Well I’m sitting in an airport, which seems to happen every summer. It’s not a bad thing…it’s expensive if you need to eat, the process is annoying (although I think I got fast-tracked through security for looking like a benign old lady), but I get a lot of reading done. Trying to eat has gotten more difficult over the years…so many carbs! I’m currently picking the egg and chicken out of fried rice and wishing there were more veggies. And my flight was just delayed…only a bit. No worries. Just stressful.
Survived promotion, checking out of school, and the end-of-year party with only a bit of sunburn…the one place I missed with the sunscreen. Despite my exhaustion, sleeping in is not an option. Cats, dogs…even partners…I need quiet to sleep. I’ll take 7 AM over 6:30 though. I’ve been ironing, but not more than usual. I had a million things to do yesterday that got in the way.
A lot of years with this team…
I did manage some ironing each night after a million errands. Here’s Wednesday night, proving I make art no matter what…long day though.
And last night, after all the crazy stuff I did. Two Zooms, two medical appointments, three stores, gas, whoops, another store last minute.
Not sure the piles look that different. I made it to the mid 900s. I wanted to iron this morning, but I needed to pack, water, enter a show last minute, pay bills, and sew on a missing piece of a squirrel’s tail. Like you do. So there are about 500 pieces left to iron. So slow. My goal? Ironed down Wednesday, start trimming Thursday. I can trim faster than ironing, which is good, because I’m 17 hours into the ironing and less than 2/3s of the way through…so another 9 hours? Yikes.
Ironing is a type of rest luckily.
There’s Scribble helping me rest.
Not so my crazy country.
But yes to the hawk….
Ok. I now have an hour, a full cup of tea, air conditioning, two books, a sketchbook, and some stitching. I might need to walk in a bit to counteract the rice, but right now, I can’t read for a bit. May your Juneteenth be a radically left one…and may the colonized win their soccer games over the colonizers.
Today is it, y’all…the last day of school. It’s promotion! The end of this school year has taken so long to get here, it’s crazy. Yesterday, I was at school for 11 hours…standing or walking for most of it. I got home and iced both knees and the left heel and took pain meds when I went to bed. Both hands were fucked up from squeezing the water spray bottle at kids (it was hot out, and we had to line up and walk three times in promotion practice). Somehow I am not sunburnt, although I am probably dehydrated. I’m definitely exhausted. Today should be easier…do promotion, ONCE (not three times), then finish cleaning up the classroom (mostly, this is done), officially check out, and then go to the end-of-year party. Return home, collapse. Tomorrow, do 17 million things because I thought flying to SF to see the girlchild on Friday made sense when I originally planned it (it does; mostly). Yeah. Crazy. And in between all that, I manage to make art. Somehow.
I ironed Monday night…
I think that was the sunflower on the arm…and some other stuff. Last night, I did the heart…and some other stuff.
I have 2/3rds of the 700s ironed to fabric, but also about half of the 800s. So I’m calling it at 800? More than halfway, I think, but holy hell, this is taking a long time. I think I thought I’d be done before I left for SF. That’s not happening. Ah well. And it’s a short, busy trip, so taking stuff to trim is probably a mistake. These are hard to travel with. I’ve done it, but only when I would be staying in one place for a while. So it’ll wait until I get back.
I also made it to ceramics Monday and did some underglazing of the sgraffito arm.
I’m not done. I had done over an hour and needed to get home to cook dinner.
It isn’t dry on the neck and chin here…hard to deal with glazing vertically and NOT having it drip.
I’m using tiny needle-tipped squeeze bottles, so honestly, it’s the ability of my hands to continue squeezing that is sometimes the problem. I don’t think I’m going to get back there before I go to SF? I don’t know when if I am…maybe Thursday night? If I’m not dead on my feet after 17 doctors’ appointments, Zooms, and phone calls. We’ll see. Plus pilates.
Yesterday, back from 11 hours at school, icing one knee. They tolerate each other.
This is not a friendship unfortunately. There will be slapping, claws, or snapping. Or someone leaves. I think they both left, actually.
I actually am having issues with this, due to a lack of other sewing supply stores in San Diego…
I need some stuff for my daughter and I’m not sure where to get it. I hate having to order online for stuff that should be easy to find locally. That USED to be easy to find locally.
And this…
When I don’t create, I start to get a little wiggy. So I make things. Every day pretty much. It works.
OK. Ugh. I need to find a lunch to take with me, find a spare set of shoes for later, get to school and remind myself how to pronounce all those kids’ names…correctly (don’t panic!). Then sit in the sun for a couple of hours. Oh wait, find the nicer sun hat before I go. I’ve got this. I’d tell you how many years but I’m not sure I can count right now…this is my 24th end of school year, but my first year was only half a year. So my 24th anniversary of teaching will be in January 2027. Long time. Only my fourth (?) promotion…I was always a 7th-grade teacher until after COVID. It’s always a relief going into summer, even as I’m planning for August so I won’t be panicked when I get back. It’s all good. The things will all happen. It’ll be fine.
We’re in the last three days of school, kind of a chaotic mess of promotion practices and leftover class time with nothing real to do plus turning in computers and signing shirts and double award ceremonies. It’s a lot of being outside in the heat and managing hot kids and water and bathroom breaks, but still figuring out how to do the whole promotion lineup and process. Our AP who was helping to manage it just went out on maternity leave, which was not a surprise to those of us who know how this shit works, but apparently some people in charge were confused. I expect a lot of chaos, sweat, and bitchiness over the next few days until everyone is done with the promotion and checking out of our classrooms. I spent most of the weekend in semi-recovery, not really, because we’re not done yet, but I only had one school thing I had to do. Well, then two. And three. Because things. I think I lose my prep period every day this week, which only means, when do I pee and when do I eat? Always an issue.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to manage all the summer prep stuff both for school in August and for my trip, copying stuff for the new school year, organizing my meds before I go, all that fun stuff. My brain is a little explody.
Artwise, I got a lot of ironing done this weekend, about 6-7 hours…here’s Friday night…
Then Saturday, I spent a few hours during the day ironing and then picking fabrics for the main figure in this quilt…
That’s all the flesh tones laid out…from the 300s to the 800s. I pulled pieces from all of those bins, so I have no clue how much is ironed and how much I still have to go. Then I ironed all those pieces down Saturday night…
And then last night, I did another 90 minutes…
So the 300s are done and the 400s are about 2/3s done and the 500s? I’m not sure about the 500s…I think there’s only a few of them left? But a lot of the 600s need to be ironed…there’s a bunch of decorative stuff on the figure, plus the heart, that are all 600s…and some more of that in the 700s. So basically it’s chaos right now and I might have 5 or 600 pieces ironed down, but I’m not really sure. Give me a couple of evenings to iron and I’ll be better.
I finally made it to ceramics on Friday after school and started underglazing the sgraffito section.
A bunch of my underglazes are dried out and so I was trying to reconstitute them and do this at the same time.
It’s remarkably challenging to do this around an arm.
Hoping to be back there this afternoon. But my right eye is twitching, so that’s fun. And it’s hot, although when I went on Friday, the A/C was on. Here’s hoping it is today too. Bringing a lighter shirt and shoes just in case. The weekend was a series of texts about how many outfits we’d need each day to get through all the outdoor sweatiness at school. Award ceremony in the afternoon after being outside on and off all day? Pack the deodorant as well. So only three days, but three stressful days. I can do that. The Man was like, why don’t you already have a plan for this week? You’ve done it before…because it changes every year, man, that’s why. They don’t ever do it the same, so every year, we’re confused and discombobulated, and this year’s management is not helping.
A friend of mine visited the Grants Pass Museum of Art, where Stitchpunk is currently residing…here’s my piece Woman 2.0.
It’ll be there until the end of July; the Man and I plan to visit it on the way up to my residency.
She looks happy in that space. I’ve had work in this museum before, but it’s been a while.
The cats have been hot too.
Hi Luna.
OK. Promotion lineup, short version, where I explain the alphabet and their LAST names (they still think first names are the most important parts). Then IDK what for IDK how many periods (movie probably) until after lunch, when they turn in their Chromebooks. We have zero instructions for this and it’s happening today. Fun times. This is why the eye is twitching. We may or may not come back to that class period? Unknown. Then 6th period, definitely finishing Scorch Trials (movie), which is fine, because today is the last day I see 6th period. I think the last day I saw 1st period was Thursday? Not sure. It’s all nuts. No real staff meeting, which is weird…usually we have a little prep for next year, but whatever. I’m not in charge. Then ceramics and sweating and cooking and sweating some more and NOT GRADING ANYTHING BECAUSE I’M DONE (even though some kid just turned something in yesterday, ha ha ha). Then more ironing. In the heat. Because that makes sense. It’s good. Almost done. Almost there. Deep breaths. Tell the eye to behave.
Y’all, it’s the last Friday of this school year. I’m stumbling into it like a bull in a china shop, but I’m there. I finished grades last night and promptly fell over on the couch for a 20-minute nap of the dead. Drool and everything. Then I got up, ate dinner, and posted 38 egg drop videos (that’s what we did yesterday). UGH. I also took down 60+ posters (with help on that one), up and down the ladder. Additionally, after waking up from the short nap of the dead, I finally pulled everything out of this one pot where asparagus fern had taken over (I hate that stuff) and trimmed all the succulents back and tossed all the detritus off the side of the deck into the greenery bin, plus watered some. AND ironed. Like a boss. But I’m still dead tired this morning. And today? We go to the local amusement park (which is tiny, thank goodness) with like 300 kids or something. Not sure how many. A lot. On buses. Yeah. Fun times. I will ride a roller coaster though.
Ironed these Wednesday night…
It’s not going fast. It’s OK. I get on a roll eventually. I kind of got on one last night…
I got the suit on the fat white guy done, but not the rest of him. He’ll be pink. Very pink. Hopefully tonight.
I never posted my finished dye paintings. I had entered them in a show and all of them got rejected. I made them specifically for that show, for that group, because I’d been asked to stay away from nudity and profanity, so I did. One of them isn’t even political. It’s fine. I mean, you don’t get into all the shows…I totally get that, but I haven’t not been in one of this group’s shows since I joined it. Sigh. So they’re available for another show. Because they’re different than my usual work, though, I start to question if they’re any good, and it’s OK; I got over it. They are good. They just didn’t get into this show. It’s an abstract group and I’m not very abstract. But also, the venue curator originally said the show was going to be about Freedom and then there were all these things I wasn’t allowed to put in the show, so fuck that too.
Here’s Immediate Action Required…
And Thought Bomb…
And my favorite, A Mouthful…
(And that juror can go off into the sunset away from me).
Yeah this is totally where I am these days.
Seriously with that. All these stupid people in charge with their chests all puffed out…they remind me of dictatorships and their stupid rules, just so they can seem more important and in control. That’s not supposed to be US. It is us. Not by my choice.
OK. School. Cleaning up after egg drops. Maybe I’ll get help on that. Then 3+ hours at Belmont Park. Usually pretty chill. Need to remember to eat. Then back for two periods (I hate that part) where I put a movie on and clean my room while kids hopefully chill out. Then duty after school and hopefully the energy/brainpower for ceramics. THEN HOME TO NO SCHOOLWORK. That’s fucking nuts…although I’ve been trying to get a start on the copying/setup for next school year in August. I watched a video of a performance at the location of my artist residency and watched it over and over again (the landscape is amazing)…just want to BE there. I have a lot of shit to get through before I GET there. But it’s close. Four more days of school.
Hey. How is it only Wednesday? Tuesday was a whole week unto itself. I’m pretty sure I aged yesterday. The teaching part of the day was not the issue; the breaking-up-a-fight part of the day really threw me. No adult assistance until I’d managed the whole shitshow. Sigh. And they you go right back to teaching, even though your adrenaline is through the roof. Meanwhile, in response, my blood sugar is crashing all over the place. Pretty sure that’s abnormal. So it’s a good thing I wear this sensor that wakes me up three times in the night to tell me things are low. I’m so exhausted. We’re so close to the end. Egg drop is tomorrow. Today I need to get them through design and then not burning the place down. And try to finish grades. I’m getting there. Really. Just all the absent kids make it hard. Parents are already pulling kids…suspect they’ll all show up on promotion day after missing two weeks of school and wondering why they now have an F. Crazy parenting y’all. Anyway, six days. Only two with teaching. I can do it. So can they. No more fights. Please.
I did start ironing Monday night, finally.
It’s been a slow start…finished (mostly) the first 100 pieces last night…
I had to find three runs of five fabrics for three different flesh tones.
Crazy. But it’s a solid start and hopefully I’ll get a chunk done this weekend and then bang it out quickly after (oh wait, I’m buried in doctors’ appointments and then going to San Francisco right after we get out of school). It’ll be fine. I need this piece significantly completed (not done, but getting there) by the time I leave. Which I don’t think I’ll be able to do. We’ll see.
This is a kid who uses Google Translate a lot due to limited English skills, but has obviously transitioned into AI…and I don’t even know what he copied in, because this should be about space…and it’s most definitely not.
Also totally didn’t look at the resources. They were about space. I swear. Sometimes I wonder about these kids.
This is shit. Absolute hateful shit.
Deny their existence? I’d like to deny the existence of a few white males. Maybe more than a few.
You know, Merlin didn’t exist when I was in my 30s or I would have totally used it then. I definitely use it now.
Today. Sigh. It has to be chill. I need them to just design and chill. Let’s hope. Then pilates. Then more grade stuff. Maybe. I’m at this point where I can’t quite finish them until Thursday but they have to be done Friday. So I just need everything done before that. Then ironing. I’m looking forward to being done with grades and fully into ironing. Coming home and just making art.
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.
Kathy Nida 