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.
Honestly, right now, I’d rather be in bed. I haven’t trained my brain to shut down early enough yet for school sleep hours. It’s not that I go to bed a whole lot earlier when I’m teaching; I’m still up until midnight or later, but I can fall asleep pretty quickly. Maybe that’s after days and days of inadequate sleep. The last few nights, though, my brain’s a go-cart, racing around turns, hugging the ground, adrenaline at peak levels. It won’t shut the fuck up so I CAN go to sleep. It’s analyzing this or that, trying to remember what needs to get done, writing stories, drawing pictures, calculating finish times, available time. Geez. Just lie down and go to sleep. You know you want to.
Last night, I really wanted to iron way earlier. I left school early, because I was (mentally?) done, but then needed to replace tires on the kids’ car (couldn’t get boychild to do it by himself), go to the grocery store, and make a last-minute trip to Staples for the stuff I forgot the last time I was there. Then I had to go return the boychild’s jeans for longer ones (sigh. Mr. Highwater makes a comeback. Remind me never to believe him when he comes out of the dressing room and says they’re fine. Go the fuck back in there, put them on again, and let me SEE.). Loads of fun. I was so tired by the time I got home that I went horizontal on the couch and stayed there for at least an hour.
And there weren’t even kids there yesterday (well, there were, but 6th graders for orientation…not a lot of interaction on my part). The exhaustion due to interaction will increase…I don’t think nonteachers realize how kamikaze our days are. It’s just nonstop from when you show up on campus until you walk away, and then you come home and work some more.
So after making myself get off the couch and cook dinner, I came in here and started managing stuff, like college payments and I don’t even remember what else. It was 11 before I started ironing, unfortunately. I really wanted to be done with ironing yesterday. Notionally, I could have handled being done today, but I suspect I will be hella tired when I get home (see horizontal couch syndrome documented previously in patient’s history), and there will be some period of time when I’m not moving. Eventually, about a week or so into the year, the exhaustion gets better, but September is notoriously sucky. Around about the end of September (which, by the way, is when the first progress reports go home), the workload seems to ease up and everything calms down a bit. But that’s when our school will be rolling out our send-a-computer-home plan. Whatever. Remember? That’s my mantra. No worries. Whatever.
Ironing. It’s what’s for dinner.
Julie thinks I should have done all the rivets on the heart (and in other places) using French knots. I did consider that, but then I wanted them to be flat, not popping up. I could have done them with silk ribbon, really tight, and I might have been able to get that, but it really wasn’t that hard to cut them out. It was time-consuming, but not hard. And I like how they look. The heart will look much better when the black stitching outline is in there too.
Then I started on the arm, which has riveted piping running down it…yup, more rivets.
And I’m looking at the clock and saying to myself, yes, self, you really do want the whole head ironed tonight. I know that. However, it’s approaching midnight and tomorrow is the first day of school. Are you fucking nuts? Because you can’t really see this yet, but there are buildings coming out of her head, and every building has windows in it. Lots of windows. Because if you haven’t figured out from the rivets and the power lines, I’m a fucking nut when it comes to detail on my quilts.
Yeah. The documented truth there. Fucking nuts.
I ironed the main part of the hand, and then I made myself stop.
I knew there was no way I was getting all of that done, and it wasn’t worth the lack of sleep and crankiness that comes with that to keep going. It’s not where I wanted to be. Whatever. It happens all the time. That’s why I set goals…so I can constantly NOT meet them. I do usually make the big ones, though, so keep that in mind.
Except then I couldn’t fall asleep for an hour. So that was kinda stupid. Whatever.
I asked the girlchild to clean up some spaces she inhabits before she leaves for school (not just a room, but a couch she has appropriated as The Couch of Dumping and a space on the kitchen table). She says she doesn’t have time. She tried to blame me for having her go to school today with me to help, but she hasn’t been at school all week, like she normally is; she’s been socializing. For HOURS. Because she’s leaving her friends and it’s like they’re DYING. Sigh. They have email and texting. We had to send letters. Or talk on the phone. And there were no cell phones, so you had to be in your room with a phone attached to a wall and a cord to the receiver. I know. Like seriously. All I want is a relatively clean space, and apparently that’s not happening. So sometime next week, there might be pictures of me with trashbags piled on her bed of all the crap so I don’t have to look at the mess for 4 months. I’m really kind of irritated by that, but I remember the boychild, who’s generally pretty neat, doing the same thing last year because he packed at the last minute and didn’t have time to clean up.
Whatever. It’s not where I want to be. I will GET there. But yeah.
Late nights. Art brain on a roll. Can’t make it stop. Followed by teacher brain and mom brain. Won’t let me sleep. I’m kind of a mess today. That said, I think most teachers start the year on almost no sleep, so how is this different? It’s not. I got a super-late ironing start last night. Had work to do for school…Kitten was a big help.
As long as I didn’t need any of those keys she was lying on (you will not backspace bitch), she was happy.
When I was done with all the computer stuff, I started ironing. It was probably 11. I started on the arm and the upper torso.
Because I really want to be further along than I am. ALWAYS. So I kept going…did both breasts…
And that was where I was going to stop…but Kitten was lying where my iron belongs (because I was now ironing instead of computing, so she had to be involved. Realize this means she moved about 6 feet from her previous position…it’s a small room), so obviously I couldn’t put it down. I would have to continue to work.
Really, if you sew at all, you know that cats will lie on ALL the things, especially what you need at the moment, what you don’t want to be covered with hair, and whatever might be completely in the way of what you’re doing. I’ve had cats that spent hours trying to lie on what I was actually ironing (Limbo, that would have been you), so really, she’s pretty benign. She never aims for the spread of tiny pieces on the table or the ironing board itself. We’re good.
I started ironing the heart (yes, that’s Voyager in the background…think I’m almost done with the series)…
Then I realized it has about 30 rivets in it and I stopped. Plus it was almost 1 AM. But you can see above how big the SMALLER figure is…There’s still an arm and a large head on this thing. The larger figure isn’t even ironed fully together yet. It will be large.
I’m in the 1500s…
In pieces, not on the timeline. There’s not much left, but school starts tomorrow. Hard to say when I will get all this where I need it to be. I think I’m at 21 hours of ironing. But I spent over 8 hours at school yesterday and today will be similar. Usually I have more help from my daughter, but she is saying goodbye to all her friends, so I’m not a priority…which is fine. Mostly it’s a matter of focus. I wander the room and a project calls and then the next one interrupts. I think I could teach tomorrow RIGHT NOW (OK, no, someone needs to hole-punch and staple stuff) if I had to.
My plan to finish ironing this tonight is not going to happen, but hopefully I can get all the pieces ironed together at least, and maybe piece the background. Maybe even deal with the issue of the dark pieces being too dark. I know it’ll take a couple of hours to get it ironed to the background though, so maybe that’s Thursday night. We’ll see. I know Friday night is driving boychild to the airport and forcing girlchild to pack (but I might need to wear ALL the things!). Then Saturday early is driving to the airport again and flying to Boston. That means my books need to be assigned, my sub plans need to be set up, and my room has to be ready to roll for that poor guest teacher. Before I leave. I can sleep on the flight maybe (I am so tired right now).
There are so many things in my classroom that I need to get done, that I stand there frozen, looking around until one task catches my eye, and then I start it, and while I’m doing it, another one speaks to me, and I start it, and then I never finish the first one, because I’ve completely forgotten it. This is also why my house isn’t clean, by the way. It just never coalesces into a one single project that can be completed. With school, you kind of have no choice but to be mostly on top of it by the first day of school (at least with the major stuff, like, um, the schedule), so there’s a deadline that’s looming over you. I guess if I knew 180 people were showing up at my house on Thursday…nope. Even then, it wouldn’t get clean. There’s just not enough time.
So I flailed a lot at school yesterday, but I wasn’t the only one. I conquered some tasks and made lists and came home to finish my syllabus (finally). I think I’m doing science stuff today. I have a bunch of stuff that needs copying, but the last batch never made it back to me (of course). Whatever (new mantra, remember?).
Girlchild had started some stuff at the local ceramics painting place a few weeks ago and needed to finish, but didn’t want to go alone, so I had agreed to go over with her, because all my mugs broke, and I’ve been drinking tea out of beer mugs (no really…it seems OK to me). I like a big mug. What can I say? Anyway, we did that. I find it really calming and meditative, so it was actually probably a good thing to do.
I knew I didn’t have much time, so I was going for big, graphic, and basic.
Strangely, girlchild was painting a mug for me, which I wasn’t allowed to see, so she sat over THERE and painted it so I couldn’t see it.
Mine, back side, ready to be fired…plus her two…yes, they’re blurry.
I can’t pick them up until after I’ve taken her to college.
Then we came home and there were three of us on the couch briefly until I got up to make dinner. After I had cleaned up the kitchen. And then cleaned it up again. Looking forward to cleaning up only my own messes. Really.
Then I started ironing around 10 PM. I stopped last night because I knew the next bit was a honking pain in the ass…the power lines and electrical transmission lines…
I didn’t do much else but them last night…they had about 100 pieces in them, with the houses and the trees…
Fussy little beasts…and now, this morning, I’m second-guessing my background fabric…might be too dark for this. So I’m debating solutions in my head. I have a few…one that I think is quite good, but will require some brain power…
There is no shortage of pieces left to iron…these are the 1400s.
So I’m at 20 hours of ironing and I still have about 450 pieces to go, and then I have to iron it to the background. Methinks my time estimate was too low. Fussy little pieces…they’re all over the place in this beast. I know the heart and the piping in the arm have about 40 tiny pieces.
But lo, though the quilt calls to me still and makes my heart all aflutter with want and need (to get it done, people), I must hither to school. We have an early program and then I will work on my classroom until the variety of meetings occurs. Or I will get stuff copied. Or whatever. I really would rather stay home and iron all this together (I could finish it today), but that’s not happening. The disappointment of the art brain is palpable. Wish I had a brain that felt the same way about yardwork and housecleaning. Well. OK. Maybe I don’t.
Kathy Nida 