No Machine Drama

Sewing machines are such temperamental beasts. Now my needle thing…you know, the thing the needle goes into? It keeps randomly moving left…so far left sometimes that it almost hits the foot. (All my non-sewing readers just visualized something totally different than the rest of us.) And the only way to get it to go back is to turn the machine off. Then it resets the location and I start over. I was hoping this was a problem with only the zigzag stitch, because I was done with that mostly, but last night, it wouldn’t reset after doing some zigzag and turning it off.

This is not good. But I have the ability to move the needle over so it’s in the zero position (center) even though the little numbers say it’s not. I’m OK with that right now, as I try to finish this damn quilt and the other one. I can pull out the old machine too, if necessary. I don’t have time to go to the guy and have him look at it. So between the giant-ass nest of monofilament thread I had on the back at some point, and the weird stitches caused by the thread trying to get over the top of the spool (finally thought to push the spool up), I was just fighting the machine for the 54 minutes that I tried quilting.

I’d also missed an entire piece of leg being stitched down. I realized that while pinbasting the previous night. A really truly anal person would have stopped pinbasting and would have gone and stitched it down (it was after midnight. You’ve gotta be kidding me). I did not do that. So I had threaded the entire machine last night to start quilting and THEN realized it would be smarter to zigzag that down before quilting. So I unthreaded everything and rethreaded, and then the feed dogs were up so I changed that and that’s when I had a nest of monofilament. There’s something very frustrating about it being really late at night and being tired and just trying to get SOMETHING done and having it fight back.

Being tired and trying to fuss through that shit really just means it’s time to go to bed. Long week anyway, first week back. I stayed late at work to try to finish grading an assignment. I hate it when people think we don’t work a lot of hours. Dumbasses. Only a 10-hour day yesterday. No biggie. Then I came home and input as much as I could. Progress reports go out next week, so I’m trying to get caught up. Always trying to get caught up.

Tomorrow I want to sleep in…to be allowed to sleep in. I want to get my grades done and some quilting done. And then go to Artwalk for a while. Not think about school or deadlines or all the other crap. Have a nice meal. Try to watch some of The Handmaid’s Tale. Both kids are hopefully coming home for a couple of weeks this summer…maybe longer, but I don’t know. The thought of doing a whole summer by myself is not…ugh. Well. Empty nest syndrome when you live by yourself is a whole ‘nother thing to contemplate…although I guess for some people, now they are alone with someone that perhaps they do not like as much any more. But I hate it when people tell me “Oh yeah, I’ve got that empty nest syndrome thing” when they still have someone to eat dinner with every night. And someone who will help lift crap. I guess that’s all I care about (funny…and not entirely true). I’ll still have a ton of stuff to do…art and hopefully some copyediting to help pay for college.

So after all that crazy with the thread, I basically sewed around part of the bathtub and then I did the Golden Retriever…

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And then it was bedtime.

And I entered another show. And I went through my existing quilts in house and tried to decide what smaller ones would be in the show at Visions in July…the ones that would go on the back wall, where the ceilings are low. Certainly it might be an interesting conglomerate of stuff, because mine are usually bigger than that and not horizontal, but vertical. I keep debating the big ones too. The only ones I know for sure that are in the show are the three bathtubs and the Superwoman piece. Then my brain goes to mush. I think it’s because I’m having a hard time visualizing. In the two-person show last year, I just brought a shitload stuff and we figured it out as we hung it what should be in there. Not particularly efficient, but whatever…it worked for me and the curator.

And I still don’t know what I’m doing next artistically. I cleaned up the entry form I use…finally put it on Google docs instead of on my computer, so I can see it on my phone etc. I really need to migrate everything over. There’s a lot of things I need to do. I watched a TED talk about that, about the things I don’t do, and admitting that’s because they aren’t very high priority. So true. Although the 90 quilts on the girlchild’s bed may soon be an extreme priority (yikes).

Anyway. Friday. That’s a plus. Assembly at school. Then trying to get through the day even though I’m really tired. What’s new, right? Hopefully quilting tonight with no machine drama.

Oh Life, It’s Bigger*

So am I the only one cleaning my floor at 10:30 PM so I can lay a quilt out for pinbasting before I go to bed? It’s certainly possible…but I had it in my head that I would get done. So I did. It always makes sense the night before. Mornings are sometimes a bit rough. My brain is functional, because I managed making tea and giving the animals a breakfast. Doing well!

Unlike yesterday, when Calli decided to go in the pool and then roll in a bunch of dirt. I had noticed her over there before, so I yelled at her, hosed her down (which she really appreciated (I got Sad Eyes for the rest of the evening)…

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And then went over to figure out the appeal of the dirt. Ah. A carcass. Another skunk. Bloody hell. That’s 4 dead skunks. So I removed the carcass, although I did not toss it…because it’s almost just bones. I could see the spine. Science teacher brain. Huh. So then I’m making tea and Googling How to Remove Skin from a Skunk Skeleton. Like you do. No decisions yet. Bet you’re glad you don’t live with me.

I was flailing a bit, tired, but not hungry. Ugh. So I started stitching down again, and the thread decided to hate on me…

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But I eventually got it to behave and kept going…

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Who needs dinner when you can stitch down a flaming halo?

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I finished. Really. I think it was about 4 1/2 hours total. Then I ate dinner and cleaned the floor…that’s where I lay out my quilts.

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By the time I was done finding a backing and a piece of appropriately sized batting, it was dry. It was also about 11:45 PM. Aargh. Well. I pinbasted. I’m pretty sure you knew I would.

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I went to bed a little late for me (a lot late for most of the world)…

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Definitely not wide awake at the moment, but happily onto the next step of the quilt phase. Quilting tonight for sure! I should see if I have a good background thread, so I don’t have to stop and wait, right? Thinking ahead. What a concept. Then go buy binding fabric on Saturday or Sunday. It will be done next week. I still have to put the binding on the other one too.

The scariest thing right now? I don’t know what I’m doing next. Yes, there are deadlines. But none of them are imminent. OK. Well one is. Sort of. I don’t even have a drawing for that one. No idea what I’m gonna do. Good stuff. And I’ve been coming home and ignoring school…probably with progress report grades due I can’t do that every night any more. Much as I’d like to.

*REM, Losing My Religion

Wish I Knew What You Were Looking For*

I came to some weird conclusion last night that I only had an hour and a half of artmaking in me on any given school night. Now I know that’s not true…there’s been nights when I’ve come home and figured out how to do 3-4 hours of work afterwards…but the week after Spring Break is not one of them. The machine did behave better last night and I was more efficient about the spacing out time on the couch (double time that space-out!), so that was good. But I’m still stitching down. I was really hoping to be done last night. Nope. Nopester. Nopealicious. Nopearama.

Not done.

I did this first…trying to be good and stay on it. The green ferny stitches on the top right on that bush that has been there for a while.

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Then I headed in to work on stitching down the stuff on the top. I had some blobby bits on the back, but got that resolved. I think it’s because the spool was almost empty. I’m using Superior’s MonoPoly right now. There’s no way NOT to read that as the game.

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Found some semi-efficient way to go through the water…I think all that’s done, except the Golden Retriever.

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Not sure how I missed the dog.

And then doing that bloody complicated bush was the thing I did right at midnight. Well that’s it then. Because I still had the torso and head to do, and that was going to be at least another hour. The bush was bad enough, all overlappy and then the bobbin thread ran out.

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I can’t really justify staying up past 1 AM on a school night right now. So I didn’t. Tonight I finish though! And then hopefully sandwich? I’ll have to get an earlier start to pull that off. Because kneeling on a tile floor at 11 PM is my way of having fun fun fun. Seriously. It is.

Kitten too. You can see it in her face.

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Here’s where I admit that she only has half her teeth because of some weird genetic thing. So she often gets this bitchy lip thing going that is really just because she’s toothless.

Anyway. Today? Finish stitch down. I can commit to that.

*The Church, Under the Milky Way

So Motivate, Though It’s Hard to Let It Ride*

I’m taking a way-too-brief break from a day full of grading. I can’t say I’m having fun, but I’m trying to get it done. No promises honestly, because some of this is just a slog. I’m trying to sew the binding on the newest quilt while I listen to the videos…because some of them are a bit um long and maybe boring. But some are kids who never talk in class, and they’re really interesting because of just that. Certainly I’m also reflecting on how to redesign this project to get more of what I want for next year. That’s the hardest part…because I might not remember for next year, so I try to write notes on the calendar and/or revise now. Writing curriculum is a pain in the ass. I’ll be glad when I can just refine stuff and make it more awesome, rather than making it from scratch.

So this is my view today so far…

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Taking little breaks regularly (that’s what this is…a break from the grading) so I don’t go crazy. Maybe I’ll get the binding done too while I’m at it.

Last night, I was just grading until I got to 3 videos totaling 20 minutes from one kid. It was a giant NOPE moment. I gave up.

And I slept in this morning, mostly because there was barking in the night and it wasn’t mine. But it kept me up. And I was tired. You should always acknowledge tired and try to do something about it. Sigh. I try. I don’t know why the stretch from February’s 3-day weekends to Spring Break is so long and torturous, but it is. My patience worn thin. My workload has not abated all year. I’m just done. But I can’t be done. So there we are.

Two more weeks until Spring Break. Then the run through until testing…it will be rough, but it will get done.

I did more of the flowers on the left, filling in between, but running out of thread, so one flower is not done. In the middle. Oh well.

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As with everything else, I will figure it out.

My couchmates last night…the cat licking my arm and the puppy throwing himself into my lap.

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Hopefully the binding will get finished while the grading gets done. And then maybe tomorrow, I can continue tracing Wonder Under on Bathtub 4 (turns out that one is #4, even though I’ve done #2 and #5), although there’s some planning and cleanup that needs to happen first, of course. So much work. Ugh. Overwhelmed. Buried. I really want to go for a walk…but I can’t do that…maybe tomorrow.

I do have plans for tonight, although they’re not ideal. I will get out of the house with my sketchbook. So I have 5 more hours. Use them wisely. Stop wasting time. You will just pay for it later.

*The Roots, What You Want

Now That She’s Back in the Atmosphere*

Well. Tired. Yup. Need more sleep. I try. Well, not very hard. But I do try. There’s just a space between enough sleep and happy because I got to make art, and I lean towards the latter. I also know that should be “toward”, but it sounds weird. Regional vernacular. See even when I’m bloody exhausted, I can figure out grammar. And that’s important. Ha! It’s really not. But whatever.

So yesterday I had quilt class, for the first time since I think September. It’s not going away for a while…but eventually my teacher will move north to her incoming grandchild and I’ll have to find another group of like-minded women (this might be incredibly difficult) who meet locally (also difficult). Sigh. But not now. So that’s good.

I wanted to be handsewing the binding at said meeting, but that would have meant even less sleep the night before, so I just got everything ready. And it’s probably good that’s all I did, because when I started sewing last night, I realized I had been a math dumbass (not surprising after midnight…math is not my strong point and it was an improper fraction too) and had to recut the binding. But the question of what to do at the meeting was easy enough, because I do have another deadline looming (they always loom…they don’t ever just come in and sit down for coffee and biscuits, let alone come in and start doing the dishes)…so I started tracing the Wonder Under for the next quilt. I don’t usually overlap when I’m working, unless there’s a jump in line. I have a couple of quilt tops that aren’t stitched down, for example. And some others that aren’t what I would consider serious art quilts that are in stitchy limbo. But generally I get all the way through one before I start the next one. I think a one-day overlap on these two is not a huge deal though.

I got a little over an hour in and about 100 pieces traced. Hopefully more tonight, but we’ll see…because I had to grade last night and I will have to grade tonight and perhaps every night until June 15.

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It’s such a relief when I don’t have to grade. So rare too.

I started doing flowers on the left side…but I only did every other one. I’ll have to figure out how I’m going to keep handling that.

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Then into the room of fabricky goodness, where Kitten deposited ALL the fur on this quilt. Bindings on, sleeves on…

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Pinned down. Yup. Used an existing fabric, which luckily I had enough of to cut another set of binding strips that were 5/8″ wider. Sigh. I hate to waste fabric. See the cat hair though?

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I think she needs a bath. Not that a bath will solve the hair problem.

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So now it’s all ready for the handwork. Woo hoo! Finished in March. Leaving me 5 weeks for the next one, except I will be gone for one of those weeks. YIKES. OK. Deep breaths. I got this.

Now I know you just come here for puppy pix…and he’s not a puppy…just a little furry asshole.

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Who is often cute. And bitey.

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But yeah…lots of tummy rubs and scratches were needed last night…and this morning, I need to get my butt out of here. Like now. Yikes…

*Train, Drops of Jupiter

When You Gonna Wake Up and Fight*

Hey. So. When art brain is on a roll, it’s hard to shut her ass down. Last night, 12:35 AM (let’s remember I have to get up at 6:30 to get to school on time), I’m staring at the current quilt, thinking…wtf. I need to finish this. I need to finish it now. I can do that. Look at clock. Fuck. Dammit. Aargh. So yeah, I COULD finish it, but bedtime would probably have been closer to 1:30. On a non-school night, no problem. Sometimes having so many school nights just sucks. I can’t just head in an hour later and make it up in the evening. Even calling sick is so much of a pain in the ass that I rarely do it. Get a sub. Make sub plans. Figure out how to get the sub plans to school (once showed up, barely walking, still in pjs, feverish, barely post-vomitous, just to dump three pieces of paper on my counter and then drive back home to crawl back into bed). Yeah. Not easy.

Anyway. So. I did NOT finish. Because I am a responsible adult. Mostly. Really.

I did come home and walk dogs…which was a problem because Calli demanded to go. I wasn’t going to take her because she’s still limpy, but she really really wanted to go. So we limped. She’s going back to the vet Friday. If it’s arthritis, then she needs something else.

Julie! Here’s a bigger shot of that weird plant you couldn’t identify before. It’s not a yard plant…out in the middle of all the wild areas. Multiple plants…

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Spiky balls. And the flowers are red on top, but the lower ones are yellow. Freaky.

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This is Simba when he wants to go outside but doesn’t yet realize it’s raining.

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He hates water.

I have had some issues with dinner lately. I just don’t feel like eating anything. And then nothing I have sounds good. I wanted pie last night. I settled for French toast and Brussels sprouts. Why? They are both foreign? European dinner?

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It was actually pretty good. Needed sausage. But my store hasn’t had any for a long time. Things to hide in your freezer for weird-ass nights like last night.

I graded…see, I made puppy tired. Midnight’s look is amusing.

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Then I added another twig branch thing in the bottom right. Another brown thread.

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And then while watching the end of the episode of The Magicians (notice that Midnight is now sitting next to me…puppy’s foot is still over there), I worked on this, the fourth (not fourth) block of Folk Tails…couching threads forever on this one, which is nothing when you consider that each of those brown spots is going to be surrounded by tiny bullion knots. Pray for me.

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Finally into the quilting room. Kitten moves over, mostly, and I quilt the background…

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I think the quilting took about 4 1/2 hours. But it’s done…

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And then I trimmed it…

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And I found a binding and cut it and the sleeves…

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And that’s when I had that conversation with art brain about the importance of sleep. It doesn’t care. If it were summer break, I would have stayed up. Hell, if it were Friday night, I probably would have stayed up. Wednesday though? Aack. Nope. Too much to deal with at school to do that. Need some reserves to deal with the annoyances.

With that, I have a parent meeting this morning…quilt class tonight, but I won’t have time to put the binding on before I go…which does suck, but it’s not like I didn’t try. Sure I could have NOT exercised…but I needed to do that. So. Priorities I guess. Next quilt is ready to go though.

*Shinedown, Sound of Madness

It’s Not Going to Stop*

You know how when you go to a website where it already knows your user ID and password, and it has that box to click Remember Me? If it already knew who I was when I got there and I didn’t click that box, would it forget me? Do I need to remind it to Remember Me every time? I just don’t know. It’s shit like this that keeps me up at night. I want answers. (Actually, that last bit IS what keeps me up at night.)

My head’s going in circles still with the to-do list, but I think if I just bust through a bit of it every day, I’m gonna make it. As my co-teacher said, we both have significant others who will be doing music stuff on Saturday, so we can just GRADE ALL DAY. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I know, right? SIGH. Deep heavy sigh. Then again, I’m the one grading in line. The plus is my eyelids aren’t twitching yet. But the fact that I haven’t finished grading the last unit and the next unit is due Monday is causing me some stress. Yup. Next year it won’t work like this, but for now, this is how we roll.

Yesterday’s teaching was frustrating for me…mostly because even after I figured out how little they knew about graphing and Google Draw (I can deal with that), there were the attitudes, mostly the “Please give me the answer because this is hard” attitude. I’m OK with school being hard. Just try…that’s all we ask. It was interesting to see who jumped in and did and who sat there and stared at it, hoping it would go away. I can’t deny feeling that way sometimes, but you know, it doesn’t go away. Funny…reminds me of one relationship as well…where I know it’s work and not magic and the other person never figures that shit out. The worst of the kid attitudes though were the whiners, the “I don’t get it” crew. WHAT don’t you get? Did you try? Nope. Big fat nopes. Just whiny. My job can be frustrating.

So first of all, here’s the asshole mockingbird. That’s the wires across from my house. He was in the neighbor’s tree.

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Interestingly, he was totally silent last night…incoming storm (which still hasn’t appeared). So I need more rain to keep him quiet? Sigh.

Then Calli is still having foot problems…so she used to run to the mailbox with me, and now she just sits by the car…

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Waiting for me to come back…

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Semi-patiently.

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Unlike this one, who does not know the word patient in any way, shape, or form.

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Um. What did I do? Oh. So I’m going through this tube of threads in order and it was brown next. I didn’t want brown flowers, because those are dead flowers, and why would I want to stitch dead flowers. So I did twigs on the right instead. I’ll deal with filling them later. Like maybe in May.

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Then I spent over an hour grading while the girlchild FaceTimed me. I did finish all the late stuff and the one assignment I had started grading in line, so that was good. I’m getting there. Seriously. It’s just slow and painful. It helps to talk to someone while you’re doing it.

Kitten was ready for me to start quilting again…although moments later, she fell off this. Mean of me to laugh.

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I caught her. And then went back to outlining.

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The machine was being cranky…I’m not really sure why. I cleaned everything out and rethreaded the whole beast, but the tension was off. Then I noticed the feed dogs were half up and half down. I can’t figure out why that would have an effect, but it started stitching correctly when I fixed that.

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So I kept outlining. But I thought it should go faster. I always think that though.

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I have about three hours in…

This is the pile of dark blue fabrics I’m apparently collecting.

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It’s my favorite background color. So when I go buy enough for the next quilt, I often can’t choose, so I buy two. Sometimes I end up using one on the back, but sometimes I just save it for the next quilt.

Not this one, obviously. There’s a vagina in the peas.

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And a ribcage in the carrots.

My favorite part is when I finish the outlining of the face…it’s where all the character of the piece is…the duct tape section came out perfectly. I still need to deal with the blue spots on the forehead…damn batiks.

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So that was well after midnight, which explains my grogginess this morning. I did start (barely) quilting the background. It won’t take long…tonight for sure. I swear. I need a binding too…hoping there’s something here that will work. Otherwise I may have an issue. Sigh.

Here’s the old lady in one of her favorite sleeping positions…

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She’s a sweet girl. Even the other one is sweet at this hour, until I try to get him to go in his crate. Then he’s a bitey asshole.

So yeah. Day sucked until I got to tutorial and kids actually were thinking, and then coming home and hanging out and then getting shit done that I actually cared about…then it got easier. Deep breaths for today (the assignment from yesterday continues!) and remembering dogs and quilting will be at the end of it.

*Aimee Mann, Wise Up

Like a Ninja

I appear to have misplaced my brain this morning. I can’t think. I can’t even direct thinking…like “why don’t you think about art? or school?” Nope. The brain is just like NOPE. Girlchild called last night about all this stuff piling up, and I was like, yeah. There’s too many things. That’s how you get overwhelmed…too much to calendar, or you calendar it and you keep having to move it, because you’re in the middle of doing one thing when the other one (or 5) pops up in your calendar. I just moved 4 things from last night to tonight, because I didn’t have time to get them done…and then I added a new thing. I’ll get caught up (or die) eventually, but at the moment, it does seem like I’m running around with my hair on fire. I’d like that to mellow out a bit please. If you’re taking requests, that is.

So here’s how it looks in real life…I don’t think I’ve ever been to a book signing. I mean, I feel like I have (wait, I know I went to a kid one with my own children)…but Jenny Lawson of Bloggess fame (and hopefully fortune) was coming to San Diego. I’ve been reading her blog for years and own the other two books. She’s funny. And deals with depression. Two of my favorite things, right? Anyway, what the hell, I wanted to hear her talk. So I drove up there, early, hoping to get a seat. Well. That didn’t happen, but it was OK. I did however grade in line, waiting to get in. Seriously. Because I don’t wait anywhere without something to do.

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I’m behind. I told you. But this is me on Google Classroom grading warmups while standing in line. Like you do.

She was awesome, as rambly and sarcastic and savage and funny in person as she is on her blog and in her books. I’m glad I went.

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I did not even try to wait hours in line for a signature. I’m good. I didn’t have that level of hardass fan in me. I was tired and I hadn’t eaten dinner and I still had shit to do last night. Besides, I totally forgot to bring a book. I could have had her sign my sketchbook, because I did have that (of course)…and she probably would have done that, since her current book is all the crazy drawings she did to fight through depression. Gee, I don’t know anything about that shit. But I couldn’t handle the number of people in there any more, so I drove home.

And did the stuff I can handle at the end of the day. I mean, sometimes I go out at night, but it’s usually with people I know really well by now. So that helps. I don’t have much energy left at the end of the day for dealing with things I don’t know. There has to be incentive, like cool art or something. Crazy authors. That shit.

I did the French knots on the left side, which will be the centers of flowers…they rambled down into cross stitches below to use up the last bit of thread.

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And then I quilted! Now that’s what I wanted to be doing. Not that I didn’t love listening to The Bloggess talk…but if she could have just shown up in my studio and talked to me while I sewed? That would have been awesome sauce.

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Even though I was tired, I had energy for the quilting. I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s there.

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Last night, it was mostly because I wanted to see her with the outlining. This is where stuff starts to pop.

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I stopped there because it was after midnight, but I didn’t want to. I just knew I had four more days of school to get through, so I needed to. Sleep is important, folks. Don’t forget that.

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I’ll definitely finish the outlining tonight…and make a good start on the background stuff, if I don’t just outright finish her. We’ll see. I have quilt class on Thursday, so it would be nice to get a binding on her so I can sew it down. And then start the next one. Like a ninja. An art ninja. I’m kind of a grading ninja too. That explains all the black I wear. In case you were wondering. Now before I have to leave, I’m going to do one of the five things I just moved on the calendar. Like a ninja.

Motherland Cradle Me*

I did finally start stitching down last night, late of course. This week is always a hard one because of the time change. You start out OK with the early rise, even somewhat invigorated by the daylight hours after getting home, but I find by the weekend that I’m usually exhausted. Oh wait. That’s every week. Ha. Whoops. And I’m up early three days this week, even earlier…meetings for two days, and then today we have a couple of concrete companies coming to science, so we’ll be outside all day. Luckily it’s supposed to be cooler than it was a few days ago. But it will still be a long day. I might pull my mom’s “come home and fall asleep on the couch”…what she would do when it was her day to work at the hospital as a volunteer. Except I have those dogs. Hard to sleep with them around.

My biggest problem last night was forgetting Kitten had been sleeping behind and next to the sewing machine for weeks. I should have cleaned before I started stitching. Whoops.

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I didn’t stitch for long. But I got started.

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Honestly this wouldn’t take long…so maybe tonight I’ll finish. If I’m still standing. Wait. I don’t have to stand to do this. That’s a plus. Ugh. I’m already tired. And nauseated. That’s always fun.

Seriously though. If I didn’t have so much going on this week and weekend, I think I might be able to finish this quilt completely. It’s so small.

I’m still reading about Toyen…I originally thought I might be able to post two or three artists a week, but apparently the one I started with is so deep and complicated that it might take me longer than that. The internet has so many rabbit holes to fall down. Intriguing stuff.

OK, gonna go put sunscreen on and hope this day turns out to be interesting for the kids. Because if it is, it will be easy to manage. And that would be cool.

*Natalie Merchant, Motherland

I Wait for the Minutes to Burn*

Well damn. I finished quilting the background. It was like a go big or go home moment…I was determined to sew until I finished. Luckily it wasn’t TOO late…just after midnight I think. Here? Here it seemed like I had forever left to go, a vast expanse of blue to fill in. I would never finish.

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Kitten is missing some teeth. She makes funny faces because of it.

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That is her new place to sleep. Because it’s right next to mommy while she quilts. When I move back into the living room to trace Wonder Under, she might follow me in there. That room is scarier apparently. More dog access. She and Simba still aren’t friends. I tried to tell her how good he is at cleaning kitty ears, but she won’t listen.

This is when I got all the way up one side, over the top, and into the blue that was left on the other side…I could see an end here…but that’s still a lot of blue.

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It took about 2 1/2 hours yesterday, totaling up over 19 hours…but all the outlining and quilting in the background is done.

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But I think I need to quilt in the cloud. Just a little. Not sure if I have the right color, but I don’t have time to go shopping.

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Either way, I can put the binding on tonight. Finally. A relief really. It’s not done, of course…it needs ink…maybe a little embroidery. Cat whiskers? Maybe. I haven’t totaled all the hours yet. I’m afraid of that number. The next one is much smaller.

At the quilt store, someone called this quilt “cute” (she couldn’t see all of it) and then asked me how long it had taken me. I said I’d started around Christmas. Not quite true. I did the cut and paste on December 11. So more than two months. It’s big…not surprising. But I did have a focus problem on this one too.

Puppy fell asleep in/on my embroidery bag…

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I filled in green leaves to go with the pink flowers from yesterday.

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Remember to fill in all the empty spaces…

I found all the balls last night. They were all under the coffee table.

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So yeah, we played for a bit, but there’s this interesting conundrum. Do we need to check under there more often? Or do I need a new coffee table that goes all the way to the ground? Or just buy more balls? The choices…

The dogs don’t care, as long as I throw them. They really really want me to throw them.

*IAMDYNAMITE, Hi Lo