All My Nightmares Escape My Head*

So first of all, another type of protest art quilt show…when my quilt got pulled in August from the AQS QuiltWeek exhibit in Grand Rapids, Michigan, because there was an invisible penis in it, Maddie Kertay offered to show my two quilts (because in the end, they pulled both my quilts) at her quilt store in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during AQS QuiltWeek down there. By the way, Facebook thinks Bonnie Browning and I should be friends (she’s the AQS Show Director…probably the sweet dear heart who pulled my stuff). This is how you know Facebook is an idiot. Because Bonnie and I are not friends. Bonnie can’t even have the decency to contact ME about pulling my work.

Then Maddie decided to host an online show called The Skin We Are In (not safe for work)…

I just love that picture. I should say that Maddie is the badass chick in charge of the BadAss Quilters Society and you should totally be a member. ANYWAY, the show is up and you should go see some of the very cool work that has been posted. Molli Sparkles has made a lovely quilt with ALL the penises very clearly marked so you can easily report them to Bonnie Browning. I’m hoping someone has sent her this link.

Sometimes grading is amusing…

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I feel like I would totally give her extra credit if she would provide me with some proof.

Sometimes grading is annoying and I walk away from it. That happened last night. So after battling with a bag of hash browns and eventually winning (I’ve never been able to cook them right, but last night I triumphed! I had to throw out the first two tries, but the third was successful! High fives!), I did some feathery things in the middle…

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To fill in space. Because I’m realizing I should do that. Otherwise I won’t be able to fit 365 days’ worth of stitching in there.

So then I came in here and quilted, and I actually got started relatively early (9:30?) because I really couldn’t stand grading any more. I thought maybe I was being extra mean, but it was more like no one wanted to read instructions. It’s hard to grade stuff when it’s all bad grades. It makes you feel like a shitty teacher. And it’s true, I missed one day when they were working on this. Sigh.

I finished the arm and the rest of the skeleton. I didn’t take a picture because I was on a roll. Don’t stop when you’re on a roll.

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It’s funny because I feel like I’ve really achieved something by finishing all the outlining, but in reality, now I have to do the background quilting, and that’s not a small task. It’s a different rhythm though…

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I don’t have to be as careful as I do when outlining. It took 12 hours to outline all this, by the way.

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It’s not a record for me, I’m sure. I have some quilts that might be as big as this? Maybe?

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I need to go back and catch some places where I didn’t stitch down properly. And then I’ll start on the background…probably not tonight…

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But definitely tomorrow. I want this quilted and the binding at least machine-stitched on by Monday night. At the photographer by the end of next week. Starting on the next quilt (which does not even exist on paper) by next week.

Yeah. Crazy. Kitten slept through all that.

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Although at some point, she woke up to give me a high five.

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Thanks Kitten. I know, right? It’s awesome that I finished that part. BOOM!

*Radical Face, Welcome Home

Your Ignorance Is Showing

It’s after midnight. I’m not gonna finish writing this tonight. But it’s in my head, and I straight-up know I won’t go to sleep until it’s out. Simply put, I’m in a mood…I’m pissed off at all the political crap that’s bombarding us on a regular basis. The stupid decisions that aren’t seeing the big picture, the world view. I’m irritated by having to deal with a president who is only barely more mature than the majority of my students. I want to bitch slap all the…well, shit, most of them are Republicans, so I’ll start there…who want to get rid of human rights and instead promote racist and sexist propaganda. Who think it’s OK to put people in charge who don’t understand science, whether it’s climate change or homosexuality, mostly I think because reality scares them. Who want to destroy the environment so they can make money. Dammit I remember Los Angeles in the 70s and not being able to take a deep breath. Who think China made up climate change. Who think the Department of Education is only for rich white people. We don’t need to educate poor people, right? What the hell? I keep thinking, “Your ignorance is showing.” Did I tell you my meditation app has an SOS setting? For when you need 2 minutes of meditative thought because a bunch of men are refusing to listen to an intelligent, educated, ELECTED woman read a letter about human rights…that men were allowed to read later. I’m boggled by that…absolutely boggled. I listened to a mom tonight almost in tears about her worries that her daughter’s IEP (Individualized Education Plan, for those with learning disabilities) would be scrapped by the incoming Education Secretary. Well yeah, because that shit is going by the wayside…along with a million educators’ jobs. And 8000+ EPA jobs. (Who are we making great again? The great unemployed masses?) And the dumbass ignorant rants from my state senator about immigration issues. And others who think a wall will stop the drug trade (wow. really?), let alone that Mexico will pay for it. Or those who think vouchers will be good…why? Because they’re rich white people. And that’s who vouchers benefit. If you don’t have money, your school choices are what you can walk to…they can’t just up and move to La Jolla. DeVos’ assertions about school ratings are so damn IGNORANT that you just want to invite her, as another teacher said, to come stay in my house, in my reality, come to my school and sit through a week, AT LEAST, of my classes. I’m not a shitty teacher because I teach in a Title 1 school…I’m in a Title 1 school because they need me there. Try, just try, to understand the social background of my students and realize that some of them are just glad to come somewhere that feels safe and has food on a regular basis.

And this doesn’t even touch what happens when the stupid decisions and dumbassery start a war. Because that’s looming.

I know for most, I am preaching to the choir. And many of you are feeling as torn apart and stressed by this as I am, and it’s not because I’m a fucking snowflake…it’s because idiots are damaging the world I live in…for me and for those I care for. So I will keep yelling until the pendulum swings back (fast please), because this is not acceptable. And the country I live in allows for protest…it was built on it. So if my rant offends you, so be it. This snowflake (I am so NOT a snowflake) doesn’t really care if you’re offended. I want to know WHY you’re offended, simply so I can probably say, again, “Your ignorance is showing.”

Meanwhile, protest art exhibits and concerts are proliferating, which I think is great. I love listening to the whiners, the ones who think we shouldn’t make MEAN art or PROTEST art because they had to suffer through the last president so why don’t we just shut up. Yeah. They can bite me. “Your ignorance is showing.” I’m making art. I really need this quilt done so I can make 17 more. Like now.

OK. Now I’m going to bed. I’ll write the rest tomorrow…

So I didn’t finish last night, but writing that helped me sleep. I had book club last night, and near the end, when we were done with the book and a few of us were just chatting, which turned into that up above, there was this guy at the bar, maybe 30 years old, and all of a sudden he yells out something like Fuck De Vos! or something, and then apologizes, and then lays out a very well-designed plan for taking care of all this chaos…something about using the government to become a trained assassin and learning how to change his identity with their help and then going out there and “taking care of” anyone who was an issue…sigh. I think there’s a movie about that. At the time, we’re all joking about that as a solution, but we’ve all thought about it, because there doesn’t seem to be a calm rational way to change what’s happening. But sitting around and waiting for the ninja warrior to take out key players in the chaos is probably not a good or healthy plan.

So I’m choosing the art resistance mode…here’s a call for entries for one of the resistance shows popping up…

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I already have work for this one. So if you follow me for my cool quilts, hopefully you realize that most of them have a message, and it’s about women’s rights usually, although sometimes it’s just about being female…which apparently now is a lesser thing again, making me clearly remember being told multiple times that I was imagining a conspiracy against women a few years back. Imagine, My Ass. Your ignorance is showing…and in that case, it was a liberal…but still a rich white male. And if they say it doesn’t exist, honey, well then you KNOW it doesn’t exist, right? My ass. Did I say My Ass?

I came home, and you know, I worked an almost-11-hour day yesterday for school alone, plus an earthquake/fire drill and then a fire NOT drill…so I stitched. Not very much…the lighter-colored fly and lazy daisy stitches on the right. Not sure why. It just happened.

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I’m actually not sure there will be enough space on this for 12 months of stitching. I think I decided 12″ square was enough…We’ll see. That’s 39 days of stitching there…326 to go?

And then it was 11 PM, so I came in and quilted for an hour. I got the skull done…

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And the ribcage on the outside of the arm, plus part of the arm.

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I was hoping to finish that whole section, but it was late. So I wrote the screed above and went to bed, although it was probably 1 AM by then. And I’m up early again today for yet another official meeting, possibly one where I’m told to make nice with another employee…but I don’t know that anyone can make me do that at the moment. If you’re in the school system and not serving my students? Because? Then I’m not really interested in making nice.

I’m looking forward to coming home tonight and finishing the outlining at least. There’s not much left. I really need this to be done…not because I have a deadline (I do), but because there’s so much else that needs making and saying and yelling and drawing, and I’m going to keep saying it until it doesn’t need to be said any more. I don’t actually believe that will be in my lifetime, dammit, but I’m still not going to give up.

Eating Cheese on Toast*

I quilted. This is good. Because I got through the intestines…and that’s the purpose of the intestines, for things to get through them…plus stress release dammit.

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And for some reason that complicated bit in the middle of her torso was fucking with my head. It really was kind of fun to stitch…around all the bits.

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Somewhere in the middle, Kitten whacked me because I tried to pick up my phone to take a picture (probably the one above) and it was under her tail and I offended her. I don’t know if you know about calico cats, but they are kind of attitudinal. I guess I’m a calico cat. You can see in her face that she’s still significantly pissed off at me…

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But then goes quite happily to sleep in the pile of fabric I obviously left for her benefit.

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So I kept quilting…got the right arm (well, it’s her left arm) stitched…

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And then stopped, because the other side has that crazy-ass skeleton ribcage, and that’s gonna take a lot of fussy stitching. It was after midnight too, and I needed to be up early today for a parent meeting. Staying late for a union meeting. Still sick to my stomach over the DeVos confirmation. I’ve seen a few of my more conservative friends express their joy (?) over DeVos as a choice (my non-US followers or non-education people may not know that Betsy DeVos is now the Education Secretary of the US, despite her utter lack of qualifications to be such a thing…don’t get me wrong, I didn’t like Arne Duncan either, but she is a significant order of powers less qualified and more likely to fuck us over more than we already are, also damaging my students. But whatever.). I would invite any of those conservative friends to spend a week in my classroom. And do my job. All of it. We ran out of our budget last week, I think (I haven’t put the last receipts in). For the year. In January. And strangely, I still have to teach for the next 5 months. I won’t even tell you about all the extra hours, especially this year, because we have no curriculum. And both my kids have federal loans for college on top of scholarships. Because otherwise I couldn’t afford to send them (honestly, I can’t really afford it anyway, but that’s another point). But let’s put someone in charge who doesn’t even know the difference between proficiency and growth.

Sick to my stomach. Just keep teaching and dealing with kids and all their stuff, trying to get them at least to think about what we’re learning…despite the crazy that’s going on in my government.

I stitched…the yellow three-pronged stitch in the cretan stitch on the right.

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This morning’s sunrise over the possum/armadillo tree (it’s actually two trees)…

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I realized yesterday my meditation app has an SOS mode…quick 2-minute meditation for days like yesterday. This will be useful.

*Kate Nash, Merry Happy

I Know Who I Want to Take Me Home*

Well now I know the difference between concrete and cement…and more importantly, I know the history of concrete…because I have to teach about it…what’s funny is that for 4 hours, I was completely engaged with the content…unlike every single staff meeting and school district professional development thing I’ve been to all year. That was Saturday morning.

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Frustrating, eh? I didn’t get paid for THIS 4 hours, but it was way more interesting and useful than all the stuff I’m paid for. Yes, there is a 2-hour meeting this afternoon about 8 pages in a book. I don’t disagree with the book. I disagree with how my district is interpreting the book. Oh well. Bring a sketchbook. Try not to increase blood pressure. Just ignore the stupidity. Insert rant here about micromanaging professionals.

Some of my eucalypti were dropping branches in the last storm, so we made them look funny. Don’t worry…they come back.

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I wish tree trimmers were smarter. Oh well.

Then we spent part of the evening wandering a mall. I never go to malls if I can help it…but look! Sewing machines! And all the clothes in this store were black and grey…

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My kind of place.

Unlike this Hermés scarf…holy crap, that’s some color.

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Celebrating the new year…

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And part of a whale tail…

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I was so tired, I slept through the movie…it’s OK. If I’m that tired, it’s best if I sleep.

This is two days of stitching…the cretan stitch in green on the right with the fly stitch in blue.

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Sleepy puppy while I stitch.

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I was watching a show and wanted to finish watching before trying to quilt, so I cut and ironed some pieces while it finished. This is more of the Folk Tails BOM.

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It’s kind of a crazy BOM…lots of overlaps. Kind of a pain because of that.

And then I finally started quilting, after nothing all weekend. Sigh. I’m 7 or 8 hours into the outlining and not even halfway up the body.

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That said, I think there is less outlining and more background quilting in the top section. We’ll see…if it takes another 7-8 hours just to outline? This week is a clusterfuck of meetings and stuff before and after school, so it will be a challenge to get a lot done…

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But I did get SOME done yesterday…look how big it is!

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Holy crap. No wonder it feels like it’s taking forever. Anyway. My goal is to have all the quilting finished by the end of this coming weekend and get the binding on. Then maybe get it photographed by the following weekend and be started on the next one…which means drawing it. Which means no more trying to avoid drawing it or avoid quilting or just being too mentally tired to deal with any of it. Yeah, like I can proscribe that.

I shouldn’t really give myself so much shit. I wrote 4 pages about my quilting life for an article yesterday, plus packed two food boxes for the kids, entered a show I wasn’t even planning on entering (because I’m nuts like that), and who knows what else I did. Lots. Stuff and things. There’s just too much of it. That’s the word I associate with Sundays…Overwhelming. Always.

*Semisonic, Closing Time

Watch Out, You Might Get What You’re After*

I guess I got to sleep in on Thursday morning instead of going to school, so that makes up for being awake early on a Saturday to go to school. Ugh. My brain is so not ready. It wants a 3-day weekend. It’s coming, dear brain, it’s coming. But then you’ll have to get up early to go to the dentist. Because teachers have to do all their dental work on holidays and breaks.

I was encouraged by a friend the other day to say No Thank You to a bunch of things. I tried that yesterday with a doctor’s referral. Let’s see how that goes. (It’s OK…it’s not really something I need…it’s something the insurance company thinks I need, which is ironic, because usually insurance companies want to do less rather than more.) I have some social commitments where I feel the same way, though, so I’m going to try the polite No Thank You with them as well. I’m just way too overwhelmed with stuff in general this year, mostly because of the art stuff and the constant planning of curriculum for school. Every day, dammit. And some people are really not understanding about that and it irritates me. So instead of trying to explain to them that my life is not like their lives, I’m just going to say No Thank You over and over again until it catches on.

So sometime last night, after 90 minutes on chat with AT&T, who can go suck my dick right now (seriously), and another 20 minutes with my dad talking about how my house is falling down and how the trees are trying to kill me and my pets, and then trying to get in touch with my daughter, whose phone is intermittently dead at the moment (see AT&T above), I was done. I wanted to come home yesterday and be uber-efficient and grade for like 3 hours and…holy shit, because I graded for like 6 hours on Wednesday and Thursday and I didn’t even make a fucking dent in it…but that didn’t happen. I sat there and did my stitch for the day…the weird purple flower thing above the e in Prosper. It’s a whipped thing with some other stuff.

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Seriously, I’m not getting up to figure out what it’s called. It’s one of those spiderwebby things, but whipped around, so you get the ridges on top. And I had thread left over, so I did some lazy daisies and a few French knots. There’s a shitload of French knots in this thing. Doing this makes you realize how few stitches are actually out there. I should probably pull a different stitch book out…maybe one of the crazy quilt stitch books.

I should go back in the day. I picked this sweet beast up from the other house after work (don’t even ask)…

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How can you not love that face? Then in my mail was this patch/mini-quilt from Joshua Durst, a quilter who saw that my quilt was banned from AQS and made this patch and wore it around the next AQS show and then sent it to me…

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After yesterday at school, this was nice to get. It was really nice. Even though that seems like a million years ago. Still no penis though.

And then there’s this guy.

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He wanted a tummy rub. They’re cute when they’re small. They’re also bitey and barky, but cute. Almost makes up for the other crap.

Anyway, after all that, I graded for a bit and then made dinner and then sat down again and thought, holy shit, self, I’m way too tired and stressed to do anything, let alone quilt, and I stewed in that for a while, graded some more, tried to release some of that stress, because that’s really just shit I’m doing to myself and I don’t need to do that.

I finally got up and came in here and did some stuff online (paid bills, cleaned up email, worked on some stuff for school), and then sat down to quilt.

And oh my god, why do I never remember how relaxing it is to just quilt and listen to music (when the machine is behaving and the world is good)?

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So I finished the bottom part of the skeleton and wandered around the pelvic girdle and did the sides of the stove and then that tree with all the peaches and the tiny hands and came back up and did part of a ribcage and THEN…

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Then I was tired. Because it was after midnight. This is a large beast and it is a bit of a pain in the assholular area in the middle to move it around, but it’s getting done. I’m not quite halfway up on the outlining, and there’s a lot of stuff in the gut area, but I’m getting there. Please remind me next time when I’m sitting on the couch all cranky as shit that this crap makes me feel better and yes I stay up way too fucking late, especially when I have to be up early, but whatever. This is me and how I roll and what’s goin’ down. Fuck yeah. Now I’m going to teacher school to learn about concrete. Fuck me.

*Talking Heads, Burning Down the House

It Doesn’t Matter if You Want It Back*

I didn’t post yesterday. I had a good reason. I also didn’t quilt on Wednesday. Good reason. And didn’t go to work for two days. Good reason, but I might have to do some damage control today, looking at what didn’t get turned in. I hate that. Teacher’s not there, can’t do my work. Frustrating. If teacher’s not there, there’s a damn good reason for it.

I did quilt last night for a bit…

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The machine is still quilting just fine. Who knows what that tension clusterfuck was about. I’m about 5 1/2 hours in…hopefully more tonight…the weekend is a little busy though. Probably only have 20 hours to go.

Here’s where I spent a good chunk of time the last two days. Grading stuff.

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So at least I got a bunch of that done…not enough…never enough.

For the year of stitch, I did two days in one…see? I didn’t even do two stitches…or did I? I stitched the whipped running stitch and then dropped some extra French knots in the flowers where the running stitch stopped and then filled in the ‘s’ with something…not split stitch. Aargh. Can’t remember the name.

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Stem stitch. That’s it. It needs a hand. Like an actual stitched hand.

Then I went to my stitching meeting last night and almost finished this block with the stuff in the center of the flower. I needed a marking pencil and some circle templates to do the last bit.

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I can’t find any marking pencils. Should have bought one when I was at JoAnns hell the other day. I know I have a circle template somewhere.

This is the 2nd block in the Folk Tails quilt. Those are warthogs. Aren’t they cute?

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They need eyeballs and tusks and hairy bits. All of which is coming. I was pretty braindead at some point last night, so I started tracing and cutting the Wonder Under for the next month of these. I actually have the first three months all sewn down, but not embroidered. The next few months, four months actually I think, are cut out, but not sewn down, so I figured I’d get the rest cut out. I really like this pattern…it’s funky. But I don’t have a lot of free time for these any more. Perhaps I should add to my daily stitch practice…must stitch something down on this quilt.

Anyway. I had some good ideas for the next quilt. It’s impossible to keep it from skewing politically. I can’t keep that shit out of my head. I’m sitting here trying to teach my students not to make claims without evidence that backs them up, and my government has decided that lying and making shit up is the new status quo. I hate this. Yes, there’s always been lying going on in government, but not like this. This is just plain crazy.

*Amanda Palmer, Want It Back

I’m Gonna Free Fall out into Nothin’*

For some reason, it was a relief to let January go. I even changed the calendars (yes…more than one) last night. Both pages now have colorful pictures instead of gray January days. You’d think calendar makers would realize we need more color in January, not that it’s really an issue here in San Diego, weatherwise…just mentally. February is a nice short month with two 3-day weekends. I have some free time in February…well, whatever free time is for me, because it’s generally not sitting around and relaxing. It’s not really my thing.

That said, I’m not at school today and tomorrow, and it’s not to relax. Or quilt. But that’s the way it is sometimes.

I’d like to introduce you to one of the players in 2017…this is the asshole mockingbird who will try to keep me up every night for the next 6 months.

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Yup. I saw him. Although he’s still in a neighbor’s yard at night at the moment. He’s not moved into my hearing space. So that’s good. Last year there were two…dueling mockingbirds. He shut up when I walked closer to him. Yeah asshole. I see you.

I did something on here…it’s pretty washed out…that feather leaf thing on the right…it’s got a light blue tint on the top in real life…

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And then I came in the office and sent a cranky political email to the ignorant slob who is my state senator. He started it by sending me an email asking for my moral support for discriminating against immigrants. Asshole. He won’t read it. One of his little college flunkies will. I’m hoping to get an answer that makes very little sense. Then I entered another art show. I’m trying to keep entering, even though I have a ton of stuff traveling and a solo show coming up. The stuff needs to get out there.

Finally I quilted. I got the whole oven door section done…

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Yes, there’s a skull of death on the door.

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It’s the kitchen…where women get trapped, even these days. Like there’s something on the X chromosome that makes us better at it. Bad argument. Men have an X chromosome too.

After all that deep thought, I got into the stovetop…at least one side of it.

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I’ve always had cats who were fascinated by the stove top, although mine is separate from the oven. Right now, I have one who is pretty cautious about it and one who never goes on the counters…a nice respite from some of the furry bastards who would appear out of nowhere when pots were bubbling away everywhere. None burned their fluffy little toes, but I think that was a miracle some days.

Four hours and a bit into the quilting. Not even close to halfway through the outlining. There’s a lot on this beast. Plus it’s big. It’s behaving mostly…its sheer size means there’s a lot of pulling and shoving under the needle, trying to get it to move around better. That will get worse in the torso area. Oh well. My hands start to hurt with too much of that, but if I look a week out, I don’t think there’s any long stretches of sewing time that will exacerbate that (pros and cons). Ironically, about the time I get more time (3-day weekend), I will probably be done or close to it. Hopefully. Which means I need to get the next one drawn! Or do the other bathtub next. We’ll see. I can’t get my head around that yet. I will have my sketchbook over the next two days. Maybe something will dribble out.

*Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Free Fallin’

Want to Get out My Brain*

Just paid college for February. Ouch. Let’s hope they save the world. Or at least take care of me when I’m old.

With daylight savings time, it makes it hard for me to get home early enough in winter to walk the dogs, but yesterday I ran home and changed and threw them into the car to beat the sunset. I got to one of my favorite hiking spots and out of the car and there’s the old guy with his two ancient dogs and then I see the path. Yes. That is the path. Those are ducks swimming down the path. Huh. Damn.

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OK. I can do this. Hiked around through the brush and found a spot to go over the stream (because now there’s a stream), but the mud wasn’t as solid as I thought…

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Hmmm. Well that’s what boots are for, right? Impressive.

Saw this on the trail. Assume it’s for photographing wildlife, so they’ll enjoy Simba pooping and my scooping it up into a bag.

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It was gorgeous out…but when we got over to this side, the second valley, Simba started balking like crazy. I picked him up. Calli didn’t show any signs of distress, so I took my headphones out of my ears and heard the yipping, fairly close, of a small pack of coyotes. Huh. Well.

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Over there. Never saw them, although they did get fairly close at some point. We did turn around and head back…at a fairly fast clip. I didn’t think they’d bug me and the Golden Retriever, but the little guy is a delicacy.

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I’ve seen coyotes out there twice at a distance, just watching, but never heard a pack.

The path was crisscrossed with many streams from the massive rains a week ago.

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It was awesome to get back out there. We were glad to get home and relax a bit after. We all have our own way of relaxing, right?

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Me? I stitch. I put flowers on all those stems from yesterday…which was three colors, three strands of thread, so more than I have been doing in one night.

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Then I headed in to quilt. I wasn’t sure it was going to go OK, so I was hesitant after all the machine problems last week. Kitten meditated for me.

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But after a slow start and a broken needle, everything was fine. No tension issues at all, the bastard.

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It’s going to take a long time to quilt this. I worked for about 2 1/2 hours yesterday and I don’t even have the whole oven door done. I did go up the sides a bit on each side though.

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Putting it up on the machine to keep cats off of it.

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It’s a big quilt. Expect to see me quilting for days.

The dogs stopped bugging me at some point. I stayed up way too late because the quilting was going well and I didn’t want to stop. When I finally headed for bed, there were no dogs in the living room…instead they had put themselves to bed…the same bed…

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Awwww. Sweet puppy. Zonked old lady.

*K. Flay, Get It Right

Piece of Cake

Ugh. Mornings. Not a fan. Too many disturbances last night. It’s fine for puppy. He just naps all day. Me? Not so much. I bully through it, sometimes more or less irritated than others. Really, I know the kids will be asking when I’m going to grade everything, and here’s what’s up with that. I didn’t grade shit this weekend. I quilted like a madwoman. I did 14 hours of art stuff instead of grading. Yup. And I’m not done, but I’m where I wanted to be, perhaps a bit further. So that’s good. But I still have grading to do. And I’m not sure how I’ll tell them that.

I started by pinbasting Friday night and then quilting. I quilted Saturday afternoon as well, although when I started, I found this living thing curled up inside the quilt ball I’d put on the sewing machine…

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Um cat. Move.

I did outlining for hours…hoping to finish it on Saturday, but I had somewhere to be at a specific time, so I had to stop short of that mark…

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I really didn’t have much left…half a face, I think. Part of the sun. Her hair.

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So I’m watching the clock and thinking, “I’ll just finish this up.” Yeah. No. Sometimes you just have to stop and get where you’re going.

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Sunday, I got all the errands and have-to’s done, and then finished up the sun etc. pretty quickly. On Saturday, I’d been smart and bought the background thread. Then Sunday, before I even started this, I went and bought the binding fabric, so I’d be ready. I knew I had a 2-hour staff meeting today and wouldn’t make it to the store before it closed. They used to have one late day a week, but no longer.

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Quilting the background didn’t take as long as I thought it would…I think I stopped sometime just after this to make dinner…

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And came back to Kitten trying to sit all over the quilt again.

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She’s not very patient with me. Total quilt time was just over 10 hours.

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Not bad. But I managed to fold the backing up into the quilting. I did not cut all that out. I trimmed the quilt and then was lucky that it fit under the binding. Don’t do more work if you don’t have to.

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I laid it out again for trimming (fast-moving dog)…

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Then sewed on binding and sleeves, top and bottom.

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Then pinned it all back. Then it was after midnight. Kitten doesn’t want to sit on it when it has pins in it, strangely.

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But that’s further than I thought I would get. All of a sudden, it’s going to be a piece of cake to get it to the photographer Friday. Only two weeks later than I thought it should be done.

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Interesting that I got more done on it while teaching than I did with a week off school…although there was other stuff messing with me that week. I guess it’s easier to be efficient when I don’t have any time. Now I need to start drawing the next one.

This came up over the weekend…back to the world of nonexistent penises. There’s the quilt that started that whole mess. Actually, it wasn’t the quilt that started it…it was one person and then one organization that claims it supports art and creativity. My ass. This article is in Textile Fibre Forum, their latest issue.

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Thanks to Tanya for writing me up again. I should stay out of trouble for a while so she has time to make a quilt or two.

OK, so tonight I’m grading stuff AND sewing down a binding. Maybe I’ll finish…maybe not. There’s a lot of binding on this one. It’s a relief to almost be done, though, that’s for sure.

Same As It Ever Was*

Finally a lie in. No raccoons. No coyotes. No howling. No barking. Just sleep, blessed sleep. I want to go on a vacation and sleep all night, get up and eat breakfast, and then take a nap. Lunch. Nap. Dinner and do some fun and crazy stuff. Not really. I’m not a very good sleeper…never have been. Even as a kid, I was hiding under the covers with a flashlight and a book instead of sleeping. I’d rather be doing or experiencing shit than sleeping. But occasionally a good night’s sleep is a blessing. Even when you feel drugged the next morning because your body is confused by what you just let it do. The alarm didn’t go off? We slept? Wait…what? We slept the normal amount? That can’t be right.

Accept it, body. It was a gift you probably won’t see again for a few weeks at least.

I didn’t get home until late (for me)…a meeting and a trip to the bank (on a Friday? What was I thinking) plus Home Depot for school stuff…but I hung up my door wreath (a present from my parents every year) and set out my poinsettia (which the dog knocks over with her tail every year, breaking off some major branch so it looks lopsided for the rest of the season). And I ordered pizza, because I was freaking tired. Then I cleaned the entryway floor, because it was dirty as hell and that’s where I pinbaste all the larger quilts.

Puppy was hyper, and I’d thrown the ball for him quite a few times, but he wasn’t done. So I kept throwing for him while pinbasting. He knows (mostly) not to step on the quilt. All the animals know to go around or I throw things at them. So he would bring me the ball and I would throw it and he would chase wildly after it.

Backing taped to the floor…if I ever have the money to remodel and this tile goes, I will still need tile in here, because sometimes on the really big quilts, I have to iron shit in here on the floor.

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I was really efficient the night before…the batting and top were all nicely smoothed out already, so I just dropped them on top. Easy peasy.

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More ball throwing.

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He gets closer and closer, tries to sniff the pins, treads on the edge of the quilt. Why aren’t you paying attention to MEEEE.

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And then gives up and sits on my leg (as I’m sitting on the ground, pinbasting). As I move around, he gets up and then settles on me again.

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Not the most comfortable for me, but apparently I was what he needed. He fell asleep there until I needed to move to the next section…

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It didn’t take long to pinbaste her.

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And then I started quilting. I do the outlining first, usually in a dark blue. I like it better than black. Black is really flat for some reason. Sometimes I use purple or dark green.

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I finished the whole dirt area and up into both legs, and to the uterus…

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And up one side of the torso, plus stomach and liver. Then it was after midnight, well after midnight, and I realized I was getting sloppy. I had quilted for almost 4 hours, which isn’t a huge long time, but after teaching all day and a long week with not enough sleep, it was best to quit. I’m back at it this morning, though, with a real true goal of finishing this weekend, although I think I have to go buy thread for the background quilting. Yeah. I don’t have enough of anything that’s the right color. So probably I should shower and eat and pick up my rain barrels (rebate!) and buy thread…and then hunker down and quilt my eyes out until it’s time to go out tonight.

A plan…I always have a plan.

*Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime