I love reading spam sometimes just for the crazy phraseology that pops up. I’m good at making up words. I had a student tell me she was going to use “legitimous” from here on out, not realizing that “legit” was short for “legitimate.” I made her look it up. But legitimous is kind of a cool word. I’m sure “knowhow” should be hyphenated, but I really think hyphens are lame most of the time. Must be my German genes…just SQUISH all those words together into one! Anyway, the title is from spam. They came to my blog to get the fastidious knowhow and I know how to provide it. Fastidiously. Legitimously. Uh huh.
Still trying to lift the mood. Ugh. I think I’m getting sick too, which figures. Whatever. I had someone contact me today about a job I applied for in early November. I need the money. I have other work that I’m doing tonight that should turn into some money at some point. So that’s good.
Last night, I just wanted to finish the ironing part…sometimes everything just takes too freaking long. Anyway, it took about another hour…longer than I thought it would. Ten hours and 45 minutes total. I think I estimated 10 hours, though, so that’s not too bad. All the fussy little bits took longer than I thought they would. Here’s the 89 fabrics that went into this quilt…
Not much blue or yellow, only one orange in the whole thing. Lots of flesh in reality. All the other colors are used in relatively small pieces.
I started trimming last Sunday at my fiber group meeting…and then I went to quilt class last night (people! socializing! not being a hermit!) and cut things out for another two hours…
And I cut for another half an hour after this, so there’s more done than that, but not a lot. Based on the last big quilt, it will take me about 9 hours to get through it all, and that means I won’t be done until after the weekend, I think. I have boatloads of grading to do on top of the work. I have not been super efficient this week. So I make myself look at the calendar and try to visualize finishing this quilt. Is this the halfway point? Not based on other quilts. If it were fully trimmed, that’s about halfway. And I only have 4 weeks left, and that’s if the photographer can do it the weekend before.
Nah. I don’t know if I can finish it in time. Oh well. OK. So I have lots to do and I don’t feel well. Moving on with my fastidious knowhow. Like I do.
I’m definitely plodding along…not getting a shitload of anything done, not ever getting to the end of any project, whether grading or quilting, not finishing anything. Not accomplishing much. Except I did. Everything’s just slow. I’m slow. My brain is slow. My mood is dank. All I really wanted to do last night was draw, but I didn’t know what I wanted to draw. Just wanted to lose myself in it. No such luck. Too many things I want done and I’m not getting any of them done. Not motivated. Tired. Moody as hell.
I did iron. I thought I might finish. I might have finished if it had been any other night where I felt motivated and awake and competent. But in the end, the last few pieces (OK, there are probably 50 pieces left) just kicked my butt. I’m 9 1/2 hours in and there’s probably 30 minutes left. I really could have done that last night. Well, last night I didn’t think I could, so there we are.
Here’s everything that’s been ironed so far…
But I’m looking at that dark piece on top and thinking it might not show up on the background…I’ll have to figure that out. Maybe. Maybe not right this second. But when I’m ironing it together, you better bet I’ll be thinking…shit…I wish I’d dealt with that already.
Here’s everything I’ve used so far…lots of bits and pieces really, since the flesh is the main part of the quilt.
I should finish it tonight, but that depends on so many factors. I can’t predict the mood or how the other shit I need to do will fall out. Last night I had some technology stuff to do and the computer was just a bitch. So was my iPad and my school computer kept crashing apps, so it was altogether a frustrating day in the world of computers. Although I suspect that the latter are because they need to be replaced. My iPad mini is a first generation and it regularly tells me it is full and I delete stuff but now it’s getting cranky and slow too. I don’t know what to do about that. There’s no money to replace that. The school computer is older and was old when they bought them, honestly…I don’t know how much more time it has, or even if its problems are its age or the age of all the infrastructure around it and on it…fairly sure we need to update some of the apps we use beyond regular releases…like you know, pay some money out…things schools don’t do.
I did two things for myself yesterday, trying to improve my mood. The first was go to the gym. I liked that. Should do more of it. The second was go fabric shopping…notionally, I needed that pink there for the binding of the baby quilt (which I did not sew on last night because I did not feel like it, but will hopefully come home and do tonight because I am a good girl)…and I bought two possible backgrounds for the quilt I’m working on now…
But there’s something relaxing about walking through the fabrics, letting your eye wander, and waiting for something new to catch your eye.
And I realized I don’t know what I’ll be working on next. I need more work for shows, because I don’t have enough for all the shows I want to enter at the moment. Too many things are traveling for too long. I’m regretting one of them…because it could be in better shows than the ones I agreed to as replacement to the ones where the shipment didn’t get there. And another sold, which is not a bad problem to have, but it was only in one show before it sold and it was one of the big time-consuming pieces from last year, so that’s made me short quilts as well. I saw a drawing I did last year for a smaller quilt and think I might do that before committing to the next big one, but then again, Spring Break is coming and that’s a good time to make a big quilt. So we’ll see. I haven’t even drawn the next big one…I have the idea, but it’s nowhere near being on paper. And with the current mood, it’s hard to know if I’ll be able to draw it. Right now, I think it would be sad and angry drawings, which isn’t a bad thing…it’s just not what I saw for that quilt.
Sigh. This mood sucks. I’m doing the shit I’m supposed to do to kick it. So kick, asshole.
Sigh. All the feels. Hormones abound. Frustration at work. I do well when I’m distracted from all that, when I can push all the detritus from work and life and house and taxes and work, did I mention work? Push it all into a pile of unfolded laundry in the dark dank corner of my brain where it deserves to live. I’ll fold it later. I’ll handle each piece later, pull it out, dust it off, fold it up, put it in the cupboard where it belongs. Apparently my version of mindfulness equates to doing the laundry. It’s not a bad metaphor. Clean it, wash it, dry it, put it away. Takes a while to do it properly, but the clothes are warm at the end and you don’t mind handling them as much as when they were smelly and dirty.
That’s a lot of philosophy for a Wednesday morning. But if my brain is going to force me to remake my existence every time the kids come home and leave again, every time there’s shit at school (thanks for the observation yesterday, dear principal…hope you understand Punnett squares now), every time my personal life isn’t going the way I want it to, well then…I’m going to have to control it somehow…and maybe visualizing laundry is the best way for now. It’s something we do all the time…every week, things need washing. It’s a lifetime of laundry. Sometimes it’s only your laundry and sometimes you’re doing everyone else’s while you’re in there.
Yeah. I know. Rambling on. But my brain is a mess and I don’t know if it’s all the emotional stuff or perimenopausal brain. I knew I had bought more cheese last night and I was ransacking the fridge for it, blaming the boychild, maybe he ate it all (it was a lot of cheese…seems unlikely), maybe he took it to his dad’s, maybe I never bought it, maybe I threw it out. I was tossing shit out of the fridge because it was all the stuff from when the kids were here and it hadn’t been fully cleaned out and I was getting really frustrated and had found a cheese alternative (just another kind of cheese, nothing drastic) and then I looked in the fridge and there it was. Big. Orange. Just sitting there. Right in full sight. Like what the fuck is that matter with my brain that it couldn’t see that? I know I looked right there about 10 times. What the fuck?
It’s really…what’s the right word? Not annoying, more than that. Not frightening, well, maybe a little, because where is my brain? Disheartening? Depressing? I don’t know. I need my brain to work well. And it’s not.
So that’s where I was last night when I started ironing. Not necessarily in a particularly good place, but knowing that spending some time ironing would make me feel better. Because it always does. And that’s why I do it. I don’t need meds…I need to commune with fabric.
I worked for about an hour…got the heart and all the arteries done, did a tree with some stuff on it, teeth! I did teeth! Little bits and pieces of stuff. All the detritus (there’s that word again) of the body and the stuff in the air around her. A cloud. Some thunderbolts. A yin/yang sign. Nipples. Just one little piece at a time. Stare at it, figure out what it is, what color it should be. Put Netflix on to calm the part of my brain that’s still trying to figure out how the cheese disappeared and reappeared right before my eyes without my noticing.
Here’s the pile of fabric now. It’s a bit messy.
I didn’t feel like straightening it up. Here’s what’s left to iron…not much. Hair, some lungs, an iPhone. The normal shit.
And the pile that needs to be cut out. Hopefully by Saturday.
I can lose myself in all that and be OK. At least there’s that. The rest will come.
Aaargh. Grades are (almost) done. They will be done after I go to school, deal with a parent meeting, go on duty (I should get a pass…I’m the only teacher who showed up in my section yesterday morning), deal with a fire drill in my homeroom, take attendance, and prep for the rest of the day. THEN I can finish grades. And maybe pee. Fuck you, world.
Boychild apparently made it to school, although he forgot to tell his mom he’d actually arrived, so of course, in true momma fashion, I worried. Woke up at 5 AM and texted him again. Doofus.
I’m in a mood. Hopefully I’ll fall out of it. I barely ironed anything last night…like maybe 20 pieces…
I was tired. It was 11:30 by then and I was just doing it because I wanted to say I’d done some of it. Tonight I can do more. I wrote two tests last night and I finished grades and I don’t even remember…oh yeah I do! The dog. So the dog has been on her normal travel schedule with the kids home, but yesterday, my ex had said he didn’t think she could escape where he did all the work, so I should leave her in the yard. And I worried about her getting out all day, which was legit, because I got home, and a muddy, tangled, matted Golden Retriever was lying in front of the garage, waiting for me.
So I bathed her last night. The water was dark brown the first run through. It was loads of fun. I don’t recommend it. So then I had to partially clean the bathroom. And do laundry. Like 6 towels.
I also finished quilting this and trimmed it. She goes out on leave today and I wanted it done so she could take it, but then I looked at the binding fabric I’d picked…
And it doesn’t work. I then went searching through my stash, and I didn’t have enough of anything that would work, so I need binding fabric. I don’t suppose I could persuade her to stay one more day? Yeah. I didn’t think so. It’s OK. It’s not like she’s going anywhere.
Shitty day. Shitty mood. More art tonight. Less work. Less bullshit. Less worry. Less moodiness. All the things.
Well the boychild finally made it out of here…knock on wood, because his plane hasn’t left yet. I’m gonna miss him and his sister. But they both made Dean’s List…so I’m proud of them. And I will figure my shit out and find a mental balance with them gone. Probably not today though. Today, honestly, I’m just gonna hold it together long enough to get through the school day. Which I am officially NOT doing right now. Holding it together that is. I do have a job that distracts me from emotional crap, so that should help.
Saturday…it was a challenge. But I finished grading the assignment from hell…and have a post-it reminding me never ever to assign that again. It’s not worth my sanity and the kids don’t take it seriously. So I’m kind of in this Fuck ‘Em mode…which may be the most healthy thing I’ve thought about school for the last two months. Grades are due tomorrow. I haven’t even started them. It’s OK. It won’t take long.
When I finished grading, I ran a million errands, and then walked in here…
This is where I wanted to be all day long. Notice it’s dark. Yeah. It was like 6 PM. I was pretty crankballs by then. Yeah. It’s a mess. I might clean it up when I finish this quilt. Depends.
I knew with the figure being most of this quilt, and with 10 arms that sit behind each other, I was going to need a larger range than normal. So I sat on the ground with the pink bins and my phone flashlight (it’s dark down there…need to install fairy lights or something) and picked a run of 13…plus lip colors off to the right and finger- and toenail color above.
I didn’t use all of them in the end. I used 11. And I added two purples. So it took me 2 hours and 40 minutes just to find each flesh piece and decide what fabric it was supposed to be. And I tried to match pairs of arms on each side, but I don’t know if I was successful.
The flesh pieces ranged from the 0-100 box to the 900 box. So I went through all of them. As I did that, I set aside the non-flesh pieces…the heart, veins, lungs, rocket ship, hair, eyebrows, etc. Two uteri even. Lots of eyeballs. So this below is what I still have left to do.
Then I started ironing all those pieces down to the fabric I’d chosen…here’s number 5 in the range.
Yup. That’s a lot of pieces. Some arms, some fingers and toes, and ribcage parts. That funny bone that sticks out on your foot that probably has a name. I went and looked it up. It’s complicated. You can Google it yourself.
Ironing it all took my Saturday art time to 4 hours plus. Ahhhh. You could hear my brain sigh from there, couldn’t you? Because I was in a dark and angry place over school. And art saved the day. Put my brain back in a decent place.
Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far.
And I tried to get them to fit in the box once I’d ironed them, but the flesh pieces were too big to fold into there.
I have no idea how many pieces are left. I think I’ve got 6 1/2 hours in, so maybe another 3 or 4? Just a guess really.
I was at a meeting yesterday and started cutting stuff out. It’s only an hour so far.
But it’s a start. And it’s something to do this week…less than 5 weeks to finish this quilt. Finish ironing pieces by tomorrow night? I have a baby quilt to finish tonight if I can pull it off, plus grades. I tried to finish the baby quilt last night and got everything quilted except the border. I started that and the thread kept getting caught on the spool and doing stupid things, so I quit. I’ll try again tonight. Maybe it will behave better. And if I can be a good girl and get a bunch of the grades done at school today, then I’ll be ironing later? Maybe. Maybe not. Then trim them all by the weekend? It would be nice if I could start ironing it together Saturday, because I actually have time.
Shit. I might actually finish it in time. Don’t hold your breath though.
One of the things that came out of the depression I went into July 2013 was that I had a really hard time listening to music. For a good year, huge swaths of my musical library caused me to weep interminably, which really sucked, because I love music. Always have. All types. I’m a total music slut, although the majority of rap, hip hop, and country are outside my music love arena. So usually when I trace Wonder Under, pick fabrics, and cut stuff out, I watch TV…mostly Netflix but increasingly Amazon Prime Video as well, and some stuff on the Tivo, when I’m in the other room. I watch that when I’m ironing the whole thing together too. But when I’m quilting or stitching stuff down, I always used to listen to music…in the early days, to my iTunes, but now mostly Pandora, which is just one HUGE channel of Kathy’s music and everything she likes. I love my Pandora. At the gym, when I’m hiking by myself, when I’m quilting, whatever.
And I couldn’t listen. Because the 80s were reminiscent and the 90s too and then the 00s and fuck me, there was very little that I could listen to. And trying to quilt a million miles an hour while crying was just a recipe for disaster. I did it a lot though. And then I switched to putting on bad TV, or TV I didn’t care too much about, while I was sewing, because it was dialogue and it was easier to take than music. It didn’t trigger anything. I guess music ties into some very deep emotional places in my brain. TV just distracts it. And I needed the distraction. But TV isn’t ideal for quilting and sewing things down, because you’re meant to watch it, and I can’t watch two things WELL at the same time (notice how I didn’t say I couldn’t watch two things at the same time…I am a middle-school teacher. I regularly watch 36+ things at the same time.).
You know what I’m doing right now? Listening to music AND sewing. Ha! Fuck you brain. Finally beat it. How many months. Fuck. Don’t even count. Just say thank you. Now REM’s Everybody Hurts will still kick my ass, my perimenopausal brain’s ass, and make me sob like a motherfucker, but that’s fucking NORMAL. I’m OK with that. I can listen to all the other stuff and sing along and get up and dance sometimes, because that’s what music is supposed to do to you, thank you very much, and if I cry occasionally because it’s a really sad song…there’s another Amanda Palmer one that kicks my ass…The Bed Song.
But see, that shit’s normal. It’s OK to have a song or two that rips your heart out. It’s not OK when it’s 90% of what you’re listening to.
I got my music back bitches. 2015. It’s all good from here on out. Seriously. I feel really good about that.
So yesterday I had a plan to go to the gym and then come back and do quilty things, but I have to be honest. The quilty things were screaming at me, so I ended up just doing that all day, and ignoring everything else. Yup. Again. Because sometimes that’s how I roll. This morning, I still have the same plan, but I’m actually going to go to the gym. Really. I am. First I have to pay out a shitload of money to the kids’ colleges, but then I can go relax by beating myself up on a bunch of machines. I’m OK with that. It feels good.
So what did I get done yesterday? A lot. First I ironed the whole thing down onto the background…I had a couple of dark blues lying around that I bought a while ago for this quilt or for something else. I like dark blue for backgrounds, so it’s never a waste. I liked this one, a batik…
When I started ironing, I put the bathtub with the figure in it on first, but then remembered not to iron the edges down because there was stuff that had to go under. Well, I mostly remembered. I didn’t iron heavy at this stage, but this is the new plasticky Wonder Under…it came up, but it wasn’t happy about it.
It didn’t take long to get it all ironed down. And I don’t know what I was looking at yesterday, but my times were completely off. It took 10 hours and 54 minutes to iron the whole thing together and down onto a backing. Not bad.
I always keep the trash from trimming the fabric until I finish ironing, in case a piece is in there. But then I often forget to look in there for any missing pieces. There were a few. They were small. I recut them. No biggie.
Then I started stitching down. Because I was committed at that point. I was fairly sure I could finish the stitch down yesterday…
Midnight really wanted to sit on this. In fact, once I turned around because the boychild was helping me figure out why the damn computer backup wasn’t working, and there she was, plopped right in the middle of it. Damn cat.
More stitch down. I went fast. I sew like I’m driving a sportscar. I started sewing before I learned to drive. You might say one prepared me for the other.
When we left for dinner, I wrapped it up around the machine like this so the cats couldn’t sit on it.
The back is sometimes even more interesting than the front. I look at the back to try to find all the places I missed…I missed quite a few this time, but I fixed them all. So hopefully that was it. I hate fixing them later, because I have to change thread. Annoying. Changing bobbins and changing thread. That reminds me…I need to go thread shopping today. I don’t think I have enough and I don’t want to run out on a holiday. Except maybe JoAnns is open tomorrow. Interesting. They close early tonight but are open tomorrow. OK. Keeping that in mind. I have a spool and a partial of the color I want.
So that was after dinner, but it was still early (by my clock). So. Hell. I’m all in. I have to clean the floor before I can lay a quilt out (too many muddy feet tromping through there), so I do that. Then I go hunting for a backing…end up using the rest of what I used on the front. I have other stuff I’d rather use, but batiks tend to be wider from selvage to selvage, and I didn’t want to piece it…this size fits perfectly on a batik that’s about 44″ wide…the image is about 34″ wide. I love not piecing (so stop making monstrously huge quilts, woman). Laid it out on the floor, yelled at one cat who tried to use it as a slip-n-slide…
And pinbasted her.
It took less than an hour to do that. And the stitch down was only 3 1/2 hours. Speedy. I’m guessing the quilting will be 11-12 hours though. I’m hoping to start today, maybe get in 3 or 4 hours (which means I need to get my butt in gear and get outta here). Yes, I have plans tonight. Sheesh. They’re really complicated, involving food and champagne and movies on a TV probably. And my sketchbook. Because if you can’t quilt your way into the new year, you should draw your way into it, right?
Anyway. It’s in progress. My goal is to have it done, binding on (dammit, I don’t have binding, do I?) by Sunday, so I can sew the binding down at my meeting that afternoon. We’ll see. That’s a lot. The boychild’s birthday is in the middle of that too. Sigh. And I wanted to hike. Balance! Sheesh.
Ironing is such a strange activity. Making things flat. No wrinkles. Folding only where you want it. I don’t iron my clothes hardly ever. My iron rarely sees fabric that isn’t in a quilt. And yet, I will iron quilt fabric to fold it up and shove it in a storage container (it folds better when ironed). I don’t iron all of it…just when it comes out of the dryer completely in knots or folded. I love ironing fabric I’ve recently dyed…you can see all the tiny changes in color that happened in the dye process. It’s very relaxing. Put some movie on and spend an hour or so ironing fabric. Ask me to iron your shirt? Yeah. Not happening. I might iron one of my shirts or a pair of my pants if they were awful, and when the boychild was doing college interviews, I ironed his stuff. But the girlchild did her own. Yeah. That was sexist. But she knows how and he does too…he was just being a stubborn widget.
Kids. Sheesh. I am handing them their expiring passports and letting them deal. If they’re smart, they’ll do it here while they have access to a car. It’ll be interesting to see how much mess gets left behind when the girlchild leaves. The boy is neater.
I iron mostly to stick pieces of fabric together to make a picture. Not to make things flat. Which is even weirder. Yes. It is.
So I ironed until the wee hours last night. Actually, it was before midnight. I actually BRIEFLY considered ironing the whole thing onto a background last night, but then it really would have been the wee hours, and I decided that wasn’t a good plan. But I got everything ironed together so far…a whopping 11 1/2 hours. Why? Well the damn wine glass alone was a bitch and a half to iron. Who thought reflections on glass and wine were a good idea? Yeah. The designer Kathy, who never thinks through the production part of the design process. She’s a pain in the ass sometimes.
I had finished the legs and one arm the night before, so I started on the torso…
Which has lots of overlapping crap on it, making it a minor pain in the ass. Lungs under and blood vessels over. So sometimes I just start putting stuff together and push vessels out of the way.
I ironed the whole wine glass with fingers on a separate section and then put it on top…because it has like 40 pieces in it.
It actually will turn out great I think in the long run, once the outlining is in there, but it was a pain in the butt…mostly because I ironed one piece in the wrong place and then had to cut a new piece for another section. Who knows what happened to that piece, but I did find the missing purple sock piece (314) hiding in the 700 bin. I had already cut a new one though.
Then it was time for the face…
I love seeing the face put together, because it’s the character of the piece, and I never really know what it will look like until it’s ironed…
This quilt is all about perimenopause and getting older. I hate this brain…it forgets shit randomly, acts like a teenager in the worst ways, cries at the drop of a hat, sometimes for no apparent reason. It is frustrating to deal with how the hormones fuck with your brain and emotions…knowing you don’t have enough control over all of it. I should have put more white or gray in her hair, more like my own, but I’ve noticed most of my friends and family that are my age dye their hair. I don’t care about the white…it’s interesting to me. Maybe Bathtub 6 will own the age part more…this was more about the brain. The brain part just sucks.
Here she is hanging off the ironing board. She’s not huge…the final quilt will probably be about 40″ w x 50″ h or so.
So this morning, I’m going to iron her onto the background and then start stitching down. I think I was supposed to start that Monday, but I didn’t think the ironing would take that long. I guessed 10 hours, and I suspect after it’s all on the background, it will be closer to 13. I’m guessing 5 to stitch it down…we’ll see. I could get that done today if I don’t do anything else (ha!). We’ll see. Sandwich tomorrow? I think I have a big enough piece of batting…and surely I can find a backing in this disaster of a studio.
Kitten says I can…
Cold weather…cats find the humans and stalk us.
In other news, a friend recently published this book…
Which was reviewed well by Donna Freedman (former MSN Money writer, current freelancer in Anchorage, place of my birth). It is the time of year for thinking about weight loss, right? In my house, there are still Christmas cookies. Makes it hard! Check it out…anything helps, right? Cooking better, eating right, exercising. Means my gym will be way too busy for the next 6 weeks. Oh well. Actually, my gym has new machines that you can sign into, and then it tracks everything on an app. Which reminds me…I should be heading there today as well. Aack. Already overscheduled. Isn’t it vacation? Sigh. Don’t ask me about grades.
I thought I would be done with the ironing last night. I just had that relatively smallish pile of Wonder Under pieces. It looked like something I could bang out in an evening. Well, if I didn’t deal with grades first. I went through an entire assignment where fully half of the kids didn’t scroll down to the second page. It’s like not turning the page over and looking at the back. And I know I told them how many questions there were and to scroll down, but as you know, the words of adults somehow bounce around inside the brains of teenagers and fall back out without resonating.
I tried to order materials from Staples so I wouldn’t have to go in…didn’t have time, free shipping, blobbity blah, but it always took like a day to get stuff from them, until this order. It still hasn’t shown up from last Thursday, and when I track it, there seems to be no movement at all. Troublesome since I needed that stuff today…I have some I can use for the kids who are fast, but I may be at Staples tonight after all. So much for being reliable people. And now their website isn’t even coming up. Interesting.
Anyway, I did iron…I ironed hair and a heart and blood vessels and a clock and a uterus, but I forgot the ovaries (they’re there…I just need to pick a color). I used to always make uteri bright pinks with fish swimming through them, but as I age, my uteri age (the fabric ones and the one still inside me), so now they are grayed-out purples. Still pretty but not as alive, not so vibrant. The figures have cracks in them…have for a few years. Wonder where that came from. No I don’t…suspect I will carry the cracks until the end. They will get smaller and more filled in, but they’ll still be there. She’s still crying because I have to say that these perimenopausal hormones are fucking nuts. I cry at such stupid stuff…although the book I finished Monday night, it was a legit cry. The Man Called Ove…good book, by Fredrik Backman. But you will cry at the end.
Here’s the pile of stuff I still need to cut out…
It got bigger. Mostly because I didn’t cut any out recently and I keep ironing stuff.
I still need to do the ovaries, the eyes, the lungs, and that damn wineglass…this pile…
I’m over 10 hours in right now for less than 800 pieces. That’s a lot. Not sure what’s up with that. Slow ironing at the moment, I guess. The problem with the wineglass is that it’s transparent, but it fucks with what you see through it. And then the part with the wine in it, it fucks with it even more. But you can still see through it. The part with the wine is a little easier, because you pick your core wine color and then some shades past it, however many it might take, and you construct the section with the wine that way. The glass part is a little harder, because technically you know you should be able to see flesh colors etc through it, but then it gets harder to see the glass in the actual piece of art, so reality is that you have to fuck with what the eye perceives to make the glass obvious in the quilt. There are some amazing quilt artists out there who make quilts JUST of mostly transparent or reflective things, and they do a great job with it. I just have one glass here though. So it might not be amazing. I am totally leaving it to the end though, because I can’t be super tired when I do it, but basically I will be tired no matter what, because that’s the way this week is.
I did vacuum the kids’ rooms yesterday and finished washing the girlchild’s bedding. I’m ready. Well, except there isn’t enough food in the house. Can’t do much about that right now. Apparently we’re driving through In ‘N Out on the way home from picking up the girlchild. Amusing since she would barely eat it when she was home. I guess the food at Brandeis really does suck…which is sad.
Anyway, with any luck I’ll be done ironing tonight and I’ll move on to the long period of cutting stuff out. I’m hoping to be ironing down by the weekend, but who knows. Maybe Monday…no school and all. Looking forward to that.
Yup. Killed it. I’m sitting there last night, trying to finish up the last of this damn piece, at least get it ironed together before I fly out, and it won’t stay hot. I can put my hand fully on it…it’s warm, but it’s not making anything stick.
This is not good. I manage to shake it around like a mariachi, and it clicks on again. And then off. Oh you bastard. I am so close to finishing.
I think Kitten did it.
The head has buildings coming out of it. With a million windows. Each.
I fought the iron for a good long time.
But I did manage to finish ironing the buildings.
The pieces in that box are all that’s left. Seriously.
I was so frustrated last night. And I knew I had to get up early to get on a plane. Here she is, almost done.
Boychild left last night, and I’m typing the last of this in a Boston hotel…exhausted. But we got here pretty easily. Boychild’s flight was on time for once, but they left his luggage behind in Newark for space reasons. Don’t think he has clothing, but he has deoderant and a computer.
We are in a room with a mini-kitchen, but there are no dishes, not even a cup in the bathroom. Bizarre. The paper cups the front desk gave me are burning in the microwave.
We went to dinner and then drove around campus. Then we found a grocery store. Right now, we are just vegging out on our beds, complaining about how tired we are when it’s actually three hours earlier. I should be wide awake. It’s amazing how travel kicks your butt.
I read and drew on the plane (and honestly, I napped too). I’m getting almost nothing done this weekend except depositing the girl. And that’s ok.
Goood Mooorning El Cajon! Ugh. The tired! I went to bed “early” last night. OK, not really so early, but I started moving towards bed and closing windows and crap BEFORE midnight. That’s how you know I’m tired. I’m missing the third day of school because I’m taking the girlchild to college, so I had to write sub plans, and I basically revised my entire plan last night, because it wasn’t going to work. It may STILL not work, but I’m at the healthy point of No Care. Worst case, the kids lose a day of instruction early in the year. Imagine how we feel if we get sick the week before state testing? Anyway, so that took some time yesterday and so did the girlchild panicking about luggage space (I was allotted a 10″x3″ space in one of the suitcases for my clothes…luckily Boston is warm right now, so all I need is a bikini.). I let boychild manage that (seriously, I don’t need to be involved in ALL the freakouts). He seems to be mostly packed. He hasn’t asked me to ship anything yet, so we’re good.
Today I will have to be very focused and get lots of prep done so when I get back, I can function, for some definition of the word function.
But the quilt…the quilt is almost ironed together. I really didn’t want to stop last night, but I was so tired that I knew I had to. I had already had an ironing incident (easily fixed). I finished up the bits on the hand that I didn’t get done the night before, and then did the tiny bird. His OW speech bubble is done too, although it’s not here…it’s in the box.
If you haven’t picked up on it yet, the other figure is all about Mother Nature and Mother Earth and natural stuff. This one is obviously about population and civilization and pollution and how we damage the earth.
I wanted to finish the face last night, but that just became impossible. I did get the nuclear power plant in on her shoulder, and I got some of the face done…
But once I got this far, I was going to have to lay out the next 100 pieces to keep going, and I couldn’t even do that. Usually I try to, so that it’s easy to come in the next night and start ironing again (I really don’t like laying them out…it’s boring). But the cool thing is that there’s only two boxes left…the 1700s and the 1800s, and that one isn’t even full. I really am in the last couple of hours here (if you don’t count ironing it down to the background). I’d love to say that’s gonna get done tonight. Really. But one kid flies out tonight and I fly out early tomorrow with the next kid. I think it’ll be a miracle if I get done before I leave, unfortunately. I’m about 24 hours into the ironing. Longer than I thought.
Oh well. Deep breaths. I’ll find a way to get it all done. I may have to rethink my priorities a bit. Maybe.
I think this is going to be a fairly awesome quilt though. It’s coming together nicely. I love watching the picture in my head translate into fabric reality. Now I just need to manage the other piece.
Girlchild came with me to school yesterday and renumbered all my textbooks and labeled all the folders for the kids and put them in color piles and typed up all the rosters (which will all change over the next week or so, but whatever) and put the goggles away and I don’t even remember what else, until I let her come home and start packing. Today is her last day with friends, so I don’t think we’ll see her for 12 hours or more, but that’s OK. At the moment, everything turns into an argument with both kids pretty much, and I’m too tired to seriously censor myself, so it’s better that way. My SIL hears the real complaints. Although after talking to her last night, I now feel like I have a significantly inferior spice-jar setup in my cabinet. I don’t think I care, though. I visually know where they all are. That’s about all I need in my life right now…a generalized idea of where a spice might be. She makes me WANT to care though. We also discussed dishwasher-filling preferences. These are very important conversations (other shit was in there too, of course).
So reworking the goal. Finish ironing the head tonight. Maybe piece the background (wasn’t that Wednesday’s plan? Damn.). Then come back from Boston and iron to backing and stitch down next week. It’s off the machine by Saturday. Then I get that 17-foot human done. In a week. Or so. Where did that panicked breathing come from? Meditate. That too.
Kathy Nida 