’m not mad about it. It’s very relaxing to watch.
It’s been a long week…and a short week. I will have gone to work all 5 days, but only 4 with kids. It has felt like a million though. How is my right eye already twitching again? Some of the stuff we get asked to do is boggling. In general, the kids are OK, they’re mostly listening and doing the things…but like we had grades due next Tuesday and someone higher up changed it and never told us it changed? I’m still doing grades this weekend, because I don’t have time to do them next weekend. I made plans, I have multiple meetings, I have things I’m doing. I have what might be considered ‘a life’. Mostly that’s cleaning things and trying to make art and finishing books, but that’s OK. Trying to find recalcitrant cats at 11 PM (he’s fine; he was hiding and wouldn’t come out when called…because he’s a cat…and either he’s sick or sulking, not sure which).
Speaking of 11 PM, I’m supposed to go to bed at 10:30, and I do try, but I’m also trying to finish grading everything and iron for more than an hour a night, and at some point, you run out of time. I finished grading the second academic assignment from December last night, and I didn’t run over my allotted grading time, but it was close. I think yesterday was a 10-11-hour day. Ugh. Just for school. Ironing was another 80 minutes. So apparently I was hallucinating the other day about being 300 pieces in…I wasn’t. I am NOW…a little over. The ironing of all the tiny things that all need to be a slightly different shade of gray? It’s taking a while. Here’s Wednesday night’s progress…
So slow…so many little pieces. I did a Chevron sign and a BP gas sign…some other stuff too.
And here’s last night…
I mean, I think I added 8 gray fabrics to the pile, but it doesn’t look like much more…I did the Exxon sign and some smokestacks, and a bunch of smoke clouds, but that’s about it, and it doesn’t sound like much, but I made it into the 320s I think. Lots of smoke. NO. I’m still not halfway. BUT I have a 3-day weekend (during which I have to finish progress report grades, finish the deck railings, replant some stuff, and move everything back) to finish ironing everything to fabric. I’m getting close to the large goddess figure, and I haven’t entirely decided how to color her. I have ideas. I don’t know which one will work. It requires more brain power than I have right this minute. Hopefully I’ll have it tonight or tomorrow.
Or not. OK, today, I’m teaching sound. I didn’t have the energy last night after 5 parents contacts and a bunch of other stuff to set up my classroom for today, so I need to go in and place the cup/string telephones and find cheap rulers for sound boinging and who knows what else I forgot. I remembered the packets. It’s been a very ON week, lots of me talking and doing. Eventually there will be more of them doing things, but we didn’t really get there this week. So that’s part of the exhaustion. I’m hoping to have the energy to go to ceramics after school so I can start glazing that bowl, because I have a cool artsy idea for what I want to work on next so I want the bowl done and fired. Then home, read, eat, iron. Pet a dog and some cats. Chill out for three days. Well, I need at least one hike in there. Maybe two. And some sleep…that’s been problematic all week. Need more of that. Always.
I’ve officially survived one day with kids; it was notionally a chill day but felt like a lot, which isn’t surprising. I had to put back a lot of things I put away so the Winter Academy could be in our classrooms (I’m not done with that yet), plus deal with a lot of kid stuff (they were pretty chilled out except for that one…there’s always that one). It’s just a lot…going full on for the whole day, so much stimulation, so much talking, so much ON. It’s exhausting. We have a 3-day weekend coming up, which is nice, but grades are also due, so double-edged sword there. I came home after running errands and graded and had an art Zoom meeting and graded some more. So this ALL ON thing doesn’t stop when I get in the car and go home. I realize it COULD? But then I’d have to be at school even longer, and I had to really force myself to stay the extra 10 minutes last night to finish one class of late turn-ins. I have three more classes of those to go; it’s not a lot…it’s just details. I should be able to finish them today. And yes, I came home and read my book with a kitten for a while because I needed that.
Monday, after 17 thousand meeting things (I got nothing done that I needed to get done on Monday…seriously, I left after 4 PM with a half-assed table of contents copied and not much else accomplished), I went to ceramics for the first time since before Christmas. I always think, oh, it’s a break, Imma get SO MUCH clay done. And then I don’t. It’s frustrating. And with this quilt deadline hanging over me, I’m hard-pressed to spend a huge chunk of time there at the moment anyway. I did pick up my frames…
I like them, although one of the greens burned out a lot on both frames…and it looks like they shrunk a lot more than I thought they would. A 4×6 photo fits in the top one if you trim the corners…you’d have to trim it a lot for the bottom frame. I should be better about measuring things. But I’m not. The final satin glaze was definitely more successful than the last few I’ve done. I’d consider reglazing some if I didn’t think it would be an exorbitant cost. But now I know.
And then I worked on the bowl some more…luckily it’s been pretty humid and wet, so it didn’t dry out too much.
I know I had some specific plans at some point, but I don’t remember what they were.
It’s not perfectly round; it’s definitely handbuilt…and even though I used a mold, it’s still not really even symmetrical.
I’m OK with that. I think I’m just going to start underglazing it. I have an idea for the next big art piece and I want to start it.
The quilt is progressing slowly.
I mean, I’m getting lots ironed at night, but it doesn’t look like much because it’s all tiny things mostly. Except for the ground and the water. So it doesn’t feel like much progress. I am trying to iron more than an hour a day. My goal is to be done ironing to fabric this weekend.
Scribble follows me at night (when she wakes up), so she’s in the studio now, checking out progress.
This is after last night’s 90-minute session. I did iron a tiny Scribble-like cat, but then looked at her more closely. Her coloring is complicated. I need a bigger cat to iron to get her facial details to work. A 1″ drawing is not a good place to start with her.
I finished the first 300 pieces plus a few out of the 300 box. So not halfway, but I probably will be tonight. Lots of fussy details in the next 100 pieces too though, so maybe not. Lots of buildings and logos. Sure enough, our school district is pushing teachers using AI in planning, and I’m pushing back. I do use it occasionally, but it’s not as useful as they’d like it to be.
Scribble sometimes comes to bed with me…
But she’s not always ready for actual bedtime. Unlike me. She’s a pretty gentle kitten though. She looks evil and vicious, but is not even breaking the skin. Just gently holding my hand in her mouth and paws. Sweet baby.
I appreciate the cuddles.
This is my medieval animal, apparently.
Seems appropriate.
OK, meeting this morning (ugh), then teaching about waves (ocean first, then sound…sort of? Not entirely sure what I’m doing today…will figure it out as I go). Hopefully my voice holds up…it was shaky yesterday. I’m still holding mucus from the flu…can’t shake it completely, so that doesn’t help. Lots of tea and throat-clearing. I may give in and take cold meds. Then pilates after school (I’m already tired) and I’m cooking dinner tonight (leftover lasagne I was smart enough to cook and freeze over break). Plus grading and then ironing. LONG day. This is what being back to work is though. LONG days. Fabric at the end of it. Good thing.
Kathy Nida 