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

Master the Weekend

Successful day yesterday. I can’t say I did everything, but I did lots of things. Although I did not wrap the girlchild’s present…because it wasn’t on my list. Everything needs to be on the list. I didn’t find the quilt I need to ship (it’s OK, I didn’t even try). I didn’t copyedit. I did go to school, dump a bunch of stuff off there, set up my technology so the interlopers can teach their class next Friday, move all the stuff off the counters that’s supposed to be on the floor, find the table I like that they don’t like and switch it out with the other crappy table they tried to force on me, and GEEZ this was the worst part, after having to sit through an hour’s worth of videos and quizzes about integrated pest management (is it more important than bloodborne pathogens, angry parents, and court-mandated reporter rules?), I found this in my classroom…

Someone (custodial) left food containers in that trash can. Hence line of ants. Did they not watch the video? I like never ever leave food leftovers IN my classroom…I always put them outside. Sigh. Yes, I aced the IPM quiz. Oh wait, I missed one because there was a timing component or something and I didn’t watch carefully enough to memorize that. But I know how to keep ants out of my damn classroom. So ironic.

I came home and watered the dog.

This summer has been rough on all of us.

Then I ironed for a while. I WANT TO BE DONE. I don’t know why. There’s just another stage after this one that requires me to sit in this hot little room. Except when I’m sewing, I get TWO fans on me. I can’t use the other fan while ironing because it will blow everything away. I’ve already lost an eyeball (a fabric eyeball, chill out) and found some finger wrinkles attached to my shirt due to the breeze (ah, the breeze, when it happens, it’s delightful).

So I ironed this hand. Ten years from now, people will ask me why that hand is orange. I think most of you know why.

Then the parents, coming for their baby.

This…

On the next thing I was ironing were a lot of these little pieces. Turns out I didn’t need all of them. That happens sometimes.

Birth control pills…guess she will be short three of them.They won’t fit.

Let’s hope she’s not really depending on them to keep her unpregnant.

Then off to gaming. No, we’re not done with the game yet. We think every time we meet that it will be the last time, and it’s not. It’s OK. We can handle it. I sewed more embellishment on the blue flowers and worked on the hippo some more.

The hippo has nostrils and eyeballs, but I’m still working on his ears. Plus you can see the additional flower embellishment. I still need to stitch around them with that hellish thread that ravels like a bitch. Rayons are not my friends.

And then I managed to continue ironing after gaming, mostly because I drank more water than wine. That has been true all summer. So I ironed that hand and birth control pack on the left and you can see the ICE steal on the right.

Tiny things like this take a long time to put together. And it needs outlining.

Then my last goal for yesterday was to get this momma ironed down…

She’s got some tiny little eyeballs. The iris on the right is the one that has disappeared…I just cut another one.

Not ironing the baby down yet.

You can see where she goes on the left.

So all I have left is about 500 pieces (I’m in the mid 1300s) and two large figures, each of which has about 25 loose leaves with stems that will have to be ironed down to the background one at a time. I could iron the base down to the bottom of this piece, but I suspect it will be easier if I iron the two women together, attach them at the top, where they belong, and THEN try to get the base on, iron the whole thing down to the background, and then do all the leaves. It sounds like a lot because it is.

I’m leaving to pick up the girlchild in about 30 minutes. I have about 18 1/2 hours into the ironing. I probably have at least 7 hours to go. I will probably get some of it done today and tomorrow…hopefully ALL of it, but I can’t guarantee that because plans need to be flexible. I am, as always, panicking about time. 15 hours to stitch down? Maybe only 10? The other big quilt I finished last year was only 7 hours of stitch down. So maybe 10. Then a couple hours to sandwich and pinbaste it. Probably 20 hours to quilt it and another 8 or so to bind it. 45 hours left. Plus the 7 of ironing. That’s gonna be tight. Deep breaths. I can do it. This quilt is going to be epic once it’s done. Until then, my stress about it will be epic. Laughing at that. OK, gotta make more tea. I woke up early with a massive headache. Probably weather related. Oh well. I’ve taken meds and drunk the first cup of tea. I’m ready to see my kid and then master the weekend and whatever comes after.

She’s over by the Corner*

I’ve started trying to train myself to get up earlier, as the beginning of the new school year veers dangerously close to my summer brain. I have a ton of stuff to get done today, and lying around half asleep is not helpful…although standing around half asleep is pretty painful. Normally I would try to avoid school until the day I was actually required to go back, but because the district-wide conference is going to be AT my school and IN my classroom, I have to go back today to figure out how fucked up my room is after summer school was in there. I have stuff here at home that has to get into my classroom. I have stuff there that has to be hidden or moved. I’m going to try to organize stuff a little bit, but that’s hard to do when you know total strangers will be in your room all day and they might not respect your space as much as you’d like them to.

I still need to finish copyediting and cleaning the girlchild’s room out, and I’m really really trying to get the ironing done. My friend has gone back to her life in Northern California, although we did get out and about yesterday before she left…plus now I have a fridge full of Indian food…yum.

First, a gratuitous picture of Kitten with her favorite petting instrument.

My friend stayed at the Sycuan Golf Resort and what I loved about their free water was that it didn’t just say WATER…it’s MY WATER. Interesting thought living here in California, where water is sacred and Nestle owns a shitload of it. OWNS water. Sigh.

ENYA HA Nestle.

We headed out to Balboa Park…we didn’t have a ton of time, but we wandered around…like you do.

It was bloody hot there too.

We went to the Timken Museum to see my friend Bhavna Mehta’s newest work, Leela, who is made completely out of paper.

This piece is in response to that painting you can see across the room…

There’s a lot of amazing construction and vivid color going on in this piece. I love that it’s not a direct representation of the painting. Bhavna talks more about her interpretations in the catalog, also available at the museum. I really enjoyed taking all of it in and thinking about how we portrayed women in the past and how we can portray them now. Leela has power in her stance.

Of course, I lost my friend to the docent at one point…

Take an artist to an art museum day. I tolerate docents. They are nice people. I just like to figure stuff out more than be told their version of it. This was the second docent that tried to track us down. My friend likes docents more than I do.

So the rest of the day was sort of kamikazing around to meet with people and sew…I finished the Palestrina knots around the hippo, but then once again forgot to photograph or bring the rest of the hippo instructions from March (they’re in the notebook!), so I couldn’t finish the June blocks. Tonight!

So I started working on July’s blocks, which are the three in the middle. I did the stems and leaves, and then started on the blue flowers.

It’ll be a while before I get July done. Then August is the one with the tree and the two down at the bottom right. I have September sewn down and October cut out, but I think it will be easier to embellish September first before I sew October into the mess, because then I think I’m sewing most of the quilt together. Because working on wool things when it is 100 degrees out makes sense. And once it gets big, it’s hard to cart around to gaming or anywhere else with limited table space. The piece I’m working on here is already a bit too big.

Remember how I was going to be done with embellishing the circles on the bird quilt by the end of July? Didn’t happen. I have been working on the art quilt nonstop. Plus did I quilt the other wool quilt that was on my list at the beginning of the summer? Fuck no, I didn’t. I got one unfinished non-art quilt done this summer. Better than nothing.

So I started ironing around 10 PM, after my evening meeting and eating dinner. I had a couple of graffiti walls to put together.

Not too complicated. Lots of pieces, but pretty easy to put together. The hardest part was cutting out all the holes in the little letters.

The other wall, plus a talk bubble for the figure below the wall.

I’ve been putting sections together and then ironing the big sections together when it makes sense. So I did the hill behind this woman…

Ironed her into her space…then the walls to the sides. Obviously, I have two things that need to go into the hill where the big white spots are. The big piece I showed before will get ironed to the bottom of this.

This is not the first time I’ve put a woman holding the Earth into one of my quilts.

This is Watch Me Go from 2010…

So this new woman is about immigration though…I really feel like we need to look at the world as one place for all the people. Trying to build walls or claim that there is One Right Way to get into this country is kind of idiotic. Read the history of immigration here in the US and then realize that your ancestors mostly likely immigrated here for similar reasons to those trying to get here now. Why is their plight not as important as your ancestors’? Anyway…so she holds the world in her hands.

I have about 15 and a half hours of ironing done and I am finally past the halfway mark. I’m in the mid-1100s. So there’s another 700+ pieces to go…probably 9 hours of ironing, easily.

I’m hoping to get the school stuff and bedroom stuff done early enough that I can iron for a few hours this afternoon before gaming. Sometimes gaming is long and I don’t get much done afterwards…but maybe I will get some done tonight. Then the girlchild arrives tomorrow morning, so I can’t predict what will happen. Well, except for squealing and very excited dogs. That will definitely happen.

*The Velvet Underground, Foggy Notion

Work Harder…

First of all, happy 21st birthday to the girlchild…now she can do all the things.

Including rocking her birthday 3000 miles away with poison ivy. She’ll be home Saturday. Miss her.

My friend who is visiting this week has been around for a while…she used to drag her kids down here too, since they’re all about the same age as mine. Here they all are 13 years ago (4 of them are now adults, 3 are in college) at Balboa Park, where my friend and I are heading off to this morning. It’s easier now that it’s just the two of us figuring out what to do…

Really, the faces in this photo are cracking me up.

Yesterday, we rode the Hornblower cruise around San Diego Bay. I’ve lived here how long and I’ve never done that? The Star of India and another replica of some old boat…

It was definitely cooler there than out here in East Country.

Fat sea lions…

The Coronado Bridge…

San Diego has a lot of military crap.

I’ve photographed this sculpture before. Apparently there is a numbers version of it at MIT, where my friend’s oldest daughter is.

Small world.

This sign. Punctuation.

I started ironing late. We had dinner with the parents and then I have to do these online classes for school, so I did three of the four yesterday afternoon. It’s too hot.

Face in stages…

She goes in the volcano in the middle…but I think I need the background behind her ironed first. Direct response to the dumbassery that is immigration at the moment.

It makes me sick to my stomach to think of kids not seeing their parents for long periods of time because of our government’s stupidity. Or never. I can’t even fathom that. It’s so wrong.

I forgot to add this one’s viewpoint, so I did that last night too.

I only got two hours in last night. I’m in the 800s…no wait…I’m in the 900s. Duh. So I’m almost halfway. But this is slow. And tomorrow, I need to copyedit and clean the girlchild’s room and go to school and get my classroom organized enough for the following Friday. I’m behind. I’m always behind though, so there. Except when I’m ahead.

Realistically, I’m not halfway done with the ironing and I’m at 13 hours. So if I manage another 3 hours tonight, that leaves at least 10. I might get 6 in tomorrow…oh shit, no, we have gaming. OK. Well I’m fucked then. Maybe. I’d like it ironed together before I go to Arrowhead. There’s the goal. Then I can do stitch down next week, sandwich over the weekend (yes, I am totally ignoring that I have to be at school on the Friday), then quilt it the FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL (OK, I’m laughing hysterically here) and bind it that weekend. Oh yeah. I’m nuts. OK. Well there we are. Work harder.