I Killed Another Red Pen…

Oh my. Two early mornings in a row. I keep going to bed a little earlier, thinking it will help. It’s not. Of course, yesterday’s 11-hour work day did not help. I meant to leave work early, but we revised everything after school for today’s lesson, so I got home late and then sat right down and graded more of the science units. I finished the last class at 10:30 PM. Dinner was in there somewhere. I had help with that.

I killed one red pen…

Some kid shoved their homework (that they didn’t do) into the science unit. Good way to hide it, man! I’ll never see it in there. You probably think you turned it in! I did actually have kids turn it in blank. I guess it saves them in the moment, because I see 4 papers and don’t call them on it right then and there. I just hand it back with a zero on it though. So I’m not sure how that works.

I only got two balls done after dinner. Slow stitching. Or slow eating. Not sure which. There was a puppy though!

I think there’s only 3 balls left. Maybe tonight?

Kitten doesn’t really like anyone but me. They all scare her. Here’s boychild making friends with the use of catnip, rubbing it all over her face. She was a little drooly.

She does like the head scratches. My parents’ dog, Katie, is behaving better this year. Not as much cat chasing. Kitten has made it down the hallway without being chased. Guess Katie is getting old.

So yeah, at 10:30, I came in to iron, after packing up all the school stuff. I only got about 45 minutes in…too tired. I finished the belly and the breasts and that other hand, plus the neck.

There’s about 120 pieces left. One night if I weren’t doing other stuff. I might get it done tonight…it’s possible. I also have to find two quilts that need to be delivered on Saturday, though…make sure I have the hanging hardware, iron them, dehair them, roll them up. Meanwhile, my doctor is harassing me for more blood tests. I told her the weekend (I seriously can’t handle that after school right now…I didn’t even leave early enough yesterday…or Tuesday…or Monday even.). I will do it Saturday. Along with everything else I can’t get done right now.

Deep breaths. Caffeine. The patience of a saint (I don’t have that last one. Wish me luck.).

Crawling the Walls*

As I’ve been watching the Kavanaugh confirmation maelstrom erupt all over the news, all I can think is why? Why would we want anyone in that position who (a) doesn’t have the back of half the population of the country (seriously not thinking of women’s rights or needs, from what I’ve seen, unless you need me to be pregnant with no rights to my uterus) or (b) where there is any hint at all of sexual impropriety (Clarence Thomas, we’re talking to you right now). I keep hearing that it’s “normal” for boys to do stupid sex things when they’re kids…or even men, as adults…and it’s not normal. It’s not OK. It’s not in their genes. It’s not caused by testosterone. As one woman said, there are plenty of people in jail who did something stupid when they were 17…they just weren’t rich enough to get out of it.

As a woman, I’ve lived through my share of sexual crap, harassment and worse, all perpetrated by men. And my goal is that my daughter never ever has to go through that. She already has…both here in the US and in Madagascar. It’s everywhere. It’s one thing to fear for yourself, walking in the dark, keys between your fingers, poised to hit 911 on your phone. It’s an entirely different thing to think about your daughter in the same situation. Give up on him. Wait until after the midterm elections. The hypocrisy in the current administration is driving me nuts. There should be no question about this. Get Kavanaugh out.

It’s actually significantly hard to watch all this. It reminds me of how little women are regarded right now in this country…and that’s sad.

So all that’s in my head.

Yesterday, we walked the dogs. At one point, the little one got it into his head that he wanted to wander off the main trail into coyote country, so the boychild let him.

He kept claiming we were on a truck trail. Uh huh. Right. Well, here, we are back on the main road. Turns out the puppy was trying out a shortcut.

He cut a 1/4 mile out of our regular walk. He said he was tired. Probably we all have ticks now too.

I graded for a long while. I have a lot to get done and not much time in which to do it. But a little at a time works.

I only ironed for 45 minutes last night, but it was enough to find and cut out all these little leaves…

Plus do the other arm (minus the hand)…and then start on the belly.

Midnight came and told me to go to bed. Wow. I miss Midnight (the cat). Still. A year later. Anyway, Midnight the TIME told me to go to bed.

I paused…I’m watching Luther…but was fascinated by this picture when I paused…

Off to bed, and there’s Katie, being a dork. Itchy nose, I think.

I helped her with that. Oh yeah, and I forgot I packed a quilt last night to ship to a show this morning. Really, I got a lot of stuff done…it just wasn’t all in the artistic-making realm. Art has to get shipped. Science has to get graded. Dogs have to be walked. Making art is sort of the ugly stepchild…it goes last, gets the smallest helping sometimes.

OK, brain…you are off this morning. Still tired. Going to go to UPS now and then school and then tutoring…and then to watch another artist explain herself tonight. And hopefully by the end of the week, I’ll see my country screw its head back on. That would be a change from the last year and a half or so.

*Dave Gross, Crawling the Walls

Needing the Art…

Well I worked a lot this weekend. I got a lot done. It never feels like enough, because there is always more, but it was a good two days. Until your SIL asks what you did all weekend, and all you can say is “graded shit.” Well. It needed to be done. The next few weeks are busy…more for my date-night companion than for me, but mine will translate into more grades (progress reports are due next week) and hopefully artmaking. I carved out time yesterday for a significant chunk of that. At some point, I’ve done enough grading and I need to do something else.

One thing we did (well, the boychild did) was replace the wireless card in my computer, trying to solve the internet problem in here.

Spiders had been in there. Weird. The plus is that when I have internet, it is now much faster. The minus is that I am still losing the internet…but only on the computer. The laptop and other devices work fine in here. Sigh. So that’s still a problem that needs solving.

I did do some work in the morning, schoolwork, but after 8 or so hours on Saturday of that, I wasn’t giving up the rest of the day. I started ironing around 4:30 PM…

This one shouldn’t take long…

I took a break to make this week’s lunches and start dinner prep. It was group cook night…make your own damn pizza. Although I did the dough prep.

So during dinner’s TV watching hour, I did more of these. I didn’t get much done last week on this.

I think I still have 7 of them left. SLOOOWWW. I remember predicting the end of July. Maybe the end of September? That’s a little less than a week away. I only work on it when we’re both home and eat together, so last week, I think that was one night? Maybe 2?

Anyway, after that, it was back to the ironing. These are all the 100s, in stacks by 10s.

I started by ironing the fruit and the fruit bowl separate and then putting them where they belong…

Then working on the legs…back hip and roots first, then back foot…

Simba was with me for a while…

Here’s the whole front leg done…

And then the heart and starting on the front arm.

The bird and nest are done, but I quit before ironing all the leaves on. It was just about midnight at that point.

And I would have had to lay out all the 300s and cut out a lot of the leaves (they’re small) before being able to iron them down. I do try to head to bed around midnight. So I ironed for 3 1/2 hours and I’m more than halfway done. I won’t get that much time tonight, but I will get some. We’ll see how well I do, but I would hope to be stitching down by Wednesday or so. I don’t have any night meetings this week until Friday, so that’s a plus. I do need to grade a lot still though…hopefully mostly at school. We’ll see.

I did not get the copyediting job, so that’s actually kind of a plus. He wasn’t the most accurate guy when it came to communication. Turns out he wasn’t just ignoring me for days…he was getting other quotes, which I don’t mind…but TELL me you received my bid and then TELL me why you aren’t answering. Geez. Professionalism. Meanwhile, I have students begging me to grade their late work (I do that once a week and I did it Sunday morning) and demanding that I change their grade because I didn’t tell them about the back page (I did) and kids losing their science folders in their backpacks (yikes!). Sigh. This job carries a significant amount of frustration, true. That’s why I love (and need) the art so much. Hell, I’d need the art no matter what I did for a living.

All That Pressure Got You Down*

It’s one of those Saturdays where the to-do list looms large on the biggest post-it note you can find, but all I want to do is finish ironing fabric for the new quilt and maybe read my book. Yeah. Well. Welcome to adulthood. First on the list is trying to use up all the food my parents left here before absconding to Spain and Portugal for a million days. Luckily, the boychild is here and he has some of those Depression-era genes in him that allow one to use up ALL the foods in one or two meals. Except he doesn’t like lettuce, I think. So I’m in charge of eating lettuce. MMMM. Lettuce. Perhaps my compost pile needs some help.

What is on said to-do list? Well, grading, of course, and tending to money issues and the compost pile and making sure art paperwork is done or ready or shipped or something. Prepping for school for the next few weeks…I have a kid who will be gone for over a week and will miss every measurement lab we do, but still needs independent work and won’t have internet. And I don’t have a textbook. So there’s that. Fun stuff for a weekend. I’m on Day 3 of uncomfortable headaches that eventually go away. Ugh. Oh yeah, I also need to go shopping for small plastic animals that will fit in a graduated cylinder, but I forgot to bring the damn thing home, so I’ll have to go GET it, and then go shopping. I also think the Golden Retriever might be showing signs of diabetes, so I should set an appointment for her. Ugh. Meanwhile, where my diabetes numbers were looking good last week, this week they have sucked and besides being totally stressed out and exhausted, I’m not sure what was different. Damn pancreas. Behave, you bastard.

My goal is to kick a lot of the to-do list hard this morning and then find time to iron later today. And maybe even go for a walk. Although I won’t have any dogs. That might be better? I don’t know.

My office floor last night…only two…the other one is outside the door. I was grading before this. I made it through one small period and half of my most challenging period…it’s big and full of kids who are not great at English yet, so their writing is difficult to grade. Trying to be fair and helpful but realizing they can’t figure out a run-on sentence yet (I’m reteaching that on Monday…)…it just makes it hard to grade. I’ll finish today.

One cat hiding behind the monitor. I was doing work stuff on here. I think. And ordering stuff. Very important stuff, like the salmon oil for the old lady dog’s food, those things for my tooth flosser, and some sort of card for my computer that might help with the fucking slow internet. I still need to contact Tivo, but their call center is in the Philippines, and there’s a typhoon. Might be hard to get through. I know if I were in the Philippines and there were evacuations, the last thing I would wanna do is talk to some entitled white chick in California about why her Tivo won’t connect.

I did eventually iron stuff. I was happy to iron stuff. It makes me feel less stressed to iron stuff. Picking colors pushes all the other stressful stuff out of my head. Ahhhh…look at all the pretty fabrics.

OK, it actually looks pretty chaotic now because I didn’t organize by color. My brain likes rainbow order. I can’t explain it.

A box full of pieces! I’m getting closer to done. I probably have about 100 pieces left to iron. I could easily kick that out today. That’s the plan too.

Get it done.

So the boychild was hacking things again. There’s a plan to get the overgrown jungle under control.

OMG. It’s a fence I haven’t seen in years. I’m not really sure what will happen to all this space once he’s done hacking at it. It might just be easier to find the little dog out there. I do feel sorry for the bunnies though. It’s gonna get scary for them.

Finally I managed to get a photo of all three dogs in one space. Not moving. This is harder than you might think. They know how to sit, but they are stubborn assholes and won’t listen.

We haven’t tried walking all three yet. I used to do it by myself. It’s doable. Pain in the butt, but doable.

OK, so grading and small-plastic-animal purchases and cleaning up and compost pile and hopefully ironing and who knows what else, but maybe Netflix could stop recommending YA movies that make me cry because I remember being that awkward and having so little confidence back then and it’s so much easier now to exist. Although I could do without the bills and taxes and the horrendous number of meetings I had to add to my schedule the other day (30. I had to add 30 meetings to my schedule.). Yeah. And I need a walk. A long one. With headphones. Maybe dogs.

*Chic, Le Freak

The Day Is in My Sight*

Good morning head. You appear to be achey this morning. I don’t know why. I mean, sure, you’re not getting enough sleep, and obvi, you’re tired, you want a nap and it’s 7 AM, so apparently you slept, so maybe the weather is seesawing around, because that’s usually what causes the head to ache so, but maybe it was the quiet chaos of yesterday (was it quiet? was it?) pounding through whatever you were dreaming last night, but wow. No need to be so bangy. Seriously. I don’t have the brain power today for pounding headache plus middle school plus back-to-school night.

Oh yeah, I did have a union meeting yesterday, which starts a host of complicated things I have to do today on top of my regular job…it’s OK, though, because I’m stuck at school until 6 PM, and I have an hour and a half before I have to deal with parents, so hopefully I can bang some union duties out in that time…in time with the banging of my head. Or pass them on to some other rep who didn’t show up to the meeting last night.

I didn’t go to book club. I haven’t finished the book. I was exhausted when I got home. Didn’t happen. No friendly gathering. Oh well…because we got Katie! Katie is my parents’ dog and her full name is Katie Girl, but no one calls her that but my parents, maybe only my mom, because that’s too many words for a dog, too many syllables. Katie is much skinnier now because she is on a green bean and carrot diet, which luckily she enjoys. Well, she enjoys all foods, so there’s that. She’s also constantly rolling over on her back, either for pets, or because she’s the most submissive animal in the house…or both. Calli steadfastly ignores her until she gets pets, and then Calli gets jealous and wants attention.

ON HER BACK…

That face will be here until November, so get used to it. Her fur will also be here until November. Someone should vacuum now so we have a baseline. (Headache is minorly responding to meds and tea…but not well enough. There might be an invisible vise on my skull…I just can’t tell.)

Anyway, after a long meeting and dealing with Katie’s arrival with all her shit and the instructions that came along with all that, and dinner and then the Tivo is acting up so there was that and I was grading essays (short ones, thank god) for a while until I couldn’t stand it, well, I didn’t get into my office until well after 10 PM. There’s really not that many pieces in this quilt, but I need to have the mental energy to pick things. And that is currently problematic.

My brain just got stuck on that word. It said it, and then some part of it argued for pragmatic instead, but no, that wasn’t right, but sure enough, some other part said it louder, PRAGMATIC, and then my brain (which isn’t very awake and is struggling with the poundiness of headache) LOST the word problematic and all that was left was pragmatic. So my fingers stopped typing for about 30 seconds until I could find it again and yell it back at that part of the brain that is always trying to interject with inappropriate words. More so as I age, dammit. At some point, there’ll be a damn coup up in there and I won’t get any of the words right. It’s coming. Definitely problematic, you asshole.

Anyway, I ironed for less than an hour, and honestly, I spent most of that time staring at the drawing, trying to color it in using the same brain that just lost a word for 30 seconds. At the end of the day too. So it was slow and mostly painful. But I added some colors of the rainbow for her hair, and that was good.

I didn’t get much done though. I wanted more. I hope for tonight, but I also know I need to put a label on a quilt, and I won’t even get home until after 6, and no one but me is cooking dinner for me. Which might be simpler. Who knows? Maybe I’ll read my book (and fall asleep on the couch because nothing survives back-to-school night). But I’m still hoping to be done ironing by the weekend. It could happen. I just need to be way more awake than I have been.

Katie will be waiting for me when I get home. There’s that.

*Violent Femmes, Add It Up

I’m Not Expecting to Grow Flowers in a Desert*

I was more successful at making art last night. Despite the long day, I managed almost 2 1/2 hours on the quilt…mostly dealing with the fleshy bits. But before that, there was dinner and a little bit of this. Remember last week when I said it would probably only take 5 more nights to finish these? Except I wasn’t home for the next 4? Well here’s where I finally worked on it…

Still not done. Working on it.

Then I came in here and dealt with paperwork for one show, prepped it all and sent it off. I still need to do another one, but I need to buy a shipping box, which means I need to get to the place that sells them during their opening hours, which means I need to NOT be at school during their opening hours. This is more difficult than you might think. I’m going to try this morning, I think.

Then I finally started ironing. I pretty much started with the flesh run…6 fabrics from light to dark. Which means crawling around on the ground under the sewing table, because that’s where all the flesh colors are. I mean, something has to go under there…it’s not like there’s colors I don’t use so I can hide them away. I realize when I’m 70 that crawling under the table might be an issue, but at 51, I’m still doing it.

So I ironed all of those down. It takes about an hour to pick them, and this is a smaller, less complicated figure than most…and then an hour to iron them. Here’s one of the colors…

I do try to fit them together in such a way that I’m wasting the least amount of fabric. When people think that I am only right-brained, I show them things like this and explain why, and they raise their eyebrows right into their hairline. It’s the same when I tell them about numbering over 2000 pieces.

It’s a process. It works for me. Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…not a lot of color yet.

It will come. She’s decorated. It’s part of the poem. So there will be color all over her. I just haven’t gotten to that part yet.

Here’s the pile of stuff to be cut out.

The real question is how much do I have left. I don’t know…because when I pulled the flesh pieces, I pulled from the 100s, 200s, 300s, and 400s…and this is what’s left.

This is the hair, the decorations, the tree, the eyeballs, the lungs, the heart…all the non-fleshy bits. They all still need ironing. I guess that’s tonight…after yet another meeting. I’m supposed to have book club, but I don’t think that’s happening. I haven’t given up on it yet…but I’m pretty sure I’m not going. Sigh. It’s OK…I haven’t finished the book anyway. I will…just not this week, not with meetings and crap every night until I collapse on Friday.

Meanwhile, here’s Satchemo, lying on my lunch bag. He likes the kitchen counter. It has the potential for foods.

Here’s the poster/announcement for the Extreme Fiber Art show I’m in right now in Springfield, Missouri, great idea of Pam Rubert. My quilt Untied is in the bottom center, next to Susan Shie’s work.

Pretty cool show…

And then I saw this yesterday…Richard Scarry was my favorite when I was a kid. I blame him for my artistic need to fill the page…OVERFILL the page. Him and Dr. Suess…way too much influence, if you ask me.

Ruben Bolling is apparently a pseudonym for Ken Fisher, a cartoonist, the author of Tom the Dancing Bug. “His pieces demonstrate concern about the power of large corporations and satirize the way government has been corrupted by money.” According to Wikipedia anyway. Well, I appreciate his comic anyway. You can go check out some of his other comics here. I could spend some significant time over there, but I need to go buy a box. Before school.

*Big Country, In a Big Country

With All These Things That I’ve Done*

I just completely freaked out because I was checking all my art exhibit entries for the last few weeks, looking to see what notification would be next, and I noticed a double entry. That’s incredibly unprofessional. My stomach dropped. I never do that shit (OK I accidentally did it once a million years ago when the kids were small and I was newly divorced, but luckily, I only got into one of the shows I double entered…which is how the odds go anyway, usually even lower odds than that, honestly). But it’s OK. One of them is only in print, so I don’t send the piece anywhere. Deep breaths. Panic over.

I did get into the Power of Women show that will be at IQF Houston, so that’s good, since I made the piece for that show…not that I wouldn’t have been able to show it elsewhere, though. God knows I do that often enough…here’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman…

Lots going on in there. Wish I could go to Houston with her, but I’ll be in Boston the following weekend and Chandler, Arizona, the weekend after. Seems like enough travel. Plus Houston is pretty expensive. So she’ll travel without me, like most of them do.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at some of the people who friended me on Facebook recently. I do actually scroll through their feeds and make a decision, like if there’s nothing there, I assume they’re a bot or a Russian spy, so I don’t accept. And if their politics are out there, well and truly not gonna get along with mine, I don’t accept. I’m not always sure why they’re friending me, except maybe to get me to like their store or their quilting or whatever, but then you’re posting pictures of guns and kneejerk Trumpisms, and I’m like, I don’t want to see that on my feed, plus you’re gonna hate my vulvas, so why are you clicking friend again? Such a complicated world.

Anyway, that’s two shows that have notified in the last week, and both were acceptances. Good odds so far, but it’s guaranteed they won’t all be.

I had a long work day yesterday, and all I wanted to do when I got home was walk the furry beasts, so we grabbed them and ran. Well, only a little running, just to see how tired the little one was after 2 1/2 miles.

It was a lovely temperature. We went down this hill we never go down, but then we had to go up it as well. Funny, the picture does not convey the real upness of this hill at all.

Then I made dinner and did some stuff to get my printer to work again, which involved a cable, because our internet is super bad at the moment, or maybe it’s just mine on the computer, but the (previously wireless but now wired) printer was refusing to work. And I needed it to work. So it was late when I started ironing.

Cherries…I started with cherries…

And then I did the rest of the fruit bowl, plus ironed the dirt from yesterday.

I didn’t get far. I was tired. I didn’t sleep well the night before, plus I walked a lot. So that makes it hard to want to stand and pick out fabrics for a long time late at night. Here’s the rest of the 100s, laid out, ready for me to iron tonight.

I get into the fleshy bits pretty early on in this quilt. She has a lot of decoration on her, so I have to decide if that will be in flesh color or different colors…probably the latter. This is not a political statement quilt…just a reaction to a poem I wrote years ago. It’s a nice break from the last quilt, which was difficult and in my head in a much different way. Last year at this time, I was doing the gun quilt. That was really difficult.

Anyway, art…make it often and in spite of all the other crap.

*The Killers, All These Things That I’ve Done

Hot Funk, Cool Punk, Even If It’s Old Junk*

It was a busy crazy weekend. Quilts were delivered…always good. Went to a show. Pix below. Made some art, watched a movie, graded stuff, dealt with the death of a phone (well, not totally dealt with yet, but hopefully today)…all that. Didn’t sleep well last night. Hours of tossing and turning and hot flashes and busy brain. Feel pretty braindead this morning. Lack of sleep is not the best way to start a week, unfortunately.

So we drove up to the Boehm Gallery at Palomar College for the show That’s What She Said, here with 3 other FIG members under Helen Redman’s work (the amazing woman in the pink scarf). This is here to remind me to put it on the FIG page as well.

Helen does some amazing work on wood and paper…

Michelle Montjoy also has work in this show…

There was no statement for this one, a bunch of marks covering a pillowcase, counting up what? I wanted to know.

As a mom and a teacher, living today, right now…this was particularly good.

There were many more.

Also in the show was the Sien Collective, the collaborative work of artists Meagan Shein and Siobhan Arnold. I particularly liked the cyanotypes…this is a uterus on legs.

And it was as tall as I am. This one is much smaller and unfortunately photographed crooked (there was an issue with lighting)…but very cool.

Meanwhile, in Springfield, Missouri, the Extreme Fibers show was opening at IdeaXfactory, with two of my pieces and some very interesting works by other artists. The pieces in the back are Fruits of Nature and Storybook Paper Dress by Hannah Klein. Mine is In Deep.

Then my work Untied, with Big Head by Shen Chen Hsieh, and the dress again in the background by Klein.

It’s always cool to be invited to be in shows, especially when the work is so varied.

Saturday night, we watched Annihilation, and I cut out the whole quilt. There’s the book I’m reading…book club is Wednesday, and I probably won’t be able to go, but I’m trying to read anyway.

Sunday was a chaotic day. Then we went to the parentals for dinner. Simba has to be on a leash, because he takes off into the upper regions of the yard and can’t be retrieved. In the far distance, my dad is explaining all the sprinkler issues to Calli…or maybe to the boychild.

Yes, I was grading. It needed to get done. Then we came home and I did some stuff for school…and then set up for sorting Wonder Under, which I’d really wanted to get done way earlier.

Sorted!

Then back to the office, where I had to clean up from the last quilt. Lots of trying to organize by color. There’s definitely a space issue in here…always has been.

It took about an hour to clean everything up. It was late then…but I did start picking the base fabrics…plus the background, that blue at the bottom.

I didn’t iron all of them though, because it was after midnight and a school night, so that means it’s bed time.

I have lots more to do on this, obviously. All week? Well, all week, I have meeting after meeting after meeting. Plus back-to-school night, which is exhausting. So I’m going to get some of it done, but I suspect it will take me all week to get ironed. Maybe not. Cutting out by the weekend? Sure. That’s doable, I think.

Kitten’s not sure…

Meanwhile, I need to go function. Unlike my printer at the moment. It’s not functioning. Or my brain. Annoying. The music is trying to wake me up, but the boychild says it’s fully apparent that I am not functioning well. Only half a cup of tea in me. Definitely still asleep.

*Billy Joel, It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me

It’s Hard to Walk Away…

OK, so I didn’t sleep much. Art brain on a roll. I said I wanted to be done with the ironing before we left for the mountains. I ironed in the afternoon…put all those single leaves together.

I ironed the bird on her head…

And a lamp. Of course…because we’re outside…

Girlchild keeps the puppy happy, as always…

Then we headed out to dinner with the kids’ cousin from the UK, on a US tour. I think the last time I saw him, he was 5…so that was cool.

Then I came home and ironed some more…the last figure!

I didn’t think about race when I originally drew the first drawing, but I wanted to have a diverse group in the finished quilt, so I made sure I picked a variety of color ranges. I really like how this woman turned out.

And the inevitable cat…

More single leaves getting put together.

So it was after 11 PM before I started ironing the whole thing down. Normally I’d iron a piece this big on the entryway floor, but it wasn’t clean, plus it’s horrendously hot in there right now. So I fussed with it on the ironing board until I got all the bits in place.

The two larger figures got ironed down at the top, and then every leaf got put on individually.

Not a quick process.

So there she is. I need to do a steam iron of it before I start stitching down. That’ll be Wednesday.

It’s huge, by the way. It took 25 hours and 38 minutes to iron together. Yikes! There’s a lot going on in this quilt. The statement will be fun to write.

Meanwhile, the boychild is currently driving me toward Lake Arrowhead, where we’re going to hang out for a few days while the girlchild is here, before school starts. She’s in the other car with her dad and the dogs. I’ve got a couple of quilts that need bindings sewn on…I have 2 or 3 drawings that need development. Plus hanging out and trying to not get sunburnt. Wish me luck. It’s hard to walk away from the quilt at this stage, but I did meet my goal, so that’s a plus.

Just the Way I’m Supposed to Be*

This morning has involved maggot collection, pool filling, trying to persuade the cat to catch and eat the fly that is harassing me, and my milk gone bad, so no breakfast tea. I’m not happy about that last one. My office is a disaster, there’s too much on my to-do list, and somehow I’m leaving town in the middle of all that. A bit more panicky than I like, honestly. At some point, life becomes normal again, with the day job and the night job and all the errands in between. But not this week.

I got a couple of hours of ironing in yesterday…not as much as I wanted, unfortunately. Too tired. Awww. Puppy…

Girlchild came home in the morning and the dogs were very happy.

So then she went to lunch with a friend and I got this thing ironed…

I still have a huge pile of leaves that need to be ironed together, but won’t be ironed down until I have the background ready to go.

So then I started on the second-to-last of the 9 or so figures in this quilt. This is one of the original figures from the drawing I did back in 2012 or so, with arms turning into tree branches.

It’s hot still. Not as hot as it’s been, but the animals have been suffering as much as I have.

So I drew this back in 2012 and it wasn’t meant at the time to be Trump, but it certainly looks like him.

We wanted to go see some art last night, which we did, but mostly we sat and watched my friend Kathleen Mitchell and her studio guys do some glasswork. Freakin’ amazing and fascinating to watch.

Yes, we went somewhere hot on a hot day…but like I said, it was amazing to watch them work.

And the outside felt much cooler after hanging out in there.

We had a drink around the corner, where another Gloria Muriel mural dominated the place.

We had gone in there to wait out the end of an artist talk, so we could go see the art in that gallery without disrupting the talk. The work was by Dave Persué and included paintings for a book he published that he wrote with his mom.

I bought the book, yeah. I really liked the paintings and the style. The exhibit is The Origins of BunnyKitty: The Book Paintings, and it’s at the Athenaeum Art Center in the Bread & Salt Building in Barrio Logan (1955 Julian Avenue, San Diego 92113) through September 13. Kathleen’s glass studio is down there too. We meant to go to the rest of the Barrio Art Crawl, but got waylaid by glass fascination.

I did finish this before we left, but didn’t take a picture of the whole thing until later. I wanted to iron more, but I was just too tired by the time we ate and got home.

I’m hoping to get more ironing done today, but I know we have a dinner thing tonight as well, so that will probably cause an issue with artmaking. Plus we’re leaving early tomorrow morning for Arrowhead. Schedules are always adapting. I’m doing what I can. As always.

*Sara Bareilles, Gravity