Maniacal Pencils

First of all, does anyone actually win the book giveaways on Goodreads? I feel like I’ve filled 100 of those things out and I never win. So the competition is stiff for the weird-ass shit I like to read? Seems unlikely. The book I’m reading now, that I just started reading, expires in 1 day and 15 hours. Now I know it doesn’t actually expire until midnight on that day, despite its dire warnings, so I have until midnight on Friday to read it, or to get halfway through and then renew it (except for every copy the library has, there are 4 people waiting for it, so I won’t be able to get it again for a long time). My internet friends have clued me in to turning airplane mode on that device so I can continue to finish the book. I need to remember to do that. Because I don’t think I can finish the book, teach for two days, go to two social events, grade a million things, and sleep at least 5 hours a night, AND get the book done. And so far, it’s an interesting book, so I want to read it. Although I think it’s my book club book from May. Whoops! I know I’ve already read June’s book (it was eh). I read July’s book last year. I’m looking forward to reading all summer, right? It’s about the only thing I’m allowed to take to jury duty if I get called in.

The WordPress app is being cranky this morning. It’s continually refusing to save. It’s not me…everything else here is working. Sigh. On the iPad now. Tiny little buttons…fingerpeck typing. It’s letting me force save it, but won’t do it automatically. Technology is so cool and so annoying.

Six days of school left. I’m sick, but not horribly. I’m tired because I stay up too late. I’m not done with anything. I almost finished grading websites last night…have two to deal with this morning. Imma gonna buy me some maniacal pencils.

We’re going to make some changes to the project for next year…for a better outcome from the kids and less torture on us, hopefully. But I’m down to only two assignments for grading that aren’t just recording whether they did it or not…so that feels very doable. I started cleaning my room yesterday too. Because we will have teachers in our rooms the first day back (hate that…they aren’t always respectful of our space), I have to hide a bunch of stuff. That part sucks.

So I graded until 10 PM, texting back and forth with three other teachers during that time (weird times, people…weird times). And then I ironed all the flesh pieces down. This is fabric number 3 in the run from light to dark.

This is fabric number 1…this is ALL I have of it. So there’s not much left, eh? It’s a hand-dye from somewhere…when I see flesh tones, I buy them.

Here’s everything I’ve used so far…the flesh run on this one is very not pink. Sorta beige.

Here’s everything I’ve ironed so far…

It’s not a huge pile. There’s a lot of little flesh bits in there on the bottom though. They were on the top until I upended the box into a bigger one. So I could start cutting them out at tonight’s meeting, but with the deadline extended, I’m not feeling that scary rush to get it done, so I think I’ll take some of my embroidery stuff. I haven’t done that for a while, except for those Palestrina knot stems…I did more of those last night…almost finished one of the short sides. So 7 more nights should do it on those. They’re pretty relaxing. I’m not measuring them or marking them. I’m all into it being a bit wonky. Wonky is good.

So if you compare this table to Tuesday night’s table, it looks very similar…because basically I took over an hour to iron all those other flesh pieces down and then I ironed like three other things off this pile of stuff and quit.

It was well after midnight. Too well, probably. More tonight…won’t be done tonight…probably won’t be done until Saturday or Sunday. It depends on grading. I have too much to do before Monday.

We’re still at three dogs. I try to get them to stay in one place for photographic purposes and they pretty much see the camera and rush me. I might have food, you know. I might pet them. I might walk them (I thought about it for one crazy minute last night…I got home right at 6 PM and still had to make dinner though).

Poor things…end of the school year is hard on them too.

Thanks to whichever hardy reader told the boychild to confirm life. Here is Lake Erie. He’s alive.

I thought it was the Atlantic Ocean, but apparently not. I guess that puts him a few hundred miles closer. Hope he’s enjoying it. I’m kinda jealous actually. I wanna get in my car and just drive for like a week, hanging out, seeing stuff. Then I remember how exhausting that can be. I want one of those pop-up camper tents so I don’t have to set up a tent and all that…plus food delivery. Not junk food…good homemade stuff. So that’s not happening.

Hello right eye twitch. Sigh. Stress off please. (Soon. Very soon. Not soon enough.)

Just Not Today

‘Tis morning and I am ill. Hello summer cold, winging to me from the snotty nose or infected fingertips of some kid who probably got to take a sick day…or three, based on my current attendance rosters. Teachers should be able to request who’s out sick the last two weeks of school…it’s never the annoying ones. Their parents are like NO. YOU GO TO SCHOOL AND MAKE YOUR TEACHER MISERABLE AND SICK. My poor body has been trying to fight this one off since Saturday…that’s when I first started feeling off. Anyway. Welcome to the end of the year. Let’s make it more miserable than it already is.

Today is a long one…teaching STDs and then a union meeting…hopefully they’ll remember it’s the end of the year and make it short. I forced myself to grade 2 1/2 periods’ worth of websites last night…it was a good thing. I only have one period left, so I’ll get that done today. Then I’m down to a few assignments from this week and one from last week. I can see a light! At the end of the 183-day tunnel that is a school year…that’s minus the weekends, so don’t get excited about how many days you have to work compared to me. I worked until 10 PM last night with about a 2-hour break for dinner and errands. So that’s just a 12-hour-day or so. Oh wait, I did take 20 minutes for lunch. 11 hours and 40 minutes. At least 6 hours last Sunday. Sigh. Sometimes. This job.

I’m jealous of people who can just choose to take a sick day without balancing the ramifications of a substitute in there (or not GETTING a sub) who will cause chaos and destruction. And maybe burn the school down. Yeah. Nope. Not this week. Not next week. I’d have to be hospitalized to be that nuts. And I’m not THAT sick…it would just be nice to have the chance to have a sick day. And to be able to pee whenever you need to. And maybe have toilet paper in the bathrooms…that would be a plus.

Here’s our school rooster, Richard. He’s still here. Can’t be caught. Was hanging out by my car.

So you haven’t seen this for a while. I got all the circles sewed on and then floundered, because it wanted 96 stems now, all in Palestrina knots…which aren’t hard, but I had to find the right thread and the book with the pictures, and that apparently was too hard to handle. Until last night. So I got 11 done after dinner, while watching Handmaid’s Tale…

So I guess it’ll be another 8 nights before I’m done with them, at that rate. It’s faster than sewing the circles down anyway. And then each circle gets some sort of embellishment, based on its color (some of them are very close in color). And then it’s done and it can go into the quilting queue with two other hobby quilts I got done in the last IDK-how-many years. I should maybe do those. I COULD do those.

Katie is here. My parent’s dog. Just for a few days. She upsets the equilibrium.

She’s not a bad dog. She just makes a dog herd instead of a pair, and then the cats…she likes to harass them. Mostly just by staring at them and making them uncomfortable. I’ve had the consent talk with her, yes means yes, then the bullying talk, but nothing works…mostly because she’s a dog and has the brain of a 2-year-old…on a good day.

So I spent two hours last night going through the bins of the 200s through the 800s, finding all the flesh pieces. Here they are. All of them. Are any of them ironed down? Fuck no…because then it was after midnight and I’m supposed to go to sleep.

So I piled a bunch of plastic bins on them and I will just hope no cat causes a mess while I’m gone. These two tend to stay off the ironing board, so I think I’m OK.

Then this was the disaster that was left over. This is every piece that is NOT flesh. They’re all in piles by what they are (uterus, lungs, heart, bird, eyeball, whatever).

So once I get done ironing all the flesh down (hopefully tonight), then I’ll start on these. Usually I have some idea of how far along I am in that process, just based on the numbers, but since I literally emptied every bin either on the table or carefully on the fabric to which it belongs, I’m fucked on knowing where I’m at. Not halfway yet, that’s for sure…maybe after I get the flesh done. It doesn’t really matter, because I have time to finish it now.

This is the morning breakfast lineup…three dog butts in a row.

Then everybody goes back outside to pee. Or bark. Whichever floats their boat.

Survival mode, people. I woke up panicking about something that needed to be done, but I’ve completely forgotten what it was. It’s probably better that way. I had called my insurance people back because I tried to talk to them back in March or April about something, and they got me some information, but not all of it. So they keep calling back during the day and leaving messages about scheduling time to talk to the agent, and I finally called back, and I’m sure they think I’m nuts, but every other teacher out there gets it, because I’m like I can’t handle this right now, there’s not enough brain power to manage this shit on top of all the other shit can you just leave me alone until the week of the 18th dammit because I had to really push just to make this phone call fit into the crazy that is my everyday life right now? They were like, yeah, sure, but you could hear in their voices that they totally don’t get it. Oh well. Join the vet and the doctor and everyone else who wants something out of me right now. I’LL FUCKING GET TO IT. Just not today.

Girlchild is alive. I need her to tell me where to buy knives to replace the ones I gave her back. No word from the boychild. If you see him, tell him to text his mom. She worries.

I’m Gonna Make Your Head Burn*

Hey guys, you remember last year? And the year before? And the year before that? That damn mockingbird is back…and it’s right on my fenceline, so it’s loud as hell. I don’t know how anyone else sleeps through that little fucker’s delightful song (seriously, I saw it the other day and was trying to decide how to catch it and move it to another state. Where no one lives. Except other mockingbirds.). I’ve been wrapping a pillow around my head to deaden the noise, but the beast gets through double pillow layers. I tried earplugs one year, but there’s some weird balance between my ear canals and my nostrils that doesn’t work when one of them is plugged up. God damn, he’s loud. Get a woman, you bastard! Or babies! Or whatever it is that’s making you talk to the whole planet on my doorstep.

School is survival mode at the moment…we’re doing the last few days of the sex ed program, so it’s all about STDs starting today. I’ve had a few questions in the question box about the TV show 13 Reasons Why, so I’ve been watching the 2nd season. Ugh. I know it’s trying to deal with the issues, but some of it is really hard to watch at the end of the school year. Or ever. I can’t decide if it’s just really heavy-handed because it’s adults making assumptions about what kids go through, or if it’s just trying to hit ALL the possible issues, telegraphing ALL the warning signs so we know what they are. It’s obviously targeted at a younger crowd than me…but maybe in teaching middle school, I never escape some of the crap in my head that was so inherently middle and high school. Like never-wanna-go-back middle and high school.

Anyway. It’s progressing…and I made it through grading about 17 websites last night before I quit. I got a bunch done at school, but the 17th one started talking about Reagan, and I’m pretty sure he had nothing to do with the plastics industry or the biosphere, so I gave up. Like please stop writing random answers to fill the space because you didn’t actually read the article or watch the video I asked you to read or watch. Grading shouldn’t involve swearing at the computer repeatedly. I have to be done by Monday…I think I’ll be OK. Hopefully.

On the way to work yesterday…I often think I should have business cards for my editing job so I can hand them out to the guys standing out at this allllllley. Or not.

Puppy sleeping on me as I finish up dinner and try to figure out the rest of my evening.

Back to the ironing board! I finished the mountain/land area and then did a jellyfish (purples) and this octopus below…

Then I’m looking at this section and trying to figure out why there’s two sets of hands on that leg. I mean, I drew the damn thing…what was I thinking?

It’s OK…I figured it out. I often put hands on the skin of the main figure…it’s like who has a hand on her, who makes a mark on her, not necessarily always in a bad way. Think of your kids…they leave a mark. Speaking of kids, one started her summer job yesterday and hopefully will (a) find her rain gear and (b) keep enjoying the job. It sounds interesting so far. If you see her tramping through the woods around Waltham, Massachusetts, wave and give her chocolate. The boychild is apparently seeing the US and might be kind enough to check in with locations and/or pictures every few days. Or not…and then I’ll just sit here and worry that I haven’t heard from him. Typical mom brain. But when I travel now, I always tell someone where I am. From the year my parents went off on a trip and left no itinerary and then my dad’s brother died and I couldn’t reach them. Or the other year when they left and their dog was really sick. Anyway. He’s out there. He might like chocolate too.

I started picking out the flesh stuff…I picked fabrics anyway, and started choosing pieces, but it was already midnight at that point. I know how long bodies take to pick out, and this is not a small body, so I saved it for tonight.

After tutoring. Last tutoring of the year! Oh hallelujah. Maybe I should NOT do tutoring next year? Sigh. I know it’s what’s best. I hate it, but it’s what’s best.

Here’s what I’ve used so far…you can see the jellyfish purples at the top of the left box.

There will be so many more colors by the time I get to the end…

I woke up this morning to Kitten sharing the dog bed with Calli.

It makes Calli nervous, so when she notices, she gets up and lies on the floor instead. Kitten is watching birds and bunnies outside. She’s the one that pushes the slats so she has a little window.

OK, so steady progress on grading and ironing. Both should be done sometime over the weekend…although two night meetings this week will affect that. Meanwhile, off to school and STDs. Hey there’s the one thing I don’t think I’ve seen on 13 Reasons Why…YET…

*Adele, Rolling in the Deep

Always Clean Up Your Mess Before You Mess It Up Again*

I keep trying new breakfast foods…stuff I can prep on the weekend and then eat every morning. My body is not good at early breakfast…it tends to be nauseous and still asleep, so it’s always a challenge. Stuff that sounds good to me while I’m prepping or shopping is notoriously putrid in the morning. Or I eat it once and then like that’s it. I’m good. It’s not good FOR me, though, to go through until lunch with no food, so then I get to school and all I have to eat are nuts…which aren’t a totally bad plan, but I can do better. So this week, I tried an oatmeal bake with fruit and so far, so good (first day only). I can usually handle oatmeal anyway, and this is just a slightly fancier and healthier version…so we’ll see if that gives me vip and vim this morning.

I’m not really a morning person. You may have noticed. I can quietly write here, as long as I don’t have to talk to anyone. Luckily, most of my cohabitants are also not morning talkers. Even when I get to work, the morning talkers are there and they’ve learned not to expect much from me. I’ll talk when the bell rings to start school…and some days, not a moment before.

So I did some relaxing stuff on the weekend, if by relaxing, you mean walking a 4-mile art and music route. I basically did very little art-related stuff on Saturday. I really needed a break from feeling like I had to do it…so I just went in there for the last hour or so of the night before going to bed and tried to clean up…

I had about 5 more piles in there when I started…so I put all this away from the last quilt…

Always clean up your mess before you mess it up again.

And then I had this broken drawer…Midnight used to sleep in there, and I think eventually the pressure of fabric plus sorta fat cat caused the plastic to fail…

I stupidly threw the broken pieces away…so I needed to figure out how to fix it. At the time, I thought it would be easy to find a replacement, but the sizes are all different and don’t fit into that space any more. I did this long-range plan for shelving in that space, but really the whole room needs a makeover and that’s not in the cards this summer…so finally, on Saturday night (yup, I party like the best of them), I put cardboard in there and then duct-taped it to death so it would hopefully hold long enough for me to be able to afford to do something in that space. Because I was tired of trying to pull the drawer open without breaking it more.

So that was Saturday night: cleaning and improvising.

Sunday was a lot of work stuff…I got up and graded 63 emails’ worth of makeup work and another pile of papers. Then input some grades and did the grocery shopping and sent the parent email and all that crap. It’s all time-consuming crap, honestly. I love the summer because my Sundays are free…FREE!

Then I graded the rest of the student videos and transferred all those to paper and started grading the websites I could find. Puppy was very tired…

Satchemo really wanted to be ON the computer and was rather pissy that I wouldn’t let him be…

Then at around 10:15 PM, I headed into the studio for the fun stuff…the first 100 pieces sorted and ready for ironing. On the far left (hiding in the dark) is the piece I picked for the background of my existing stash…

On really long drawings, I can’t see the bottom without having to lean over to the ground, so I pull the drawing up to the ironing board…

It’s just easier to see that way…

And I ironed almost 100 pieces…at some point, it was after midnight and I was still ironing and thinking I didn’t want to stay up too late because then I’d lose all the sleep I’d made up over the weekend.

So I stopped just short of the snow on the mountains. Not a bad start…

I will have to be grading every night, but this will be a pleasant ending to every day…relaxed…the way it should be.

Acting Steady Always Ready to Defend Your Fears*

Ugh. Braindead. Twitching eyelid. Mornings. Things I like: more sleep. Really, I think that’s not true. I want more hours in the day. But sleep sounds nice. It’s probably really nice to be asleep. Damn. It’s only Wednesday. Gotta get through relationship abuse (not personally…teaching about it), yes means yes, anatomy, and puberty before the weekend. We used to start on the first day with anatomy and totally freaked them out…but now we start a little easier and talk about liking vs loving. Already had to bring up repeatedly that it’s OK to love someone and NOT want to have sex with them. Sigh.

It was a long day…I have duty this week and I had tutoring yesterday too. I get home and I’m completely burnt out. I did sit down and calculate the hours it would take me to finish this quilt (approximately 31) and how many days I had (approximately 9…well…now 8). And I did some math and stared at the calendar. Then I calculated hours on the next one (100) and days I had (22? I think?). Um. Yeah. I then proceeded to work on this quilt, because I still think I can pull it off. I might be crazy.

Well, you already know the answer to that. I think I need to average 3.3 hours a night to finish. OK. Wait. I’m laughing hysterically. Last night, I did 2 hours and 50 minutes. I could have done more, but I was tired. So I took a break. Tonight I have more time.

I finished ironing the stuff on the mantel. That was easy.

Then I pieced the background and ironed everything down. That was also easy, although somewhat time-consuming. This quilt isn’t huge (it’s also not small), so it wasn’t too hard. I’m just realizing I’m totally gonna need thread for the background. I don’t think I have anything that will work.

Total iron down was 14 1/2 hours. When did I start? Thursday. Last night was Tuesday. That was fast.

And then I started stitching down. I got everything down on the floor done and started on the standing figure.

So that’s on my list for tonight…I don’t know if I need batting though. Damn. I should figure that out now. Because it’s closer to school than home. Ugh. OK. Thread and batting.

Calli on her daily ride back to my house, where she likes to escape the fence and run away to this house. Even though no one is there either. Weird dog.

OK, I’ve eaten and drunk most of my tea and I’m still exhausted. This job kicks my ass some weeks.

Is it realistic to think I will get this quilt sandwiched and pinbasted after school tomorrow, so I can quilt at class? Probably not. Sigh.

*Aimee Mann, That’s Just What You Are

Happiness Hit Her Like a Bullet in the Back*

Well today is the big day…the day we start teaching human reproduction and all the resulting crap to our kids. Are we ready? Well we never really are, although as far as attention span, this usually means we don’t have a problem for most of the rest of the year. That’s a plus. It’s a high-maintenance unit though, with not a lot of down time for the teacher. You can’t really set them free on the internet to explore a topic. So direct instruction for most of 5 weeks. Talking every day all day…let’s hope my voice holds up.

I’m so very tired, even with going to bed earlier…I think I can blame school. I’m really looking forward to a break. I guess that’s always true.

Anyway, I came home, walked the dogs, cooked dinner, and then ironed. I wanted to be done. It’s always like that…you wanted to be done or you were done. Or you knew you were nowhere near done.

We ate late so I started late. We ate late because I walked the dogs. So it’s like a cascade of late things. I started by ironing the fireplace…I needed it to be dark so the figures would stand out.

The female figure even mostly fit…I had to add two pieces of fire to make it work. It happens…stuff shifts around and doesn’t fit perfectly. I’m not particularly anal about perfect ironing. I make it work. You can make the pieces stretch or add stuff behind so it fills in.

At midnight, this is all I had left…a spider web, a key, and a candlestick in a holder. But I wanted to get to bed at a reasonable time…so I quit. I knew I’d have to piece the background before I could iron it all down anyway…so I guess that’ll be tonight.

He fit pretty well…I had one piece that needed shifting, but I just pulled it until they would stick together.

Looking good. Tonight I’ll finish the last little bits and get it all onto the background…and hopefully start the stitch down. I’ve spent almost 13 hours ironing it together so far. Like I said before, I’m not sure I can hit the deadline on this one. It’s going to be tight if it happens at all. Oh well. That’s the way it goes. I don’t think I’ll be able to finish the next one either, honestly. Sigh. I’m debating quitting on this one for a while and trying to get the next one done. I’ll think about that. I’m really on a day-to-day basis at the moment. Probably not the best plan if I have deadlines. Tonight I’ll analyze my remaining time and make a decision.

There was sun yesterday morning. Satchemo found it. The chair is holding his head up.

There’s no sun this morning. Poor kitty. I wanna be a kitty some mornings.

*Florence and the Machine, Dog Days Are Over

Until I Have to…

So over the weekend, I managed about 7 hours of ironing this quilt together…but until I went and added all the time up, it felt like I hadn’t accomplished anything because I wasn’t DONE. Need to work on that mindset. I did OK. No, I’m not done…it’s true…and it’s possible I’m not going to get this done by the deadline. The world will not end. It’s still going to be a great quilt. It’ll show somewhere.

So where am I? I’m still ironing. Yup. Not done.

But first, a sleepy puppy.

Because he’s cute.

So I left off with the body done…but she’s holding this heart and sewing up a gash in it. So I ironed the heart together…

And then shoved it in the hole where it belonged…ironed some fingers together to go on top of it.

Strangely everything fit together fairly well. Then I ironed the hair in there and the face parts separately. They’re too hard to see with all the hair around, and I always iron eyes separately so I can place them correctly on the face. It’s less of an issue with just one eye. With two, I don’t want them crooked.

Face in place…all good. That hand is HUUUGE. I like it.

Then I laid out all the 700s…moving into the fireplace area…

And I ironed most of them down into the hearth. Seriously…that’s about all of the 700s right there.

I laid out the 800s, which is the stonework and the rest of the fireplace…and then I looked at the clock. Midnight. Damn. Can’t start out the week on too little sleep. It just snowballs by the end, and I’ve got stuff to do Friday night. Can’t be exhausted. So I went to bed.

All that’s left are the 800s and 900s…the fireplace and the stuff on it. Then iron the whole mess together and onto a background. I might be able to get all that done tonight. It’s more likely I’ll get most of it done, but not onto a background. Stitch down tomorrow night or Wednesday? One of those. It’s going to be tight, this quilt. I have to work hard at grading stuff at school, so I don’t have to bring it home. I’m not even going to think about next week. Until I have to.

I Would Like to Hold My Little Hand*

Happy mom’s day y’all…unless it’s not a thing for you. I admit to having a troubled relationship with the day, because I never had my kids on Sunday mornings due to the divorce agreement, so no breakfasts in bed, no kid-oriented stuff in the morning…I guess I had the ultimate mom break on those mornings (other moms would tell me that), but generally it just made me sad. Today, both kids are 3000 miles away (well that’s better than 11,000 miles away, for sure). One doesn’t acknowledge these things; the other is working 11 hours today, but texted me and then called me. They’re good kids. I think they’ll only need a little therapy to get over my influence on their lives. Tonight I’ll hang out with my own mom, who remembers every time I drive her bonkers that she raised me to be an independent thinker. My cohabitant is currently out buying breakfast burritos, because we don’t want to deal with the Moms Day brunch crowd. Sounds good to me.

Yesterday, I went to Pepperland, the Mark Morris dance group performance of an interpretation of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Group Band, the album. There were a ton of visual inputs at this show, both from the color of the dance costumes to the movement of the dancers. I don’t watch a lot of dance, but I do appreciate it. Plus there was a theremin, and that was cool…very much used as a voice in the music.

Otherwise, I spent yesterday ironing a quilt together…I had the legs already…so I started working on the rest of the figure…

It needs outlining and shading in the hand area…

I found this piece, but I don’t think it belongs to this quilt. Seriously. So I don’t know what quilt it belongs to or how it ended up in these boxes.

His head and chest…

Imagine the dark background behind him that’s not there yet…

Then I started working on the other female character…I’m missing the one black dot on the yin/yang. I’m hoping it shows up…if not, I’ll cut a new one.

I left it there yesterday afternoon…need to do the head and heart for this one as well, and then start on the background. It’s taking a long time…and I have stuff that has to get done today, so I was hoping to be done this weekend and I’m not sure I will be. I just laid out all the 600s, I think…so that’s 400 pieces left to iron. Maybe today? Ugh.

Then get it down to the background and stitched down…I’m running out of time. Deep breaths. It’s OK. I’ll figure it out.

*Rusted Root, Send Me on My Way

Not Today

I have been looking forward to this weekend. No real events…just something tonight. No things I really HAVE to do, except work on these two quilts…which I should probably get going on. I slept in (but went to bed really late too). I need a swathe of unplanned time to just sit around in my pajamas and drink tea and maybe do what I want. Think what I want. Not really though. That’s what weekends SHOULD be…but I’m stressing out about school and getting stuff done and whether or not to give kids more time to finish something when I can’t really afford to give them that time. Because I need to grade it. Aargh.

Anyway. I don’t know who let all that shit in, because I was trying to keep it out. Deep breaths. Sip the tea.

I worked on both projects last night. I also wasted chunks of time doing hell I dunno what. Seriously. I really don’t know.

A student gave me a rose for teacher appreciation week (his mom made him)…I don’t pick yellow usually, but it’s pretty.

I traced Wonder Under for about an hour while my show was finishing up…I’m in the 300s? I think? All the way up both legs and now starting to do the stuff around that.

Then I moved into the studio and worked on ironing the second figure. He’s got legs…

And I did his hands (one hand is literally just the tips of his fingers)…

That hand was complicated. I like it though…and the arm attached to it.

I numbered the fleshy bits before the box he’s holding, so I guess I’ll iron all the body parts and then the box and then insert the box? Not sure. That was midnight last night and I was tired, so I quit…and then stayed up too late anyway. It happens.

Today I am braindead. So I’m going to eat, shower, drink more tea, and then start ironing I think. I have an event tonight, but I should be able to get a chunk done this afternoon. Kinda looking forward to it. Then tomorrow I can make a decision about whether to extend kids’ time or grade stuff or whatever. Not today.

Not Remembering My Existence

Well at least it’s Friday. That’s a plus. By the end of the week, I’m really tired, so I sleep better. I think. At least I don’t remember waking up to vivid dreams of coyotes or previous lives. I hate waking up and not remembering my existence.

I started ironing yesterday. I did a bunch of other things too, but really, the most important one was the ironing. I ironed for a long time too. Because it was nicer than other things. It’s often nicer than other things. I was going to write it’s always nicer, but that’s mostly not true…I do occasionally like to hang out with humans. Interactions are nice. But sometimes I still just want to be making art instead of socializing. Sad but true.

I ironed a backpack…it’s a little beat up.

Some pens…

Some books of some sort…really just a place to put some of that hedgehog fabric.

That might be all of the hedgehog fabric I ever use. That one piece. The kids will be getting rid of my fabric after I die and they’ll pull that half yard out with the one tiny hole cut out of it and go…WTF mom. Seriously?

Yup. Seriously. It was worth it.

A camera…old school.

Those were easy. Super fast. Then came the first of three bodies in this quilt…here’s all the 200s and the tail end of the 100s all laid out.

The two piles on the bottom left are all the fingernails and other pieces that were too small to cut up before…I’ve learned to cut them out right when I need them so I don’t lose them.

Now this would have been a good stopping point if I’d wanted to go to sleep at a reasonable time. However, I am less about the reasonable time (obviously) and more about getting to the point I want to get to…so I wanted to finish her and get her onto her rug. So I kept going. There’s not much left here…just one arm and her face. The rug was done already.

So I persisted. I could have stopped here too…but no.

On the rug. Good. Well done. About 250 pieces in, close to 4 hours.

Now that was satisfying. More of that tonight please. There are two more figures and a fireplace. I want her (the whole quilt…not the her that’s in the picture above) ironed down this weekend…ready for stitch down. Yeah that’s crazy. Have you seen my schedule for the next few weeks? Better that you don’t.

I ordered some threads I saw online on a whim…Dirty Threads from Deb Lacativa…and wow, they are gorgeous…yes the fabric came with it…gonna be using that somewhere too.

Lots of color in those strands…fun stuff.

And then this thing. Wants to be in my face. On the couch.

Hi Calli. You’re a dork.

Well at least there’s no testing today…except of my patience. More ironing tonight. I’m excited.