Words First

Mondays are hard, even when you’re supposedly on vacation. Maybe it’s because the weekend brings all this hope of getting stuff done AND enjoying yourself and Mondays just feel like the day you have to work. And I do! I usually am copyediting on Mondays because I took the weekend off. So maybe that Monday feeling is my fault. I need to do the words first because they actually take more mental energy. Then I can do the art.

I redid the calendar on the fridge yesterday and realized that school is only four weeks away, but also, the girlchild is leaving before I even start school. And the boychild leaves less than a week after that. It’s certainly easier with other people in the house. Plus they entertain the puppy. I’m not looking forward to the exodus.

I ironed most of Saturday, over 4 hours…so I’m at 13 hours and 40 minutes so far. My sewing machine goes into the shop today, pick up on Wednesday…I don’t know if I’ll be done with the ironing Wednesday, because I have to copyedit today, plus we’re gonna hike. So those are kind of time sucks.

I started Saturday morning with the giraffe on the right…I think he started out in the 400s.

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I finished the giraffe and went on to do grapes and grape leaves…it’s fussy in here, because the ribs go over some stuff and under some stuff. Which is my own crazy.

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When I’m drawing, I don’t think about HOW it will get made, whether it will be a pain or not. When I was drawing all this earth-related stuff, I drew a homeless woman in there. Because she seemed like something an Earth Mother should be paying attention to…carrying close to her.

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She’s tiny, but she’s in there. With her shopping cart. The homeless population in San Diego and El Cajon has always been there…but lately it seems like we aren’t really helping them. Can we house all of them? I’d like to think we could house those who wanted it. I know a few don’t, but most of them do. But instead we do sweeps and tear their camps down, and we put up sharp rocks so they can’t sleep there or even sit there, and we carry all this fear about them. I’m sure they carry fear too.

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Then Saturday night, I went to the Visions opening and to watch a band in Pacific Beach…I got to see the sun go down at the pier.

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It was quite pretty out there, which makes up for the fact that most of PB smells like vomit and pee.

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Sunday was busy…Calli got to run after the ball a lot, which made her hot.

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Grandpa got gnawed on by Simba.

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And then I kept ironing…butterflies, cocoons, and poppies…

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A gecko…he was fun.

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And sometime after midnight, this happened. Because playing with the puppy after midnight means he might sleep through the night. Maybe. Actually, he was asleep, but we were trying to deal with a giant fur matt in his nether regions, and he woke up vicious and bitey. Both kids are involved…you just can’t see the boychild except in the shadow. If you throw balls down the hallway long enough, puppies get tired.

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While all that was going on, I was finishing the left side, ironing passionflowers, like you do.

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Luckily that whole piece ironed easily onto the flesh background, so that’s the lower torso done. Next is the arm that bisects that…and I’m now in the 900s. Still not halfway, sadly. Close! But not quite.

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Here’s a closeup of what I was doing most of Saturday and Sunday.

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It’s really not a huge area of the quilt, but there are a lot of pieces and details.

In the last Earth Mother, I wasn’t allowed to do any nudity or politics. I’ve obviously blown that off this time. Although the nudity isn’t really a huge deal. Someone asked me what this one was FOR. It’s for…well…I just needed to do it. So I did.

Anyway, I probably won’t get to iron more until tonight, and I’ll be tired from hiking. Oh well.

Kitten is still living under the ironing board, playing with the strings…

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It’s been hot, so that fur-free belly is probably a good thing. OK. Back to work with words. Then maybe I’ll get to the fabric.

I Really Want Waffles

Summer quiet. Birds singing. Mornings need caffeine, sure, and nights are getting warmer, but there’s still a breeze. The days aren’t unbearably hot yet (give it time…this isn’t really our summer).

What did I get done yesterday? Not much. Honestly. I’m not sure why. Well, that’s not entirely true. I shipped a quilt, which meant going to get a box and then coming back and making a label and packing it up and then driving back to the place where I got the box and shipping it. So that was about 2 hours. I always forget how long simple tasks like that take. And I finished a book. And I gamed in the evening, and that went longer than usual. But I was not my usual efficient self. I find summer does that to me. My brain remembers what it’s like to be a normal human, instead of a teacher on work overload, and it tries to make me act that way…like a normal human. No, you should flail a bit and lie around on a couch or maybe read some stupid articles about whatever. Stop doing all the works!

I finished Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and all I could think was that question was not answered by the book. And it’s different than the movie Bladerunner. Which is fine…I don’t mind that part, but damn. I still want to know if they dream. And I’m glad I didn’t remember the Bladerunner connection while I was reading it, because I made my own pictures in my head instead.

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I was looking for cool covers and found these. And I’m still disturbed by the androids’ behavior with the spider. I guess I was raised on Star Trek androids. Data had a significant influence on how I view them. And Battlestar Galactica as well. But the later series.

Anyway. I’m reading a lot. This is not a bad thing.

I didn’t iron until late. You hear that a lot. Because it’s true. Today I plan to iron all day.

I did the daisies in the top left, and now that side is done all the way up to the arm that bisects the body.

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And then I started on the right side…

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Today I’ll be ironing a million spots on a giraffe. And a uterus…see that blank spot in the middle? Easy to figure out what that will be.

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We have renamed Puppy by the way (not really). Nugget of Idiocy. It’s a great name for a puppy. Seriously though…the first owner called him Fluffy Teddy (godawful name), then the second called him Simba. We call him a variety of things, including Asshole and You Little Fucker and Vladimir and Fanny, none of which he answers to…Nugget it is. Last night’s conversation revolved around how sweet he is when he’s tired and what a jerk he can be when he’s hyper. Plus all the moods in the middle. He’s not a bad dog…he is learning to behave. He’s just a puppy. Puppies are jerks sometimes.

OK. Ironing. I really want waffles though.

It’s Coming Along

‘Twas a busy day where some things got accomplished. I’m settling into summer. A bit. Funny, because I go back to school in exactly a month. Sometimes a month sounds like a long time, like “there’s a month of school left,” but sometimes it’s way too short, like “there’s a month of vacation left.” Perceptions…

A couple of my co-teachers are pinning educational stuff on Pinterest (I have to admit to some of that…it’s an easy place to keep stuff so I don’t have to remember it) and some are actually going into their classrooms and doing stuff (oh heck no). And some are doing everything in their power to have a non-school existence for a while, because it encompasses everything when you go back.

I got a great rejection letter yesterday, with a handwritten note to try again next year. Funny…at first, I just assume that she wrote it on everyone’s letter (and maybe she did), but it’s nicer to hope that it was just a few. I wasn’t expecting to get in…it’s “real art” and I work in fabric, dontcha know. It’s like craft. I do it with macaroni and a glue gun. I’m not really trained at all. (all lies. Although I do own macaroni and a glue gun.)

I cut out all the Wonder Under for the commissioned owl yesterday at my sewing meeting. Now I am getting closer to deciding what he should look like too…because I ironed the real one (well, the first one) together yesterday…

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I have to admit that the ironing is going slowly. Too many other things going on, I guess. But I got that part done before I went to the sewing meeting. I think the striped fabric worked out on the wings. There will be stitching that delineates between each feather a little better in the long run, but I think it works.

Kitten has taken to lying under the ironing board and playing with the strings that keep the cover on.

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So then I went to another meeting, an art meeting, and came home with this idea for our feminist coloring book…well, honestly, it would probably make a cool quilt too, but I’d have to significantly enlarge it. Right now, it’s about 8″ square.

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The original idea I had a while ago involved a ruler and a protractor, but this was not so well-divided and organized, and I like it better. I had to figure out how to balance the piece, despite the disparate sizes of the women, and I like how it turned out.

So that was about 2 hours of time when I should have been ironing, but I think it was well spent.

So then I made it back in here for ironing…finished the owl’s wing and another violet, and then moved on to the belly space. I ironed the trees separately, because I can’t see the lines through the background fabric…

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And then I put them where they belong.

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This stuff is pretty time-consuming. I’m almost all the through the 300s. Only. I’m planning on a few hours today as well, although I have some stuff I have to do first. It’s coming along. I never thought it would be quick.

Kitten moved to the other chair…her shaved bits clearly apparent. She’s so much happier now without the cone and the stitches.

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And I’m happy she’s still here too.

Tiny Ironing

Late start this morning, not because I woke up late (ha!), but because we walked the dogs early to beat the heat. I usually like evening hikes better, because morning should be sleep time, but my nights have been booked this week.

Yesterday, I managed to finish the chapter I was working on, go to the gym, and then iron stuff…although I don’t feel like I got a lot done. Sigh. Everything takes so LONG! Tiny little pieces.

Well, first I started with the big pieces…and did the mountains and a volcano. A lot of the lighter fabrics will be easier to see once the stitching is in.

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I finished the world all the way across, and then pulled it off the ironing sheet, rolled it up, and put it aside for when I iron the whole thing down.

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Then I started on the Earth Mother portion, which has a lot of tiny little details…on the right are all the pieces for the next violet.

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And at the end of the evening, I have leaves and a raccoon and an ovary (it fit in the hole)…one more violet to do there, and then the owl. I’m gonna be ironing tiny for a good long time…

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So I’m in the 200s, but barely. With about 3 hours of ironing done, I think. It’s gonna take a while. And I’m gone most of today, so I probably won’t get a ton of ironing done, but I’m going to do a little now and then more tonight.

The dogs were tired last night…sometimes they do get played out.

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I think they’re in the same position right now, post walk…except I need to wash the little dog. Whoever thought furry butt hair on a dog was a good thing should come bathe this little beast. I’m gonna shave his butt for him.

Ironing the World

It’s so delightfully peaceful this morning. There’s no hammering or machine noises. Just birds and a puppy running around and yeah someone probably needs to pull pine needles out of the pool motor, but otherwise, it’s quite wonderful. And I got to sleep in for once, because the puppy wasn’t here in the early AM…the kids took him with them to their dad’s last night, because I was going to be in Oceanside for hours.

Yesterday I was amazingly efficient and finished a few rounds through the copyediting, so I’ll finish that today and then have a few days off again. Which is good, because I finished sorting all those tiny little pieces last night…

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I pile them up in my hand by 100s…and then put them in the correct bin. It took a little over 2 hours to sort them all. Here’s all the bins, each with 100 pieces…

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Someone asked how I find the piece I need…well, this is how. Each bin is numbered and has all the pieces from that batch of 100…

Then I lay them out on my table in the studio by 10s…so this is the 50s, 60s, etc.

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It’s pretty damn organized and fairly anal. Some people are much more organic in their process, but I was organic in the drawing and the fabric choosing. At this point, I want it to get done as easily as possible. So this works. Because I want it to look like my drawing too.

Then I started ironing…this is the world at the bottom of the piece…and it’s huge. It doesn’t have a ton of pieces in it though…

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So although it’s larger than the ironing board, it only had about 50 pieces in it. It was after midnight at that point, and I was tired. Driving in traffic to Oceanside was tiring.

I never really know what the piece will look like until I start ironing. I don’t color in my drawings…I just sort of imagine it in my head and start picking. So I really like this…especially how the blues flow around the world. I didn’t plan that. It’s just fabric magic.

The talk went well…not a lot of people, but honestly, it was kind of cool to hear the artists talk, because we don’t often hear how our own people in the group work. I enjoyed that.

And I’m going to enjoy the ironing process from here on out, even though it means standing for hours, because this is the part where the image starts to appear. This is the exciting part. So I’m really looking forward to that. But first I have to finish the lesson I’m copyediting, and then go to the gym, and then I might have time in the afternoon. I’m hoping. Definitely tonight. I need to finish ironing the world so I can move on to the minutiae of the Earth Mother.

Brainpower

So I don’t know what my problem was on this quilt. Picking fabrics usually takes me about an hour per 100 fabrics, sometimes a few hours more than that. So this one has 1952 pieces, so I’d put it at 20-22 hours. Nope. Almost 33 hours. Sheesh. Either I was spacey and couldn’t decide on stuff, or there was just a lot of stuff, or stuff. There are 164 fabrics in this quilt. Yeah, I said 169 on Instagram, but I was wrong. I couldn’t even read my own writing. So that’s a lot. So maybe the two of those go together. Lots of fabrics = Lots of hours.

I’m glad to be done with the standing portion, for sure. I always forget how tiring standing for hours is…like during the summer, when I don’t do it, and then I go back to school, and my body reminds me. Painfully.

Now I have about 20 hours of cutting out to do. Although, I was wrong about the fabric-picking part. The time for it. So maybe I’ll be wrong again. I only have about 2 1/2 hours in.

This is yesterday, when I made a concerted effort to finish off the ironing part by blowing off work (it’s OK…it’s not due for a while. I don’t actually know WHEN it’s due, but I know it’s not next week. OK. Wait. I don’t know that. I know it’s not Wednesday. That’s ALL I know.). Kitten is rocking the cone. And often just sits on the chair and stares at me, like she knows I could take the cone off (and I do, when she needs to use the litter tray, because otherwise it’s ugly, like a blind little old lady trying to find the toilet.). So I must hate her if I make her wear it the rest of the time. Except I left her in the litter tray area and went off to deal with a doggie thing, and I came back and she was trying to lick the stitches out. So THAT bitch is why you have to keep it on. Because you won’t follow instructions.

Ironing the sun below…

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At the end of the day, you can see the mess I’ve been piling up. LOTS of fabrics.

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And that thing I always do, where I semi-organize them (I gave up on the greens) and pack them up in boxes, partially so I can see the range for that quilt, but also in case I lose a piece and need to find that fabric, because otherwise it might take me hours to find it in my stash. There’s 164. I counted.

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Puppy finally got ran around enough to stop biting and trying to sit on my lap, and settled down for his nighttime nap. Right next to me.

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Midnight occupied the other side of the couch. With a pile of stuff. And my bra. Nice. So the left tub is what I cut out last night, mostly big pieces from the bottom of the quilt. I flipped all the pieces into a larger bin, the one on the right, because it was getting too crowded in the smaller bin. So I still have to cut out everything on the right.

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I keep a lid in my lap for all the trash.

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That’s one evening’s worth. Well, not even the whole evening, because I didn’t start until late. And now there’s competition on the couch and for TV again. Ugh. Because I don’t want to watch the Gilmore Girls. Again. I didn’t really like it the first time around. I could watch and cut in here…not as comfortable, and for some reason, my Netflix in here cuts off the whole world from the wifi on this side of the house. I might not care. I do pay all the bills. I could just start watching.

Boychild also just made a very good-smelling breakfast. My body responds with hunger. Bastard.

I should make a plan or seventeen for today, but I just don’t have the brainpower. Ugh. I’m so much more efficient when I’m working full time.

Conehead

Well so this is morning. Apparently. After being up after 1:30 AM, trying to settle cone-wearing Frankenstein cat (now baby, that’s a scar…), then a 4 AM wakeup for meds (for the cat) plus something puking, and the dog going ballistic before 9…I feel semi-drugged, definitely not rested, just half awake, if that. Ugh. Reminds me of the baby years.

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The poodle trimming of her legs is also nice. Especially since they told me to take off the bandage when I got home, and then there was blood everywhere. I wanna see you hold a pissed-off and drugged cat with a cone and blood oozing and try to one-handedly get a bandage on that. The kids had left, of course. Sigh. I’m really quite amazing in a hard place.

Last night, she was decidedly more pissed off about the cone and surgery in general (the photo above is this morning. She hid in the fabric drawer hole for a good long time.

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Yesterday, the girlchild got her hair done in a pinkish manner. I don’t have a final picture…

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I’ll have to get one.

I’ve been stuck in places where sewing on these is all I could do…so I finished these.

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I only have three left to embroider, and then I can sew them together. It’s very relaxing. Funny though…a year ago, I had nine left to embroider…so I’m really slow. I guess that’s why I’m years behind. Whatever. It’s not a race. I always tag this as Bird Crazy, but I realized its real name is Bird Dance. This is a Sue Spargo BOM from a few years back. I like her stuff…it’s got depth and fun stitching and it’s relatively easy to do. She’s released this one as a book now. In fact, she’s released all the ones I have except this year’s, so I can post about all of them now (there were issues with people copying her stuff before). Seriously though, her instructions are so amazingly good that you’re an idiot (and a jerk for stealing her ideas) if you don’t buy the book/pattern/whatever the heck it is. Plus she’s going through cancer treatments at the moment and deserves all your money. The one she just released, the Folk Tails quilt, is absolutely amazing. I can’t wait to get done with this one for real so I can start the embroidery on that one.

I did iron finally last night…I had to finish copyediting in the morning, then check out the girl’s hair, then do counseling, and pick up Kitten, and cook her shit she wouldn’t eat, and cook myself shit I would eat, and THEN…then I could iron.

I’m 26 hours in…LONG time picking stuff. This is the tiger on one breast…

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I also did the cat (aka Kitten) and flower vine on the other breast, the lungs, and the heart. So I did a lot…I’m in the 1500s now, the high 1500s I think. I have all of the torso done…just the head and an arm left to do.

I do have two more chapters to copyedit, but they’re not due for a while, so I’m taking a break. I want to get this fully ironed today…I probably only have about 300 pieces left, so that’s 3-4 hours. Then I can sit and cut pieces out for another 20 hours. While syringing water into the cat’s mouth, because I haven’t seen her drink anything yet. Plus I need a break. It’s been a lot of work lately, and that’s good, because it means I might be able to pay for the cat’s surgery AND college (ha. Well. Maybe.), but I also need to draw and sleep and relax and read books. Like a normal person does on vacation.

Thread-Free

Well that was a stressful day. Yesterday. No need to test my adaptive abilities. Really. First there’s 8 hours of jackhammering, wherein I almost lost my mind, but then Kitten decides to eat thread.

So I’ve been quilting since I was about 22 years old. I’ve sewn longer than that, largely around cats, so yeah, I’m aware that thread and cats are a bad mix. I’ve had multiple cats over the years who were thread-munchers. Some even tried to get bits out of the trashcans, so I had to work hard to keep it away from them. But these two that I have now…well, Midnight likes the poly/nylon-y stuff, but I never leave that on the sewing machine because that stuff is really bad for them. I’ve pulled it out of a couple of cats who literally stalked the machine until I went to pee, and then went for the thread. It’s one of the reasons I always use the quilt under the machine to cover the machine when I’m not sewing. Cat can’t sit on quilt. Cat can’t eat thread.

But the regular sewing stuff, these two cats have never given a shit about it. They sit back behind the machine all the time and have always left it alone. And Kitten’s been here for 6 years, so I don’t know what bug got in her ear, but I turned around, maybe 5 minutes after she went to sit back there, and she was swallowing black thread like there was no tomorrow. Yeah, I pulled. I’ve pulled (gently of course) on multiple cats and been successful. Not yesterday. It was stuck. Dammit. Well, I cut as much as a could (a foot or so) and then called the vet, who had me call the emergency vet. Damn cat. She’s the most expensive cat I’ve ever owned now, between the nasty dental surgery a few years back (she’s got some genetic thing and had to have 12 teeth removed) and this thread thing. They sedated her, tried to release the thread (it was around her tongue). Pulled gently, it’s stuck. Scoped her. By then it was in her intestines and they couldn’t get at it.

So those who have gone through this realize how much money all this costs, and it’s funny, because I went into this summer for the first time in YEARS (like pre-divorce, baby) feeling like my head was (temporarily, due to upcoming college payments) semi-above water. Well yeah. And that was after the car costs from last month, which were fairly horrendous. But I thought I could get through the summer and actually pay the mortgage and groceries and half of the boychild’s health insurance, due on August 1. Because I’m a teacher, and I don’t get paid until the end of August. Summers always make my guts clench financially. But this year seemed doable (unlike last year, which was a giant clusterfuck until I sold a quilt).

So yeah, Kitten had surgery last night. Luckily it was quick and easy and her intestines weren’t shredded by thread and she’s recovering, but she doesn’t want to eat. And every time the doc calls to update me, they reassure me that they’ll do everything they can to make the cost as low as possible, probably because I completely lost it in the exam room. Well. You know. I guess life just wants to remind me that I am not in control. Like I didn’t already know that.

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She’s making a funny face because she only has one fang and it sometimes gets stuck on her lip.

So I had to get one of those pet loans, which luckily I qualify for, and when I start getting paid again, I’ll pay it off quickly (I’ve done this before)…but it means all the extra money I’m earning now is no longer being put away for college. So there we are. I don’t even have a total cost yet on the cat, but I know it’s bad. But she’s also my baby and my responsibility, so I didn’t really feel like I could do anything else. I know some cats pass these just fine, but it’s not a huge percentage. So the quicker I did stuff, the easier it would be on her.

And yeah, I guess my takeaway is to hide the thread no matter how the cat acts about it for the first 6 years, because cats do stupid shit just like humans do. And she’s gonna be fine. And I’m gonna find the money somewhere. Here she is just yesterday, schooling Simba in cat/dog interactions.

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I spent the rest of the evening trying to focus on the copyediting, once they stopped jackhammering…Simba is such a goofball.

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Realizing that my ancient keyboard really is nonfunctional if you’re trying to FIND a specific letter or whatever…

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The kids have been complaining about it for years, but whatever. I type mostly from position, not watching keys…it’s been an issue with the copyediting in the last few weeks though, so I had ordered a new one. Work expense. Which I’m now questioning, like I’m going to be questioning every damn penny for the rest of the summer. And it is probably 15 years old. They did come out in 2005…so maybe it’s only 11 years old. Anyway, I must be rough on certain keys…

Girlchild made dinner and the vet called with the post-surgery news in the middle of that. At least it was quick and there were no complications.

After I finished the first run-through on the lesson I was copyediting, I gave myself permission to iron. It was probably 10:30 by then. I did the octopus, the grassy knoll (OK, it’s not really a knoll), a giant artery (the aorta or some version of it anyway), and the cactus. There’s some cactus pieces.

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While I was working, I was listening to and watching a few of the Coursera courses I’m signed up for this summer. I’m taking two basic college chemistry classes, because I will be teaching a lot more of that this coming year, and I’m decidedly shaky on it. I haven’t had chemistry since high school and I was never great at it, which might make you worry about my teaching it, but trust me…I’ll understand it or I’ll figure it out as I go. I didn’t know anything really about light before I started teaching it, and I did OK. The new standards move the content around quite a bit, and it’s hard to go from being a life science teacher to being a middle-school, 7th-grade science teacher in the days of NGSS if your background is biology. So I’m working on it. Boychild keeps trying to answer my questions, which mostly center around WHY, proving I haven’t changed at all from high school. WHY do electrons do that? WHY do they get excited. WHY do we call it light when it’s really EM radiation? Or IS it? Fuck. I’m still in lesson 1. Let’s hope I figure it out. I have a couple of books from NSTA called Faking It…written specifically for teachers who have to teach this stuff. I might want to read them quickly.

I’m also taking a class called Sexing the Canvas, about art and gender, which not surprisingly, I know quite a bit about. So I watched some videos, did some math (ugh), and took a quiz last night. I think I’m gonna fail the chemistry quizzes, but I’m really just trying to get the concepts more than understand how to work all the equations. We don’t do a lot of equations in 7th grade. I think. I’m OK with failing my first college class (not for credit) at 49 years old.

So I’m in the low 1300s now in the pieces…coming up is a lung and a tiger and then…well…Kitten…because she’s been in a ton of my quilts.

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And I hope she’s in a ton more of them. Thread-free.

Jackhammer in My Brain

Aargh. The neighbor is jackhammering concrete. I can’t think straight. I can’t even think crooked. And there’s a porta-potty up there…that does not bode well for quickly finishing this project. I can only play my music so loud while trying to copyedit.

In other news, I reordered the post-it on my computer that lists all the art deadlines I’m working on at the moment. There are 9 things…well, that’s not true…there are 10 things, because I forgot one and had to do 2a between 2 and 3. If I were really truly anal, I would redo it, but I know it will change yet again, so I didn’t. I don’t have a real due date for one of them too…I had it for October, but someone told me it was August. I hope not.

I’ve done a pre-drawing for number 5 on the list. I’m currently working on number 1 and I’ve started number 2. Number 6…well, I’m debating that one. I have a few pieces that would work for it…but I wanted to do a new one. With the addition of some deadlines that go with the solo show, I might need to revise. It’s lovely to say the show is a year away, but images and lists of work are less than a year away. So yeah. I do plan all this stuff out. And then try to figure out how to be my own creative self within all of that. That’s somewhat more difficult. And I think I left a few deadlines out. Fuck.

I did finish one chapter yesterday…and sent it off. Kitten likes to supervise. Ugh. I was supposed to do the next chapter today, but the jackhammering is totally throwing me off.

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I started cutting stuff out last night…didn’t get far. I just find it hard to sit and watch TV without doing something, because these deadlines are looming over me. And because I don’t like to waste time just doing one thing. Unless it’s reading. I can Just Read.

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And then after TV time (which was really dinner with that guy who puts up with my crazy and puppy bites), I came in here and ironed a crane…a crane that had over 100 pieces in it.

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I wanted to do some in the afternoon, but I was mentally dead. In fact, I have no idea what I did in the afternoon. Cleaned stuff up. I even bagged up all the stuff for the thrift shop, some of which had been there for a year. Seriously. What did I do? I ran an errand. I don’t even know.

I have more errands for today, which is good, because I can’t edit with this going on. Seriously, if I were going to be jackhammering concrete and I had my neighbor’s email address, then I would have emailed a warning…something like, hey, jackhammering Wednesday starting at 9 AM and going on for 17 days, so you should just move out now.

Here’s the pile. I didn’t clean it up. Oh, I also ironed kelp. The greens reminded me.

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I’m all the way up one arm to the shoulder. Octopus next. Then cactus. I’m almost done with the 1100s. Plus the others I’ve already done. Less than 800 pieces to go.

Here’s more to cut out. It took a couple of hours to iron the crane and the kelp.

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And then I couldn’t fall asleep. Which is the opposite of the night before, when I could fall asleep but woke up at like 4:30 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. Sleep is just not my thang. I do it wrong. With this jackhammering thing going on, I would have been better off if I had gotten up and edited for a while.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to take two college chemistry classes online at the same time, which is interesting, because one explains the other. Sort of. It makes me feel kinda dumb sometimes, because I have a lot of “why” questions and not a lot of answers. Boychild says “because” and then tries to explain. I’m sure my facial expression tells him exactly what I’m thinking. And then I Google stuff and find out the rest of it. I’m a shitty college student. Now. I used to be a good one. Now there are so many other things I’d rather be doing. Like jackhammering my neighbor.

Forced Break

My brain gets into this art mode and refuses to let go. I have a post-it with some have-to’s on it. None of them are really desperate, but it would be good to do them sooner rather than later. But…ironing…it is all I do at the moment. I’m on a roll. Except shit. I just got paying work. So I’ll be doing that today (and apparently part of tomorrow). Sigh. OK. I need to pay for college. I can do this. But that pushes everything else out of the way too. I’ll work work work until I get it done, and then I have freedom…to go back to ironing, still not getting the other have-to’s done.

Whatever. I’m doing my best here. It’s a forced break. Harder to do on “vacation.” I’m envious of those who just have the freedom to do what they like most of the time, to get up in the morning and consider their options.

Calli hurt her foot. She still wants me to throw the ball, but I’m refusing. She is not happy with me. The rule is that she puts the ball on or near my lap, and I throw it. I am breaking the rules. Yes. I’m still stitching birds. I’m almost done…seriously.

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I do this at my parents’ as the girlchild cooks dinner. It’s a Sunday thing.

Eventually she (sort of) gave up and sat with the ball, just waiting for the next unsuspecting ball thrower to not realize she’s injured and throw it again.

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I actually spent a good part of the middle of the day at Taste of Adams, 40 restaurants (we only made it to 16 or so, and I skipped the 4 or 5 with fish entrees) in 4 hours. So the afternoon was a little fuzzy-headed from too much food and some wine and a bit of sunburned dehydration.

But I ironed anyway. So I wish I could tell you how far along I am…but I’m skipping around again. I have a few pieces left to iron in the 900s, so yes, I am more than halfway, but this piece is evidence that I’ve done much more than that. This is the fabric I used for the lightest range of flesh tones, and I have very little of it left, which is somewhat unfortunate, because I still have the face to do. But I can manage that.

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I went through the boxes and found all the flesh pieces for the upper torso and arms and ironed all of them, including fingers and finger wrinkles and fingernails. So that was a bunch of pieces above and beyond the 900s.

Here’s the box of ironed pieces, ready to be cut out when I move on to that stage.

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It’s a little overly full, but the big boxes I have are being used for the higher numbers, like 1800s and 1900s, so they won’t be available until the end.

Anyway, I have 19+ hours of ironing in. Sheesh. I’m going to go over my original estimate of 23 hours by a significant amount, I think. Yesterday and Saturday…I ironed a gecko, some cocoons, a few butterflies, I got through all the grapes and the vine, also a passionflower vine. Then I did all that flesh…and the pine branch on the right arm. The next step is the crane, shades of white mostly…then up the arm into the kelp and cactus.

So by the time I was done ironing last night, the fabric pile was a mess. I rummage through it looking for stuff that will work for what I’m ironing now…I don’t need to pick brand-new fabrics for each section, although I did pick some new ones…

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I cleaned up so when I start again, I can see everything clearly. By color. Sort of.

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Still heavy on the greens and browns.

So there’s still a ton of work to be done on this, but I’m past the halfway point. It’s really really hard to put it down today, to walk away from it, but I need to copyedit. So hopefully tomorrow I’ll get back to it. Or maybe post-hike tonight (yeah right?). If I think I might do more tonight, that might be enough to get me off the couch after the hike. We’ll see. Until then, I’m staring at a computer and trying not to go cross-eyed.