Peace and Joy…

Hey. It’s the last day of the school year…of 2025. School has changed a lot in the last 25 years…I realized this as I was watching a keystroke video of a kid editing their test after school earlier this week, so I could let the parent know that they will still have an F after I grade it for realz. Luckily, mot kids had to submit during class, so they couldn’t do the cheaty thing. Well, she had to submit during class too, but unsubmitted later, and I’m sure saw the message that said I wasn’t accepting them any more. Fun times. I miss the days when…OK, never mind, kids have always found some way to cheat. Back in the day, I allowed a notecard for tests (before I went all standards-based) and kids would try to bring a big card or more than one card. It’s not like we teach them to study…and for my current tests, they don’t need to study. They do need to turn their brains on…longer than it takes to ask AI the answer. What’s mindboggling is that I showed that class a similar video of a kid cheating, and she still did it. Ah well. Some of us learn all the things the hard way.

The quilt is progressing! I got it pinbasted on Wednesday night with the help (not) of two cats, one kitteny.

I pinned fast. Because cats. Then last night, I started quilting…

An hour in. Still on the first bathtub. I’ll be here a while. Hopefully done by the end of the weekend. Finishing early! A miracle. Maybe. Knock on wood. Which means I need to figure out the next one, because it’s on a tight deadline. School is gonna need to back off a bit…a lot. I’m not sure how that’s gonna fly, but I’ll have to make it work.

Lots of kitten pictures…lots of kitten sitting ON me.

Definitely have a lap cat…at least for now. Nova is also a lap cat, and was a little offended by having to share. Scribble doesn’t care about the others; she will sit wherever she wants.

It’s the right attitude for this house. Each evening, I try to read for a little bit before I have to do all the other things.

There’s a lot of furry beasts around when I do that. Sometimes there’s a dog too.

He also doesn’t care when I have other beasts on me. Honestly, it’s the best part of my day sometimes. I mean, I like making art too, and they sometimes come in when I’m doing that, but it’s loud right now with the sewing machine and Scribble doesn’t like that, but she was in here with me when I was ironing.

I’ll have to add her to a quilt soon, in the great tradition of Nida’s cats living on in her art. Her face is going to be more complicated than Kitten’s was. The hardest part is making sure they show up on whatever background there is. I did one quilt with Midnight (an old cat of ours) and because she was all black, I had to add like an aura around her so you could see her. She rocked the aura.

Yesterday, I had to pick up a quilt from a closing show and then do some holiday post office and shopping stuff. Shockingly, both places were empty, mostly I think because everyone and their mother was on the freeways.

It was a 2-hour trip in the long run. Traffic could have been worse. Maybe. I did get this treat of a view…

The palm trees at Costco/Ikea. Nice.

OK. Today. Is a test. Ha! And they turn in a packet. And I have to lock up my room because stupid Winter Academy will be in here and they steal stuff and break stuff. It’s annoying. Plus they’re going to clean my floors. I’m not putting all my shit back for the academy people. They can live without it. Not my problem. Hope they know how to set up the projector. I’ll leave the tech on the counter, but they move my teacher desk for floor cleaning, so I can’t leave it where I normally do. Frustrating. I shouldn’t have to go in over break to set stuff up for other people. I have a packet to grade, a homework assignment, two easy just-record-the-numbers assignments, and two academic assignments. I started grading one of those last night. While they’re testing today, I’m going to try to finish the homework papers and clean up. I’m not fully planned for the week we come back, which sucks. Our prep periods got sucked away this week.

I’m fully looking forward to three weeks off. I’d like to reinstate a drawing a day, but realistically, it’s been hard the last few years to pull that off. Pre-COVID me could have done it. I need to finish this quilt and start the next one. I have a million yard and household things that need to be done (always). The girlchild is home for a quick week. I just want to get some extra sleep and exercise too. That would be lovely. I need a reset. School has been a bitch. Not the kids…they’re relatively decent this year. Just the rest of it. The rest of it needs to fuck off. And with that note, I’m off to work. Maybe there be peace and joy at school today, unlike the last four days.

Slipping Off Slowly

I just realized it’s July. I missed that. Hello July! It’s the only full month of break that I get. I have a ton of things to do still, but I’m doing a good job of feeling like I’m on break. I’m doing lots of art and reading books. These are good things. I’m feeling the burnout slipping off slowly. This is awesome. I need to do more of that. I need to focus on forcing that into the new school year. I can’t do this every year. I need my day job to be only a day job…not an every-moment-you’re-awake-and-even-when-you’re-trying-to-sleep job. The less my day job allows me time, the more I think about retirement from that job. This is also the month I don’t get a paycheck…somewhat stressful.

Am I also stressed about American politics and the Supreme Not Court and the possibility of 40 more years of Trump? FUCK YEAH. Will that show up in a future quilt (or 10)? Oh my, yes. Right now, the big quilt I’m working on has a ton of war, especially Gaza and those affected by that war, and reproductive rights, which have been a constant issue in my head for a looonnngggg time. And thanks to those who can’t stay in their lane and get out of other people’s uteri, that’s not stopping any time soon.

Meanwhile, I do a little bit of that big quilt a day…

I thought I might be done Monday night, but that didn’t happen…Tuesday night, it did.

Almost 22 hours of trimming pieces, and I didn’t do the smallest pieces. I don’t cut them out until the last minute so I don’t lose them. So up next? Sorting them. That’ll be a couple of hours. Gonna wait for that part of the house to cool down to do that. It’s the sunny side right now.

I also sandwiched and pinbasted the two smaller pieces that have been lying around.

This meant crawling around on the tile with my kneepads on, sweating my ass off.

Small quilts don’t take as long…

There’s the second one…

Both ready for quilting now. Won’t take long. Just need to get my act together to get them done. And my act is on summer break. So there’s that. I had a plan this morning and it already got exploded, but for a good phone call, so I’m OK with that. Real life often gets in the way of plans.

I wanted to get to the ceramics studio this morning. I got there yesterday and happily had the opportunity to put iron oxide on my piece…

And then I started to wipe off the excess iron oxide…

I have some more glaze that needs to go on…some satin clear in a few areas, and I’m going to update the cat’s white fur. I tried to avoid the iron oxide there, but that’s kind of impossible. Well, that’s not true. I’d need wax resist and I didn’t have any, and I really didn’t think of it until today.

This back picture is a better view of the color…

And it will brown out a little when it’s fired. So ideally I would go in today and finish that up so she can be glazed. The other pots are probably ready to go in the bisque fire, but I’m getting totally into the glaze being perfect, which is silly. Anyway. Maybe today.

I’ve also been working on the upper torso of the world figure. The plan with this one is to make a quilt that hangs behind it and comes down under it. The winged piece above will have feathered wings over the ceramic ones and some fabric coming out of the top smokestacks. That’s the goal anyway.

I added the second hand and did some carving on the face and the ‘hair’ and the shoulders…

This one will have mostly underglazes, I think. That’s the plan. It may change with time. I also picked up some more groggy free clay. Some Texas clay. I’m apparently a clay slut. I’ll use anything. I do know that what I’ve been using is not great for sculpture; it slumps a lot. So this will be good.

So what else? Reading. I’m so behind on gardening/yardwork and housework…the fixing part. I was waiting on the contractor to come in and finish the window, which he did yesterday. Now I need to sand some major areas before the carpet goes in next Monday. So that’s a deadline. We also have a heat wave coming in…they’re saying Friday and Saturday, but my weather app is showing Monday and Tuesday will be even hotter. Joy. Not.

I finished the Period book…fascinating stuff. New ideas, new science, about an ancient biological process.

“Require sterilization”…holy crap. That’s a thing? That’s so disturbing. I can’t even think of a reason why that makes sense biologically.

And this was the end of the book…kind of how I look at what I do in my quilts.

Lots of social media memes/graphics about our current political mess…

And this…

Our current Supreme Court is a joke.

I dissent.

In local news, it’s a good thing we moved all that furniture last Friday, because the boychild’s been working this fire for a few days now and will probably make it home for one day, maybe.

It’s east of here, and somewhat under control.

He’s still out there though. So Sunday night, I’ll have to empty dressers and move a few things, strip two beds Monday morning. Not too bad though.

Remembering this for the upcoming school year.

The last one seems relevant.

And lastly, Nova has found the roll of quilts that normally lives under the bed…now it’s 4 feet higher, but she’s still lying on it.

This is why they’re all covered in sheets.

OK. I’m watching the Stitchpunk Textile Talk, three artists whose work is in the show. I need to go to the ceramics studio. I need to get some greenery trashcans filled…although I just realized they won’t pick up until Friday because of the holiday. I need to buy a box to ship a quilt…the one box I have is buried way way back in the dining area…no chance of getting to it. And I need to ship the quilt that is currently on my worktable so I can start ironing the big quilt together in the next few days. I’ve got pilates, I’m almost done with my book (90%! So hard to not just read it right now), and I need more tea. Definitely slept better last night…the night before, there was a skunk or raccoon that set Simba off, and then two loose dogs around 2 AM that made us get up, our upper neighbors get up, Simba lost his mind, and it was just generally not sleep-conducive. The one dog got trapped in my yard and couldn’t figure out how to get out, so he just kept barking, and the other one was running around, all upset. He eventually got trapped in the upper neighbor’s yard, more barking. Scared dogs, so no persuading them toward us. We finally just opened all our gates and went back in, hopeful they would figure it out. And they did. Hoping also that they made it home, wherever that is. OK. Make a plan. Even if it’s reading and napping (sounds lovely, doesn’t it?).

Really Hard Dirt

I meant to write this in the morning, before school, but I worked instead. I thought about writing it in the afternoon, but I had to deliver art supplies to students who can’t leave their homes. I got home after that and had a little time before gaming tonight, but instead of writing this, I talked to my mom about my dad coming home in the next few weeks, which is good news, but a little frightening as well. I’m going to go see him this weekend; I get to talk to him through a window. I could go now, but it’s close to midnight and if I know my dad, he’s asleep. Hopefully. I might go to bed before I ever finish writing this. I was up late last night and didn’t sleep well; I had a really low blood sugar drop, no reason that we could see, and it really messed up my nighttime routine. You know, sleep and all. It took a while to come back up, and then I woke up a few times at night to check it. It’s happened once before, about a year ago, and the phone nurse just keeps asking me if I’m sick and did I eat. Well yeah, I did eat and no, I’m not sick. So I just took my insulin tonight and I’m kinda watching the clock and giving it some time to make sure everything is OK tonight. Hopefully. Because I need the sleep. And I need some time this weekend to get some work done, because I didn’t get any done tonight, art or otherwise. Good thing it’s a 3-day weekend.

Wednesday night, I finished the stitchdown on the current quilt…

It took just under 5 hours to do that…not bad…

I wasn’t sure I’d get her sandwiched and pinbasted last night…it was a long day, and it meant mopping the floor first, but I pulled it off…

Sometimes I have energy and I do shit.

It’s not actually a huge quilt…just has a lot of pieces in it for its size. I should be able to start quilting this weekend; we’ll see how that goes, because Craft Napa started on Wednesday. I was able to hang out in the Welcome group for about 50 minutes, until I had to go to a union meeting. I spent most of Wednesday’s prep period, 5th period while kids were working, the Craft Napa meeting, and the union meeting sorting art supplies for my 72 online art students.

I actually had a fairly impressive stash of colored paper. Anyway, I delivered those envelopes Wednesday night around 8 PM, and then today, hand delivered a few of them. In general, I make them go get them from school. As always, some kid three weeks from now will tell me they didn’t even know about this and it’s not their fault they couldn’t do the project. Sigh. I put a lot of time into my classes. Sometimes I don’t want to, but I really don’t know how to half-ass it. Although I lost my mind on Wednesday when they pushed one of my classes to 40 kids. Apparently that is my line: 40 kids in a class. They fixed it (the kid really was supposed to go to another teacher), but I’m still annoyed with myself that my mindset for the 2nd half of the year went out the window in just three days. That said, they flipped about 5 kids from hybrid to distance and back, and then gave me three additional students, so I suspect my crazy was somewhat justified.

Anyway, I have one Craft Napa class on Sunday and another next Saturday, plus the wine tasting tomorrow night, although after the blood sugar thing last night, I’m cautious about that. No, I wasn’t drinking either last night…you sound like the nurse. No no no no no. I wasn’t doing any of those things. Sigh. Stupid body. I hate when you feel like you can’t trust your body. It sucks. Anyway, knock on wood that it was a one-off. Again. The second time.

I’m still chugging away on this…

I might find the pattern designer at some point and post it with this. I might. I’m using stash. One of the designers I follow was asking if people preferred kits or PDF patterns, and it’s not that I don’t like kits, they’re easy, but I have all the floss in the world (I say that, but I had to buy 3 skeins for this one because they were using all the new colors) and besides, I have a dog who eats patterns, and if it was a kit, I would have to buy another one to get the pattern, unless the designer was really nice (dude, I would totally send pictures), but with a PDF file, you can just print another one.

Kitten agrees.

No art tonight. No energy either. I do however have excited sourdough starter.

Can’t argue with that. I’m making sourdough focaccia tomorrow. Or Sunday. Hard to say. I never get the timing right.

I’m teaching radial zendoodles for warmup this week.

These are the practice ones, which all look like hydras. Really, I’m teaching kids how to fold carefully, because that seems to be the bigger issue.

We got this freebie cat tent when the kittens came over a year ago. Nova would sleep on it. Luna would kamikaze all over it, but this is the first time anyone (Kitten) has slept in it.

We planted the Christmas tree…Calli for size.

Of course, that makes me sad, because in a year, when I check the size again, odds are Calli won’t be around. But she’s cute. I don’t know why I say “we” planted the tree. I whacked the bottom with the shovel to break up the roots and helped shove dirt into the hole, but the boychild did the rest, including digging a hole in rock. Or really hard dirt. Maybe really hard dirt is just rock.

OK, I’m feeling OK. It’s 45 minutes since the insulin. I’m going to test my blood and crawl into bed, hopefully for better sleep than last night. Wish me luck. Then do some exercise this weekend, hang out with some quilt artists, do some schoolwork, quilt a little, see my dad through a window, and hope the body and brain feel better at the end of it.

I Don’t Need a Huge Piece of It

Wow. So May is a long month, but it has whipped by, leaving me in the dust. I close the gradebook for the last time this school year next Friday. Holy crap. That means I have to finish grading stuff. And a bunch of other things need to happen. Like magically. I had hoped to get a lot of grading done yesterday while the kids worked on vocab, but there was a lot of behavior stuff going on. So I didn’t get much done, unfortunately. I finished one class of the big assignment by staying a little bit after work, before going to my friend’s retirement party. And then, I brought one class home with me. I only have two left. But they have to be done by Monday. And this weekend is a mess. So there’s that. OK. Well. I’m going to have to figure it out. I’m not quite at the point where I can see a light at the end of the grading tunnel. Ah the sweet respite of summer, where no lesson planning or grading has to happen every damn night.

I was supposed to go to the gym last night, but by the time I got home from the party, I was exhausted. Not too exhausted, though…because I pinbasted the quilt.

The backing is this fabric I’ve had for years and never used…

It’s way too busy to be a background, but it was just too amazing not to buy. Plus it was on sale. But I’m trying to use stuff up. If I have a small piece of it in my stash, I can use it for images…I don’t need a huge piece of it.

I think that’s my life lesson for the day. True for cake and wealth and responsibility. Responsibility especially right now. I’m wondering if either of the people I live with will realize the fridge is dirty and even just wipe off the shelf. Or is that just me. Sure, it’s my fridge. It’s my house. But we all live here. And that doesn’t even touch on school stuff. Sigh. There’s been a lot of this lately…

This is from the Noom app. Some of the articles are good. And it’s not that I didn’t know this. Trust me. I know this. I suck at it, but I know it. As my friend Julie tells me, Be Brave. And I also think because I am older and (maybe) wiser that I just don’t give a fuck about some things any more. I don’t have a lot of tolerance for people who are teachers and don’t get kids. Or people on teams who don’t pull their weight or work cooperatively with others. I’m a lone wolf at a lot of things, but I do know the power of teaming when working this job on so many fronts, and it’s been a joy to have some really good team members in the last few years. I think I pull my weight. I could probably be nicer about it. Maybe.

On that note, my quilter friend of (holy crap) 29 years is moving to Portland in a few weeks for good. We’re going to attempt online meetings, but it’s not the same. So I reached out to SAQA to see what’s going on with meetings locally. I need to branch out a bit. I’m hoping there’s meetings that are not just during the work day. In a city/region this full of people, there have to be like-minded artists who just want to hang out once a month and stitch. Hopefully. This as I listen to the girlchild, who is in the Boston area jobhunting and currently subletting in a house where no one is living at the moment, plus all her friends have disappeared for the summer (or forever) and she has nothing to do but clean and run errands…which will eventually get expensive. She’s like me…needs to have shit to do…and NOT like me…in that she is an extrovert and gets energy from her interactions with people. So hopefully all that will get worked out soon.

Me? I need to go teach pregnancy today, do a lot of other things, go to a friend’s opening, and then figure out whether I can start quilting tonight. This thing is going to quilt quickly, but I actually need time to DO it for that to happen. And the next week is a mess. I want it done by next weekend, if I can pull it off. We’ll see. At least it’s Friday again. I’m totally in survival mode.

You Understand They’ve Got a Plan for Us*

I’m realizing this week that I’m not coming home and doing schoolwork. I’m not grading assignments. I’m not being a responsible teacher person. I’m behind and need to get caught up, but I’m not doing it. I will. But this project is driving me. I need it done and out of my head and at the photographer’s so I don’t have to think about it, see it, feel it any more. Plus I’m going a little bonkers because my co-conspirator in furry beast maintenance is not here this week and said furry beasts are being more than a bit demanding.

So yesterday I went to the gym. That was good. I read. I exercised. I zoned out in exercise brain. It’s a good thing.

And then I came home, peed the dogs (which currently requires a couple of leashes and a flashlight due to coyote incursions and massive spider webs), then started part of dinner, showered, came out and checked the timer on the food (16 minutes) and cleaned the entryway floor for later artistic shenanigans. It might be the only way that floor gets cleaned regularly, honestly, because it’s never high on my list. Finally food was ready and I ate and read some more. I do love to read.

Then I had no choice but to get in here and get this thing sandwiched. Huge as it is, this was gonna be a pain.

Iron backing. Trim selvages. Cut in half. Sew halves together. Iron some more. Trim excess off.

Lay it upside down on the now-clean entryway floor (barely fits). Tape it down as flat as possible (replacement floor in here should be tile…but bigger tiles and less obvious grout).

Try to figure out how much batting to cut by laying the top out on the chunk of batting I found over the weekend. Cut batting a bit larger than the top.

See seriously sleeping dog.

Lay batting out. Iron quilt top and lay it out on top. Try to get it straight. Wish I cut the backing a bit larger to make that easier. Duh.

Stare at it for a bit. Realize it’s after 11 PM and you will need to finish pinning before you can go to bed. Accidentally spill all the pins onto the quilt. Not what you meant to do.

Start pinbasting. Look at this view. Disturbing.

That dog. Seriously.

Then this one…he’s never seen me do this before. All the cats have an interesting relationship with my quilts. This one wouldn’t listen when I told him to get off.

The cats never do listen.

This one has learned to stand at the edge and woof at me. Wait. That’s not a cat. And you saw the other dog. Totally ignores me.

Pinbasted by midnight. Ready for quilting. Getting close to the end. Closer anyway. I don’t kid myself…quilting and binding this sucker is going to take a while. No shortcuts on that part.

I head for bed. Kitten. You need to move.

I’m tired this morning. And none of the grading got done. Oh well. I worked for 3 hours last night on that quilt. Sometimes that amazes me. I worked all day in the classroom, went to a meeting after school, the gym for almost 2 hours, and then 3 hours of artmaking. I really wanted to sit and watch some light TV and draw with a glass of wine last night after all that kneeling and crawling around on the floor, but then I looked at the clock and it was almost midnight…so I went to bed anyway. Probably the smarter thing to do, but I still want that other time. Maybe tonight? Or not. That really is the part of the balance I haven’t been able to slot in. Teachers. Silly teachers. Always talking about balance and never achieving it. Sigh.

*Big Data, Dangerous