Furiously…

I worked for 12 hours yesterday. I really wish I could say that I worked on ART for 12 hours yesterday, but I would have had to blow off my real job completely to do that. But wow, think of that. Getting up in the morning, having a cup of tea, then settling in for 3 or 4 hours of work, maybe go for a walk, have some lunch, another 4 or 5 hours…you can see how this day might go. Reality is that even when I have spring or summer break, I’m not that efficient most days. Some days I’ll pull 10 hours of artmaking, but never like I do with teaching. And it was stuff I needed to do. Yes, some was grading, but I have a project coming up for my students, and even though it’s probably the last year I’ll teach it because the standards are changing, I still felt a need to completely rewrite it. And I don’t know if that will help at all. It will probably still drive me crazy. It’s the nature of the beast.

But grades are due Tuesday, so there’s some of that stuff that just has to be done. I actually think I’m a little ahead of the game though. I have two more assignments that really NEED to be graded, and then a handful of makeup work, and then I’m done. Well. I still need to input all that crap. And take my show down at Grossmont. And deliver a quilt to another show. And pack up one for yet another show. So it’s not looking REALLY good over the next few days, but it’s certainly not as impossible as it seemed last week. At least I’m pretty damn efficient. Most days.

So I didn’t start tracing until late. In fact, I had a really hard time getting up off the couch. I didn’t even grade on the couch. I was just tired. I ran a lab in class yesterday with a ton of water, and the kids did really well with not spilling TOO badly. I had 20 towels in there and they were all significantly damp by the end of the day, but that’s normal. Last year was a lot worse. I should thank them for that…for not being as bad as last year.

But in an hour, I did manage to trace about 350 pieces, so I’m still going faster than I normally would. Because those pieces are tiny. Seriously tiny. Aargh.

This part is never very exciting to photograph. But that’s what 350 tiny little pieces look like on Wonder Under. I’m about halfway up the second torso, having finished the first one, which was only her butt and up. I don’t think the girlchild is thrilled that she’s naked in another quilt of mine. The second one is a full torso, so it will take a little longer. I’m almost at the halfway mark. So if I figure another half hour to halfway, that’s about 3 hours…so 6 hours total? That’s not bad. I might be able to finish by the end of the weekend…because this weekend is kind of a mess. I might try to start cutting them out on Friday at my meeting, although they’re pretty tiny and I don’t usually like to trim Wonder Under away from the house. It’s too hard not to lose pieces.

I’ll have to think about it. Speaking of thinking about it, I’m deep in my head at the moment. Reflective I guess. Trying to figure out who I am and who I want to be, where I want to be. How.

I stare at this every day…

The computer screen and then that crazy raccoon behind it from The Bloggess. Furiously Happy is Jenny Lawson’s new book (Lawson being The Bloggess) and no, I haven’t read it yet, because I don’t own it yet and maybe I should see if my library has it, because they bloody well should. They DO have it…and holy crap, it has 75 holds on it. OK. I can handle that. I requested it. I might be reading it over the summer. But I can read her blog while I wait. The real point is that phrase “furiously happy” because I really do think I don’t do happy the normal way, that I’m just not one of those happy perky people who can just BE happy with things, but I also think that’s what makes me good at the art and teaching and crap, because I’m never satisfied with what’s done or what’s out there. I need it to be better, to make more, to try this, to draw that, and if I were just normally happy, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do. So I’m gonna get FURIOUSLY happy about some things, like mailing two quilts out in a week for shows that are a long way away and getting an article published and almost getting on top of my grading. And then Ima gonna (like my students say) get some of that furiousness (way better than furiousity) and channel it into making stuff. And maybe even cleaning the house and doing yardwork, but honestly, that’s more furiously irritable than furiously happy.

So if you live near me and you see me out in the driveway yelling like a banshee, it’s OK. I’m being furiously happy. About the dead leaves piling up. It happens.

Art Is My Superpower

I have this pool vacuum that sometimes tries to climb out of the pool. I’m listening to it now, realizing it sounds like a wild animal devouring burgers in the backyard (sorry, neighbors…I don’t know how to make it stop doing that). It doesn’t seem to bother the ducks…they avoid it, but they don’t stay away because of that. Nor do they stay away because of the Golden Retriever who swims in the pool and barks at them. Halfheartedly. Like, “get outta my pool bitches…eh…stay awhile. I don’t really care.”

I’m barely awake, despite the shower and a reasonable (for me) amount of sleep. My sleep app tells me 4 AM was troubled sleep. I don’t doubt it. I already know I have to be up early on Saturday, my normal morning of rest. Oh well. Sleep is wasted artmaking time. Might as well rejoice in what little I get.

The plus is that the tracing is going well…

I traced over 150 pieces last night in less than an hour…because they’re small pieces, so they don’t take as long to draw. Duh. That’s a plus. So there’s only 600 pieces to go. Too bad grading is competing for my time. I did grade papers last night. I might sort of get caught up (maybe). Don’t hold your breath. I don’t think teachers are ever really caught up. Even in the summer, we are prepping for the next year, how are we gonna change things or fix things, or in the summers that follow for the next THREE years, how do we transition to new science standards with no curriculum. No problem! say the districts. There’s the INTERNET. It’s like magic. Curriculum just appears. Well, it appears after hours of searching and tweaking and messing and collaborating. It’s a giant time suck. I know because we started doing that kind of stuff this year.

So why do I do this job? Well, it is creative and requires most of my brain. I don’t like to be bored at work. It’s also cool when kids get stuff, like holy moley, so that’s what a heart looks like. And they can see the muscle. And middle-school kids can be funny and loving and all that. But it is an incredibly stressful and demanding job, like no other job I’ve had, and sometimes I just need to talk about it. That’s always been an issue with non-teachers. There’s a difference between complaining and venting. I vent and it’s out. I don’t have to think about it any more. Frustration released. Moving on to the next daily challenge.

Maybe that’s why I’m still in counseling. Because I just need someone who listens and lets me get it out without taking it on themselves. You can’t fix my students. You can’t fix my school (and next year, based on the plan we’ve heard about, is gonna be hell on wheels with no teams). You can’t fix what’s wrong with public schools. Seriously. It’s unfixable as long as parents don’t care and politicians are involved. Or parents care too much and are ignorant of how a school or classroom actually run, and politicians are involved. I can handle my job…most days…I just need someone to say uh huh, that sucks, have a hug. Or a glass of wine. Or both.

My joy in life doesn’t come from my job. It comes from my art. And I wish I could make more of it.

Today I’m running a lab that requires 17 towels. That should be interesting. Labs are exhausting, especially with water or chemicals or dissectable things, but the kids get a lot out of this one, so I do it. I’m still trying to prep for next week’s project, so I’m a little behind. Hoping to get caught up by the end of the weekend. Might not be socializing much between grading and that. Ugh.

All this is why I make so much art, people. The job sucks my brain out and spits it on the ground. The rest of life is somewhat stressful and often lonely. Art makes it all OK. It’s my superpower. Certainly doing taxes and financial aid apps and going to the store and cleaning out the litter tray and trying to analyze the tire pressure light in my car all just make me crazy. I need something to tip the balance in the other direction.

I was interviewed for San Diego CityBeat. You can see the article here. I think he did a good job of capturing me and my art. And he didn’t mention my grandmother’s quilts, so that’s a win.

Quiet Meditative Tiny Little Fucking Pieces

Some nights I think I’m going to get all this artmaking done, no constraints, and then that just falls apart. Sometimes it’s for a good reason, like your kid face-timing you from college or taking the dog for a walk, or both…like last night. Sometimes it’s your brain…it’s tired and can’t deal with even getting off the couch. It’s easier to stare at distractions on the TV or the phone. It’s too hard to stand up. You know you have to clean up first before you can start. Most people have already gone to bed. What is wrong with you? Don’t you know lack of sleep is unhealthy?

I guess that’s the part I’m pretty good at: getting up and starting, no matter what. I have grades due in a week, so I can’t really take a break and blow off grading, because I need to get caught up, best I can. So I’ve spent the last two weeks basically making myself try to grade a thing a night, although sometimes “a thing” is one class’ worth because it’s a time-consuming assignment, or more common, their answers are so off the mark that if I grade more than one period, I become so incredibly frustration and convinced I’m the worst teacher in the world, until I come to one where the kid did it right, and it’s not the smartest kid in the class, and I say to myself, “Well if JOEY got it (there is no Joey, just to be clear), then everyone could have understood me.”

Yeah. Those are not the best nights. Except it means it will only get better. If I do something else afterwards.

Last night’s grading session wasn’t hard, but there were head-banging-on-the-desk moments where I thought the cats might call 911, because I was a little frustrated. Talk about ignoring simple instructions. Anyway. It’s done. I’m getting down to a reasonable number of assignments left to grade, if I don’t think too hard about the last unit that’s piled up at school.

So after a 3-mile dog walk/hike hybrid, cooking dinner from scratch, face-timing the girlchild, and grading homework about hiccups, I almost just went to bed. It was late enough. I was tired enough. But it really feels like shit to go to bed, wake up the next morning, and realize I did no art stuff at all the day before. Especially when I’m working to a deadline.

So I spent about half an hour doing art stuff…because even a half hour a day counts. Some days that’s all I can do, but it’s better than nothing. And it got me started on the next task for this project, so that’s a good thing. I cleaned off the cover on the light table and then moved that off the top and got started with the tracing.

I am a whopping 50 pieces in. Of 819. Yeah. It’s gonna take me a while. But I got my butt off the couch and did it, so yeah, I feel better this morning than if I hadn’t. I actually find the tracing process very meditative. I look forward to it. Some of the artmaking tasks are more heinous, like trimming Wonder Under, but this part is nice. It’s just following the line and deciding what overlaps and drawing that in. Finding the next piece. Doing the same thing over and over again. I know it sounds like it would be boring, but it’s not.

So that’s what’s in my future for probably the next 8 hours of artmaking…quiet, meditative, tiny little fucking pieces. Yup.

With Age Comes…Late-Night Drawing…

So the plus is I worked on grading stuff and prepping lessons for about 6 hours yesterday, so I could go out to the living room and finish that tiny little drawing that is now going to kick my ass for the next (shit, count them) four and a half weeks. Damn. I thought I had 5 weeks. OK. I can do this. I think I did the last one in that amount of time, oh wait, no I didn’t. I started tracing Wonder Under on January 10 and finished February 21. OK. I see. Well this one is much smaller so hopefully everything will take less time. Or more. Plus Spring Break is in there. That should count for something.

I got interviewed yesterday for a local newspaper and he asked what I was looking forward to, a project or piece, and I said I was looking forward to working on a piece just for me, one that I wanted to work on that wasn’t for a particular show or theme. And that’s true. But if I want my work in shows, sometimes I have to work like this.

So Saturday, after grading, I had a couple of hours to work on the drawing. I did go in with pencil and do the main parts of the two figures. And that bird at the top? I ended up erasing it and moving it before I inked. Usually I just go for ink, but this one is small enough and fussy enough that I didn’t want to mess around with…well…messing it up.

I love the late afternoon blue tint there.

Saturday, I started inking the top figure, which is male, despite the long hair. These are my kids. Then I kept going on Sunday night. I moved the bird down and closer.

Then I turned the drawing upside down and did the other female, the girlchild. I’m still debating the empty space in front of her face.

That’s one of my problems…that the empty spaces kind of bug me. You might have noticed. She has a knife because she’s a damn good cook, not because she’s a serial killer.

Someone emailed me about one of my pieces that was in Florida this last weekend and her interpretation really threw me…not in a bad way, but she’d taken the title to mean something different than what I had, and it threw a new interpretation on the quilt…but it wasn’t an incorrect one. In fact, I quite liked it. So this is why I explain the knife. Although there’s also the meta-interpretation of daughter and knife with mom, because that relationship is often a dicey one, as mothers and daughters throughout the ages can attest. You love them but there is a struggle there.

Here’s the whole thing…

I think it’s done. I may change my mind. I like to let them sit for at least a day before I start the next step, although with only 32 days, I don’t have time to sit for any days. Besides the first bit of drawing, the main part of the center female, the rest took me about 4 1/2 hours to draw. It’s always longer than I think it is. I think I can bang out a drawing in an hour, and sure, I can, but mostly it takes longer than that.

What I should have done at that point is go to bed, but if you’ve been reading here for more than a week, you know that’s one of my weak points…knowing when to stop.

So I numbered it.

I needed to know how bad it was…and it was. Bad. Over 800 pieces. Seriously. OK. I can do this. Yes I can. They’re small. They won’t take long.

And yeah, I went to bed too late. With age comes wisdom? Well, yes, in that I know that it’s numbered now and I can get on with tracing it tonight with very little brain power. Awesome. But maybe not so much feeling wise this morning with my brain in mush state as I go to work. Whatever. I always wanted to be one of those crazy old ladies.

The Goddess of Something…

So I have two quilts in Daytona Beach right now…with the AQS circuit. So enjoy Fully Medicated…

And I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…

I keep forgetting about the pieces traveling with all the quilt shows. I have a real shortage of work in house at the moment. I know, it’s an elegant problem to have, unless you have shows to enter and nothing with which to enter. I have two coming up where I think I just can’t enter. That kind of sucks. Oh well. I made decisions about what to enter where, and this is what happens. It’s kind of a bloody miracle I’ve gotten the last two pieces done in time for the shows I figured they were made for. So there. Keep making work. I love the chaos of the Lifejacket piece. Should remember that for the next big one. Maybe blow off the themes that are coming up and just MAKE something.

You’ve got a few more days to see the exhibit at Grossmont…we’re pulling it down next Saturday. Hoping to get a little more press out of it.

And I got photos back from the photographer of the new piece…

Her name is still in my brain, working its way out, so just know it’s the Goddess of something, I’m not sure exactly what yet. Possibly everything. Just like me…I’m the Goddess of something…of cleaning up cat puke. Of coupons. Of paperwork. Of Google Classroom. Of the bougainvillea. Of multi-tasking. Of blueberry oat bars. That seems like enough.

And I worked a bit on the drawing…

Hard to see anything, because I’m still in pencil, because I don’t wanna fuck it up. I think the male figure is almost ready for ink. Then I’ll need to turn it upside down to do the other female…and figure out what’s going on with the hair. And the empty spots. Probably should figure out the main figure’s hair before I draw his wings. You know, like you do.

I’m really annoyed by empty spots. I like to fill everything in. I blame Richard Scarry. And Dr. Suess. OK, maybe that’s just how my brain works.

I saw this last night. There were two, but there was a guy in the way of the second one. Please sir, move so I can photograph the scary faces.

And Midnight is in her standard place.

I’m buried in grading. I have a ton of yardwork and housework. I still need to finish taxes and start financial aid. I can’t deal with any of it right this second. I’m too tired. Sad! That said, I got up at a reasonable hour, finished grading tests and another assignment, then did yardwork, drew, ate, and I think I showered in there. I think I’m going to spend an hour trying to draw some more and then give up for the day. Because. Because I have to hang out with humans for some period of time or I go a bit bonkers. More than I already am. There’s a fine line between the bonkers that keeps me going and making stuff and the bonkers that throws me down the hole. I’m staying above ground right now. Need to keep doing that.

Slow Percolation

First of all, I’m not getting much sleep lately. I’ve had something (probably animal) waking me up every night around 2 AM and sometimes I’m so hyped afterwards that falling back to sleep is just troubled. Last night it was the mockingbird…the one that visits every year. Last year I was lucky and he (she?) hung out at the neighbors’, just far enough away that I could hear him while I was falling asleep, but not like when they live in your yard. Last night, he was in my yard. Move on, you bastard!

Then I woke up with a start at about 4 AM…someone kept saying “low battery.” What the fuck? Oh yeah, the smoke alarm. Pillow over head again until it started that loud horrendous screeching that I will appreciate only if there ever is a fire or…well, my house is so leaky airwise that there will never be a carbon monoxide leak big enough for me to have an issue. So at 4 AM, I was switching out batteries. The dog was mightily confused by the timing of all of it. And falling back to sleep was not easy.

I actually took a nap yesterday evening. Just 20 minutes. Power mom nap. Yeah baby.

My counselor is trying to graduate me…I get it. I’m not clinically depressed any more. That’s a good thing. But I still want balance in my life and we went through and listed everything and work has to give. It’s the only healthy thing. Can’t sleep less or exercise less or art less. Work is the time suck. Like I didn’t know that.

Moving on to the art stuff. I did grade last night, so I didn’t start artmaking stuff until almost 11. I started with the easy stuff, the cutting and taping. It’s rhythmic, meditative. Cut. Measure. Tape. Cut again. Measure. Draw a line. Cut.

So the finished size on this needs to be 16×24″…I measured the paper at 15×23″ to give me some space for a binding, and then I’m going to try to stay about a 1/2 inch inside. Maybe. Maybe not.

Damn thing is tiny. Anyway. I then stared at it for a while, trying to have a vision. It is kinda like that. I stare at the paper until what needs to fill in the space appears in my head. There’s some little elf in there, or a gnome or something, that’s drawing on a white board while someone else erases, trying to find something I like, because sometimes I’ll get picture after picture and almost shake my head like an Etch a Sketch (you would laugh to see all the words I just typed into Google because I couldn’t remember the name of those things). And then one will stick and I’ll draw it. It’s a slow percolation process. Nothing fast and furious.

I gave up on the staring and started to tape the two larger drawings together. This is Bathtub 6, I think.

It’s the creepy one. Some part of me wants to draw more around it, but the minimalist in me (which rarely surfaces) says it should stay the way it is.

Then I taped this one…tentatively named Heart-Shaped Box. It needs a lot more drawing…more room on the bottom. I think. Anyway, it’s there for when I want to work on it. You can see how much bigger it is because the first drawing is up in the top right.

I have another huge one that will probably be a triptych just so it’s not overwhelming to quilt…maybe that’s something to draw during Spring Break, since I will have hours and hours of alone time. Huh. Not looking forward to that…except I am. Difficult. This will be the first school vacation where I’m not visiting someone else or having the kids come home. I need to do yardwork like every day. Ugh.

So I finally picked up a pencil! (Sion is happy now…) Because I didn’t want to fuck it up.

Good thing really because I had to redraw the lower figure about 5 times. Still not sure what to do with the heads. Gotta let the gnomes do their white board thang. Will have to get back to you on the heads. Even hers needs something. Hair? Who knows. Why keep it so simple? Oh yeah, because the pieces are gonna be freakin’ tiny. I’m not enlarging this one. Need to remember that so I don’t go crazy later.

Cut and Tape

Tired morning. Sleep is messy. Whatever woke me up at 2 AM didn’t bother the dog. The cat was as alert as I was, but she gets to sleep all day, curled up in my laundry. (Doesn’t that sound nice? I should have been a cat.) Me? I’m a little on the edge of irritable and crazy. Nothing new there.

I was so efficient yesterday afternoon. Walked the dog…three miles uphill. OK. The whole three miles is not uphill. But the hill was easier than it was on Saturday. This is good. Then I came home and ran errands and talked to girlchild, who was trying to figure out insurance crap.

After dinner, I finished grading one WHOLE assignment (OK, I had 2 out of 5 periods already done, but whatever) and then I worked on some fabric hobby stuff, something I’m not allowed to show you, but Sue Spargo wool embroidery stuff, which really just gives my head a place to rest sometimes when it’s all over the map, wanting to be creative and stitchy, but not able to focus on that for whatever reason. So I traced freezer paper for two blocks and cut out the freezer paper, and now I can move on to the next step. It was enough to calm the brain down and let it focus. Unfortunately it was then also really late.

Sigh. Yeah. I know why I’m always tired. I don’t sleep enough or well. Really, I never have. Even as a kid. Not sure about as a baby. But never a deep sleeper.

So I did get up off the couch and try to deal with the stuff I’d copied. At least some sense of artistic achievement most nights, right? That’s what keeps Kathy happy and sane?

So I copied the one from Tuesday night. I stood there debating for a while if the part I cut off (on the left) would make a cool small art quilt all by itself.

Yeah. The composition is kinda cool. But I don’t want to make one that looks like the other one. So I recycled it. Now I need to add paper to this, measure the final size, and decide how I’m going to do the rest.

Then I had my smaller sketchbook, the one that travels with me. There were three drawings in there that I thought would make interesting smaller quilts. I enlarged them 200%. Honestly, with all the detail, I could have gone to 300%, but then I wouldn’t be in the smaller quilt range. I taped together all the pieces to get the one I was going to do next…

Sort of a reminder of Earth Mother for Ventura in some ways. No boobs! Technically no nudity. I couldn’t enter my local SAQA show this year because I had nothing small enough with no nudity from recent years. Guess that says something about me…and my local SAQA show. Oh well.

These all started in a sketchbook that’s about 9×12″, so these are about 18×24″ or so. Here’s the second one…

She looks like she’s related to the one above. One was done on the plane home from dropping the girlchild at college in Boston. The other was done either on the way to or from Seattle for Thanksgiving. I guess planes are my new sketching arena. Too bad I don’t spend much time on them?

This last one was drawn while watching Mockingjay. So there goes the plane theory!

It’s a reminder of another older one, although it doesn’t look like it at all…just a vague reminder. These spiral-shaped women often show up in my drawings.

So that’s three smaller ones plus the other one that needs to be done by the end of March (should get my butt going on that one).

I also copied two larger ones, out of the 14×17″ sketchbook. They’re both older…

One is the most recent of the bathtub series, a kind of creepy one…I can’t find it at the moment, although I know it’s filed somewhere. Oh well. And the other one is something I started drawing a long time ago but it wouldn’t fit on the paper. So I enlarged it to be able to draw the rest. No rush. Maybe it’s the next big one. Maybe not. We’ll see.

It’s a start anyway. I have some directions to go once the next have-to is finished. It would be good to have some smaller art pieces around this year I think. Don’t worry. There will be a big one. I just haven’t decided which one yet. Or whether I’ll draw a new one.

So tired still. Work calls. It’s kind of a whiny bitch, but I can’t ignore it.

What Next?

With very little stitching left on the new quilt, which is being photographed Monday (that’s one in January, one in February people…don’t expect that level of crazy to continue), I’m already looking forward to the next quilt. Except it’s supposed to relate to a larger piece of mine. And I’m sure some of the artists, maybe the painters, can do two pieces in a month, but I can’t, certainly not while teaching at the same time. Then the show is about feminism, or at least the things listed on the prospectus, which leaves it pretty wide open: sexism, body image, class, race, family, gender politics, biology, history, etc. But I have a ton of my newer quilts out traveling or already promised to shows. Or they’ve been entered in shows and I won’t hear until too late if they got in or not. So I can’t base a new small quilt on a piece that might not be here for the exhibit.

So I started making a list of what was available. Like Tsunami…

I do love this quilt, but it’s more of an Earth Mother quilt. I have lots of those. And I don’t know if that’s got anything to do with feminism, except that we have a history of earth as mother, which probably leads into the female as caretaker…not just of the world, but of children and husbands and houses and food. But I think I’m pushing it with that. And I’m not getting a hit for a smaller quilt that goes with that idea.

Then there’s Spread Out on the Pavement…

Made it into Quilt National. Funny I really don’t like this quilt. Seriously. I originally drew the body, head and part of the car back in 2002, as my marriage was dissolving. Then I pulled it out 10 years later, finally able to process it, and added the rest of the truck (now it was a truck) and the eyeball tree. It has all the things that are supposed to make you feel better: meds, chicken soup. It’s not a happy quilt. Which isn’t the problem. It’s about a failed relationship. I have lots of quilts about that shit and I don’t really want to dwell on it right now. And I guess it’s gender politics, but it’s not speaking to me.

Then there’s this one…One of My Kind…

I love this quilt. This is four generations of women in my family (plus the boychild, who loves that his naked ass is up there). This is all the connections and history of being a single mom, my mom holding all the things she taught me, my grandmother, long dead, her bones still in me, still part of me. Not all good, of course…she had some crazy ideas about race and my daughter’s name that kind of drove me nuts, but isn’t that how you decide who and how to be? Based on not only the good stuff you saw growing up in your family, but also the bad stuff. Stuff to avoid. My daughter mentioned something about how I had reacted to something my parents had pushed when I was younger, how they dealt with my college choices versus how I dealt with my own children’s choices. We learn from the shit we don’t like as much as from the shit we do like.

It’s a powerful quilt…that’s never gotten into any show but the one it’s in now, the one I put it in. Totally feminist. No problem. Easily could do a smaller quilt related to this. But it’s HUGE. And if there are going to be lots of other people in this show, I don’t know if I can get away with such a large piece. I’m debating emailing the curators about it. Because there are other choices. The other issue is that a lot of the people in this group have already seen the piece in the Grossmont show. In fact, about three of the pieces I thought about for this exhibit are hanging in Grossmont right now, so maybe they should just be out of play.

This is Here…it’s actually the first one I thought of…

But I have shitty pictures of it. Wonder if I should rephotograph. This one is old. It’s about being female, but mostly about breast cancer. A friend was dealing with treatments and this came out of me. I already have an idea for a smaller version of this, and it does apply to body image and biology, so it’s an easy fit. It’s also a smaller quilt. So…we’ll see.

I also considered this one, So Deep, So Wide…

But the feminist link is sketchy. And there are other reasons I don’t want to use it.

And this one, Held Hostage…which needs new photography.

And is all about the biology but doesn’t even have a uterus.

And High Tide…about being a single mom…

But not really what I want.

So I’m down to two possibilities. Emailing the curators now. That might just make the decision for me.

Then I can draw. But I need to do a bunch of schoolwork first. Heinously behind in grading. It’s a gorgeous day. Gonna sit inside and stare at a computer screen. Not by choice. It just has to be done. But at least I’ve worked my brain around this new quilt a little bit.

Bound…

So two days in a row this week that I’ve worked on art for more than 5 hours…and neither of them was a weekend or holiday. Now how much work have I gotten done? Yeah. Don’t ask that. Is the house clean? Don’t ask that either. Last night, I managed to kamikaze out of school, pick up the dog, who went right in the pool for her daily wade (she won’t swim), then cleaned the entryway floor enough so I could trim the quilt. On Wednesday, I had bought two possible binding fabrics because I couldn’t decide…I picked the green one…

Which is funny, because there isn’t a ton of green in the quilt, but it works. The other one works too, but it detracted more from the image, and there isn’t a lot of room between image and edge, so it was too much.

What’s funny is that I miscut one strip and I had already cut both sleeves, and I had only bought a yard, so there wasn’t enough for the last strip. So I cut it out of a sleeve and just barely had enough of the background color, which I used for the backing as well, to cut another sleeve. So not a whole lot is leftover of either fabric, which is too bad, because they are both lovely batiks. That said, I really don’t need more fabric. Well. I do. I always do. I’m always missing that one color that would transition between this or that, or the turquoises are out of fashion or the purples aren’t quite right. Seriously. I do always have this issue.

So the top fabric below was the other binding contender. The two blues are because I haven’t seen good ones in a while. The rest were from an attempt to replace a really good pale gray/white I had for the last 5 or so years, plus they were having a sale on batiks and those spoke to me.

There is a whole shitload of batik fabric in my stash. That and Kaffe Fassett. And random black and white stuff. And skulls. Anyway, so I had quilt class last night and the kamikaze binding event was so I could get the machine stuff done at home so I wouldn’t have to lug everything with me and I could just hand sew the rest at the meeting. And I was rocking that until the girlchild called, which was FINE. I love to hear from her, but not when she missed her stop and is randomly crying and standing in the freezing dark 3000 miles away, waiting for an Uber with a strange man driving, so I’m gonna just keep talking until she gets back to the dorm.

Which I did. It slowed me down a bit, but that was fine. It was nice to hear her voice, but then I get sad because they’re gone. Ugh.

I made it to class about 10 minutes late, which didn’t really matter because I’m always late anyway. Really. And then I did handsewing for quite a while. Came home. Made 48 mini cornbread muffins (like you do) for today’s chili cookoff thing at school WHILE making dinner and trying to edit something and send out a bid on something else and manage a third thing. Oh yeah. Shipping a quilt for a show. Not a bad thing. Sort of half-assed lesson-planned, because I do need to have stuff done for next week and the rest of the unit (ha!). Then kept stitching.

Naw. She’s not done. I have one more sleeve to stitch down. That was at 12:30. Ugh. And then I didn’t fall asleep until after 1 and some animal…OK, definitely a skunk based on the odor this morning…was barreling around outside my window at 2:19. Scared the crap out of me. The dog rolled over and sighed, but Kitten, my attack cat, leapt out of bed to her observation post at the door, where she’s pushed the slats of the blinds to the right enough that she can see out. Good to know someone’s ready to take care of intruders, because the Golden Retriever didn’t even whine or bark. Eventually my adrenaline levels returned to normal and Kitten came back to bed, my erstwhile companion in sleep, and I got a few more hours in, but I’m feeling it this morning.

Almost done with this one though, and a week early. I haven’t totaled up the hours yet. And I started looking at stuff for the next one. It’s supposed to be a smaller quilt of a particular size that relates to a larger one that has something to do with women or feminism or gender or whatever. And yeah, a lot of my recent work does that, but sometimes it’s harder for me to see that in the earlier work. And most of the current work is out traveling or has been entered in a show, so I can’t use it for this one. But I think I picked one. And now all I have to do is draw the smaller one…without 700 tiny pieces. Ha! No problem. There’s already a picture in my head. I just need time to put it on paper. And sleep. I’m gonna need some sleep.

Lemonade Afternoon

You know that quote, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?” Well yesterday I had CPR/First Aid training. And it was boring. It could have been worse, but I’m easily amused by bad video. Like when the worker goes “Hi, little buddy” to the small furry animal you can’t see and gets bit. I laugh. Because my lord. Seriously. The trainer promises there will be a better set of videos in two years when we have to take this again.

The plus was that we were so quiet and asked so few questions that we got out way early. And I came home and quilted. When life gives you a free afternoon because you did CPR training so you could take your students on a field trip next month, use it to make art. I should have graded all afternoon, and to my credit, I did try to grade at the gym, but first the wifi wasn’t working and then the damn app wasn’t functioning correctly. So I gave up. And then came home and kept quilting. Because I have a deadline and my photographer is flexible, but hell, I have to get started on the next quilt too.

And grading. Sucks. Yeah. I did monitor my students on their computers all day. That was fun. We can see what tabs they have open and send them messages, like “Get off Facebook and get to work.” A couple kids just didn’t get it. I kept shutting them down and finally shut down every tab they had open as soon as they opened it. It didn’t take more than about 5 minutes of monitoring per class before they were all in the folder they were supposed to be in. Ha! Bastards. Big Teacher is watching you. My co-teacher in crime (also in CPR) was doing the same thing, so I think by the end of the day, the kids all knew they had two teachers watching everything they were doing. Sometimes being a teacher means being an evil villain character.

So I quilted for 5 hours yesterday. I know. Wow. Cool.

There’s lots of eyeballs in this quilt. Twelve to be exact. Well. There’s two on the cat, but they’re closed. And the little figures, there’s four there too. So 18 eyes. No snake on this quilt though. My imagery is shifting maybe? No Christmas lights, no bird…no bird is weird. Most of my quilts have a bird.

Anyway, I think it’s turning out well…

And at some point in the afternoon yesterday, I went and got two possible binding fabrics for it. Not sure which one is best. I was in a hurry. They’re in the dryer and when I get home from school tonight, I’m going to try to get the binding on, because I have quilt class tonight and I can do the hand-sewing there. I don’t want to lug the machine along and do the whole thing there though, so I have to quick! Come home, iron it, trim it, and bind it! No problem.

The animals were confused by my presence all afternoon…

I have five blurry-faced photos of the cat. She wouldn’t stay put. Same with the dog. Ten hours almost total quilting. Half of what I had estimated…although I knew my estimate was too high.

I feel much better about things today. I got taxes and FAFSA started, I got the quilting done, I got a quilt packed up and ready to ship. I still have a ton of stuff to get done, but it’s less looming and more manageable-looking. I will be so glad when the kids are done with college and I don’t have to deal with all the financial aid hoops any more. They are really stressful. Especially in a divorce situation. I’m really worried about how I’m going to pay for any of it next year. I don’t have any more cushions, no more college accounts to cover my portion of the fees. It’s scary.

But I’m going to try not to think about that right now. Because I’m finishing a quilt, and that’s a cool thing (although now she needs a name…aack!). And I can start thinking about the next one, which will be smallish. In fact, a difficult size for me…not super small, like 8-12″ squares really challenge me, but at least they don’t take long, but this is a size I never do…16×24 I think. Totally off for me. Remember not to do a lot of tiny pieces! Yeah. Like I listen to myself. Oh well…at least it will be a challenge.