Interrupt My Routine

You know you want to. Just interrupt it. I dare you. Get me out of my routine. I’m used to getting up, showering, feeding animals while making tea, and writing my blog while drinking the tea and eating my Cheerios. Then I go to work. It works. It’s 9 months of the year. The other three…it takes me a while. I often still get up, shower, etc., all in the same order but a few hours later (hell, I go to sleep later too), but there are some days where I can’t manage anything close to a routine. I had a cup of tea this morning on the way to the girlchild’s physical. I didn’t eat breakfast. Lunch was late because I was on hold with two separate medical offices, trying to coordinate two appointments (some nurses are angels, I will say that).

I turned the iron on to get working about an hour and a half ago. Then I remembered I was supposed to be writing a proposal for a piece in an exhibit. I’ve written proposals before, but not for something like this. I wrote it once and then accidentally deleted it. I wrote it a second time, making sure I saved it 17 times. But I don’t know if it’s any good. Whatever. I’ll wait before I send it. Read it again before I send it. There’s no loss if I’m rejected…it’s kind of a tight deadline as it is. As I considered an editing job this morning that would have taken 50-60 hours a week for the next 4 weeks. And decided I couldn’t do it. Sigh. Bugger.

I think it takes me a while in the summer to get used to working during the day. I’m so used to working late at night, after dinner and dish cleanup and all that crap. Into the early morning hours, which are plaguing me now, at sleepy-afternoon time. Seriously. I don’t do well between 2 and 5 PM.

So I wrote the damn proposal and dealt with some other paperwork and college stuff, and then I made another cup of tea and tried writing today’s blogpost. Seriously. So I can get on with the fucking ironing.

Yesterday was a mess. I was tired. I did the grocery shopping etc. and then finally started ironing at 9:30 at night. See? I’m on vacation and I can’t start earlier than that. I started with the ground and a cat…

Easy peasy. Then I started on the flesh. I had already picked out the fabrics (although I had to add one at some point when I realized I needed a darker one), but needed bone colors as well. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t think this through, because the majority of this quilt is flesh…

It took two hours to pick them all. Because like I said, the majority is flesh…maybe 400 pieces of it. And stopping in the middle would have meant confusion, getting off track, getting off the roll I was on. So I didn’t stop. And then I realized it was like 11:30. And I still had to iron them all down…

So I did. It took a long time and I was pretty tired at the end.

Here’s all the pieces that weren’t flesh: the lungs, the nipples (technically flesh, but different colors), the hair, the eyes…I still have to do them.

That’s why I turned the iron on an hour and a half ago.

OK. I’m amused. They just extended the proposal date until next week. My lord. I could actually go look at the space (again…I’ve seen it before).

Here’s everything I got ironed. Looks pretty bland.

It kinda is. Well, all the color will be in the weird stuff I add now…the tattoos and the fish and the holy crap it’s humid here. We San Diegans cannot handle humidity. (OK, it’s only 45% at the moment, but it’s usually 2%. So we’re dying.)

Yesterday I had Midnight until she decided the iron was pushing out too much heat in her personal space…

Today I have Kitten, who keeps coming in and meowing plaintively at me, “Get out of the chair, bitch. It’s afternoon and in the afternoon, I sleep in that chair.” Well, yes, and I WOULD be ironing, if people didn’t keep fucking with my routines. Tomorrow I’ll be sitting in a waiting room…waiting. Boychild needs his wisdom teeth out. Fun stuff.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far (in the plastic bin).

Mostly flesh and bone. The pinks outside the box are going to be used, but haven’t been yet. Not a ton of color yet. But it’s going fast. Three hours in and I probably only have another hour, maybe hour and a half to go? Like NOW. Except I said I would go to the gym today. FUCK. I swear, I need 5 or 6 more hours in a day, which is crazy, because I’m not even going to WORK right now and I can’t get it all done.

OK. It’s OK. I read this in the last book…”People are screwed up in this world. I’d rather be with someone screwed up and open about it than somebody perfect and…you know…ready to explode.” (Ned Vizzini) It’s true. I’m done with the people who think they’re perfect. Or that tell me I think I’m perfect (so not true). The wonder of living with teenagers…

Gym. Then home and probably dinner and ironing. Maybe ironing, dinner, ironing. I should probably run the dishwasher before I go. They use a lot of dishes, those bizarre complaining aliens that were my children. Earlier today I called myself an unpaid project manager with shitty employees. Yup. That’s it. I’m getting a new one tomorrow. It sheds and it’s very needy. Stay tuned.

Stuck Down

I’m trying to stay on track. I have a list a mile long. Actually, I have multiple lists. When I wake up in the morning, my phone says alarming things like, “You have a busy day today. There are 22 items on your calendar.” What the fuck? Are any of them “eat” or “sleep?” Nope. The standard stuff isn’t even on there. That’s just the extras. And some of them are easy, like “pay the damn bills” or “enter a show.” OK, that one is not easy, and many thanks to the three varied and useful brains (plus Google) that were helping me come up with a theme/show title for a one-woman show I’m considering. Though it made me realize that a lot of the words that have to do with women just annoy me. Like “feminine.” Anyone who knows me is clear that I am sort of the anti-feminine, and yet that is the word, the adjective, that is supposed to go along with me and my parts. There’s “womanly” as well, which just means you have curvy boobs and hips, right? “She has a womanly figure.” Fuck me. I hate that stuff. “Feminine” implies pretty smells and wafting silky fabrics and a pinky raised for tea. It’s interesting what words just set my teeth on edge. “Tits”…that’s the one my male students use that just sets me off. I don’t know why. (I should probably carry warning labels…maybe I do.) Don’t call me a girl, don’t call me a lady. I’m not either.

Anyway. My brain is on overload with that, and I have about a week to figure it out…surely from the list I typed into my phone as the other three threw stuff out at me, I will be able to find something semi-appropriate.

Meanwhile, I finally made it home and tried to focus. I’ve been so tired, and I’ve been going to bed early, but then I don’t sleep, so it’s fucking pointless. I am going to buy a gun just to go find that fucking mockingbird on my street and blow its perky, loud feathers away (moody much?). Then I will sell it back (the gun).

I wanted to iron everything to the background on Wednesday night, but that was exhaustion level tired. Last night, I had a cup of tea and some food and started to revive. I cut a background piece…luckily it didn’t need to be pieced, because this quilt isn’t actually that big, and then I started ironing…

The tree leaves tried to be fussy little assholes, but I ironed them into submission. This was actually pretty easy to iron down, because it was all one piece and only the tree was fussy.

It took me less than an hour…

So that’s a little over 10 hours in ironing, more than I thought, but not unreasonable. Notice in the bottom right corner that Kitten is venturing out into the house again. She’s still really nervous about being out, and keeps looking around for Babygirl, and Midnight is being kind of a pissy bitch about her being out too, so there’s some growling going on, but I think they’ll adjust.

ANYWAY. Hopefully tonight I’ll start stitching it down, which shouldn’t take long. My Saturday is kind of a mess at the moment, though, so I do have to grade papers tonight. I wanted to pinbaste it on Sunday, but I don’t know how realistic that is. We’ll see. Probably not an option.

But I’m two weeks ahead again. So that’s good. Anyway. Stuck down to the fabric. Ten days of school left. Then I have to get my head above water and try to figure out how to get some extra money this summer. I have three things going…I just need enough time and space to get them moving. Right now, it’s a lost cause, but it will get better soon.

Last night, I did sew some feet…

Although it feels like I should have been able to do more than that in an hour and a half. Whatever. Thirty-nine bullion knots in 90 minutes. OK, see it doesn’t sound so bad when I say it THAT way. That’s 2.3 minutes per bullion. OK then. I’m not going for the world record in bullion stitching. I think. Is there money in it?

Makes Me Crazy…

I made art for over 4 hours yesterday. I didn’t work when I got home. I couldn’t. It’s been a really long week. Again. I keep reading articles about how to keep sane as a teacher, and they all scream BALANCE at us. And then you have a 14-hour day. (I made art on that 14-hour day. I’m a little nuts.) It helped that it was my monthly quilt meeting last night and I had something at the right stage for working on there, but still…I worked a full school day and then some (testing was extended an hour due to internet issues), and then I came home and (collapsed for a good long while and) made art.

I don’t know if I’m doing it right, because I’m pretty stressed and tired at the moment, but I think I’d be that way just because of my job, and the art is the part that makes it all OK.

This quilt is finally interesting. The fabric-choosing part really sucks me in. I find it hard to leave it, even at 1 in the morning when I know I have to go to work the next morning.

So I finished last night…76 fabrics, 7 hours and 53 minutes to choose them all…

Not a ton of color in this one. The blues and whites are the largest sections, I think. I’m looking forward to seeing it come together.

Here’s what it looks like when I have a bunch of small, weirdly shaped pieces that are all in the same fabric…this is hair.

I cut all those out yesterday too…here’s the whole bin full of pieces at the end of the ironing, although…

I had already started cutting stuff out at my meeting earlier in the evening…

I got a lot done in an hour and 40 minutes. I was exhausted when I got there, but managed to keep going. Bought dinner, drove to my parents and picked up snow chains that I won’t need, then home and ate. That woke me up a bit, so I came in, ironed for almost two hours, then looked at the clock.

I’m not going to sleep before midnight. So I might as well keep cutting…

There’s all those browns cut out, plus some others. Still got a good chunk to cut out, but I have a good start. I’m debating taking it with me this weekend. I have a hard time sitting still without doing anything. Then again, I have hiking and canoeing on my list for the weekend (hoping my foot is finally healed). Not a lot of sitting still with that, but we’ll see. I prefer to take a bunch of artmaking stuff with me, so I can pick and choose. I’m still debating taking grading with me. I don’t want to. I should. We’ll see how that pans out. I just know I need some sleep and some time away from my job and my life. Isn’t that what 3-day weekends are for? Yes. Yes they are.

I’m actually thinking this quilt might be put together by the end of the school year, I’m that far ahead at the moment. That’s two weeks earlier than I had thought…which is good, because the other one has to be done by the third week in July. And I’m sending out stuff on editing jobs too. So I might have paying work on top of all this. Crazy.

With that, I have to get out of here to that place that makes me crazy…

The Picture of a Happy Family

It is just the picture of a happy family at home here, as we nestled on the couch last night, boychild providing calculus support to the girlchild while randomly Googling facts about the show we were watching, SVU (happy wholesome TV), and I graded assignments about reproduction (asexual, sexual, and cloning), often dissolving into hysterical laughter when I read student interpretations of the notes I’d given them. Girlchild cooked a lovely dinner with vegetables, which are no longer forbidden here…well, they were never forbidden, but they were limited and now he eats a lot of things he wouldn’t eat before. Boychild helped out in the kitchen and then cleaned things, which was scary and nice. But eventually girlchild, who gets up earliest, went to bed, boychild wandered off to his room, and I went off to my studio to deal with the flesh and the water.

Tuesday night, I had time to pick the flesh fabrics I was going to use, but not to actually lay them out and iron them. So that’s what I started with…

There’s not actually much flesh in this quilt. Most of the larger body and a goodly portion of the child are all under water. While I was ironing, though, I realized the bones didn’t go through to the bottom part of the leg. I don’t usually change things at this stage, but this bugged me, so I drew in the lower bones…

Traced them and ironed them. Easy enough, and now I won’t stare at it, wondering where the bones disappeared to.

Really, that’s when I should have gone to bed. I’ve been up way too late all week, and it’s starting to hurt in the morning. Or maybe Thursday mornings always hurt. Hard to say.

Being my usual cantankerous and stubborn artistic self, I kept going…and I didn’t keep going into something simple. Oh no. I went for the water…big crazy pieces of curliness…

And this crazy thing…

That is one piece. I don’t know what I was thinking. It will be “fun” to cut out (not).

I have quilt class tonight, so I’ll start cutting them out then…

I’m not done ironing yet though. I have at least another 150 pieces to go. I’d like to get them done tonight, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. I have a little over 6 1/2 hours in so far, which is more than it should have taken for a 600-piece quilt.

I also seem to have more colors of fabric than I normally would for a quilt with this few pieces…

We’ll see if that’s true at the end. All I have left to iron is the adult woman in the piece. She doesn’t have a lot showing, but her hair is incredibly complicated. Wanna know why? Because when I first drew it, it wasn’t the right size or shape, so I just added to it…and that added about 40 pieces. Crazy, right? Well we already know about that.

Today is the last day of state testing (hallelujah) and my kids started microscopes yesterday, which means my sarcasm spilled over…”What is that?” “I don’t know.” “Where is your slide, your coverslip?” “What are those?” “The things I just stood up there and showed you how to prepare, that I showed you a video on yesterday and made you take notes about the day before. Where are they?” “I don’t know.” It takes a massive amount of patience to teach some days, really, on any hands-on lab day and many technology days, and I can’t say that my patience is at a maximum at the moment. I said, “Oh my God! Look! It’s an e!” about 17 times yesterday (the first assignment is to look at a newsprint letter e).

But they will survive me, as I survive them. And they will move on to the next grade, the next science teacher, and they will either hate them or come back and tell me how they have an A in science now (good job!), and the really annoying ones, the ones I wanted to run away from on the last day of school, they will come see me every day and yell “I love you!” across the quad and hug me when they get close enough…except for the few that I am STILL glaring the evil eye at, even a year later. I think it’s sad that we only really remember the badly behaved or tragic students…that those good kids you see every day doing amazing work…they make me happy in the moment when I see their test scores or their very cool science drawings or their happy little faces as they wave at me…but they’re the ones I forget over the years…their names, their faces. Sigh. Is that proof that the bad sticks to us easier than the happy? Hard to say.

This is an interesting article about an artist who did a show of white women in advertisements over a span from 1915 to current-day, removing all the text and just leaving the pictures. I thought it was telling that the author, a white woman, wasn’t sure if things were better now than they were in the ad from 1915…in fact, they might be worse. In advertising, in imagery about our bodies, I think it is worse.

Me and my early-morning headache (woken by girlchild screaming about spider; I really needed that extra two minutes of sleep, dammit) will now attempt to go to work and be calm and patient for the first part of the day. It’s really up to the kids as to how long that sticks. Looking forward to hopefully finishing the fabric-choosing part of this quilt tonight. And maybe sleeping. That never seems important at night…just the next morning.

Girlchild is now at school, now that the spider is dead. Boychild is intelligently still asleep. I am questionably awake and ready to go to work (well, not really READY per se, but I should go). The happy family continues (yours may be a bit different than mine).

Sanity Is Built Up of Many Crazy Parts

Not much time this morning. Yesterday was crazy rushing around, but the boychild is finally home, recovering from not eating for hours and all that other traveling crap. I suspect there was some serious running in Philadelphia’s airport (he has long legs), but all three California kids from that really late Ithaca plane made it. Apparently no plane ever leaves Ithaca on time. He can sleep almost all day here if he needs to. I don’t think the cats know he’s here.

Meanwhile, I have three interviews (not mine), an emergency scary meeting (not about me), and a massive lab to deal with today, so I need to be at school early and for a million hours (fun stuff)…so I’m writing this quick! That Quick!

I did iron for a short bit yesterday…

There was a faucet and a handle that needed doing, and then a soap holder with soap. I’m trying to remember what the red fabric was for…who knows…part of the handle maybe? No, that doesn’t make sense. Anyway. I then spent about 20 minutes under the desk picking out flesh fabrics in a run of 7 (the pink/flesh drawers are under the desk…gonna install a light under there next)…

Before having to leave for the airport. It was too late to start ironing when I went to bed, so I’ll be ironing body parts when I get done with everything tonight…maybe. If I don’t collapse from exhaustion before then. Plus boychild is home and he’s usually pretty talkative the first few days. I’ve got about 4 1/2 hours into the ironing so far.

So there is progress, but it’s fucking slow at the moment. I’m not a full-time artist…some days, I’m barely a part-time artist. That’s because I choose to hang out with more people after a long day of hanging out with mostly little- or medium-sized people. Crazy, I know, but sanity is built up of many crazy parts.

Five Whites That Aren’t White…

Oh morning. You are sometimes so sweet and pretty and bright, but this morning is delightfully gloomy (really, that’s easier to wake up to) and there is a cat butt in my face. The cat quite boisterously cleans itself when it thinks I should be waking up. I have three alarm clocks really and one is sentient. And it’s not my iPhone.

I sat through my daughter’s prom dress fitting yesterday. I have pictures, but she would surely kill me to post them. A small, lovely, and very competent woman is making my daughter’s dress from a photo. I’m thoroughly impressed by her wizardry. After that came flopping on the couch to read, because it was a long day that included a bunch of crazy because one of the substitute cleaning team at my school unplugged the computer cart over the weekend and every computer was dead…on the first day of math testing…online. We managed that crazy though (never again, please).

I also spent a good chunk of time finding all my reproductive unit paperwork (didn’t actually find most of it, strangely), and then creating a profile on a proofreading/editing site. Once they’ve approved me, I’ll post it here. Because y’all are looking for editors? You never know.

So it was late when I started the artmaking part of my life…as always.

This thing is actually going pretty quickly. I stopped the night before when I got to the bathtub pieces, because they are huge and required some thought. Here’s one of them.

Basically, I have 5 whites that aren’t white. Well, one of them is white. The other 4 pretend towards whiteness but are really what white would be if there were shadows and 3D going on.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…

You can see the whites, such as they are, in the left column in the middle. So I didn’t do a ton of pieces last night, maybe 50? But they were huge and complicated and took a long time to iron and cut out.

The pile grows…

And this morning, I still have three hundred pieces to go. Tonight I’ll be somewhat busy…and my late night, which is normally saved for artmaking crazy (I stayed up too late last night), will be spent at the airport getting the boychild.

Really, there are days when my life seems inordinately busy. I’m glad I took a half hour with a cup of tea and my book yesterday, partially because I like this book and want to finish it, but also because my brain needs shit like that. I didn’t grade hardly anything yesterday, between the testing fiasco and refusing to work when I got home. I worked enough hours as it was. Oh, I also took the lake boating test so I could kayak/canoe at Lake Arrowhead this weekend. I need a license for that! I don’t know if I passed. I would hope so. It was open note.

Anyway, so we’ll hope today is better, less crazy, more grading at school (except I’m starting microscopes tomorrow, which is a little crazy in itself). Time to get stuff done at home, but also that the boychild’s plane comes in on time so I don’t have to go to bed super late. Like even for me. And nothing else pops up on the radar. For now. Just let me get a little caught up before something else shows up.

I Know You Know It…

Apparently I like to pick out fabrics…or my mood finally switched on to art mode. Either way, even though I spent a good two hours yesterday arguing with the girlchild by text about whether she had taken my shoes or not or whether I was in the right to demand that my shoes be returned to my house (ah, the wonder of divorce), and then we weren’t speaking to each other for the next 2 1/2 hours, somehow all that shit worked out and I managed to do some grading and make some art.

Actually, first of all, this is a drawing from Saturday…

Which needs a redraw. I like the hands. I like the belly and crotch area. I need the head further down. I’ll try again. I also went to an art event Saturday night, but I’ll have to deal with that in a later post…too many photos for a Monday morning.

I had mostly cleaned in here Thursday night (yes, I know it doesn’t look clean, but what do you know?)…

And set up for ironing, did a tiny bit, but then succumbed to cranky exhaustion.

So last night, I managed to avoid both, and made it through all of the first 100 and second 100 pieces…

There they are laid out by 10s. Very exciting, no? Yes, I’m a little obsessive sometimes. But look at what I can do with it!

Basically, last night I ironed everything together up until the bathtub…here’s the ginkgo tree…

Some of those browns are just shreds of skinny pieces because I’ve cut so many tree branches out of them.

Here’s what I’ve used so far…not much color.

There was a dog on a rug, a cat, a ginkgo tree, a pile of clothes, and a pair of shoes.

Next stop? The bathtub. Which might be a bit difficult. I need big pieces for that. Here’s everything I’ve ironed so far…

I got to piece 229. On this quilt, that’s almost halfway done…which is good, because my brain is realizing I have to get another relatively big one done by mid-July? Ish? And that is closer than it appears in that mirror.

I also started revamping my LinkedIn page to include my editing and proofreading experience, which is old, but still useful. I’m debating joining a couple of groups that might get me work, but school is still hanging over me. My car went into the shop, though, and between it and my house insurance, the next month is going to be ugly…which is a problem, because I don’t get paid over the summer. So I need to get some focus on…realizing I don’t know how to edit electronically (well, I can mark up in Word), and might have to take some courses to figure that shit out. Anyway. I try to worry about the smaller stuff, one bit at a time. College crap. Getting the boychild home crap. Getting through state testing crap.

I aired out the boychild’s room and rewashed his bedding, realized we were still short a pillow and his fitted sheet no longer fit. Elastic with issues…so I made a run to Target for another pillow and a fitted sheet. Set all that up, so he at least has somewhere to sleep. He can work on cleaning the rest of it when he gets home. Asked the girlchild to clean the bathroom, and she tried to blame part of the mess on her brother, who hasn’t been home since January 19. It’s gonna be a fun summer! I know you know it.

More drawing. More art. I was commenting that I find it hard to draw specifically about the relationship I have with my daughter. I can draw about motherhood in general and the stress that goes with it. Earth Mother shows up a lot in my work. But when I try to parse out how the two of us work and why it drives me bonkers sometimes, I just can’t make a picture about it. I can only hope she has a really nice roommate in her dorm who doesn’t kick her out after three months.

It’s OK. I know her worst behavior gets saved up for me. OK. Apparently I have to go to work. Damn paying-the-bills job. And please don’t tell me you want teachers to love their jobs…there isn’t a single teacher out there who loves state testing, and most of us are trashed by the last 6 weeks of school.

Speaking of trashed, I dropped my favorite mug yesterday…

Dammit. I made it myself. I made another one at the same time, but I’m apparently not allowed to have it back. And the other large mug I had sprung a leak. So I’m fussing around with a tiny mug, checking Groupon for the next coupon for the ceramic painting place.

OK, off to my day, if only to figure out all the ways I have screwed up already. Love Mondays.

I Just Don’t Know

This damn piece is giving me angst. It shouldn’t. That’s what I’m told anyway. Wish someone would tell my art brain to get over the shit that bugs it so I could settle into my own existence. Apparently not an option. But maybe that’s why I make so much art…because I never settle into myself. I’m always questioning what I’m doing and how it makes me feel and whether it was good enough. Good enough for what, I don’t know. But that questioning, I don’t know that it’s abnormal in someone who creates all the time. Maybe that’s the difference between me and the people who did art in college and occasionally do something crafty, but they don’t stay up until after midnight every night making some piece that won’t get into any shows because it’s too in your face.

I just don’t know.

After running 17 errands in the morning, I was able to pick up my newly cleaned and tuned machine and I pieced the background. I also decided I didn’t feel like cleaning the entryway floor to lay it out. I thought the piece would be pretty easy to lay out, because it’s basically one large piece that’s all ironed together. If I had to place a bunch of smaller pieces and make them all fit together, I would have done it on the bigger floor space.

So here…it’s a little crowded, yes.

Couldn’t even get it flat. Oh well.

I laid it out anyway. Sometimes I’m kinda stubborn.

I tacked it down on the floor (this might be why my floor is dying…I do in fact iron on it.)…just enough to get it up on the ironing board, where I did the 30 seconds with steam thing that makes it stick better…enough that I can stitch it down.

And then the water droplets had to be placed…and I hung it up…

This thing is big…59″w x 66″ h. I thought 4 hours to stitch it down was probably an underestimate…but I did start yesterday…

And everything went fine for the first hour or so, and then I don’t know what happened. Something broke threadwise and I pulled everything out and tried to restart the stitching, and then spent probably 45 minutes fucking with my machine, cleaning stuff out, resetting it, turning it off and saying abracadabra over it, swearing and assuming I would have to take it back today to get fixed and I would never get done. Thread was tying itself up in huge fucked-up knots that somehow translated to shit in my head. Love that. Art brain. Get out of that hole. And then it magically started working again. And I spent an hour restitching all the crap it had fucked over. I’m sure it wasn’t really magic. I did something and that fixed it. But I don’t know what that something was.

When I finished restitching, honestly I didn’t have it in me to keep going. I was just depressed and frustrated with the whole thing. And with life in general. So I walked away and tried to sleep (ha!). Yeah. That was kind of a failure too.

Fucking Pandora is in pretty perky mode. I want to punch it. Where’s my screaming angry young men when I need them?

Seriously, though, I’m fighting a lot of stress about well everything I think. I’m about to crawl into a ball and lock all the doors (probably not realistic considering girlchild lives here half time…apparently) and not come out until I have to…which might be sometime around April 13. I’m sure there’s some people expecting me to show up before that, but I don’t know if I can handle that. Dammit, I unlocked the front door. The Golden Retriever is now here, lying on my floor. It’s harder to be depressed with a Golden around.

I’m trying to decide whether to stitch for a while (I might not stop) or to go to the gym first. I really should go to the gym. I have a social thing tonight. For a hermit who is feeling overwhelmed and antisocial, that seems problematic. Because otherwise I would go to the gym tonight. I like it when it’s quiet there. During the day is not so quiet.

This song was in my head too much yesterday…not sure why.

Not even sure I like it. Certainly can’t watch the video without getting sick to my stomach. Maybe just the lyric “I don’t know what I believe.” Maybe that’s all I’m hanging on to today. Trying not to think about all the crap I need to do. Trying not to think about that pit in the floor that’s screeching at me. Need to meditate more.

OK. Pandora has figured out I’m feeling depressed and is now playing depressing music. I’m not sure that’s helpful, Pandora. Really, you need a better formula.

She’s in One Piece…

I didn’t get as far yesterday as I wanted to…as usual. My machine is also still in the shop, so that sucks. Hopefully it’ll be done today, because I can’t finish the ironing. I need to see the background together before I can iron the whole thing down.

I started with the hair…

Then got the full face ironed together…this was the water section, so there’s a jellyfish, some regular made-up fish (Kathy-style), and a shell. Oh, and a starfish on her face…

Then I did the sun on top of her head…

I debated ironing the whole thing together now or fitting the pieces together on the background. It is easier to just deal with one piece though, especially if it can be ironed down to the pressing sheet, because then I can stretch pieces to make them fit if needed…which is what this one needed. So here’s the head ironed to central torso…

While I was working on this, a duck love triangle was working itself out in my pool. This is an annual event. The duck couple has been visiting every day, but today an extra male showed up and there was some significant drama for a bit until this point.

I kept working. Here is ironing the upper section to the lower torso…

Which also needed some adjustment, but overall, everything fit together fairly well. Here’s the whole thing rolled up…

For storage until I can get the background ready to go.

I’m sitting at the vet with the tiny-bladdered cat for her followup. I don’t want to spend an hour here, but it seems that is always the case. I need to go buy batting and hopefully pick up my sewing machine so I can get this thing to the next stage. I might have to do a college-visit trip next week, which is going to seriously mess up my schedule for everything I needed to get done over break (much like last year). Sigh. I don’t know why I make plans…it seems life conspires against me.

Left the cat…she wouldn’t pee and I persuaded the vet to let me leave her there for a few hours. I wanted to be stitching down yesterday! Oh well…let’s see what I can get done today…at least she’s in one piece.

I Need That Right Now…

I’m getting close to done, which is good, because I’m expecting to be able to pick up my sewing machine today, and I’d like to be stitching things down today, although that would mean not doing much else, so I might have to rethink that plan. I’ve been trying to grade a little every other day and to do some yardwork every day or so, and clean some part of the house every day, although my brain just wants to get the art done…it’s worried that I won’t get this quilt far enough along by the end of break, and the reality is, I probably won’t, because stuff will get in the way, but I’m trying. I’m always trying. Part of why I write here is because it forces me to be accountable to myself, to say every day, what the fuck did you get done? What art did you make? And if you didn’t make art, what’s your excuse? Is it a good one (spending time with people is a good one)? Or is it lame (sat on the couch all day and stared at a television)? I don’t usually do that, just to be clear. But I could iron for 10 hours in a day and I don’t, because other stuff just happens. So if I only get two hours in, that’s the same amount I would do if I were teaching…and I’m not…

Anyway, yesterday was pretty good. I cleaned, I did yardwork, and I ironed for 4 hours…starting up in the torso…sunflowers on the shoulder and the arm…

Then added the heron wing, which is quite pretty (and hopefully will still be pretty on the background I picked)…

The heron body is there too, as part of the arm, ending in the head below.

I often have snakes in my quilts…couldn’t leave it out this time…

Although I ironed it separately and then set it aside, because it was in the way. I do try to iron the pieces in numerical order…it’s just easier that way than having multiple boxes out at a time. I had made dinner earlier, because I had some time in the middle of the afternoon where I didn’t feel like ironing yet, and it was lasagna, so I could premake it and refrigerate it. I’m trying to be really efficient with foodmaking right now. Froze a dinner’s worth of it for next week or the following week, when we’re both back in school, plus made enough for two dinners this week. I seem to think this stuff through better when I’m not actually teaching, unfortunately. It’s all practice for next year, when I hope to cook a meal on a Sunday and freeze it so I can have it all month, interspersed with other Sunday meals I freeze. Or something. Some attempt to be healthy and not eat the same thing every night, and admit that cooking for just one person every night is tiring.

Then I ironed the bird in the torso…

Tons of feather pieces between the two of them. Then I added the cat on the right side and a piece of the snake on top…

It got a little complicated in here. I added the rest of the snake and the heart, and then the right arm is a fox, which turned out well…

Although I had misplaced part of his eye, apparently. Never found it. Just cut a new one.

The next two sections had complicated overlapping leaves and roots on a flesh background. With the roots, I just lifted the pressing sheet and put them approximately where they belonged…

But with the leaves, I ironed them together separately and then laid them out on the background. It was too complicated to not be able to see the pattern and try to iron it at the same time.

I did the same thing on the leaves on the right breast…then ironed the bird and snake down on top of it, where they belonged…

The last step was the grassy area growing on the right shoulder…and there’s the whole torso…

That’s almost 9 hours so far.

It looks a little chaotic without the head on top. And it definitely will need outlining to define some of the areas. I think the whole thing will read as a body, though, especially with the head. I really want to see it all together today at some point, so even though I have stuff planned (gym, more yardwork, book club for a book I read over a year ago and I’m really just going because I haven’t been since December and I feel out of touch), my goal today is to get it all ironed down and at least ready for stitching down. That part should only take 4 or 5 hours, then another couple hours to pinbaste, although that reminds me…I’m not sure I have a big enough piece of batting for this thing. I should check that today.

Everything else right now is stressful. It’s nice to come in here and iron and not have to deal with drama about colleges or health issues or worry about money or taxes or school. It’s peaceful working on this quilt. There’s the problem-solving of trying to get all the pieces to fit together right. It’s very methodical, laying the pieces out numerically, looking at the pattern, fitting them together, ironing them down, seeing the image come together. Apparently I need that right now. Which is good.