It’s Too Late to Say You’re Sorry*

Ugh. Well I’m sick again. This school year is kicking my butt. Too much work, can’t stay well…I usually get sick like once a year. It’s only October and it’s my second viral incursion. Damn immune system needs to get in gear. Makes it hard to stay caught up. Or whatever that means.

The gun quilt is at the photographer’s…will be picked up later this week. I was trying to get fabrics ironed for a small climate change quilt I started in June, just for fun…

I’m not done. I did a little bit yesterday afternoon after grading shit, running errands, and trying to get other stuff done.

Friday night at gaming, I finished Block 15 (bottom right) on Folk Tales (I always call it Folk Tails because of all the animals).

Block 15 is part of May, but I haven’t done April yet…so I started on that.

There are three blocks for April, and I have a lot of embroidery to do on them. Expect to see them rolling around for a while.

Then I realized I hadn’t touched this in days. I did 4 day’s worth around the eyeball…a bunch of filler stitches.

However interesting and challenging it’s been to work on this, and whatever bullheadedness it takes to keep working on it every day for a year, I probably won’t sustain it beyond December 31. It was an interesting experiment. No idea what I’ll do with it…maybe make it the center of a small crazy quilt in all black backgrounds. Who knows? Because I need more projects.

I emailed the woman in charge of the project I’m supposed to be working on next to see if I could change my focus. Much as climate change worries me and however many ideas about it are clamoring for my artistic attention, women’s rights are weighing much more heavily on me right now…and a new drawing for this project popped into my head last night on the way back from the Visions Art Museum opening for Interpretations. It had absolutely nothing to do with the art I saw there…but it’s in my head now. I wanted to start drawing last night, but after about 9:30, I felt like absolute crap and was in bed before 10:30. See, that’s how you know I’m sick. I can’t do anything.

Today is a fiber-related meeting…long drive and interactions with humans. I’m not always up for that. Right now I’m tired and not feeling at my best, stressed about the grading that needs to get done, worried about getting this quilt started so I can get going on it. Probably need to go take more meds. Drink more tea. Maybe nap. Who knows. No time for napping. Shit needs to get done.

*Malcolm McLaren, About Her

It’s Not a Miracle We Needed*

Better. A little more focus. I appreciate that. My brain allowing some space for artmaking, even if it isn’t the most challenging part of the process.

First I made time to hang out with friends…I took this to keep sewing down wool for the next month…

My parents’ dog is visiting, so when I got home, I hadn’t seen one of the cats for a while. They don’t like the dog, because she’s a little too interested in them. I finally found her in a cubbyhole in my office…

I didn’t get far on the wool piece…but the hyena(?) just needs eyeballs. I think I might need to sew something together to do the sun…

It’s not a priority at the moment.

The next part of the quilt I was ironing down, after some fish and stuff, was the tree that makes up the majority of her lower torso. It’s intertwining roots, and it was fun to draw, but not as fun to trace, and pretty mind-boggling to pick fabrics for…

But I did it. That puts me at about piece 175. Super slow on this…but just trying to give myself the space to draw sometime soon. I will finish picking fabrics…but I could draw at the same time. If I had the mental space. It really is too much school stress weighing on me.

I’ll get there. Here’s everything ironed so far…lots of tree parts…

Funny, I really think of this quilt as bright, but brown is never really bright.

Anyway. It’s progress. It’s something.

*Phoenix, 1901

I Can Do No More

Well. So. Some days you just write off. I did get some of this…

IMG_8528 small

And honestly, that’s a good thing. I tried grading (almost fell asleep doing it), I tried reading the book I’m supposed to be reading for school (more almost falling asleep), I hung out, I went to book club, but mostly just to hang out. I’m tired and stressed and cranky and overwhelmed and worried about getting the next drawing done and a whole bunch of other shit.

So today is going to be better. I’m going to hang out and do some hobby sewing and then come back and maybe grade a little and then work on the ironing of this small quilt to fabric so I can start drawing on Saturday or Sunday. Don’t look at the calendar for the next week, because it’s ugly. I’m gonna do what I can do. I can do no more.

You Paid Me Well in Memories*

Everything takes too long. Everything you don’t feel like doing or don’t want to do, it takes forever. It actively gets in the way of the stuff you wanna do. It’s like a large man in a smelly suit standing in front of the dessert menu. Seriously. Move it, dude.

I worked last night…grading stuff. I have to. It needs to get done.

But I couldn’t do it forever. I still don’t have the mental space to draw. I don’t know when I will. Soon I hope. Time is dribbling away in days. Watching the countdown on my phone. Crap! Holding onto 17 daily tasks that pop up on the phone and then I still forget to do them, slot them into the calendar for the next day. Hope I remember them eventually. I start ignoring the reminders. Not good.

So I guess my yearbook alter ego for this year isn’t quite right. Oh well.

This is blurry. It’s not your eyes. I did some stitching under (on top of?) the eyeball.

This is the only exercise this thing is getting right now. Me too. It doesn’t help when it’s 100 degrees out.

So I gave up and started ironing this at 10:30 last night. I couldn’t do anything else. I figure I can iron it to fabric and then it can sit around for a while again.

Hopefully when I get done with ironing, I’ll have a drawing brain.

I didn’t get a lot done…remembered I had to put all the other fabrics away, and then got lost in trying to make the blues work.

It’s something though…and that’s good.

It’s where my brain goes when school is too stressful. I’m not even sure why it’s so bad at the moment…too much stuff to do? Pressure of being observed by someone you don’t even know (that part sucks)? Who knows.

Midnight doesn’t. But she’s inhabiting the blue drawer.

She waited until I found all the blues I needed before she plopped her fat butt in there. Good thing.

OK…meeting before school…maybe too many meetings is the problem? Could be.

*A Fine Frenzy, Think of You

Now the Party’s Over*

OK. Last night was the night. It’s when I finally saw the whole thing ironed out. We’re good. I really should trust my instincts after all these years, but there’s often that moment of uncertainty when I’m not sure it’s gonna work.

Before I ever started ironing last night, though, I packed a quilt up for Quilts=Art=Quilts so I could ship it this morning. And then I went to my quilt meeting…although I should probably stop labeling it with the word ‘quilt’ because half the people knit. Let’s call it a String Meeting. A friend I used to work with always asked me how my string things were going, because another friend at work knitted and I quilted and he could never remember which was which, but he knew they all used strings.

Because this quilt was at a stage that is not transportable, I took my handwork with me. I needed to get the wool pieces sewn down for April (yes, I’m working on May…I’m a little wombly sometimes). These are two of the three blocks, but there’s a bunch of pinky-red flower dots that have to be sewn on, plus I had to find the eyeball fabric when I got home. So luckily I’m still working on the May elephant block, because these aren’t ready. But soon.

Then I headed into the studio and pieced a backing, shoved the ironing board and chairs out of the way (I should have kicked them out of the studio), and threw the whole thing down on the floor.

Sometimes it’s a mistake to try to iron a big quilt down on the floor in there, so I do it in the entryway, but it was almost 11 and I didn’t want to mop the floor, because it was pretty dirty. Luckily it worked…I managed to line up the male’s head and gun with the hole in the chalkboard (note to self…no need for a hole there…if I’d drawn it all behind the gun, I wouldn’t have had to worry about it). I also managed to get everything else flat. Miraculous really.

Midnight was no help.

And then I spent about 40 minutes with a spray bottle and a hot iron, trying to make sure it would stick long enough for me to stitch it down…which I could start tonight, if it wasn’t gaming night. Surely I will start tomorrow.

It’s hanging up there and it’s too big for the space, so that’s a seriously wonky picture. But it’s gonna work. Outlining in the quilting for sure. No way do I have a thread that color…so this weekend, check batting and backing, and buy thread.

I’m sort of amazed by how hard this has been to make. I started teaching at age 35, recently divorced, with two little kids. The school where I started had very little support for new teachers. I had another science teacher I connected with who helped me a lot, but she has since quit. Nine days after I started my first job, two students brought a gun on campus to kill a teacher who “gave” one of them an F. Another kid snitched. I hate that word. I love that she told someone responsible. But those were the days before lockdowns. I remember at lunch, alone in my room, seeing kids running for the back part of the school in a huge bunch, but no one told us what was happening. I went home clueless…until I was watching the news last night and they broke the story.

There was no shooting. As far as I know, the teacher never came back. The gun never made it into the classroom…it was hidden on campus. That was a Friday. Eventually they called an emergency meeting for Monday morning. And that’s when lockdown drills started here in San Diego…or soon after. It was 3 years after the Santana High School shooting, back when these things were not so commonplace. I had a hard time dealing with the situation. It was hard for me to think that I might not make it home to my own very small (at that time) children because of something like that. And I have to say, that feeling has never gone away. I do still go back to school every day. Why? Because of the kids.

I’ll write later about a conversation I had last year with my students…which is also what this is about.

Deep stuff. Stitch down this weekend. Then sandwich and quilting.

*Roxy Music, Avalon

And I Will Try to Fix You*

Silly me, thinking I was gonna finish last night…because it bugged me most of the day, way back in the way back of my brain, but I was fairly sure I could make it better. So once I got home and got past the paralyzing exhaustion I apparently caught on the way here, I grabbed a blank piece of paper and traced over the part of the drawing that I wanted to change…

I was trying to keep the original drawing simple, so I only added one target, but then it ended up being on one of the lighter-colored heads, which was silly (but random) and said something I didn’t want it to say. It’s not that one kid is a target in a school shooting…in reality, a lot of the time, I think some kids might be because of bullying (them being the perceived bullies, and perhaps even in real life) or teachers or other staff might be, but sometimes it’s just anger at the whole world and a school has a lot of concentrated human beings so maybe it’s easier to go in there if you need to shoot a bunch of living creatures? Humans, to be specific…you don’t hear about zoo shootings or pet store shootings. I’m not being facetious…I’m serious here. Why does any sane (and that might be the issue) adult walk onto a school campus and shoot unless they feel the campus is part of their problem? I don’t pretend to understand anyone who uses a gun to solve their problems.

I did trace Wonder Under before dinner and a movie (it was one of those nights)…and caught up on three night’s worth of this. I’m behind because I’m doing other art stuff. I did stuff in the bottom left again…filling space…leaves and parts of that vine…

And after the movie (where I was sewing wool bits together)…I ironed. First I finished the thought cloud…but I had lost (misplaced) one of the Es…so this is why I keep my trash pile. It was in there. Duh.

And ironed it together…

Again, making a guess about what’s going through their heads. It’s hard…bullying is a real thing in middle and high school. Kids can be vicious assholes. But it would be nice to live somewhere that the solution was NOT to bring a bunch of guns to school and spray bullets everywhere.

So this was all ironed down already. I was hoping it wasn’t ironed down super hot, so it would still release and allow me to push stuff underneath. Otherwise, this would have been a pain in the ass.

I was still gonna do it though. Luckily, it did release pretty easily.

So I ironed and cut out and then ironed down all these little tiny target pieces…so it wasn’t about one kid with a target that was supposed to stand for all of them. I didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding about the target. Mostly the kids that get killed or shot (and hell, I go back to Sandy Hook Elementary every time…) just happen to be there. Because who shoots kindergarten kids? Because he had access to guns…otherwise maybe he would have done something else, something less deadly.

Such a dark place I go to when I work on this. Because as a teacher, I always have in my head what I will do if a shooter arrives on campus…how I will protect a classroom full of 12-year-olds? And if your response is to arm ME? Yeah. No. That’s not a solution. More guns. You want a gun to shoot? To protect yourself? To hunt? Is that more important than a 6-year-old’s life? Tell me that. Truthfully.

No. I didn’t finish.

*Coldplay, Fix You

Stray from the Straight Line on This Short Run*

Rough morning…puppy seems to think if he howls, he is somehow scaring the coyotes away. Or he’s communicating with them in coyote talk. Or he’s just scared. It’s really hard to say. I just wish he’d stop. The Golden Retriever feels no need to communicate with the pack that runs by my house at 4 AM. And I greatly appreciate that. Maybe size does matter. Simba, the part-Pomeranian, drives a mad sports car with tinted windows and tails you down the road because you’re only doing 5 miles above the speed limit. Calli, the Golden, drives an old Subaru going 5 miles below the speed limit, oblivious to everyone around her, quite happy to be toolin’ along. Certainly she perks up when balls are being thrown or there’s a walk to be had, but otherwise? She’s mostly lying around relaxing. There’s something to be said for living with each of them.

I had hoped to be done with the ironing yesterday, and I think I would have if (a) I hadn’t gone to the gym, (b) my book weren’t so good so I kept reading when I should have gotten up and started ironing, and (c) I weren’t worried about how the pieces would fit together. Usually on a big quilt, I iron sections together and then don’t put the whole thing together until I’m putting it on the background. I have an ironing board extension (well, I have a board on top covered with a towel), but it’s still not big enough for this thing, to try to get everything positioned correctly. The pieces ironed on Teflon get really heavy and slip off the board at some point.

But I needed to know all the fingers and tentacles were going to fit right, so I did it anyway…

There were a couple places where I had to put a small piece of fabric behind to fill in a hole, but nothing major.

Then I ironed the head to the body on the other side…

But I couldn’t figure out how to get the arm in the middle positioned on the ironing board. It just wasn’t big enough. So I dropped to the floor.

I had to fuss with it a bit to get it all to go where it should, but it eventually worked. I often do the final iron on the floor for a big piece. That’s probably why my floor looks like crap…because I iron on it. I have to keep that in mind for when I eventually replace the flooring. I’m sure the Home Depot person will be able to help me find a flat, solid floor that takes a hot iron and doesn’t melt or otherwise disfigure. A simple requirement.

I decided against trying to iron his head and arm onto the existing stuff at this point…too much weight.

Well. That’s um. Yeah.

So what’s left? The thought bubble, which won’t take long. It was after midnight when I stopped there, though, so I figured it was better to get some sleep and finish ironing tonight. So I’ll iron it all down to the background tonight and maybe start the stitch down. Definitely I’ll be doing stitch down on Thursday and probably Saturday…it’s a big quilt, so it will take a while. Distance over number of pieces is what matters on quilting and stitch down. I’ll have to check my backing and batting stash over the weekend and make sure I have enough…maybe sandwich on Sunday? Start quilting?

I’m ready to be done with this one. I do (finally) like how it’s turning out, but it’s still not somewhere I want to hang out for long. The subject matter is worrisome.

Hard to say if these two are getting along any better. I’ve seen some playful moves from mine, but Satchemo is still just trying to invade space. They do both sleep on the bed sometimes, one at my feet and one under my armpit.

It makes it hard to move sometimes. But I’m looking forward to the day when they curl up together. Or at least exist in the same space without glaring or yowling at each other.

Man I want time to draw. It was loud last night, the voice…draw draw draw. I may just have to go with it at some point.

*Sarah McLachlan, World on Fire

Fake It if You Feel Like Infection*

My brain doesn’t know where to start. I’m listening to Talking Heads. I finished grades yesterday afternoon (I think…I’m always paranoid I missed something). My lunch is put together. All the animals are fed and medicated and settled…well, no, I had to go get the Golden Retriever because she’s being destructive. Paper is her issue. She likes to rip it up and eat it. Nice habit. I need to leave for work in about 25 minutes. I’m fed. I obviously don’t have enough caffeine in me.

Girlchild has been in Copenhagen for 5 or 6 days…her school had a few days off and she and a friend found a cheap flight, so they’ve been living it up in a tiny bedroom belonging to some young couple and their kid. I hear from her a couple times a day, so I know she’s alive. Boychild complains about the weather and sends comics. I know he’s alive. That’s all good.

I’m trying to finish up this quilt so I can move on to another more lighthearted one. Ha! Because the next one is about climate change, and that’s still depressing. Sigh. I did enter another show last night and there’s another few coming up in the next month. My solo show comes down in a week and a half, so all those quilts are coming back here. I didn’t expect to sell anything big, unfortunately…it’s a harder sell. The little ones are safe and relatively cheap. Time is worth money. I’d rather have the quilt than be underpaid for my time.

So finishing grades at work yesterday meant I came home and totally spaced out for at least an hour or so before I came in here and started ironing. I think I made dinner first. Can’t remember. Oh wait. I entered the show, THEN made dinner, and THEN ironed. I have half a brain. I wanted to walk the dogs, but it was hot. Bleck.

I’m considering a change to the head with the target…I didn’t purposely pick head colors…just wanted a variety. And this is less about the colors of specific students and more about all students as a whole. So I’m debating how to deal with that. I have a couple of ideas…one is embroidery and the other is more random. I’m letting it percolate.

The chalkboard…you know, the thing teachers don’t use any more.

The head goes in…

And the writing. The date is the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting…that event had a huge effect on my local school district…it’s when we started locking the campus, fencing it all in, locking our doors for that 6 months afterward because the kids were so freaked out. So were the parents (and the teachers), but we do this stuff for the kids.

Some more stuff on the board…

And that arm in place…

Finally working on the last figure…some may be offended by the American flag, but I think we have a deeply rooted issue with guns that you don’t see in other countries. This school shooting problem is a purely American construct. From Columbine on, we keep seeing these shootings occur and we don’t do anything to stop them.

As a teacher, I have some issues with that. More about that later.

Anyway, I have about 110 pieces left to go, and then I hope it all fits together…it could be a little wiggy where all the hands meet bodies. Hopefully that’s tonight…ironing it down to the background. We’ll see.

*Seether, Fake It

Let Me Hold My Broken Parts*

Yesterday I was efficient and on track and yet frustrated as hell and then incredibly inefficient. Sleep makes one inefficient. But apparently I needed it.

So the app I use to keep track of how much time I’m spending on tasks in my quilts did not update with the iOS update, and instead of just working slowly and inefficiently, it’s completely inaccessible…along with all of my data. Fuckers. So I think I can cobble most of it together from my blog (which means reading through and trying to find that info for the last few months), but I’ve lost some data from older pieces that are in flux at the moment. Frustrating, yes. I found a new app and hopefully the developers will continue to update it and I won’t lose shitloads of stuff because of an update. And maybe I will remember to download all data before I ever update again. OK, that’s unlikely. I think I’ve picked one that keeps data in the cloud instead of on the device…at least, that was the plan. The problem with these apps is that they border on a business app, so the developers want to charge a million bucks for aspects I don’t need with the Pro versions, and the free versions sometimes don’t have the save in a cloud feature. OK. They never do. Frustrating as hell.

Anyway. So that was some moments of my day yesterday. I did finish a big chunk of the grading on Friday night, which is why I did no ironing Friday night. I think I in fact fell asleep on the couch, brain fuzz fully in gear. But I got up at a reasonable hour yesterday and refused to work on school shit all day, so I got 5 hours of ironing done and then went to an art exhibit and out to dinner (and fell asleep on the couch again…aaargh!). Must have been tired still.

Walked the little dog on Friday night…lovely skies…

Kitten doesn’t like it when I close the door on her…

Simba needed knots combed (and cut) out…this is his bitey face. Y’all love his bitey face because you are just looking at a picture of it and not trying to keep him from biting you while you cut knots out of his incredibly badly designed butt fur.

Ironing begins…this thing is BIIIIGGG.

I’m using two teflon sheets to try to iron the entire width. Straight up, it’s a pain in the ass, because it’s heavy and keeps trying to fall off the ironing board. There’s my cup of tea and cat in the background.

I did try to keep this piece relatively simple (for me), but spiderwebs crept in…

The bottom with roots…this piece has a lot about roots in it…our beliefs rooted into our behaviors…or vice versa. This notion of what it means to be an American seems so deeply rooted in some that they can’t see sense or have empathy.

Working on the female figure…the two margarine containers are being used as weights to keep everything from falling off.

The heart…complicated…always…

Her torso is done, although there’s another arm out there…

I got the other arm down, although the sun is shining on the hand so you can’t see it. I can’t remember how wide this is, but it’s not small…

From there to octopus tentacles. I wanted her to be able to reach out and hurt him, but not with a weapon, per se. I only wanted one real weapon in the piece.

Yes. That is a cat. In a box.

Third tentacle done just in time for leaving for an art exhibit…

So I got into the 300s yesterday…next up is her head and stuff behind her. More of that tonight, I hope. Less sleeping on the couch…more art. I say that but I know I did a lot yesterday.

From there, we headed out to the Perfect 10 exhibit at La Bodega Gallery…

Everything is supposed to be 10″ square…

Below are Kristine Tran and Natalie Bessell…just a note, I link when I can easily find one and it’s obvious it’s the artist I’m showing…sometimes I can’t figure that out. Which maybe is a commentary on artists who need to have a better presence online? But if you know you have a good link to someone you see, I’m ready and willing to fix this. I do want people to be able to go look at their art and maybe even keep an eye out for it or buy something. I wish I could buy more, honestly.

This is Skindiana Bones…I love her stuff…

Mario Chacon…worshipping pizza with cactus heads…La Sacred Piksa, he calls it.

Jennifer Cooksey…with some badass 3D work…

This is by Hyper Helix…

Luchuk’s stabby eyeball…

Another Spenser Little wirey piece…

I really like this Karen Ramirez piece…’twas all shiny and frightening…

David Van Gough…the lighting was hard to get around, but incredible detail…

Optimus Volts…they look like spray cans all cut to pieces…

Iwatsumi…the lighting was changing as I watched it…sorry for the crookedness. There are always lots of people at these exhibits and it’s hard to get straight-on views sometimes.

Turns out I follow this mural artist on Instagram…this is Shiva Trump by Celeste Byers…crooked to try to beat the glare…

Hers was the only piece with a statement…

Anna Stump with one of her beautiful nudes…

Teenah Clemente…

Chris Farrington…

TEM…

Lauren Grant…

Buffalo…

An interesting show…with that much small work, you’re bound to find something you like.

With that, I need to do a bunch of schoolwork today before I can get back to ironing…plus it’s time to get the week on track with food and other crap. I love having a day off from all of it to just do what I want…I need to plan more of that into my schedule, of course…always.

*Ingrid Michaelson, Be OK

Down Here So Laughable and Small*

The good news is that I’m done with the ironing. It’s funny, the disconnect when I type that. I don’t iron clothes. Like ever. OK, once maybe for the boychild when he had a college interview. I don’t iron my own stuff…unless it’s got a major issue. I just buy stuff that won’t need it. Because I spend so much time ironing when making art…that’s why. It took 13 hours and 39 minutes to iron 800 and something pieces of Wonder Under to fabric. It’s probably gonna take another 13 hours or so to cut them all out. Well. Maybe not…it’s taken less time than the ironing on the last two quilts…so maybe I’ll be done sometime over the weekend? Who knows. I have two nights clear…I think. That’s probably not enough (snorts hysterically…who the hell am I kidding? Nowhere near enough. OK, add in Saturday and Sunday, and maybe I’ve got a chance of finishing by the end of the weekend. That’s realistic. So ironing together next week. There’s a plan.).

Yeah, I’m still sick, but not as bad as I was. I’m still getting wiped out easily at night though. I think I worked a 12-hour day yesterday, between school, tutoring center, coming home and trying to make sense of the next unit, and then a last-minute, late-night revision of the quiz we’re giving today.

THEN I made art. Yeah. Well it didn’t take long to iron the last bits. I think I only did art for like 52 minutes last night (yes, I keep track…it keeps me accountable to doing it).

So here was flailing on the couch…

And Satchemo giving Calli lovepats (no claws) while Calli tried to get me to throw the ball for her.

Then I realized I had to get up and deal with the school stuff, because we start the new unit Friday and I’m not ready. I had this cider I wanted to try at a restaurant over the summer, just because of the name, and the last time I went to BevMo, they had it, so I bought a couple bottles…and I was feeling kind of ultra-stressed, so I poured a rare glass before dinner…this is Ginja Jinja.

It was pretty good. I could use more ginger in my ninja though. Seriously. I like ginger.

Ironing didn’t start until almost 11 PM. But it was pretty easy in the end. An eyeball, a gun, this cloud of letters. A coupla tattoos. The male figure’s hair.

Shit. I shoulda counted these. I always count them. Damn. Hang on a second…101 fabrics…

This is not an uber-colorful quilt. I think it’ll be toned down a bit from some of my others. Some of that is the background color, but also I didn’t add a bunch of bright color. We’ll see what that looks like next week when I start putting it all together.

But before I do that, here’s tonight’s work…cut out that whole boxful of pieces.

Lots of big pieces on this one. I did that on purpose. The next one won’t be as lucky. I’m actually looking forward to starting the next one. I’m really unsure of this one…plus it’s a difficult topic anyway. Not that the next one is easy, but it seems easier for me to manage…maybe the science aspect is so clear to me. Who knows.

*David Gray, Ain’t No Love