The Power

Hokay. Wednesday. I’m a little tired, I must say. Not sure why. Rejiggering my lesson plan for today, I think. Some catchup, some kids finishing stuff up, instead of starting the next thing. I may do a piece of the next thing, but I have two classes that need to finish yesterday’s thing still. It’s OK. It’s fast. But I hate having classes on different things. It’s just easier when they’re all in the same range of stuff. It’s Back-to-School Night tonight…set for 5 PM, which makes more sense for parents, but it means I have 90 minutes after school where I’m just there. I have grading to do and will do it, so I don’t have to bring it home (the first batch of progress reports are due next week, which seems really early). I have a lot of work to get through. I really just want to finish my book though. And finish another one by Monday for book club. I had to finally buy that one, because it was still 5 weeks out at the library.

Artmaking is going slowly. I am not giving myself enough time because of grading, unfortunately. It sucks. I hate it. I guess I lose Sunday afternoons? I don’t know any other way to do this. I feel like I lose half the Saturdays too. UGH. So I traced the two little pieces onto Wonder Under, which took almost no time at all…

And last night, I cut them out…

Superfast. Hopefully I’ll have the energy tonight to iron them to fabric. I’m not holding out much hope, but some.

Monday, I worked on glazing the mug still…

Anybody who’s thinking, oh, Nida will make a bunch of these and sell them…HA! My god, they take so long. Which is fine. I’ve always been more about the process than having a product to sell…obviously.

This already has 10 hours into it.

Consider time, materials, firing fees…

Completely unaffordable. Sorry y’all. This is not going to be a second (third? fourth?) income generator for me. And I’m OK with that.

Enjoy the video in the round.

That long thin quilt is going to this show…

In Miami, Florida. As soon as it’s back from the photographer. It still needs a name, but I think I had one somewhere. I just need to figure out where.

OK. School. Ugh. Redo plan for the day. Get the kids working independently for at least half of class time. Grade things. Prep for next week. Try to figure out how to efficiently grade the thing the other teacher fucked up. Sigh. Spend more of my prep time not prepping. Yesterday started badly with a last-minute switch of two resource kids who need support into a class with no support, literally 2 minutes before they were supposed to show up to my class. They needed seats, they needed to be added to my Google Classroom, they needed to be told not to delete themselves out of the other classroom until I graded things. FUCK. And no support? So that put me over 20% resource kids in that class, so after my complaints and reminders of how shit should work, I have support in there today. But the long string of emails leading up to that last one? I could have been included. So I would’ve known. But no. Not important. So my mindset during prep was to put on loud music with lots of swear words and grade all the makeup work so it was off my plate. Pro? That last bit.

Anyway. Today will be better. I command it. And I don’t have to try to cook after pilates, like last night, cooking after 7:30 PM. Tonight the Man cooks and I collapse. With my book, hopefully.

They All Change…

OK. So this week has gone from 109 degrees to a delightful 77 or so. The Man replaced the ceiling fan. School has been…interesting. It’s fine. Lots of chaos. Like give us a bunch of kids and have us get to know them and then keep adding new ones and taking away some of them as all their school attendances adjust, and then about 4 weeks in, upend the whole mess and create a new section, which unbalances every single classload in that grade level, and then, probably, y’all will do it again with the Newcomer kids who are coming into general education classes because they have graduated out of that program…but wait another two weeks before you do that, so we have chaos all over again.

Every year. So you figure your classes out and how they work and then they all change. And you’ve done rules and expectations and how things work in this class and then it all changes again. It’s frustrating. It makes the first 6 weeks difficult. But do grades! And independent study contracts! And do them now and fast. Because the kids won’t actually do the work, and they’ll lie about it, because they’re kids. Fun times.

I have not figured out the balance yet.

That said, I finished the little quilt, which will get photographed and get a name. I had it on a post-it note somewhere, and probably a cat ate it. Or a dog. We have both.

I just had a tiny binding and tiny sleeves to sew on.

Simba is entirely unhelpful. So were Nova and Bowie, who tried to climb either on the quilt or on my lap or both last night.

Until Simba won the position.

Cute little thing. About war. So many not so cute. And possibly already maybe sold? I don’t have a price yet and I can’t remember if it has to be for sale for the show I’m sending it to (I don’t think so…I think that’s the other show I shipped to recently). So photographer tomorrow, just in time.

What’s next? A giant drawing of my own choice plus finishing up quilting on two other quilts, one for me, one for a friend, and then some clay stuff that needs fabric. Coolio.

I got to stitch with friends last night…this is the second flower of five…

And no, I’m still not done with it. It takes forever. It’s cool when it’s done. And I like the process. But forever.

Bowie in low-energy mode.

Unlike at 6 AM this morning. Woke up everyone except the Man.

OK. Gotta go to school. It’s Friday the 13th. Can’t be worse than last Friday with its multitude of fights? Right? It probably can. But it’s cooler, so maybe it won’t be. Clay this afternoon. Shit ton of grading to do. Art thing tonight. The Man has a show tomorrow night at the Music Box (sort of; it’s on the street outside). I need a ride to the trolley station in the afternoon, because I’m not trying to park down there. I am tired. I want to read my book. Instead, I will go teach football with regard to Newton’s Laws. Or Newton’s Laws with regard to football? Not sure. One of those.

Dead Fan…

It’s finally cooling off…a week of ugh. And our bedroom ceiling fan died yesterday. So that was fun. I kamikazed over to Home Depot after school and bought a new one, but the Man will be installing it today, so we found one of those tower fans in the house (there’s like three of them) and put it on a dresser to keep the bedroom cool last night. The house does not release heat easily after a heat wave. My office here is still 88 degrees; it’s much cooler outside. But soon…it will cool off. At least the fan made it through the worst of the heat.

The quilting on this little piece took forever. I ripped out so much…I think because it’s small and any mistake is much more obvious? Or I was tired at the end of the day and didn’t stitch as well? I don’t know. I got all the outlining done Tuesday night and barely started the background…

I had the right color of thread. Miraculous really. And last night, I finished quilting…

And I trimmed it up, ready for binding. Which I’ll need to do quickly if I want it photographed before the deadline and shipping. It jumped up on me! Deadlines do that. I have a bunch of bits and pieces I want to do after that, while I draw the new big quilt. Which I drew in my head during the MRI on Saturday. Results came back fine, nothing that explains the visual disturbance. So good news, still no brain tumor or infarcty thing or blockage they can see. Bad news, they still don’t know what it is and they’ve run out of tests to do. So. There we are. It’s there, it’s not going anywhere for now, and I will be living with it. I realized as I was driving last night that nighttime is where it annoys me the most. I was trying to see where to turn into a road and the little swirly thing was right in the way. Frustrating. But in the larger scheme of things, better than cancer or MS or a seizure disorder or any of the other crap they kept throwing at me. A migraine that doesn’t hurt and will never go away. Except it’s not a migraine. Whatever. Moving on. Well, first make a quilt about it and everything else.

I’ve noticed people like quilts about one discrete issue, not many issues. Ah well. ‘Tis not how my brain works.

One of the shows I went to on Saturday was at the R.B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla for my friend Jeanne Dunn’s solo show Forest Bathing.

That’s her in the middle and the infamous Anna Stump on the right. I realized later that her new work kind of reminds me of Dr. Suess and the Lorax (I guess the trees?). But it’s very bright, colorful, and fun. Apparently this piece has a fourth panel…

My favorite part is the DNA tree there in the yellow. Jeanne works hard at her art and is a sweet person…glad to see her getting shows and selling stuff!

More pieces from the Techne Art Center show…

By Gail Wagner…

Interesting cyanotypes by Annalise Neil…

Rhonda Anderson…

These intriguing sculptures by Reginald Green…

They are listed as ceramics and mixed media…

Very colorful.

Ellen Dieter’s work is there too…

I’ll post some more next time. It’s a nice show…lots to look at. I strongly suggest you check it out.

Kitten is moving uber slow these days, but this piqued her interest…

She’s moved down onto the floor with the heat. It might be that she can’t get up on the table any more. She’s pretty stiff moving. Much like me after sitting too long.

This shit.

My school board may flip this way soon. It’s certainly trying to. Assholes.

Yesterday’s weird really red morning sun. Pretty sure there are fires out there causing this…

The smoke from the Line Fire in Riverside maybe? Scary fires in LA right now.

Oh, I did work on ceramics, on my mug, on Monday. I was tired and forgot half my materials, so I just carved for an hour.

Sometimes that’s all I have in me. I’m going to add more underglaze colors to it. If I remember to take the glaze box with me on Friday.

I found this interesting feather yesterday…

So polkadotty.

The last of the science lab apples…this was was truly trashed by Period 1, who didn’t realize I needed it to last all day and poked way too many holes in it (it’s used as a battery for one of the energy stations).

I went through 6 apples…and composted all of them afterwards. Poor things. Glad those stations are done; although they are cool…they are a pain in the ass for the teacher.

OK. Today. Test for the kids. Ha! Fun times. Finishing our first unit. Tons of grading to do, but glad to move onto the next one. I need to make 5 seating charts today, grade a bunch of homework, finish an academic assignment, finish vocab slides (I got next week’s done at least), and survive a union meeting. Ugh. Plus hopefully get a new fan in the bedroom (it’s still warm in there, really warm), take the trash out, and read my book. And put binding on this quilt! Because now I’m committed to delivering it to the photographer. So that’s a thing. It’s cool. I don’t know why it feels like the first two days of school is a week’s worth, but it does. How is it only Wednesday? Yeah. Well. OK. Off I go.

Melting

OK, there’s always a hot run of days in September and hopefully that was it…well, today is supposed to only be 102 degrees (yesterday maxed out at 109? I think? My car said 116…but then cooled down to 109)…so that’s today as the last day…95 tomorrow and then back down into the 80s…might need a sweater for that. This is the time every year when I think about air conditioning, but it’s so damn expensive to install and run, and I never have money in September because I don’t get paid all summer. So it doesn’t happen and next September, it’ll be hot again for a run of days that will feel awful. Definitely a cycle. At least I will be at work today, which has air conditioning. The old cat is not having a great time of it…neither is the furry dog. It also messes with my ability to get shit done. And I broke my no-work-weekend rule in a big way because I was so freakin’ far behind in grading. Sigh. I’m frustrated.

I was really hoping I’d be done quilting by now, it’s such a small piece, but no, the machine and/or me…there were issues and I had to rip stuff out, which I rarely do. I pinbasted Friday night…took a very short amount of time.

Quilted badly on Saturday night…apparently took no pictures of that…ripped last night and quilted some more.

Seriously this thing is so small…but there is some fussy quilting in there…drawing peace signs in thread. I should be able to finish it tonight…hopefully I have something that will work in the background. Then bind it.

I had an MRI on Saturday of my brain and neck…still trying to figure out the weird visual thing I see…eye doc calls it a visual disturbance, neurologist calls it a hallucination. Hmmm. Great. ANYWAY. It was 45 minutes in the thing and I drew (in my head, the one being scanned) an entire full-size drawing for the next big quilt. About my brain. And the boob. So much health crap. Mostly turning out OK or unknown. Unknown is stressful. But it’s not changing or getting bigger. Whatever the fuck it is. Alien spider in my head. So now I need to draw it in real life. I also started drawing (again, in my head) the banned book piece, which still pisses me off, because there’s censorship there of some sort. I’m just going to make what I want and let it be rejected if need be. Whatever.

I underglazed the girlchild’s boot vase on Friday…

It’s cute…it’ll be darker when fired…

The Man had a wedding to play at on Saturday…he was gone for like 14 hours.

Luckily they were at the beach, but it was still hot…

I drove past where he was twice on the way to and from art openings. One was in Oceanside at the Techne Art Center, a newer gallery space. The show was Flora and Fauna and I think it was all Oceanside Museum of Art Artist Alliance people? Which I am now a free member of for a year because of the Allied Craftsmen show there. Which is cool. I’ll post a few pictures from the show today and more the rest of the week.

Susan Osborn had four pieces? I think. She is a member of FIG with me, which was why I was originally going up there, for the FIG members.

There are probably names of pieces somewhere. There was a price list that I scanned and then my phone disappeared it unfortunately. Ah yes, this is Trees and Ladders.

There’s more! There was a lot of interesting artwork in the show. Totally worth it; just be warned that either there is no A/C or it wasn’t working. I’ll post more later this week.

Boychild left Sunday for 6 weeks of firefighter training in the Merced area. He left his lint roller.

The dog will miss him. We will too, but not as much as the dog. He ate my leftover pasta before he left…I was going to eat it Saturday night. Ah well.

Our barn owl was quite vocal and local on Saturday night…

No fear of me and the flashlight…

Right next to the house. Beautiful animal.

This one lost his balls but has not really slowed down much…

Very kitteny.

Grading yesterday.

Hmmm. These kids…wish their parents would talk to them more about their futures, but I get it. Like fuck jobs and paychecks, right?

Anyway. I need to go to school. This week is pretty chill in the classroom…well, for me anyway. Only one day of labs this week. Thank goodness. The kids are finishing up a bunch of stuff, but hopefully I’ll find time to grade things while they’re doing that. Hope. Hope. Hope. So that I don’t have to bring it home with me. Friday was three physical altercations (two I was involved with) in the last hour of school. It was a lot. I need that not to happen today.

I’m going to ceramics after school, after the staff meeting about literacy that I found really frustrating to prep for, because I’m not an English teacher and testing for fluency is not something I’ve practiced. I get how to do it, mostly, but the fussy little mark-it-this-way or that-way shit is not in my wheelhouse…and I’m not entirely sure it should be. I have two new kids today, right before an assessment. Poor things. And a kid that was kicked out to the language classes and then kicked back to us (OMG, test him before you do all that shit), so he missed all the labs last week, but did them the week before. Not sure WTF to do with him. Sigh. It’s all that fussy little shit that takes us down. And hopefully finish quilting tonight and pick a binding and do that. But right now? I still have a headache, probably from the heat, so I’m going to take meds, make more tea, and get the fuck out of here.

What Good Are Notebooks?

Yo Ho Yo Ho, a pirate’s life for me. I wake up in the morning sometimes and wonder what my brain has been doing while I slept. Apparently piratey things, because that’s the song I’m hearing in my head. There was a quick rehash of some stupidity from last year (I know what triggered that). Love that. Thanks brain. Also, it’s hard to sleep well on Sunday nights during school…my brain is figuring the whole week out (and often worrying about it). I really pushed this weekend to NOT open the school computer. I did make a list for today (and the next three days). I cleaned out my notebook…I love that my notebooks last for years now instead of dying after one (heavy duty notebooks…what good are notebooks? OK, there’s the Talking Heads…that’s a better song than the pirate one). I didn’t have to buy folders this summer…there was extra money last year and I spent it on that. Hopefully I got enough…I should figure that out quickly, because I think they need them Friday.

So I finished the big quilt last night…I spent the last three nights (or more?) sewing binding and sleeves. Friday night…

Saturday night…I actually sewed for almost three hours (Saturday was very braindead)…got all the binding done and part of one sleeve.

And Sunday night…

Bowie assist…

We’re trying to get him to sleep at night instead of only during the day, so after this, I woke him up and played with him for a while. Didn’t work. He was up and down all night. Like me!

I stitched some on this on Friday at the back-to-school event. They had us go to the local mall and fed us breakfast (it was SO loud…so loud), then put us in the movie theaters by school and we watched videos and played games. It was shorter than usual, so that was a plus. It was also dark a lot.

Made it harder to stitch. Pros and cons. Then we went back to our schools and did the district-mandated meetings where we write on big poster paper and then never see this stuff again.

There’s my science team! Yes, we are dorks. Well, most of us anyway. You probably don’t wanna know why the science department is pointing at a math rubric. We had to send this to the principal who will send it to the district. Sigh. Anyway, at some point, the district will make something of all this and push it back to us in some format. Proving something. Yes, I’m cynical about all that.

Today, we have four hours of all-staff meetings, then about 30 minutes with our partner team-in-crime (which is finally wholly back with us), then who-knows-how-long with the core team. Then making a list of what to copy tomorrow AM, because I have to be up at 4 AM to make sure I am tired enough for the EEG at noon. Don’t ask. I’m not looking forward to it.

In between all this, I’m halfheartedly trying to finish painting the hallway.

It’s hot, I’m tired, my wrist starts to hurt after a while. All of the cutting in is done with one coat, about a third has two coats. Obviously need to roll two coats as well. I’m not highly motivated, but maybe I will be this week. It would be nice if it were done.

I also finally got everything appliqued down to this. I finally watched the video about the hexie papers and how to make that damn flower in the bottom left…

And then I made it Saturday and sewed it down, and sewed down the last velvet circle (those things are a pain in the ass) last night. So now I can do embellishment.

Little man plays with his tail a lot.

OK. School. Need to leave in about 5 minutes with more tea and my meds in me. Pack a lunch! Fuck. I forgot how to do all this. I’ll be exhausted later. It might not even be that long from now. Then hopefully starting something new.

A Little Luck…

Hey, officially summer is over for me…school starts this morning, 30 minutes earlier than usual, because they hate us or something…or because we’re an elementary district and those littles don’t mind getting up early. I need to leave in 22 minutes with a fresh cup of tea, all my meds in me (ugh, too early), the official school shirt on, my computer in my bag, my stitching in hand (speechifying…need to stay alert), my water, and some realization that I need to get my brain in gear. It’s OK…it started yesterday when I finished one of the six documents I was gonna edit this summer. I feel like I did the summer right…art every day, ceramics every other day, 27 books read. My goal for the new year? No 5-hour work sessions on Sundays. No working on Saturdays at all. It might take a miracle, but I’m going for it.

I did trim up the big quilt on Wednesday night and cut all the binding…

And last night, after my stitching meeting, I got all the bindings and sleeves sewed on by machine…

That is some bright green…and now there’s some handstitching to do. I also mended the pants I’m wearing today. The second mend on these, but they’re really comfy and I won’t give them up yet.

Yesterday, I got my second tattoo, which I’d been thinking about for a long time, by the artist Gloria Muriel. It’s not quite a barn owl because of the ears, but that’s OK.

I wanted the barn owl face in there…I need this year to go well, so here’s to manifesting that.

I had my stitching meeting last night…I’ve been working a little bit on Sue Spargo’s Rooted block of the month while I try to get everything appliqued on the Homegrown central panel.

These are easy enough, but relaxing. I like relaxing. I’m taking this with me today to the speechifying.

This is really my thing for this school year.

That might be my mantra across the board.

Cool mural in North Park on the way to tattooing. Not Tattooine. Probably spelled that wrong. Ah yes, no double tt’s. Tatooine.

These two have been coming to bed with me the last couple of nights…

The baby is ‘sleeping through the night’…midnight to 5:18 AM this morning. Woohoo!

OK. Go find my stuff, take my morning meds, make more tea. Sit through speeches and rah rah, then professional development of some type, interrupted (thank goodness) by a taco truck lunch, then more of the stuff. Then ceramics, because the studio’s closed all weekend for a class. Then probably a fucking nap. If I haven’t already taken one by then. Wish us all luck. It’s a new school year, my 22nd…and we’re all gonna need a little luck to get through it.

Cynical Mullet

I exercised this morning instead of writing this. And then I ran errands. And now the day is half gone. I still need to fill two yardwaste trashcans and continue painting the hallway. The binding for the big quilt is purchased, though, and in the washer. So that can hopefully happen today as well…I need to trim the quilt first, and it’s big and that means washing the entryway floor again. Lots of physical stuff needs to happen…it’s been really warm, but today is somewhat cooler…a weather front is tossing up clouds and sprinkles, so that’s a nice change. Oh wait, we’re back to sunny and hot. Anyway, I’ll paint for a while (my wrist hurts if I do it for too long), cut gardeny shit up for a while, and get this giant-ass quilt bound (or at least start the binding process, because we’re gonna be here for a while.). I also need to iron and clean up two quilts for delivery to the photographer tomorrow. The next two days are a little overly busy…because we’re going back. To school.

Anyway, Monday night, I managed to ALMOST get all the background quilted…

Just the part where the pins are was not done, but I had to be an adult and get up early in the morning for a dental appointment, so I went to bed. Ugh. And then finished quilting last night…

Just under 14 hours of quilting. I bought binding this morning, so that’s up next.

I already have the next quilt drawn…it’s small (but still complicated, because I am me)…and there’s a deadline for it, so I’ll be working on it as soon as this one is completely stitched.

I went in to ceramics yesterday and did more on the base…

Honestly, I think that’s it…

It just needs to dry slowly and then I need to figure out how I’m going to glaze it. The rest of this piece is done, except for the fabric bits. I put the base of the world figure and the sgraffito piece on the bisque fire shelf. It’ll go in the kiln in the next few days. The top needs to keep drying slowly. And then I need to figure out what I’m doing next. I have lots of ideas from art stuff to needing a new mug because they all have cracks in them. We’ll see.

I found the needlebook instructions from the guild…and cut out all my little pieces…

Now that the quilt is out of the sewing machine, I could sew these together or sew the pieces for that Spargo tree block that needed to be pieced…it’s been sitting around since March. I’ve got a couple other low-priority things that I want to finish up too. And inevitably, I’m going to need to do some school stuff in the next few days. I’ll be at school tomorrow afternoon. Then officially back on Friday with all-day meetings.

Back to barn owls…the sweetheart in the tree from the last post? She leaves me pellets under there with lots of bones…

I leave them out and let them decompose all the fur and goop away until I just have a pile of bones. It’s like she knows what I really want. Best friend.

Oh yeah, I got interviewed earlier this summer. You can read it here…

OK. I took the migraine meds to see if it makes the hallucinations go away (which would make it a migraine)…just a test. It might make me tired…wait, I’m already tired. I’ve been staying up too late and still having to get up. Ah well. I might go read for a while before doing something physical. I had my COVID shot again yesterday in preparation for school…so I’ll be protected for a little bit…maybe. So my left arm hurts. That also might be why I’m tired. I’m accidentally reading a romance novel…I thought my book club was reading it, and it is, but the romance subset, which I don’t go to (one can only be in so many book clubs…and for me, that’s two). But I already had started the book when I realized. So now I have to finish it. It’s the rules. Sigh. Anyway, wish me luck…the school stuff is giving me the heebie jeebies…my team met yesterday and it was already too much. It’ll get better, I know, but I said that last year and it never did. So. I’m eternally positive in the front and a cynical mullet in the back.

Finished a Closet

Might be a fucking miracle to have finished painting anything this summer…but I did finish the damn closet. Yay! And I put everything back in it (except for the stuff I’m getting rid of). This week? I’m painting the damn hallway. I think it will actually be easier than the closet. I washed the walls yesterday after doing the final spackle. Trying to decide what to actually tape.

In quilting news, I was still outlining until last night around 11 PM. Quilting at night is really the only bearable time in this room. And that’s with two fans on me. It’s a big quilt, so it’s in my lap half the time.

I love this barn owl. I started the background quilting last night right about here…yes, at 11 PM.

And then when I took the dog out to pee at midnight, there was my baby…yeah, blurry, but look!

I’m 10 1/2 hours into the quilting and I’ve done maybe 1/6 of the background. So probably another 2-3 hours of that. I’m hoping to finish today so I can buy binding fabric tomorrow.

I did go to ceramics yesterday and spent an hour building this tiny car.

The winged woman is going to sit down into that depression. Hopefully. I made it bigger than it needed to be because shrinkage. I also marked the front on the newsprint so I could keep that in mind as I build.

I’m mostly impatient with building…I could have made it solid and then let it dry and hollowed it out, but no…I slab built it. Nuts.

The other piece didn’t crack again, so I’m just trying to dry it super slowly. I would have put the base into the kiln for a bisque fire, but there was no room on the shelves. She’ll probably load it today, so if I go in tomorrow, I can put that one and the other sgraffito one on the shelf to be fired. Someone asked what I’d be doing next…I don’t know! I have some ideas. I’ve been working on the winged woman since late March and the two-part piece (which is mostly climate change) since late April. I am not fast, y’all. Not fast at all. I kind of want to do a flat sgraffito piece, or maybe a frame? Also I’m thinking of how to make taller pieces that fit into each other…this is not easy if you don’t build them all in one go. As I’ve found…and with going back to school, I’ll be back to twice a week at the studio…not a lot of time. Unless I pick a weekend day that has nothing else (ha! OMG, you should see the next three months) and just build all day. Anyway. It’s been nice having the summer and going every couple of days. I’ll miss that.

I had so many meetings on Saturday…I stitched at the quilt guild one…

Almost done with the hair…then need to decide what else I’m going to put on it.

This thing. Bowie is either fast asleep like this or racing around like a hellion…mostly in the early morning with the racing. Ugh. We are both tired.

As you can see…

The Man has been the one getting up with Bowie…mostly Bowie is hungry and wants attention. Hungry a lot. So the Man is exhausted.

OK, I’ve had my eyes checked and new glasses ordered…eyes changed a lot this time…hopefully not related to the hallucinations/visual disturbances. But who knows. Next step is to try migraine meds and see if they make the visual stuff go away…then we would know it’s a visual migraine…and not epilepsy or MS (both bad). So I may do that later today. Taking new meds is always stressful for me…I’ve had so many bad reactions. I also need to go get a COVID shot again before we start school later this week. I need to paint. I’m talking to my naturopath again, just to update on stuff, consolidate supplements a bit. I need to quilt…I need to find the pattern and materials for the needlebook I’m supposed to be making for my guild, I need to fold all the really cheap hand-dyed fabric I got at the Visions veranda sale on Saturday (amazing and fun…$4/yard was a total deal…I only bought stuff that could be used for backgrounds or backings). I have a shitload of yardwork to do still…three greenery trashcans in three days. But I’m waiting until evening to do that, one per day. This last week before we go back to school is always such a challenge…I realize how little I got done over the summer and I kind of panic. I do need to do school stuff too but I don’t want to. Oh yeah, I also need to learn how to make a super-tiny hexie flower. I bought the glue pen because it just seemed easier…but I’m not totally sure how to do it…the YouTube video is already queued up. It would be good to get those set up today so I can stitch them at night after eating, while we watch Exploding Kittens. Enjoying that. So not a bad day today…tomorrow will be a little more stressful. Sigh. I have loved having this time to make art every day, so much more than during school. I need to reduce my Sunday workload and completely leave Saturdays open. It’s going to be better this year. It just has to be.

The Right Month…

OK, yeah, I know, yesterday was Friday. I think. Let me look at the calendar. Fuck, it’s still on July. Stand up, change calendar to August (it’s OK, the one in the classroom is still on June)…cool, pictures of orphaned baby elephants being reintegrated into a Kenyan national park. Seems inspirational…and maybe too real as I start school officially in less than a week. Whatever. Not ready. Never am. Really just trying to finish all the things on the to-do list (ha! oh wait, hysterical laughter because nuh uh…not happening). Really trying to Just Finish Painting the Closet…but this thing…

This sweet little asleep kitten, when he is awake, he is a terror and it is impossible to paint, so I wait until he’s asleep, and then suddenly, he is awake. So I finally got most of the closet done last night, but the doors need a second coat. I would have done it this morning, because I was up early because of that cute little sleeping (not sleeping) thing in the picture and then no, because he was awake. So hopefully later today (after two meetings), I will finish painting and then I can start putting things back in there and to consider what day I am painting the hallway, which will probably also need two coats dammit. Sigh.

So many things to do. Strangely, he does not mess with the quilting process…he’s scared of the old lady kitty because she bops him and hisses quite loudly and he’s unsure of that. And her territory is the quilting room. So that’s a plus.

She has no tolerance for kitten pouncing. The other two do, so he does better with them.

So I have almost exactly 7 hours in the quilting so far, and I am still outlining.

Last night, I got the second figure done and about half of the third figure, maybe, plus all the stuff to the left of her…wait, not all of it, just most of it.

So I’m probably more than halfway done with the outlining, but not halfway on all the quilting because there is a lot of background. I need to be able to buy binding next week…no way do I have enough of anything to bind it in-house. But I’m only getting in 2-3 hours of quilting a day. I need to do more. But now I have a dental appointment next week (crown being replaced), an eye doctor appointment (for glasses, not the hallucination stuff, which created a whole host of new appointments, woo hoo!), and some other stuff I don’t even remember.

Claywise, I finally got this one to fit into the top one, but one hand was kind of in the wrong place, so all of a sudden, the top slipped down and broke again.

I’m going to redo it with a slight rotation of the elbow. It will be fine.

Actually, I already did fix it (two days in a row in the studio!), plus fixed the damn fingers and painted some more.

There’s some cracking going on, and one hand is a different color than the other, but I don’t care about that.

The bottom is dry and ready to fire, but there was no room on the shelf, so I’ll fit her butt in next week. Or maybe I’ll fire them together? Not sure.

And then I started a base for the winged woman piece.

She’s not entirely stable, so she could sit in that space in the middle and be glued in, I think.

I’m in the process of drawing her wings and deciding what goes on them.

Anyway. I obviously like the endless MAKING of the clay (I started the winged woman the end of March?) and the never-finishing of the clay. Process over product. Always.

More announcing stuffs.

They have Jan Soules on there twice…

I’m sure they’ll figure that out. From a design perspective, I can see how it happened. From a copyediting perspective, I can see they need one. But I’m grateful to be in the show. Also what was the logic for the order? Random? I’m sure that makes sense. Sigh. So critical. I am.

Heart-Shaped Box also got into the SAQA special exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show.

Strange piece. But I like that it got in…it definitely tells a story.

OK. Today is Saturday. I have dueling meetings, so I picked the one I knew about first, my quilt guild meeting. I will stitch there. I think. I could actually Zoom into one AND attend the other one. No. Nope. Then I will head over to an open house for the art show at Liberty Station, mostly because a muralist I like, Panca (I guess I like her work; I’ve never met her) is doing a group painting session at the same time and place. Also it might be cooler toward the beach and then I have shown up for the other group, even though I didn’t do the now monthly meeting that I can’t do. And I’m trying to not be irritated by people who don’t read emails or listen or understand how email groups work, because I am always saying the same things and the same people aren’t listening. As always. Then there will be some painting and quilting and a date night with the Man who had the same or less sleep than me (see note about kitten above), so we are both tired and cranky. Plus it’s supposed to be 97 degrees today and that’s not a good thing. But art will happen and so will reading my book. Hope your Saturday goes well and you get some good sleep and reading in. At least my calendar is on the right month now.

More Than One Coffee Shop

A blackberry/pistachio croissant…but no chai. Ah well…only so much sugar at once, right? Not sure how long it will take to write this. Maybe in more than one coffee shop today. Pro of traveling: I can sleep in because no dog/kitten in the AM. Also I’m trying not to fill every moment, which tends to be how I roll…mostly out of necessity, although maybe choice.

Yes, I’m still in San Francisco…and if you’re a friend of mine and I haven’t contacted you, know that I am trying to be present with my kid…she’s been here for over a year and it’s my first visit. That said, I did go to PIQF on Friday for a few hours…and promptly ran into 3 San Diego folks. There were a few quilts that caught my eye…

Jan Soules’ Finding Neverland #7: Fanfare…I had just read an article about her Neverland quilts, so it was cool to see one in person.

All the Social Justice Sewing Academy quilts…two of the blocks I embroidered were there, which is always cool to see (2nd row from left, 3rd down).

I actually didn’t see the other block until someone else posted it. Not sure I photographed it. This blogpost is just gonna get written in pieces all day. I’ve finished my croissant and tea and am moving on to an exhibit of quilts in a random building. So I need to figure out how to get there. My kid and her SO were good about bus training me (so much easier than San Diego’s public transport)…so I’ll head there and write more later. Or I’ll write on the bus!

I found a few good vendors for fabrics I find difficult to locate at home, so that might have been the best part. I did see a few more quilts I liked, but my iPad is ancient and doesn’t like to load photos, so this is all you get.

Friday night I met up with my daughter and her boyfriend, and we had dinner and drinks out, with a giant hike up Divisadero in between (Uber and Waymo were too expensive…totally got a workout there). None of us woke up early on Saturday, but eventually we made it to a farmers’ market and then MOMA, which was really great. More pictures on Instagram, but here’s me with the girlchild and some of Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkins…

We only had about 2 1/2 hours…I’m considering going back today to listen to the whole Ragnar musical thing, but probably won’t. It was beautiful though. The girlchild cooked Saturday night, fresh from the market, so good. I’m staying at an Airbnb that’s about a 10-minute walk from her, and they are nice enough to walk me home at night (something about not sending me off alone into the dark).

Sunday we hiked up in the Tennessee Valley, drove across the iconic bridge and hiked out to the ocean.

Hopefully I’ll get a better picture of the bridge today…although it’s cloudy and delightfully cool again. Can’t complain about cool weather in July.

I needed a nap after that (and really good pizza…pizza, then hike, then nap). We had great Indian food for dinner and then I drew and read and watched some show.

Can’t explain the drawing, sorry. There’s a headless cat in there. Hoping to do some drawing today as well. I did a little embroidery Saturday, lots of reading. I’ll see them tonight for soccer and dinner, then hanging out with an old friend tomorrow and home tomorrow night. I love hanging out with my kid and getting to know her SO better. I also love not having a work/home to-do list at the moment. Getting off at the next stop…saving the draft!

I managed to see this exhibit in the Mills Building in the Financial district….first…no second stop of the day

I love Margaret’s work, especially how she incorporates existing items into the pieces, such as the umbrella in this one.

Joe Cunningham’s work has really interesting lines throughout, whether quilted, painted, part of the actual fabric, or as a thin strip of meandering fabric…

And I was introduced to the work of Adia Millett here too…

I love that a local business building is celebrating quilt art. OK, I’m going to post this now from the Financial District. Got more tea, planning on Britex Fabrics (0.2 miles), maybe some bison, maybe a boat ride. Not sure what else. I would like to finish my book….with lunch? And maybe draw somewhere. We’ll see.