That’s the Way That It Goes*

Rain? Is that water falling from the sky? The dogs are surely confused by this. They don’t want to go out in it. Um. Guys. You’re gonna have to. I don’t have a dog bathroom in the house, and no, you can’t just use the carpet like some of your previous cat friends. I don’t understand why the Golden Retriever, who goes in the pool almost every single day, even in 40-degree temps, will not go out when the same stuff falls from above. And looks confused when I remind her it’s the same stuff.

What’s the most important thing about yesterday? Oh yeah. I finished quilting. Finally.

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I still had to grade first, so I didn’t start until after 10 PM.

This photo shows the actual finishing moment, but more importantly…

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The close up…I seriously had stopped paying attention to the thread. And I do have another partial spool, but this was close…

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And then some cloud quilting…

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People used to get pissed that I don’t quilt differently. I really just outline the shapes and fill in the background usually. The quilting just holds it together and provides an outline. I’m letting the fabric carry the image…not the quilting. There’s an argument for that.

Speaking of fabric, I needed a binding. And some other things spoke to me while I was there…

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I had a batik moment…but also, I often look for shortages…whatever I felt like I was missing in the last quilt, or colors I know are always an issue.

I also had laid this out…it’s not the next one, but a few down the road. That bird is a goner.

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But then the cat puked on part of it. Sigh. It was one of those nights.

I meant to post all of these, but honestly, I don’t have time to do all of them. So a little at a time. Pangeaseed has a program called Sea Walls that is murals highlighting issues in our oceans, mostly environmental stuff. They were in San Diego (again…they’ve been here before) a week or so ago, so we headed out to track some of them down…this one is in North Park across from a Jack in the Box (and you can find all of them on that website)…

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This is by Lauren YS.

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All the murals were painted in about a week, which is crazy, if you ask me.

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And it’s about ocean acidification, if I remember right.

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There will be more…

*Gillian Welch, The Way It Goes

Nobody Knows Me at All*

A short and quiet song to start the day…because it’s Monday and whatever the music app plays sets the tone for the day. Sometimes. This morning it’s quiet and a little folksy and guitar and pure voice. That might get me through the day.

As usual, I didn’t get everything done. I never do. It’s the wonder of being a teacher and an artist. There’s never a stopping point. There are marks I aim for, stopping points. Progress checks. I did finish the outline quilting last night, and then started the background, of which there is very little. I wanted to be done with the quilting yesterday, but school took up the entire afternoon. I have two days of training this week, so I had to prep for the sub. Ugh. Two days of sub…I’m going to come back to chaos. Not looking forward to that.

I had everything done up until the last figure’s head…the biggest head in the piece…

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And then the clouds above her head, where disasters reside.

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Quilting a rift in the ground, a bomb, that mushroom cloud, a burning church…she’s got plenty on her mind…

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Done. Upside down. Because I’m starting the background quilting right there…I think. I was debating using the same color thread as what I outlined with, which sometimes works…

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But when I tried it against the background fabric, there was a lighter color that worked better. I don’t have a full spool of it, but honestly, I don’t think I need a full spool. And I have two others that have a little bit on them. So I went for it.

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I should easily be able to finish the quilting today. Now binding is the issue. I always need supplies in the middle of the night, because that’s when I work…so I’m better off just pulling it off the machine this morning and taking it with me, so I can hit the fabric store after school. That will guarantee my ability to put the binding on whenever I finish quilting. And I have to tell you, I wasn’t expecting to be this far ahead. But I am. Good thing. There’s two for October (not as complicated as this)…and I’m so far behind in grading, I’m starting to panic. But it will be fine! Ha.

I’m a little stressed out.

From the inside of the house, this guy looked like a stick insect. But no…that looks like a praying mantis…not a pretty green one, but I don’t think we get pretty green anything here in dry desert world.

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Kitten would have been excited by that. She really likes lizards too.

This quilt is almost done. Mind-boggling. I really didn’t think I could get it done in time.

*The Weepies, Nobody Knows Me at All

Some Nights I Call It a Draw*

I’m quilting! Yes, even though the union meeting went until after 6 PM and I had to blow off book club for about the 4th month in a row (I even read the books and then don’t make it to the meeting…even more lame)…I still managed to quilt for almost three hours last night. I’m not even sure how I did that. I think I got into a zone and didn’t come out until I realized I had two meetings this morning and actually remembered to set my alarm early. A miracle, surely.

I’ve been getting a few messages from Chattanooga attendees, at the shop and the show. I appreciate all the little protests going on. There’s a few people here wearing the pins around, even at school (it’s in cursive…the kids can’t read cursive. It will be our new old-people secret language). I really can’t waste any more energy on their crazy. ALL their crazy. But you should go to the show and appreciate the SAQA quilts that are there, and check out the rest of it, and then head out to Spool to see my two and Melly Testa’s piece as well.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get the next quilt (without a penis in it) done in time. And mentally work on the next two projects at once.

Not the easiest thing to do. Kitten still resents my taking her chair. Look at her face. Won’t even meet my eyes.

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I booked all the way through the rest of the rocks and the water and up both sides through the land sections, and then did the boat…

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And I started working on stuff in the boat, but that’s when I looked at the clock.

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I only have about 3 1/2 hours in…and most of the detail is in the center section, where the three larger bodies overlap, so that’s the next step. I don’t think I’ll get much done tonight…I’m going to a drum circle thing. You know, like you do on a school night. I hate thinking of it as school nights and not being able to do stuff, but that’s the reality of it. I can’t blow off teaching because I was out late…and for me, it’s usually just staying up late making art. But it is looking more and more like I’ll get it quilted this weekend. I can’t ignore the pile of Unit 1 science packets staring me in the face, though. They need grading, because we just started Unit 2. I made a mistake on the cover, but we’re teaching kids to recover from that shit (because they’ll have to), so I rolled with it. I was drawing and thought H 2 O. So that’s what I drew. An H and 2 Os. Duh.

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I think the molecules look like spaced-out frogs.

I really should go in early, because I’m not even prepped for today. I had a meeting after school yesterday and didn’t think to do it during 8th period. Ugh. I hate that. I used to have early prep and that helped, but this midday stuff is mostly useless. Sigh.

*Fun, Some Nights

‘Cause I Like Giants*

Sometimes raising a puppy is a lot like teaching middle school. This morning’s lesson? Don’t eat caterpillars. Yeah. It could be relevant for either group, right? It’s OK. The big black fuzzy caterpillar was moved to a safer environment.

I survived Back-to-School night. A big hot cup of tea helped my voice make it through. The 10 minutes of head on desk helped me get through the rest. And then somehow I managed to come home, make dinner from scratch, and pinbaste the quilt. And I went to bed early (I was really tired…still am this morning)…I hate it when we have B2S night early in the week. It’s better on a Thursday because you only have to survive one school day afterwards. Instead of three. Ugh. Union meeting today. This week is kicking my ass. And all the social stuff I had on the calendar for this week got kicked due to the cold. Double ugh. Whatever. October will hopefully be better.

I’m trying to kick the week’s ass back.

So after dinner, I pieced a back out of a couple bits and pieces (I really don’t care what’s on the back), taped it down to the floor, and started pinning…Simba was not helpful…

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Mostly he would grab a toy and try to climb on some part of my body while I was pinning. I think eventually he figured out that I really didn’t like that. Because when he’s biting at his toy, he inevitably bites me too. Which sucks.

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So eventually he went and laid down on the floor with Calli…my view from the pinning.

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It didn’t take too long to do this, if you forget about the fact that I’d been at school for way too many hours, standing for way too long. It’s really not a huge quilt. A huge quilt would be twice as wide as this (like the last one I did).

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Anyway, it was still relatively early, although I was tired, but I wanted to at least start the quilting…

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So I did. For a while. I’m a little bit relieved to have gotten that done last night. I didn’t think I would have the energy.

Meanwhile, I’m planning part of the next project that needs to be done via email. Collaboration when you can’t meet. It’s OK. Our brains work. Eventually we’ll get into the same place with a bunch of materials, a glass of wine, and a plan. It’ll work.

Now I just have like 20 hours of quilting (or less? I’m beyond figuring that out for this quilt…)…OK, it should be less. The two giant quilts I’ve done in the last year that were twice the width of this one? They were 21 and 22 hours of quilting and there were significantly large background areas. This one has barely any background and it’s half the width. I originally thought I needed to be quilted by the 23rd, but now I’m thinking I might be able to get it done by the 18th? And then bind it and email the photographer.

Well there’s a plan. Now let’s see how I can fuck it up and still get done in time.

*The Dresden Dolls, Shores of California OK, so I’ve been picking the song that was playing when I got to the end of writing, but honestly, I don’t know what quote I’m gonna pull from this song. I love the song itself, but eek. Let’s see what plays next. Kimya Dawson, Like Giants Still a weird but lovable song.

You’re Gonna Find Yourself Somewhere, Somehow*

So it’s been a little over a month since the imaginary penis surfaced, and the blog has finally calmed down; the emails have reduced to a manageable amount. Ironically, AQS QuiltWeek Chattanooga opens tomorrow and my quilts won’t be there. They are currently hanging at Spool Quilt Store in Chattanooga, which is awesome. It did suck when I got the Friday SAQA email to see the line that said the People and Portraits quilts would be there…oh well. In response, I entered another show last night. So there.

Meanwhile, in AwesomeSauce news, I finished stitching the newest piece down last night…

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Straight up, though…I did not come home and start sewing. I was exhausted when I got home. Taught and then had a 2-hour staff meeting. All I can say about those is hey! I get a lot of grading done. Anyway, I laid around on the couch like a potato for at least an hour before I was functional. The cold is improving, which is good, but it was still a long day.

I took a break to eat dinner and came back to Kitten inhabiting my chair again. For some reason, she won’t sit in the other one any more.

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See that look? She’s not pleased with my taking the chair. She even tried to sit behind me, which really doesn’t work on this one…it slopes at the front, so I fall off if I try to share it with her.

I stitched for a while and then entered the art show and then stitched again.

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This was where I realized I only had the head in the clouds left and it was still a relatively reasonable hour (OK, it was after 11 PM).

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So 5 hours and 44 minutes in and I was done. And I found an appropriate piece of batting, so I (knock on wood) should be pinbasting tonight. I say knock on wood because it is Back-to-School night tonight. I’m at school until 6 PM and it’s high energy. Usually, on a good year, I’m dead tired afterwards. Being sick going into it is a little worrisome, but perhaps I will just sit on the couch for another hour or so when I get home before getting up to be the good little (crazy) artist.

I saw The Oatmeal’s comic yesterday about How to Be Unhappy…and it really resonated. I don’t walk around naturally happy. I am content or pleased or satisfied or sometimes ecstatic or passionate or involved or whatever. But I’m not unhappy all the time. I’m challenging shit all the time, my own, other people’s (especially people who don’t signal or toss their cigarettes on the road, let me tell you), society’s, governments’, whatever. When I was in high school, there was some movement to Question Authority. Yeah. I have that gene. I don’t know why. But I can’t just sit still. Or not think about how to change things for the better. Well, except when I’m quilting, and even then, my brain is going 700 miles per minute. It’s not HAPPY per se at that moment. It’s DOING STUFF. And there are times when I look at other people’s existences and wish I had more of that, whatever THAT is, but I think in general I’m OK with where I’m at. There are things I want to change, but that’s normal for me. And I think it’s OK. And it’s even more OK when I’m making stuff. Which is why I do it so much.

*Corinne Bailey Rae, Put Your Records On

Back Off…I’ll Take You On*

Sits down. Throws toy for dog. Takes a sip of hot tea, even though it’s been over 100 degrees here for days. Back to the school routine. Alarm at 6:30 AM. Brain already awake, worried that I’ve forgotten something. Trying to remember to eat, because my body has to get retrained on no bathroom for 4 hours, no food until noon, standing for hours, talking nonstop (at least for today). Saying the same thing 5 times to 5 different sets of faces. I know how tired I’ll be at the end of it. Voice scratchy, feet aching. And mourning the loss of more freedom. BUT. A paycheck this month. It’s been a while. That will be nice.

Girlchild Face-timed last night…not to see me and the boychild, but to see the dogs.

The quilt saga continues, in a crazy wonky way. I got an email yesterday morning that AQS had shipped both quilts to SAQA. Their reasoning? Not overtly that they were worried there would be complaints, but because everyone else in the exhibit had 2 quilts and now I only had 1. Um. That’s because of You Guyz. Surely I can send another one? Oh no. A friend said maybe they were worried my quilt would be lonely. Does she look lonely?

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Fuck no. She doesn’t. She’s got this. Strong woman. Can hang alone.

I posted about it, after I sat alone in my classroom (I had to be at school yesterday, even though I was mostly done setting up) and cried a little. Cried because my kid is gone, the other leaves today, I’m frustrated that I keep banging my head against all these solid rock establishments…the quilt world, the Quilt Police, the art world, the anti-art people, the anti-craft people. This is crazy. And it hurts.

I make most of my work completely alone, mostly in my head. I’m fairly isolated from a community of makers. I belong to one quilt guild, but they’re awfully traditional. I don’t need to take classes. I live out in the boonies. And honestly, I’m an introvert, not much of a joiner, not a socializer. I’d really rather be in my head with my drawings and the fabric.

So I appreciate all the people checking in. Last night, at some point, I stopped trying to answer all the emails. I’ll try again after school today, because some of you have written some truly nice and funny stuff. I did get one email from a woman who interviewed me for a podcast last night, and as soon as she gets it ready to go, I’ll post all that info here, so you can listen to me and figure out how to pronounce my name right. I just know y’all are going around saying it wrong. (like it matters) But it was really nice to talk to someone who had seen the quilt in Grand Rapids before it came down and wanted me to talk about what happened. Total stranger before that, but sort of cathartic to get it out.

In other awesome yesterday news, Maddie Kertay of BadAss Quilter’s Society fame and owner of SPOOL in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was willing to exhibit the two quilts during September, so I got SAQA to set up shipping directly to her. So if you are going to Chattanooga to see the AQS show (and I really don’t want people NOT to go because of this…go see and celebrate the other artists there. They deserve it.), then stop by SPOOL as well. Maddie wrote about the issue here. And my quilting friend Judy Kurpich wrote about it here. Sometimes other people’s words are better than mine.

So yeah, the world is coming out and supporting me, and that’s cool.

And I keep going. Making. Because it’s what I do to stay sane.

I said I was going to clean up the office/studio, and I did…

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I forgot to photograph the piles when I started. There were many more of them. All the fabrics from the last quilt, plus the stuff my SIL sent. They all needed to be put back in the drawers. It took about an hour to get everything straightened out, and at that point, after being on the phone for quite a while, I was tired. Honestly, too tired to start picking fabrics for the big quilt, although I did set up for that.

See, she’s ready to go.

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And then I remembered I had this easy little guy, the owl from the most recent Earth Mother…a commission. So I had just picked up that quilt from the photographer on Monday. I pulled it out and realized I had just put all those fabrics away. Dammit. Sigh. So I found them again…

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And I laid out all the pieces (there’s only 103)…

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Ironed them all down…and started cutting them out.

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So I’m almost done with that. Hoping to maybe iron it together tonight and then give the future owner some background choices. Then maybe I can get my head around the big one.

So this sugar packet has been lying in the driveway for weeks. It’s the girlchild’s. I’m leaving it there until she gets back.

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Empty nests. Suck.

At school, I was kinda done with everything, and pacing around because of the email about the quilts, and not very focused, but I was supposed to try to draw this spiral of life thing that I do in the classroom…so I started…

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This is what I usually do with the kids…to show what we learn in 7th grade versus all the other grades, and how they’re all connected.

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I brought it home to work on it, but that didn’t happen.

This did. Kitten and Simba are wary of each other.

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In the end, Kitten comes up and sleeps on the keyboard, thus altering Google Docs forever. I come in and my school calendar has 7800 equal signs in it, because she was lying on that key.

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She doesn’t care about all that.

To school. My job. Art when I get home, after I take the boychild to the airport. Then it’s just me and the menagerie and my art.

*Trapt, Headstrong

I’m Breathing in the Chemicals*

Hello morning. Earlier than usual. Have to leave for school in a few…still planning science today. And trying to figure out my classroom. Mostly I just walk in and go Oh Shit and then start moving stuff around a bit. I always feel bad because other people spend more time in their rooms rearranging stuff and doing new things they found on Pinterest, and I’m trying to go as fast as possible, so I can get back to my sewing. Oh well.

So in awesome sauce news, I’m done quilting. Twenty-two hours plus of quilting, in case you were wondering. In fact, Saturday evening, I had a time I had to be out of the house, and this is how much was left…

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It took me a whole 3.2 minutes to finish quilting that on Sunday. But yeah.

Here was my trusty companion, randomly typing shit with her head and hitting Like and Dislike indiscriminately on my Pandora station.

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I spent the evening watching a band and taking on my persona of Draws in Bars.

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It either freaks out or endears me to waitresses. This one was so serious (the waitress, not the drawing), but wanted to have a discussion about art and her uncle and then took good care of me all night. So it works! I did another drawing…forgot to photograph it. It wasn’t that good…and because people showed up, I didn’t finish this one until later…

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And maybe it’s not finished. I like it though.

Sunday was nice…although knowing there is only one Sunday left of “vacation” (in quotes because I am at school at least twice this week, despite not officially being back yet), and the girlchild will be gone by then. Some animals know how to Sunday though, even if I don’t.

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So I finished quilting and trimmed the quilt…huge motherfucker.

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She quilted easily, nice and flat for once. I’ve been fighting some of the last big ones in the flatness category.

Went and bought binding…ONLY binding. Nothing else. It helped that I had the girlchild with me and some time constraints. Got the binding stitched down last night…

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And then settled down on the couch for the hand sewing. I tell you, I’ve been looking forward to this part. Just relaxing and stitching and watching some TV for a while. Kitten follows me wherever I go.

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Kitten is lying on the next quilt (well, it’s a numbered drawing anyway).

There’s the back and the sleeves. In over an hour of hand-stitching, though, I didn’t even make it all the way down one long side.

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It was already late and I knew I had to be up early. So there will be more tonight. I should email the photographer…finally. A finish. No panicking on the other stuff that needs doing. Really. Seriously. I should be panicking. About all of it. Quilts, school, losing the kids to college again, money, dogs. Aack. There’s so much I never ever get done.

But I guess you can see my priorities. Spending time with people when I feel like it (probably should do more of that), lots of art and animals and even hiking when I can. It’s not a bad life…just a bit too stressful and work-oriented some days. I’ve held the goal of Art Everyday for the last couple of years now and I don’t suspect I’ll be letting that go anytime soon. It’s where my head needs to be.

Unfortunately, my body needs to hightail it to school now. Keeping life balance in mind…biggest thing in most teachers’ minds right now.

*Imagine Dragons, Radioactive

Anywhere We Go…*

Holy moly, waste of a morning just trying to get technology to work right. Chrome just doesn’t like me unless I’m incognito. So there we are. Seriously, I meant to be sewing right now. I quilted for about 6 hours yesterday and got all the outlining done and started on the background quilting. By the end, the machine was making some noises, but I think it’s the foot…I’m not sure. I’m hoping I can finish today and go buy the binding and maybe even get it sewn on.

I also bent the hell out of a needle…usually they break!

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So I need to check my needle stash before I start sewing again.

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I wasn’t sure I’d get the outlining done even, it was taking so long. Fourteen hours plus of just outlining.

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One eye done, one eye not.

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Her whole face, although I realized afterward that I never did the starfish, so I’ll have to go back and do that.

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The kids and I stayed up way too late, me quilting, the others chatting and searching up weird makeup videos and who knows what else. Almost every animal was in here with us. So we’re all slow-moving this morning. Ugh.

I bought this the other day…couldn’t resist.

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Because I need another sketchbook? Nah. But all those goofy creatures. I will never run out of sketchbooks.

OK. Quilt my ass off today. Seriously.

*IAMDYNAMITE, Hey Girl

I Don’t Get What They Do It For…

I think I’m officially in panic mode…and it’s because we were proactive Wednesday and started planning the first science unit of the school year. But then you start thinking about what you need to do, what needs to be set up, what changes you want to make from last year. And you start to panic. You think about how many hours a day you will have to be grading and planning, on top of the hours at school, plus meetings etc. And how are you going to get everything else done? And new schedules and students and realizing you’re getting ALL the little brothers and sisters of the kids you happily said goodbye to in previous years. And then yesterday (I didn’t even have time to write yesterday), you have a nice luncheon with teacher friends, and it gets worse. I know I do this every year. I freak out about a week or two before school starts, because I realize how little I got done and how much is left to do, and I’m losing days left and right to school crap. Plus the kids will be leaving for college at about the same time, and that sucks too.

And the art stuff has been difficult to get done this summer, between working another job and having machine issues. And today I found out I have another project that has to get slotted in there. I mean, it’s a good thing, it’s something I wanted to do, but I’m hyperventilating.

Stop. Deep breaths. Manage.

Thankfully, all the construction noise that surrounds me at the moment didn’t start up until 9 AM this morning. They actually let me sleep a little. It’s been a sleepless summer.

Yeah. Gotta get my head out of this crazy.

So Wednesday, we hiked, and then I quilted a little bit Wednesday and Thursday nights…I’m up to 10 hours in. And I’m hoping to get it done sometime tomorrow.

I originally hoped to be done today, but it’s already 10 AM and I have errands, plus gaming tonight, so that ain’t happening. But hopefully I can get significantly into the background today.

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There’s a lot of detail on this thing, and some fussy little stuff for quilting, like those passion flowers, but they look awesome now that they’re done.

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I got the whole lower torso done Wednesday night…

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And even moved on to the heart…

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Then Thursday night, I did the right breast, covered with cat…

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Strategically placed flower for nipple…and then did the tiger (hid the nipple in the fur pattern) and the cactus and the seaweed to finish up the left breast and arm, except for the octopus. It was midnight. I was tired.

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So today, I’m going to do the head and the right arm, plus the very top of the torso. And then start the hours of background. This one has a lot of it.

So I had been wanting to do either a Cuyamaca or Lagunas hike all summer, but it takes a while to get out there, plus weather, so this last Wednesday was the first one I felt organized enough to pull it off. I have to make dinner ahead of time and figure out the leaving time based on sunset and hike times, etc. I wanted to repeat a hike I did in January 2015, but that was full snow. I read the organizer’s description, but there was one section I couldn’t figure out, so I emailed him and he sent the GPS map, which actually turned out to be way more useful than all the Afoot and Afield pages I photographed. In the end, it was a well-marked trail and we only had one minor crisis of direction. It lasted about 2 minutes.

It was a gorgeous day for it…nice and cool for most of it. They threatened thunderstorms in the early afternoon, and the clouds definitely looked like they could pull that off, but we didn’t start hiking until 5 PM.

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I love the mountain vistas, the pines, even the dead grass.

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And the views. Smartass.

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There was some minor bouldering, just because.

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I like hiking with my kids. It’s gonna suck when they’re gone. We did see a deer, but I couldn’t get a photo of it in time. We thought we’d see more when we got to the meadows, but the cows were out and so were the mountain bikers, so just the one. And girlchild didn’t see it, so she was pissed.

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There’s something about climbing up…

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Lots of bugs and grasses on the back end of the trail, the Sunset Trail portion.

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And then we came out into the cows…and the Water of the Woods, which still has water. Last time I saw it, it was mostly frozen over.

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The meadows are gorgeous, even without water in the lakes.

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We came back via the Big Laguna Trail…there weren’t any other hikers that we saw…just one pair of bikers on this end, and then a group of about 15 of them near the end, and we could outwalk them on the slopes.

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Big beautiful pines that survived the fires. You can see the burn marks on the trunks.

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The sun was definitely on its way down. We had a couple of really slow miles due to…um…chaos. Let’s just call it that. But we sped up on these last miles (and we had headlamps, worst case).

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We figure some virus or something causes these giant ball-shaped things on the old oaks…

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And this has to be woodpeckers…or something. Such perfectly placed holes, all the way up and down the trunk.

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This low-lying plant (not the grasses) had all these weird giant pods all over it.

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We saw morteros galore in this rock…would have been a nice place to hang out in the summer. Much cooler than East County is at the moment.

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I think this was officially sunset. We did think we should have gone BACK the Sunset Trail, so we could have seen the actual sunset, but this worked…

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These tiny flowers were everywhere…

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This was watching sunset hit the trees to the east…

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And the last bit of the path, as dusk fell around us.

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We drove off in the dark, 8 miles, a good hike…probably the last long one before they leave. We’ll see.

And yesterday, while talking to the garden guy who came out to help me figure out my yard, we watched the raccoon who has been hanging out in our yard walk right across in broad daylight and climb the tree…about 30 feet up. He’s sleeping in a fork of the tree up there…

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If you can’t figure it out, the left circle is one of his feet and the right circle is his head.

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I didn’t have my phone when he walked across the yard, unfortunately.

So I’m quilting today. Lots of hours. Need to get done. Construction noise has started up again. So distracting. Oh well. Turn up the noise.

*Amanda Palmer, The Killing Type

Oh Life, It’s Bigger*

I got some significant quilting in last night…was finally able to get my head down and into it without breaking the thread every 20 minutes etc. What a relief. What’s ironic is that I don’t have much quilting time in the next two days…OK, not ironic. Just plain frustrating. But it’s all stuff I need to do in one way or another, so I have to just take a deep breath and realize I’ll be quilting all weekend to get done. Or something.

I can only sit like that for so long…

So I did some tulips and grapes and a giraffe and some trees and a hand…

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And a crane that took a really long time and was very hard to see in the dark (sheesh. I need better light in here.).

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Oh yeah, and a gecko. I started on the vines around him, but didn’t finish.

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Look at his suction cup toes! OK. That’s crazy.

There’s the whole crane…

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It was not easy to stitch without good lighting. I have a light on my old machine…I’ll need to get one for this one, I think. Yeah, I think this machine will do the job.

I did a flower as well. Just a little one.

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I still need to do a good chunk of the stuff in the lower torso. It’s all lots of tiny details, but they all really pop once the stitching is done. Aargh. I really want to just stay home and do this. It’s the hardest part about going back to school, because I often come home too tired to really manhandle a quilt under the machine. Or to do anything, honestly. The first two weeks are usually pretty difficult. Plus I was missing my kids already last night. Got all sad in the head.

I played with puppy quite a bit last night to tire him out, and finally put him on the chair (Kitten allowed it) so he would stop trying to rip up the linoleum floor in here. Yes. It’s coming up. I know. But you don’t have to HELP it. He’s like offended by the floor. Honestly it makes more sense to be offended by the wallpaper. Or the general mess in here.

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I have not made a significant dent in any of the messes in the house. Well, except the entryway. And stuff is already piling up in there (OK, most of it is going to school today).

I spent most of the day with girlchild. I had a Groupon at our local ceramic-painting place. She made me an awesome mug last year (World’s Okayest Mom) and I broke it. Funny…I do break mugs all the time (I’m a klutz), but usually after years of using them. I think this one lasted a few months. So I painted a mug for me and she painted a mug for me.

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