THIS is the week where I get back to regular artmaking. I swear. I have two pieces to prep for delivery Saturday and three pieces for next Tuesday, but otherwise, school notwithstanding, I can art at night. Maybe. Ha!
The show I’m delivering for on Saturday will be at Liberty Station at the end of the month; first official opening is the first Friday in November…
I have two pieces in the show, and they’ll be up for a few months, so check it out. I’ve never seen this gallery space; looking forward to it.
I spent all weekend grading. And I’m not done. Well, I think I’m done GRADING…I just need to post everything and add comments etc. THEN I will be done. THEN I can try to plan Friday for 8th grade (I only got through Thursday in planning) and maybe even the next unit. I’m not crying. You’re crying.
When I grade, I have to constantly distract myself from how boring it is to just sit there for 5 hours straight, sifting through emails and docs and kid verbiage. So my eyeballs are constantly wandering…
Hummingbird through the weird coating on my windows where the kids tore it off.
Simba contemplating his hedgehog…
Simba contemplating ME!
Poor puppy. It’s boring when I’m working, I know. And I’m almost always working.
On Friday night, the Man had a show at the La Mesa Oktoberfest, which was pretty fun (albeit exhausting)…
It was their first time playing there…
Pretty crowded. And then Saturday night, his band played at the birthday party of one of the bandmates…
Nice location, although I was too exhausted by then to do much…
Except draw and read my book, amusingly enough…
Honestly probably should have stayed home and finished grades, but he wanted me to go. They played well. And I’m not going to the next show…it’s a school night and it’s some Battle of the Bands thang…nah. I’m good.
Last night, I headed up to PHES Gallery in Carlsbad, where FIG has its current show, Portals, to be part of the artist talk.
Ellen Speert ran the panel and Paul Henry took photos and found more seats.
We had our token mansplainer in the audience who tried to tell us women have all the same exhibitions that men do and there are no gender issues in the art world. I love it when that happens. NOT. All in all, though, it was a good talk. I hope.
Meanwhile, my sourdough starter is still alive…
Oh yeah, and we got a gift for doing the artist talk…
Best kind…homemade stuff from the artists’ yard.
OK, school calls, loud and clear. Grades. Two-hour staff meeting that better be cut short. The potential for some crazy in science. Ugh. I’m tired. But my goal is to get it all done during the work day so I can drag myself in here tonight and start the stitchdown on this piece. I’ve got three more I need to make before March apparently, and that will be tight. So gotta get going.
Dear wild animals: I realize many of you are nocturnal and I sympathize with that whole ‘avoiding predators’ things, sleep during the day, yada yada yada. But I am not nocturnal. Well mostly. Let’s put it this way. I have to subsume…no, not subsume…sublimate (something sub anyway…is subserviate a word?)…my nocturnal tendencies to hold down a day job that requires some level of awakeness (oooh also not a word) and ability to make 7,000 decisions in 14 seconds flat. So when you, wild animals, are traipsing through my yard and on my roof at holy shit in the morning, the little dog who is currently sleeping with me loses his tiny little mind and barks and boofs until at least an hour after you are done traipsing. Please traipse elsewhere. Or do it more quietly. Please.
Tired. Yes. Why do you ask? When am I NOT tired? Hmmm. Good question.
I think I might finally be getting back to some normalcy in the art stuff after last week’s disruption. Monday night, I had to pack a quilt, a HUGE quilt, that need ironing and lots of dehairing and is just huge and awkward as hell to get done in here (stop making huge quilts!)…
So I got that packaged up into a box that was 83″ high. And yesterday, I shoved it into my car after school and dropped it off so it could go to Quilts=Art=Quilts in Auburn, NY.
Hello box that is almost as long as my car. I love this quilt. I love that it’s getting into shows. I don’t love shipping it. This weekend, I need to clean up and pack two more quilts…wait, no, there are five quilts going out between 10/8 and 10/14 I think. Still waiting for an answer on one…because they want delivery during the day…not shipped. Um. Artists have day jobs? Really? Sigh. It’s a school, too, so you’d think they’d get it. No answer yet. OK. So there’s that. It’s done. So last night, I’m like, where the hell am I on the quilt that I wanted done by the beginning of September that is now going to be an October quilt because my day job is a time-sucking asshole? Oh yeah, sew the background together. Easiest thing I’ve done all day. Seriously. Then I trimmed it. I did measure twice (good). I probably should have checked my drawing with the measurements twice (oh well) because I had graded for about 3 hours and I was tired. I knew I was tired, but I wanted to be making art dammit. Anyway. The measurements are fine. Somehow in my head, though, even though I’m staring at a drawing that is taller than it is wide, I started ironing with the fabric horizontal instead of vertical. Luckily I didn’t get far before I figured out shit wasn’t going to fit. And I didn’t iron hard yet, because I didn’t know if it was in the right place. So I could pull off everything I’d ironed.
It’ll be fine. Everything is fine. Tonight (hopefully…after school and taking the cat to the vet and cooking dinner) I will try again. Thinking it through. Again. Wish me luck. I also ironed the nonwoven version of my drawing down to some silk I had lying around (welcome to my weirdo stash)…plus a random diatom thing that we put on there to use up the nonwoven.
I trimmed the silk away on the smaller piece…didn’t have time/energy to do the larger one, but I will. Then I can paint the silk from behind and see how that looks. That’s not happening soon…I have grades due in less than a week and that’s all I’m doing is grading and trying to plan 8th-grade science with zero help. I emailed the other teacher and that’s a no. I don’t think he’s doing anything but the provided curriculum, which has no labs, or hardly any. It’s driving me and my kids bonkers. I’ve been trying to map out the next unit so there’s plenty of hands-on stuff, but I can’t even get my head around the subject matter (Force and Motion, Velocity, Speed, ugh…it’s not like there’s a shortage of cool things to do…I just can’t figure out how to organize it). I will have to get there at some point (actually really soon), but I’m not ready. Hopefully my 7th-grade co-teacher will be helping this week with some real basic stuff. Here’s my piece in the PHES Gallery in Carlsbad…the artist talk with four of the artists (including me) is Sunday night at 5 PM.
Hopefully I will be coherent. Questionable at this rate. This is a mental war I’m having with the online library at the moment.
I order books online to read on my iPad, and they’ll be like 6 weeks out or 3 weeks out and then they all come the same week. Every time. Luckily they have a new thing where you can say, um no, deliver it next week instead…so if you’re like me and you already have one book you’re reading that’s supposed to take 7 hours and you only get to read for like 30 minutes most days and another book queued up that’s supposed to take 9 hours, and you really really want to check out a third book, but you can’t. Because you only get them for 21 days and there’s already 5 people in line behind you, so if you start reading it and don’t finish, it might be another 21 days before you see it again. Or more. Someday in the future we will just pay writers a living wage no matter what and all the books will be free and fully accessible. Seems reasonable, yeah? I think so. But for now, no, I will try to save up all the books I want to read (right now, I am obsessively checking out every book written by two women authors…been working on them all year. I think I have four books left for one of them and only three on the other. Then I can read other things (I do read other things while I’m waiting for these to show up). Who are the authors? Natasha Pulley and Sarah Maas…light, except when it’s not, total fantasy or steampunk or dystopian strange fantasy. Not real. Makes up for everything else. OK. School. Today is rocks and landforms in 7th grade and designing systems to capture energy in 8th. I’m hoping 8th runs itself and I can do some planning. 7th never runs itself. It requires constant putting out of fires and sometimes arguing with the adults who are supposed to be helping kids in the class, which I honestly could do without. So hopefully that’s solved today too and I can do art for real with a larger portion of my brain tonight
All the pieces are done, ironed together. I just need to make them fit. Ha! That’s always the issue. I love it when the quilt top is just one giant ironed-together piece with no holes in it, because it’s easier to get onto the background. Pieces like this with a little bit here and a little bit there, and they all have to fit together, which implies I ironed them together really well (ha!)…those are the hardest. I’ve got two big heads (here’s one of them from Friday night)…
Then there’s the head and upper torso of the main figure with the arms, then the lower torso with the rest of the three figures and the body of one of the big heads. They’re all attached in some way. It’ll be a challenge. It’s not a small piece, so doing it on the ironing board won’t work. I finished the Earth last night…
That was the last bit…and I found the missing ‘s’ finally. It was in the box of 1300s, even though it’s a 300. It has aspirations…
In other art news, Coronawood got into Quilts=Art=Quilts, which is cool. And I’ll be part of an artist talk on October 2 at the PHES Gallery in Carlsbad.
Should be interesting…a wide variety of work.
I spent a huge chunk of the weekend working on school, which is funny, because I only just got my nose above water and my mouth sometimes. Meaning 8th grade is planned through next Monday and is a disaster after that. I spent 5 hours on Sunday just dealing with that, and then the other 3-4 hours was grading stuff and posting stuff and trying to make sense of stuff. I brought home 5 things on paper that I didn’t touch, needed grading. I’m taking some of it to my other quilt guild meeting tonight. Valerie Goodwin is talking. I took a class from her last year on Zoom and wanted to hear/see her in person. Also I won’t be at school for two days this week, so hence my panic about school stuff. But I’ll be at SAQA Summit listening to artists talk and then taking a 2-day workshop. I still need to write sub plans.
That whole 5 hours yesterday was on this chair with this cat behind me…
It wasn’t particularly comfortable.
Later we walked the little dog. Not sure why I call him that, since he’s the only dog we have at the moment. I guess I have a wishful big dog.
We only did 2 miles because all of us were tired. The boychild has been gone a lot lately for work, so Simba has been needy. And a shitty sleeper. I’d like to thank the local coyotes for my lack of sleep today. Boychild may be back Wednesday…depends on local fires. He was on one over the weekend, but seems to be off it now. I told Simba; he understood nothing.
We managed dinner out…
So I drew something very basic that I’ve probably drawn some version of about a million times. Which was fine, because at least I was drawing.
This school year, man. I’m hoping I get a better handle on it soon. It’s been shit. I should say the 8th graders are mostly fine. They are a decent group of kids. I just don’t have the curriculum down until like 5 minutes before class. The 7th grade, I’ve taught this curriculum enough times that I’ve got it, but the kids are a challenge…and not all of them. Just a significant enough number of them that it is hard and exhausting and sometimes they behave and sometimes they are shitheads. Because they are kids, yes, but also because of COVID and not being in school and still figuring out how not to be immature and some of them don’t HAVE to behave at home, so why behave at school? Some days are good, most are ok or tolerable, and then some are just shit. And because I end the day with them, it just throws me. And then the curriculum is stupid, the stuff I’m using for 8th grade. Hate Amplify. It’s lame. So repetitive, only one right answer, hardly any hands-on stuff. There are simulations, but it’s not the same thing. The kids need something to put their hands on, to mess with. Hopefully the next unit is better. I guess it’s only as good as I am, and I don’t feel up to it by myself. I don’t have any other curriculum that I can do with them. And I don’t have time to go searching for stuff, or the brain power, because I would have to be able to get the big picture to do that, and I’d need like a 40-hour week of planning to get there.
On top of all this, some messy shit with adults happened last week at school that still is pissing me off. I need to drop it, let it go, but it’s shitty and I can’t get it out of my head. Thank you brain for that.
I did finish one book, read a whole ‘nother book (the Man hates it when I use ‘nother)…
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy…second book in a series, but basically I love anything by Becky Chambers. Reminds me of why I don’t hike the PCT as a thru-hiker.
Anyway. I’m on yet another book now. It feels good to read. I do love to read. And draw. And sleep. I love sleep so much and I suck so bad at it.
Today is chaos. I’m giving assessments to both classes, although 8th probably won’t finish today. 7th will if it kills me (and it might). Staff meeting after school, plus counseling, pick up the parental dog and bring her back, then off to the quilt guild meeting. I’m not sure I can do all that, but I’m going to try. I should eat something in there sometime. I’d like to say I’ll iron when I get home, but odds are that I will just collapse. We’ll see. A girl can hope.
Yo! Busy weekend, mostly cool stuff. Work (day job) takes up too much time, as usual, and too much of my trying-to-sleep-dammit brain. But I got a bunch of fiber and art in there this weekend.
Quiltwise, didn’t get much done…didn’t iron at all on Friday night, and then did an hour or so each Saturday and Sunday nights…so this is part of Saturday…
Did the lower torso that is above the arm…then realized the whole damn thing was too heavy to keep on the ironing board, so pulled another Teflon sheet and started the upper torso on that.
It’ll all fit together at some point. Last night, I continued on the upper torso…
At this point, I have some arms to do. I’m in the 800s, almost done with them, I think. So more than halfway finally. Still a lot to do…another big head, her head, the arms, and some stuff in the background. Not a fast iron.
Friday night was a no-iron night because I went to see the Man’s band play…here he is pretending to be Exene of X.
That’s some neon green there. Pretty exhausting show for both of us, though. Friday nights are hard. I managed to get up and go to my quilt guild meeting the next morning to listen to Sara Trail of Social Justice Sewing Academy talk. Great talk, very inspiring. Put it on my calendar to do another remembrance block when I get a break from school. There are 50 or so here in San Diego County that need to be done, so volunteer! (wherever you are, there are unfortunately people who have been killed for a variety of sketchy reasons who need to be documented and remembered…).
I stitched while she talked…been a while since I worked on this, but I got a chunk done.
Mostly boobs.
On Sunday, I went up to the PHES Gallery to see the opening of FIG’s Portals show.
I need to post all those pictures sometime this week…but it is the first time I saw mine hanging. It’s much bigger than I had originally planned it to be.
Definitely commands attention. I’ll be participating in an artists’ talk on October 2 at 5 PM at the gallery with two other artists.
I drew some things for school…this was the hairy gravestone reject.
They were good until I put the hair on them. Don’t even ask.
I was really excited to see a monarch caterpillar in pre-cocoon mode…
But 12 hours later, it hadn’t done anything new and looked mostly dead. And this morning, it was gone…with three more green tomatoes. I know I have a tomato stealer; apparently they like caterpillars too.
I did find another one on there, so maybe there’s hope.
We have a lot of birds though. So I’m not incredibly hopeful.
So it’s Monday. Y’all know that. It’s a busy week: union meeting AND back-to-school night. Plus all the other stuff. I rewrote the whole 8th-grade month in my head while trying to fall asleep last night. Should really stop doing that, but it’s amazing what my brain is capable of when it should be sleeping. The weather has cooled off a bit, although it’s still muggy. The boychild left this morning for his new CalFire posting; not sure when he’ll be back, because there are crews on fires and his new one may need to do something. So either he’ll be back Wednesday or who-knows-when. I need to get to school and hope a copier is running somewhere.
Today is a holiday for some, not all, as the boychild went off to training today, earlier than I wanted to be up, so then all the animals were ready for me to be up, in fact, I think Luna purposely got herself stuck under the dresser just so I’d get up (and then got herself remarkably unstuck) and the boys next door have new toy machine guns (seriously. I’m not kidding you) that they run around shooting at each other, rat-a-tat-tat, which is not conducive to sleep or thinking or anything but rage, honestly, or maybe less rage and more WTF toward their parents. Religious as fuck but machine guns. Anti-Satan (gasp!) but OK with killing. They seem like nice people. I just don’t get it.
ANYWAY. So I’m up earlier than I want to be, which has been the case since before the kids were born, so you’d think I’d be used to it. It’s still hot here, which make everyone cranky, although I think yesterday was cooler. We had clouds a lot of the day, and sure, they were monsoon clouds, so it’s humid, but not as bad as Saturday. Today dawned clear and hot, though…so all the fans are on and I’m in here typing before it hits 95 degrees inside. Even the internet is cranky in the heat. I was trying to do school work yesterday afternoon, and that was a no-go. Slow as hell and kept freezing. Could be the new loaner computer though. Either way, it gave me an excuse to quit working and iron instead. For whatever reason, my studio was cooler than the living room. There was actually a breeze yesterday. Not so much today…a little air movement, but not much.
So I finished the one figure…her right hand and face were all that I needed to do…
Then I started on the figure next to her…
That’s when I took a break to try to do schoolwork. Waste of time really. We went over to the parentals for dinner, brought side dishes and dessert (what requires the least amount of time in the kitchen)…then came back, it was dark and night and a little cooler, so I got the third figure done…
And started the large figure on the right, after the broken Statue of Liberty…
Some of my drawings are more stream of consciousness than others…I think of them as brain dumps or an anxiety drawing, how do I just get it all out of my head and onto paper. This is one of those. Whatever my concerns and anxieties are, for some groups of people (BIPOC/LGBTQ), this shit is way worse and doesn’t seem like it will ever go away. My old-white-lady concerns are ten million times worse for them. Anyway. I love that I made progress…hopefully there will be more today, but first, I really need to do schoolwork. Way fucking behind.
Friday night, we went to see the Threads of Inspiration show at Inspirations Gallery in Liberty Station. Here is my quilt Bill! Bill! Bill! about Bill Nye…who not only made all those awesome videos we know and love, but continues to advocate for the planet.
This quilt was part of the A Better World exhibit pre-COVID about people who make this a better world. So he’s traveled a bit. A friend of mine sent me this…
So I believe I am 4 or 5 degrees separated from Bill…which feels good. I hope he laughed.
The show is up through the end of September, so check it out, because there are some cool pieces…
It is a SAQA local show, so Southern California and Nevada…
If you’re coming the the first day of the SAQA Summit, the official artists’ opening will be that night.
I will be there for that. I will also probably be exhausted, but what’s new?
Lots of color in the show…
Some fun work…
If you want to see each of these pieces with all the artist info, I’ll be posting them on the SAQA SoCA/NV instagram page @saqa_soca-nv once I get done posting about Desert Diversity, the local show in Phoenix, Arizona, right now. Or stop by on Thursday, September 22, from 6:30-8:30. I think otherwise it’s open only by appointment.
The next opening is next Sunday, from 2-4 PM…
I delivered that piece Saturday. First time out in the world with that one. I will probably be at the opening earlier rather than later, depending on when the grocery shopping gets done. Sundays are a little crazy usually. This coming weekend is a little more packed than I like them. I like some down time, some art time, some reading time, some hiking time. Which means it needs to cool the fuck down enough to hike. Not happening today. Maybe Saturday.
I drew before we ate out on Friday night…it was definitely cooler at Liberty Station. Hungry man…
Didn’t feel like a serious drawing. So whimsical it was.
The view of clouds on Saturday reflected in the pool where I kept putting my feet to cool off.
I couldn’t find the energy to put on a bathing suit and go all the way in…so up to the knees it was. With my book.
Other bits and pieces from the week…I thought this drawing was a pretty effective explanation of yo-yos and energy.
Made me laugh anyway. And here’s the apples I brought home to compost from the apple batteries…they were getting buggy after four days…
Seems like a waste of food, but the kids learn a lot from this. Mostly they’re a little mind-boggled that apples have energy.
I keep finding caterpillars on the milkweed and on the citrus trees, but no cocoons so far…on either.
I think I have too many birds for the caterpillars to survive. Something has been stealing the tomatoes again too…I had one almost ripe one and it’s gone. Probably rats.
This…true…
What can I say? Black is versatile. Hides the spills.
This one was at my parents’ house, just hanging out on the grass.
Probably close to dying, but it was pretty.
I worked a tiny bit on Sue Spargo’s Homegrown. I think I’m still doing April’s blocks.
I had to read the instructions four times and then turn the book with the embroidery stitch instructions upside down to help me get this far.
This. Sigh.
And finally this…
Kitten is doing OK. She’s not great. We’ve been switching her meds around, trying to make her more comfortable, but also increase her appetite with giving her horrendous diarrhea. I think we’re closer to a solution, but I will be happy when I can stop giving her the medicine that makes her foam at the mouth.
OK, so all the things that need to happen today, on my holiday: cook lunches for the week (meat is in the crockpot already), laundry (I did not get to the washing machine first, so I will have to wait…also to shower), grade a bunch of stuff, post things for this coming week, pay some bills, get some posts ready for SAQA’s instagram, fix my website current shows and recent work sections, read my book (maybe), iron some art (definitely), and get ready in general for a short but packed week at school. I’m finally getting my lost filling replaced, got two parent-teacher meetings and one “how-the-fuck-do-we-manage-this-parent” meeting, got one stitching meeting, chiropractor with mini-massage before (that’s a necessity), plus a Pilates class. I think that’s it. I’m not counting next weekend. I wanted to hike but it’s too damn hot. So I’ll aim for next weekend for that. Plus there’s some stuff on my to-do list for the day that I’ve already forgotten, even though I only wrote it down like an hour ago. Hence why I write it down! At least this is a day off…I appreciate that, even if I haven’t been very efficient with my time. Hopefully the heat won’t be too bad today and I can get things done. I will feel better going into the week if I can.
I feel like this whole post is about energy, which is what I’m teaching the 8th graders. Less what I am teaching and more what they are learning. I just throw a bunch of materials at them and then they figure out the things with a little bit of help from me. Which is the way it should be.
Hello Exhaustion, my old friend. One part labs all week with 8th graders (which hasn’t been bad, just a lot of moving…a LOT a lot), one part first full week of school for me, one part 7th graders who need to figure out how Nida rolls (we got close yesterday…it was MUCH better than Wednesday, which made me cry), and a final part of no real air conditioning, in fact, I get warm air blowing in the classroom by the end of the day. Saps your energy, makes it hard for the kids to think, which makes my job harder. That said, I feel like I’m finally getting a handle on things (despite the exhaustion). Hallelujah for a 3-day weekend though. Today will still be long and tiring, but there is a light at the end of it. I have a meeting this morning, labs for three periods, and then something I’m hoping the 7th graders will enjoy (or at least be engaged in), then I get to stand by a traffic signal in the sun for 15 minutes (aka my duty after school, to make sure kids don’t get killed by parents driving like maniacs…not sure which of those is the bigger maniac, actually. The kids don’t look and neither do the adults).
Then tonight, check out the opening of the new SAQA local show opening at Inspirations Gallery in Liberty Station, San Diego, CA.
I’m just looking at this card now and seeing the artist reception will be part of the SAQA Summit, so I’ll be there. But I’ll also be stopping by tonight during First Friday to check it out, dragging the Man (who is as exhausted as I am) so we can check it out. Pretending to be normal and not old and tired. Ha ha. We do go to each others’ stuff pretty regularly. I just bought my VIP ticket to the La Mesa Oktoberfest, where his band will be playing later this month. I don’t ‘bier’ much, but I’ll hang out and watch him play.
My piece Bill! Bill! Bill! is in the SAQA show…
Maybe Bill Nye will stop by and check it out.
I’m delivering work tomorrow to a show that opens on the 11th…your first chance to see The Way Out, at the PHES Gallery in Carlsbad.
The opening is from 2-5 PM on a Sunday. I’ll be there, probably closer to the beginning of that time.
Meanwhile, although I am working many school hours (graded until 9 PM last night again), I am getting a tiny bit of ironing done. Wednesday night, I got everything set up, laid out the first 100 pieces, and started ironing the first figure…
I didn’t get super far, and certainly last night, I really didn’t get far…
Three whole fingers. I hadn’t seen the Man before he left for band practice (I was still at work), then I worked a ton, started ironing, and he came home, so we hung out and talked about life, liberty, and IDK what else, outside, where it was not 100 degrees. My house holds heat like crazy, and this weekend is supposed to be over 100 degrees. Not looking forward to it.
OK, off to the meeting and the school and then the art. There’s a balance in there somewhere. I mean, some part of me just wants to check into an air-conditioned hotel and read my book all day while no one speaks, but I realize that’s not an option…so I’ll do the things and maybe read later. Plus art…ironing in high heat is something I do around this time every year…why stop now?
So today is my first day back at school with kids…my room isn’t totally ready, I don’t have all the materials for a lab I’m apparently doing tomorrow (I feel like I should be more on top of this shit), and the Man tested positive for COVID on Monday. I’m still testing negative, but woke up with what feels like a stuffy nose? I’m writing sub plans in my head for the next 5 days (well, 3, because I don’t have to teach on the weekend, thank god), and it’s a cluster because it’s those first few days when everything is more hands on, supposed to teach them how to exist in my class, and who knows who might BE in my class if (when?) I test positive. I masked all day yesterday, will continue that. But I feel like I’m a giant-ass redwood about to fall, but not yet, maybe today? Maybe tomorrow? I just don’t know. Do I plan the labs and hope I don’t come back to my room being burnt down? I just don’t know. I’m not even done setting up our online classrooms because I just haven’t had time. The district sucking away that Friday planning time really…well…sucked. Yeah! I’m feeling better right now with a shower and a cup of tea in me, my sinuses have cleared, but my voice is off. Hell, I feel off, but that could all be in my head…I’ve done that before. Or my body is fighting it and let’s hope my immune system, two vaccine shots, and two boosters are all stronger than one variant. Ha!
Just stay away from me right now. For so many reasons. I have had a stuffy nose multiple days this summer…allergies related to weather and/or dust. So who knows.
I finished proofreading last night. That’s a good thing. It was kind of a mess. But it’s done. The mess was not because of me…I blame the copyeditor. But hey, IDK what she started with.
I’m still ironing, but pretty damn slowly. I might need to admit that I’m not going to beat that deadline. It’s OK. I have other pieces to enter, and this one will still get done. There’s just something about an insane deadline.
Piles of pieces in the 600s, 700s, and 900s…last night, all I ironed down was the cat. Hardly anything.
I think I did 16 minutes on Monday night and 26 minutes last night. Big time! Better than nothing. It is what it is. Even if what it is is frustrating.
Not a lot of color in this one. Well maybe there is, but it’s all chaotic-looking here. Lots of fleshy bits. I’m still ironing that pile of lungs/heart/whatever. So far behind.
Kitten is still depositing fur on the black fabrics in that box…
I have a piece in this upcoming show.
And another show in September in Liberty Station. I’ll post that one when I get a thingie for it.
OK. Well, I’m going to go do this first-day thing and hope for the best. It’s humid, I’m sweaty, I have meds for a stuffy nose, I have COVID tests (sorry kids, Imma test right now while you’re writing on that paper), I’m going to write sub plans during prep? I think? I honestly don’t know what to do. Right now, I’m going to print my class rosters and get to school and hopefully everything else will make sense from here on out. Wish me luck. Send the anti-COVID thoughts.
I’m loving this cooler weather. I actually wore warm socks to pad around the house, albeit with shorts on, because it’s not flannel pajama weather yet. Quite. It won’t last, of course, but it was nice this weekend to go out hiking with a bit of a chill in the air. Hell, it was just nice to go out hiking, even if it was only 3 miles. I’m fighting for work/life balance (and mostly losing). Here’s the hike view, though, so I don’t forget…
That was Saturday evening, around 5:30 PM.
Friday, after work, after entering a show, I got in the car and drove to Carlsbad, to the PHES Gallery opening of the Allied Craftsmen show. It’s a nice show in a nice space. My two pieces are here…
I lurked behind people and listened to them talk about the pieces. That’s always fun. Although I didn’t get home until after 10 PM, so that was also exhausting. I also got news Friday that two of my quilts at The Studio Door sold, so that was cool…not enough for a new sewing machine or to trim the trees, but it’s a start. It’s always a good thing.
Saturday, I got up early, because my brain knew how much work was on my plate and wouldn’t let me sleep in. I started by cleaning up, ironing, and packing up the quilt to go to the photographer at noon. Then I pieced the two blocks I owed for the community quilt my guild is doing for Quilt Con…they were due at noon to someone’s house, so I dropped them at 11:45 (I was early, c’mon), and then dropped the quilt at the photographer’s. Here’s the blocks…
They had given us some extra fabric to deal with the long pieces in the center, but I fucked that up and ended up having to do some improv piecing, which wasn’t hard and will probably add to the final design…I’ll post it when we have it.
I graded after piecing and before driving to drop things…and then I came home and graded until my sourdough dough was ready for the bulk stage. Then I went to school to deal with the stuff I’d left there…all the late Unit 1s that I had to rip out of kids’ hands (just a little more time! Dude, I need to do progress reports now, not later) and then all the stuffed animal drawings.
Guys, grading art is so hard. Sometime Friday night/Saturday morning, when I wasn’t sleeping, I figured out the best way to handle it…lay them out based on the rubric…who hit all 4 points, who hit most of them, who hit a few of them, and who wasn’t hitting much of anything. Yeah. It worked. I printed the rubrics and graded the obvious As first…they had all the things I asked for. I can’t say the middle lows were easy to grade…they weren’t. But I wrote suggestions, and with some, offered that if they kept going at home and improved it (like actually finished it), their grade would improve.
I know some would just give everyone an A, but this is an academic class and my kids feed into the REAL art teacher (I just play one on TV), and she will hold them to these high standards. Plus this is probably the hardest project we will do. So hopefully the next one will go better. We’ll see.
After 2 1/2 hours at school, I had what I needed, and that’s when I came home and hiked (what I REALLY needed). At dinner, I drew before the food came…
This is the beginning of an idea for the next quilt.
Sunday was more grading, lots more. But Sunday night, I got a chunk more done on this…
It’s taking me forever because of the other deadlines I have. It’s almost done, though, and should be on its way to the Social Justice Sewing Academy this week sometime, assuming I can get to the post office before it closes. I wanted all the things done before I started drawing the next quilt.
Cats are weird, y’all.
I’m gonna shove my face and use the wall as a pillow.
Am I done with grades? Nope. Wearing my Nope shirt today too. Had one kid constantly emailing me all weekend. I stopped answering. I’ll get through the last bit of it today and post grades. Hopefully some of them will learn not to do stuff last minute…luckily it’s a progress report and not a final report card. Then I will have my first chiropractic adjustment in forever, hallelujah. And maybe I’ll get to do something besides school tonight…maybe. I’m still two weeks behind on assignments, so that’s a thing I’ll be doing all week. Plus making videos for this week…kids are still out on COVID contracts. Ugh. Yeah. It’s been too much school lately. Need to get to work on changing that. Again. Still.
I don’t know what you do when you come home from work, especially after a long frustrating day where you had planned specific work tasks after the kids went home and then your loaner computer (because yours is hopefully getting fixed as it keeps shutting down randomly) shuts down randomly (wait, I think I heard that already) about six times in a row, trying so hard to restart like a good computer would, and then giving up the ghost and popping up that message again about how it can’t possibly restart, there’s something very wrong with it (no duh asshole). So after getting it to start and working on grades and contracts for kids out on COVID or pandemic concerns, and finally coming home around 6 PM, and then getting dinner (that was the best part, away from the house, although it was dark, hard to see the food, one of the issues with always eating outside, you know, it gets dark and all), then mopping a floor, sewing a backing together, ironing all the parts, taping them to the floor, and then getting down on hands and knees at 9:45 PM, wondering if this is the year you buy knee pads, like you’re really an old person now, and pinbasting a quilt together.
Sometimes I wonder about the amount of power my art brain has to get my tired old teacher ass off the couch and doing all that shit after 8 PM on a day when I had no prep period. On a day when the 6th graders decided to sharpen the metal end of a pencil in my new $92 sharpener that can handle colored pencils, and yes, I think I know who did it and hopefully I scared the shit out of him. Certainly if there are any other issues, that thing is sitting on my desk and they can pay me to use it. Yeah. It was a day. I’m kind of on the verge of tears constantly again, and I hate that. So part of this weekend will be quilting instead of thinking about work. A large part of it will also be grading, let’s be honest; grades are due soon for progress reports, so I can’t blow it off.
But here we go. Book club got rescheduled on Wednesday. Luckily I checked the app right before I left, so I didn’t actually leave. I worked instead and fed myself with leftovers from Saturday (probably a mistake to go that extra day, says my 2 AM stomach), and then finished the stitchdown…
That’s 5 1/2 hours worth of stitching.
I can see the figures on the back…
On the front, they are hard to see. Hopefully the quilting will help with that. That starts tonight. Here’s all taped down on a clean floor…
The backing is some fabric I found in my stash, quite a lot of it actually.
It seemed right for a quilt about hiking etc. The etc. is kind of a big part of this quilt.
So far, Mom’s machine is rocking it. Much appreciated.
I also did the stitchdown on my Patreon reward, which is really late now…
That only took 13 minutes though. Much easier. I’ll pinbaste her this weekend too. But my goal is to finish quilting and get the binding on this weekend. I don’t know if I can do that. But I will try. We’ll see.
I have an opening a week from today…two pieces in the show…
PHES Gallery is in Carlsbad, California. It’ll be a bit of a drive. No COVID test that day. With 1-2 positive cases in my classes every week, I’m still getting tested every week. Two new ones this week. Woo hoo!
These are drawings I did at dinner while waiting for the food to come. I can’t remember if I’ve posted any of these.
My pen died, so this is ballpoint…
It works. It’s just not fun.
I don’t think when I do these. I just draw.
Sometimes it will turn into something else in a larger piece…mostly not.
I think I will actually get limes and lemons this fall…they seem to be sticking.
Certainly they’re bigger than they have been…
And there’s more to come.
OK, today shouldn’t be too hard (ha!), at least the school part, except I need to get everything posted for school. My co-teacher is out of town, so I’ve been making lab materials for next week. The copier ran out of staples, so I need to staple 290 packets before Tuesday. I’m hoping to find some classroom helpers today who are done with shit to do that. Work after school, bring a ton of work home, get my COVID test for the week, do some grading, possibly do a quilt Zoom, then quilt until I fall asleep, hopefully in a bed and not on the machine. Tomorrow, repeat. Plus some other stuff. I’ll be glad to get the quilting started…I didn’t think I’d be able to finish this one on time, and now there’s a chance of it…I’m going for it.
Kathy Nida 