Impossible to Ignore*

I fought dizzy and cold clammy sweats all day, but managed to make art last night, at least for a while. It feels good. I missed it. It gives me focus.

I had already picked and laid out the flesh fabrics for the male figure before I got sick, so it was very easy to jump in and start assigning pieces to colors…

In fact, I got mostly through the last half of the 600s and most of the 700s with those…the pile on the number 1 fabric was quite large.

Although I say that, and it still took only a third of the piece of fabric…so a third of a half yard, since that’s what I usually buy.

I try to fit them as well as possible to not waste fabric, but sometimes you just have little bits and pieces all over.

This is all I have left to iron down…his tattoos, a gun, and the cloud above his head. His hair. His eye. I’m not sure what those little pieces are in the middle. His lips.

Not much. Not-sick me would have finished last night. I quit right around 11: 15 and tried to go to sleep (ah ha ha…too many things in my head for that…upcoming stressful meeting, student stuff, deadlines, people, a quiz, a show I didn’t get into and why, the next science unit, deadlines, cleaning stuff, did I say deadlines?). So no sleep for me. Well. I’m sure I slept at some point.

The box is full…almost time to start cutting shit out.

Here’s all the fabrics so far…two runs of flesh tones for two bodies.

Lots of red and gray.

Anyway, work calls. It always does. I’m still fighting the cold sweats and a voice that’s not quite right. Not sure what to do but keep going. Looking forward to finishing the ironing today though. It’s about time.

*The Cranberries, Dreams

I Wanna Be Sedated*

Oh yeah. That’s a cold. Bam. Some kid’s germs. Ugh.

Honestly, I came home from school last night, after Back-to-School Night, and I fell asleep on the couch. Like an old person. Cuz sometimes I am an old person. I woke up to dark and no desire for dinner (I never did eat dinner) and a need for another cup of tea, because I’d made one but now it was cold. My kids will tell you that I constantly heat up my tea…I could put it in one of those things that keeps it warm, and at work I do, but at home, there’s something comforting about the ritual of heating the tea, of 60 seconds passing and my reading a page of my book while it does. It tastes better in ceramics than in metal too.

Today I will try to keep myself upright and not use my voice too much, because there’s not much of it to use. I can’t stay home…it’s a lab day and no substitute teacher can handle a lab day. Plus it’s only a cold. We don’t waste sub days with a mere cold. Even pneumonia isn’t a reason to stay home. Gastrointestinal flu? Well yeah, we stay home for that. We don’t have enough subs either. And none of them want to teach science. Gee, I wonder why? I will have to wander the classroom during the lab today though…measurement is still a skill they are learning.

Here I was for a bit after waking up, tea heated, needy animals.

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Then I got up and ironed. I should have graded things, but I couldn’t face it. I will pay for that this weekend. Here’s a bunch of numbers and alphabet things…

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Here’s the baby lizard I rescued before Kitten found it.

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It was very cute.

I finished the blackboard behind the female figure and then picked the run of flesh tones for the second figure, the male.

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A slightly different run of colors. I don’t want them to be the same. But he’s still a white guy. Because they usually are.

I didn’t add a lot of colors in yesterday’s ironing…a few greens but mostly white and beige tones.

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At that point, it was about 11:30, I knew I had to be up early for a meeting this morning, and I didn’t feel well. So I didn’t start ironing the next figure, because once you start, you can’t stop until you’re done. And this is what faced me…

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Plus a whole ‘nother box or two of pieces to get through everything that’s happening on this guy. Much better to consider that tonight or even better, maybe tomorrow. We’ll see. Sick is not helpful in this case.

Here’s a boxful of pieces…

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I’m expecting to be able to start cutting them out on Sunday. Hopefully. If I get through the grading. Sometimes you just have to put your head down and get it done. Sometimes you just have to go to bed! We’ll see where I end up tonight.

*The Ramones, I Wanna Be Sedated

Words Make My Mouth Exercise*

I think all the surrounding coughing and sniffling is finally gonna take me down. On Back-to-School Night no less…ironic that. I’m feeling the throat pain, the spacey, the beginnings of something. I don’t get sick that often any more…also ironic, because I work in a middle school AND the diabetes is supposed to affect my immune system. Ah well…maybe this weekend will be all about sleep and cold medicine…if I make it there. Trying to explain to a non-teacher what Back-to-School Night is like…after teaching 100-plus 12-years-olds how NOT to kill each other with a triple beam balance, I’m going to talk to 50 or so parents and try to remember what their kid is like in class, and I only have an hour…GO! Yeah. Well. It’s a marathon day…let’s just put it at that and hope it ends well. I do know it’s harder than any day I ever did working in corporate world. Some people find field trips more difficult…they are tiring, yes, but I enjoy field trips…getting out of the classroom with the kids is a plus. I’d like to do more of those.

Anyway. I made it to the gym yesterday and then cooked dinner and then graded stuff…so it was a very late start on the art stuff.

This guy turned 2 yesterday…

He was kinda playful and demanding for a bit.

This guy is venturing out more…but trying not to be so aggressive, so that’s a good thing. Adjustment is slow for all…

I swear I scooped this Tuesday after school, and then came home yesterday to this. I’d swept too.

Sigh. The trees have decided it’s Fall. Fall all over the place.

I ironed for less than an hour last night, but I did finish all the 400s…well, most of them. This is what I’ve used so far.

Yesterday I ironed the weird arm in the middle…mostly grays. The box is filling up quickly.

So I’ve reached the halfway point on the ironing. I don’t think I’ll be done until Saturday. I actually have some time on this one before the deadline, but I still want to get it done quickly…some of that is because I’m not sure about it and some of that are the other deadlines behind it. I’ll find out on September 20 if I have to make a new piece for a show I was already juried into (sigh. no comment.). I’m looking forward to coming home tonight and doing something with this…at least dinner is mostly made already (did that last night) and I don’t feel like I have to grade anything if I’ve been at school for 10 hours straight. Just saying.

*Violent Femmes, Add It Up

Like Spun Glass in Sore Eyes*

I’m kinda losing track of things at the moment…sitting here looking out the office window where the leaves keep falling (because it’s Fall? Not yet in Southern California…we’ll hit 100 again before the month is out, for sure), wondering how some days go so quickly I can’t even breathe, don’t even see them slip past. Yesterday was like that…zip! And it was gone. There are pros and cons to that of course…some parts of the day were unbearably long. Lunch is never long enough, nor prep long enough to get it all done. Sleep is never freaking long enough for anything.

It’s something to do with September, I think…even without kids’ back-to-school nights and packets full of paperwork and new soccer seasons, this month impresses on me some level of urgency. I wish it would stop so I could just watch the leaves fall and wonder why they do that when it still looks and feels like summer. Look! There goes another one. It’s not even yellow. Green leaves falling. Stress from last week’s heat? Perhaps. It’s still a marker of time in my brain. FALL.

I did some of this last night, lower left corner again, some chain stitch in some color I can’t remember…a green with a pink in it, I think.

Even Pandora is playing all wistful mopey music.

Still not sure about this quilt. But it continues. Last night, I got lungs, hair, octopus tentacles, and bullets ironed down.

I lost one of the octopus tentacles, so I redrew it…and then found it in the next box. I usually check, but this time I didn’t. Mistake. I also figured out where the unnumbered piece belonged. I had traced it but forgotten to write a number on it. That time I had gone through the next three boxes looking for it…and then glanced at the table, where the lonely unnumbered pieces go. And there it was…409…in all its glory. It was the right shape.

Leaves falling 5 and 6 at a time. There’s no wind…just leaves dropping straight down, twirling a bit as they plummet to the ground. I won’t sweep or rake them up…I let them decay where they are. Well, except for the 700 leaves that fell in the pool over the weekend. I tried getting most of those out yesterday.

It’s funny, I try to find an hour or so a day to make art…some days, like yesterday, I’m over 2 hours in and trying to negotiate a later bedtime with my brain so I can keep going, until the mom brain reminds me what it’s like to teach 7th graders metrics and measurement on not-enough sleep (oh yeah. bad.). So I’m 8 hours into the ironing and hoping more will happen tonight, but also I need to deal with the 720 emails from students yesterday and last night (it’s OK…they’re making up work because I explained yesterday how to fix those Not-A’s) and food and the gym is on my to-do list. So I can read my book. OK, also because I need to go to the gym. I do actually like the gym. I just like artmaking more.

With that, I need to book out of here early to deal with stuff…but I did get through all of the 300s and into the 400s, but not very far. I’m doing the weird arm in the middle and then starting on the other figure in the quilt. I’m not quite halfway, but I’m close. That’s something.

*Elliott Smith, Coming Up Roses

Pulling Your Puzzles Apart*

It’s funny…I thought I would have all this time yesterday to iron, but grading took forever, plus we walked the dogs in the much cooler weather. Yeah. This dog…

The clouds were low and it was in the 70s…a huge change from 109 on Saturday.

There’s an endangered bird species or two who live here…it’s nice that someone makes their homes decorative.

We tried a new way back, one we won’t try again, because it goes past a variety of sewage treatment areas.

Plus at some point it’s just a paved road. Not my first choice, although this piece of equipment was pretty.

I graded for a couple of hours after that, then cooked dinner and did something on this. Hmmm. French knots in the bottom left, in a variegated thread this time.

And because we were trying to finish watching the first episode of Ozark and I can’t just sit and watch TV, I kept sewing parts down for the next month’s worth of Folk Tails.

I think I made eyeballs too.

Finally to the ironing! I finished ironing down all the pieces of flesh from the day before.

Which probably took close to an hour. And then I started on all those pieces that weren’t flesh but were in the body…there were a ton of pieces in the heart this time, and many more arteries/veins…so the reds were more extensive than normal.

I don’t feel like I got much done really…just the eyeballs and one tattoo and the bloody stuff. I still have parts of the face, the lungs, the octopus tentacles coming off her hand, and another tattoo.

I started the bullet trails through her head, but didn’t get to the bullets. They’re lined up on the bottom. Anyway. I’m almost 6 hours into the ironing and I still haven’t gotten to the 400s…some of them are in the hair too. So I guess that will be tonight. I hope. I suspect 15 hours for the ironing is a good estimate…although I hope it will be less. Maybe by the end of the week? This is a tough week…back-to-school night will kick my ass. We’ll see.

Here’s the pile of pieces that are ironed plus the fabrics before I organized them…

I’m trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour (ha!), which just means midnight instead of 1 AM. So I’ve been watching the clock and making myself stop.

Here’s what I’ve used so far in fabrics…the flesh run on the left at the back of the box…and a ton of reds.

I have to remember that I have tutorial today after school, so exhaustion will be high. But I don’t have to cook dinner tonight…so that’s exciting. No really, it is.

*Coldplay, The Scientist

From the Mess to the Masses*

Three days off is always so nice. The weekend is so rushed when it’s shoved into two days…mostly because teachers need so much weekend time just to prep for the next week, unfortunately. I really enjoy being able to stretch work out a bit with that third day, although I’m sure if I always had three days off, I’d manage to fill them up and feel the same day-before stress I usually get on a Sunday. Too much to do in too little time.

The weather also cooled off considerably, so my brain is back. We got a little rain and it’s about 20-30 degrees lower in temperature. It’s like we’re human again.

I am trying to persuade Kitten to stay in the office for a little while, even with the interloper in the house…it worked for a bit.

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There were treats involved. Who uses an ironing board base as a pillow? Cats are weird.

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Speaking of weird…I almost bought this just for the raccoon. Yes, that’s a Disney princess behind him.

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Majorly weird. And not cheap.

So when we got back from the store (must have food), I started folding and putting away fabric, both from Saturday’s run to get a background fabric (the brownish gray or grayish brown)…the green is for the chalkboard behind her. And some other stuff that leaped into my hands.

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Then I found and sorted by color all the fabrics from the last quilt…

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And put it all away so I could start the next one.

And then I graded for a while. See this stuff? They all do this. Inhabit me with their tails. Plus that’s the gradebook he’s lying on. AND he looks pissed off that I might want to do these things near him.

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Trust me, Satchemo, I feel the same way about grading. But you’re not helping. I need to do more of it today.

Then I hung the drawing…big but mostly square. I’m still not sure how I feel about this one. I mean, I’m making it. We’ll see.

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I tell you that so you don’t think I’m always totally confident about what I’m doing…that there are times when I’m not sure it’s going to turn out well or at all. And I keep doing it.

I just have to hope it works. I started out in the earth, so browns…

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But I quickly got into the flesh run for the first figure in the quilt. She used a run of 7 fabrics, although that brown was only used for one thing. I laid out all the flesh pieces last night…

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Here are all the pieces that are part of the first figure but aren’t flesh…so a lot of artery/heart pieces, some lungs, eyeballs, and I don’t remember what else.

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I’ll get to those today. It means I was almost to the 400s, but I haven’t done all of them. I don’t know what that means in terms of how far I am. I’ve got more to do, for sure. I spent almost 4 hours ironing yesterday and finally had to force myself to stop to go to bed.

She has words on her neck.

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I still have the three lightest fabrics of flesh to iron down…that was 1 AM. There’s a lot in the box…honestly, I need to pull a bigger box for the pieces.

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It’s already full. Ahhhh. I love this part; I really do. That and ironing it together.

OK, today. Well grading, of course. And a dog walk for sure…now that it’s cooler. And then ironing. Lots of ironing. Yay.

*Phoenix, Lizstomania

Infiltrating My Brain

Awww school. You’ve infiltrated my brain dammit and now I’m in panic mode. I keep looking at the calendar and reminding myself that there are hours in there and I will get organized at some point. My brain is unraveling. I haven’t bought supplies, I don’t have my stuff into the print shop, my room is a disaster.

Walk away.

So I had my stitching meeting last night and started the next month’s blocks. This is May though and not April. April is not sewn down yet. I did stems and legs and grass. The legs are awesome…two couched threads with bullion knots over them.

I have lots more to do on these. Obviously. And I should start sewing April down too.

When I got home, I finally started ironing more quilt parts together. I iron the eyes separately and then put them on the face.

There they are. The eyes are the most important part of the quilt, I think.

Aliens in my quilt, polluting my world.

Seriously. Alien ships give off CO₂, right?

Ironed the head/land to the rest. Most of it’s rolled up.

But then I realized that I hadn’t washed the background fabric in Retayne, and the dark fabrics, especially the batiks, bleed like a motherfucker. And then they say not to use the high-efficiency washers to do that, so I stirred for 20 minutes.

Which was good, because it didn’t bleed at all. Midnight did not fucking care.

Then I finally got her ironed down. She’s taller than I am. Not that that’s hard.

Head ironed. Woo hoo.

Now I need to stitch the whole thing down. Like today. Ha! Well. It will probably take 5-11 hours, based on the last two quilts. Probably closer to 5 hours. But I need to do school stuff too and deal with the bedroom and the garage, all of which are stressing me out.

I’m glad I’m at this point though. She’s good. I’m good with her good. But now I need to go do shit so I can stop panicking.

For a Minute There I Lost Myself*

School today. Not the start, just the prep. The stuff we do every year that no one pays us to do but that has to be done. Sometimes I only do this stuff alone, at home, staring at a computer, but we’re trying to finesse what we built from scratch last year, and that takes both of us. Next year maybe we won’t have to meet beforehand. You miss the people…not the workload. Well. And not ALL the people. Just like any other job.

I wanted to be done with the ironing yesterday…COULD have been done, but ’twas not to be. I started well…doing all those stupid little windows in the morning…see how small they are? How many of them there are?

Can you find the two cats? It’s hot and humid here. Cats don’t like hot and humid generally. At least that’s the impression I’m getting.

Then I had a good visit with an artist friend but when I got back, it was apparent to me that thunder had happened. Calli doesn’t like thunder any more. At all.

She tried to dig out the hat tree in the corner of the entryway, she tried to go under my desk, and in doing so, knocked down the ironing board with the quilt and 17 thousand safety pins on it. She also tried to dig through the couch, in my bathroom, and on my bed. Poor baby. There’s more possible thunderstorms today. I’m debating bringing her with me to school, just in case. Not that she’ll be better there, but at least she won’t be alone. And destroy the house. I debate the thundershirt idea every year, but haven’t done it yet.

So she was semi-frantic when I got home and needed about 4 hours of petting and sleeping to get over it. Meanwhile, the internet disappeared, and then so did my time, because fixing that took about 4 1/2 hours and a trip to the not-so-local cable services store for a new modem. And four different guys. The last one was named Lloyd and he promised to fix it in three minutes and he did. That’s all I really need folks. Follow-through and accountability. Or something. Thanks Lloyd.

I did this while I was waiting…

The white lazy daisies up on the top right plus the fern stitch. I also sewed 4 eyeballs down, but that’s not documented photographically. Just imagine the elephants from a couple days ago, but with no pins through their eyes.

Oh yeah, and I stopped by to see my exhibit, because it was near where I was visiting…just sat there and stared at it for about 5 minutes or so. It’s funny, because I walk in and start to explain who I am and they’re like, “We know who you are.” Oh. OK. Hi.

It’s still weird to sit in there and see all my stuff.

Before I left the house, though, I had finished those windows…

And ironed the arm from the night before on top of it all…

Then after the internet fiasco, so many hours wasted on the phone and otherwise, because then the phone was not working once we replaced the modem…I went back to ironing and finished up the torso…which looks ever so strange without boobs, quite honestly.

And then did the last bit of land…and a rocketship, and the wind behind her head. It’s a cheery landscape? No?

Eventually I will iron these two together, once I finish the head.

That’s today’s goal…along with stitching it all down. Hopefully. I have my quilt meeting tomorrow afternoon, and I might have nothing on this to take with me if I don’t catch up. There aren’t many pieces left, but it was enough at 12:30 last night that I was too tired to keep going, plus I knew I’d have to be up early for school today. Ugh. That phrase. Damn day job. I need another month. Seriously. Finish the quilt, the cleanup, the organization. Need more time. Always.

*Radiohead, Karma Police

It’s More Likely to Happen if I Talk about It

This happens every year. I get close to the beginning of the new school year and I decide to just make art nonstop. Like screw the housecleaning and the to-do list. Probably I should be more mature and get the car smogged and the bedroom out of chaos mode (I have two drawers and the hope chest still…just cannot deal. Cannot.). But no. I need this quilt done. I’m irritated that I’ve finished no quilts in months. This one isn’t even that big…although it does have a ton of pieces.

The last week before going back…it just sucks. You realize how many hours you’re going to lose…not just the hours at school, but it’s back to daily grading and planning, to kid problems that never leave your working brain, to adult drama (seriously), to stupid professional development that aims to teach you what you already know (some day they might differentiate…but it hasn’t happened yet), to endless meetings. UGH. I need to change my mindset. Somehow. Maybe if this summer had been more of a recharge and less like hard work. Reminder for next summer, eh? Then again, LAST summer at about this point, I was getting kicked out of an AQS show for an invisible penis. So. There’s that.

Anyway, I had another dental appointment in the morning, but then came back and refused to do anything but art. That’s not true. I moved a few things into the garage. But the humidity is killing me at the moment. Ugh. So I started ironing. Which isn’t hot at all. Stop laughing.

I did the rest of the hills…hard to see it all in this picture. We got oil things and a dam and a cracked highway and a volcano. Like you do. Some power plants.

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I added some oil drums to the top right…

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Then ironed all the bottom stuff to that…

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It’s super long, so that’s harder than it looks to keep it all attached. Right now it’s all rolled up under where I’m ironing. Somewhat dangerous, as I might accidentally iron it all to itself. That would suck.

I did some of this after dinner. I think I was doing blue in the top, above the tree. Just filling in spaces with whatever makes sense.

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Then back to ironing. I did about 5 hours total yesterday…up to almost 14 hours of ironing at this point, but I’m much closer to done now. These flowers were a bit of a challenge.

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Then the body behind it, attaching it all to the bottom bits and building one arm. The hand went in front of and behind the flowers.

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I did some of the torso (the yellow sun thing) and then turned the teflon sideways to do the other arm separately. I numbered it before the torso, but the torso has to be finished before, because it’s behind the arm. Complicated much?

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Awwww. Tiny bird.

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Then I ironed the other arm where it belongs, although it’s not ironed down where the buildings need to go. I just wanted you to see everything I ironed yesterday. It was a lot of little pieces. I gave up when the buildings were next.

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It was after midnight, I was tired, and I didn’t want to deal with all the tiny windows. Although, now it’s morning and I still don’t want to deal with them. Huh.

So then I was trying to figure out how to photograph this thing. Finished, it’s 61″ long…I’m not finished yet.

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This is a slightly better view. You can see I need to finish the torso, the land above it, and her head.

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So I’m in the 1000s. About 320 pieces to go. That’s it. Then iron it to the background and start ironing it down. See now I can see an endpoint, a light at the end of the tunnel. So it’s really hard to NOT work on it right this second. I have about an hour and a half before I have to leave again. But I need to get the dogs. And really I should clean something (ugh I so don’t want to). I could be done with ironing today if I worked hard and if my schedule allowed. Hard to say if that will happen. Stitch down by tomorrow? Quilting by Friday? I don’t know if I can pull that off. Probably not. But I can talk about it. It’s more likely to happen if I talk about it.

Back from That Soul Vacation*

It’s frustrating to keep making plans to get a certain amount of art done, and then you end up barely getting anything done, whether it’s because of limited time or because things take longer than you thought they would (my fault for so many tiny pieces) or even both! Which is what I’m dealing with today…along with a cracked filling that needs replacing because I grind my teeth. The same with exercise and cleaning and organizing and getting everything done. Life is time-consuming.

Anyway, I’m back to the dentist today to deal with the filling, unfortunately…but it’s gotta be done. I don’t know what to tell her about grinding my teeth…I was busted for that the first time my freshman year of college. I need to socket the exercise back in regularly. I am definitely a work in progress. Sigh.

I did some of this while I was finishing something else up…more stitching in the bottom left, the lighter color, pistil stitches and fly stitches.

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And I have almost all of these sewn down…just eyeballs and those big yellow flower things. I need this done by Friday. Maybe Thursday. And I was watching the last bit of an episode I can’t watch on the computer…

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So ironing started late. Same time as when I’m teaching, ironically. What else did I get done yesterday? Some major cleaning in the bedroom again (still not anywhere near done), boychild needed shoes, some other stuff. Then I ironed the rocky crotchland.

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So yeah, this sits right above the legs…and then the land sits above it. Normal people might just do one piece of brown behind all the rocks and water. I am not normal. But I like how it looks, so that’s my problem. I didn’t get much more in height yesterday…

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I did start on the land, but you can see there are a ton of tiny pieces here…

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The sheep will look more sheeplike with outlining. Hopefully. So this afternoon, when I’m recovering from the dental crap, hopefully I’ll be ironing. Before that, I’ll be dumping 10 bags of clothing and other crap at the thrift store. It’s progress. I know when I’m done with this, it will be a good thing. It’s just sucking up so much time. This is nothing new, right? I’m so at peace when I’m ironing though. Makes me want to do more. Less likely to grind my teeth, right?

Anyway. Teeth call. Louder than the other things.

*Train, Drops of Jupiter