We’ve No Time for Later*

OK a bunch of stuff I was supposed to do yesterday didn’t happen, but it’ll happen today, and I went grocery shopping at 8 PM to avoid the crowds, so that was a thing, but I’ll have to go out today to get the 5 weird ingredients the girlchild wants, well, one was buttermilk but that was gone at my local shitty store, so I’ll have to figure that out. It means venturing out into the land of crazy holiday drivers and irritating people and oh man, I’d rather hermit here in the house all day. But no. I will be a good girl (ha!) and shower and get out of my pajamas and do all the things. Including the emails I need to send and the shopping and cooking and whatever other stuff. Oh yeah, finish cleaning the girlchild’s room. I had help yesterday to put the quilts away, but two hours later, I realized I put one away that needs to come back out for a show. Oh well. I’ll have help with that too. It’s nice to have help. Even if they’re all judgy about the boxes I need to deal with that are still in the girlchild’s room. Fabricky stuff with which I know not what to do. It’s unlikely I will solve THAT problem today. Odds are I will just shove the boxes into my room and ignore them for a while longer. No it is NOT OK to just throw that stuff out. That pink fabric with the skulls on it could be useful, crucial even, in a future quilt. You just never know.

Today I need to find fennel and pepitas and brown mustard seeds. Could be a challenge. Remind me next year to tell the girlchild she has to come home in time to do the shopping, because it sucks.

So yesterday morning, I faced the vast expanse of just dark blue that needed quilting. I thought it would be pretty quick because I got about halfway (what I thought was halfway) in an hour, but then I didn’t realize I had a big space on the other side that I had left unquilted. So it was more like 2 1/2 hours of the boychild standing over me, because I told him he had to go to the quilt store with me, because he’s supposed to buy me a gift for another family thing, and he couldn’t decide, so I suggested fabric. I actually really like it when other people pick fabric for me, because they pick stuff I might never buy. And then I have it and use it.

Sometimes life (and sentences) are too complicated. This is dog on the outside, cat on the inside.

I finished the quilting in just over 16 hours, so 4 fewer hours than I had predicted. I don’t remember what I predicted for the binding…

I did two nights’ worth on here, all on the left side, filling stuff in still. Looking for something finished-ish by the 31st. Such rules.

Then I trimmed this beast…she ended up being about 64″w x 74″h.

Easy to trim. She needs ink too though. Gotta remember that. Here’s the binding fabric and the quilt, all on top of the cat’s chair.

She does not care. Until I move the chair.

Binding on…lots of maneuvering of big quilt under machine. It took about 3 hours to trim, sew binding and sleeves on, and pin them down for the hand-sewing part. I finished after midnight…

That red and green fabric fucking vibrates man. Hurts to sew on it.

Binding pinned…

Calli lying on it while I’m trying to pin it totally doesn’t help.

Right now, I’m having a fight with the cat over the chair (she likes this one better…I literally walked away to let the dogs in, just over a minute, and she had hijacked it). I need to eat and shower and do the have-to’s on the list so I can sit on the couch and binge watch something while sewing the 400 linear inches of binding and sleeves down by hand. Before going to get the girlchild, who is finally coming home, and gearing up for two full days of holiday interactions that might just kill this hermity introvert, even if most of them are actually blood relatives. Or maybe because they are blood relatives. At least there will be good food and wine and perhaps some stitching time (easier to do with my own family than with others’ fams). I need to do some drawing too, but think I will let my head just sit with some calm for a while. I need to do that. Notice I didn’t put grading in there. I might grade the one easy assignment. Maybe. Or wait. I’m definitely going to read more of my book…

*Frou Frou, Let Go

I Hide in My Music, Forget the Day*

I only quilted 3 1/2 hours yesterday. I got tired. I got into the big blue expanse of the top of the quilt and quit. I need to finish it today and go buy the binding. Then hopefully trim it and sew the binding on…although I might not get through all of that tonight. Hopeful though. I get sidetracked. What threw me off yesterday? Not sure. I did some computer stuff in the morning, then finished the last of the Christmas stuff, hopefully on that too, then came back and printed cards (which no way in hell are getting out of here before Christmas…just so you realize)…

I was a printmaker before I ever was a quilter. I took a “class” Thanksgiving week (I say class because I already know how to do this, but this was an impetus to do it), carved this linoleum block, and printed some then…and more yesterday. Usually I do a letter as well, but I haven’t been able to deal with that…think I’m going to do something online instead, like a slide show or something.

But one kid still isn’t home. I’m trying to coordinate grocery lists via text between here and Dallas (don’t even ask), because I’m going to have to shop without her (that was bad planning) tomorrow. So it’s a little chaotic. I only put up a few ornaments and decorations, and I’ll need to clean up a little…well, unless I think about the girlchild’s bedroom. I might panic if I think about that.

So I quilted eventually last night…then ate some food…read my book (it’s a good one)…

Yeah, that fabric…it’s good that I used it up here…yes, it’s Christmas fabric. Why do you ask?

I’m trying to quilt big, because this thing is large. I did get all the way around it, except for, like I said, that vast blue expanse in the top section, above the banner. That’s what’s left. It really won’t take me long. I just couldn’t deal with it last night.

Last night, we stayed up (too) late and partially planned our Spring Break trip. Made one reservation, because I panicked. It’s funny, because so many people are talking about bullet journals at the moment. I use something like this plus an online system and a calendar on the fridge (I need visuals!). I even have a drawn plan of my neighbor’s houses and their names in one notebook, because I’m always forgetting that.

Sure, it would be better if I had an index so I could find shit, but I have done that before, numbering pages on sketchbooks and making an Excel spreadsheet with columns for whether they ever become quilts or not (most don’t). And when…interesting to see drawings come back 6 years later and become something new. But I’m usually not that organized, which is problematic with the two journals I’m currently running. I can never remember what’s in what. One started out for art and is more than half full. I was carrying one around for school, but I think art wormed its way into that one too. Yeah. It did. And there’s only a little school stuff in there. We live on post-it notes at school…we were on real ones (I still use those because I can put them ON my notebook or computer and SEE them), but then we migrated to Google Keep…which is helping. I think. Because we can share notes. It’s not easy to migrate stuff between post-its though…at least, I haven’t found an easy way to do that yet. Plain old cut and paste is how I’m doing it. I wish you could click on it and move it to another note. That would be cool.

So yeah, I’m still pretty old school on art stuff though. I have a white board thing on my door with upcoming deadlines, although I’m about to erase all of them. I have notebooks. I have Google docs with deadlines and entries. The show that was supposed to notify yesterday pulled that date from their online info…sigh. I guess I’m putting everything away in the girlchild’s room anyway. I would have liked to have know beforehand if I needed to pull one out for shipping. So a busy day…but in a good way, I think. I’m not a fan of cleaning, but finishing the quilting will be good. Satisfying. Always.

*Boston, More Than a Feeling

The More I See the Less I Know*

Over 6 hours of quilting yesterday…apparently staying in one’s pajamas all day is good for getting work done. I even graded yet another assignment. Piece o’ cake!

Well, it wasn’t a piece o’ cake when I started yesterday. I had a thread breakage, thought I cleaned it all up, rethreaded, and then got these nests over and over again. There was a lot of yelling and usage of inappropriate words. Loudly. Unfortunately, that never really solves a thread nest issue…

The newer machines are harder to get at the innards, but my machine guy showed me one access point. Ah HA! There’s the bitch that’s fucking me over.

No real problems after that? Well. Of course. I have to say, I suck at just sitting and quilting. My brain goes kablooey. So I had to get up and do other stuff. Unlike this cat, who slept right there ALL DAY LONG.

Although he did wake up long enough to clean his head.

This is about a third of the way through all the outline quilting…

Ah Midnight. Miss you baby.

Finally up into the face. I had this goal yesterday to finish all the outline quilting.

I didn’t quite get there. Almost…the little heads are freakin’ awesome with the outlining done…

NOW you know why I do teeth.

After dinner, I did more fill-in on this…I think it was on the left side…

I also stitched down some rhinos…I had the last episode of The Crown to watch and I can’t do that while quilting. I also graded another assignment in there.

These are the July blocks…trying to get all the wool bits sewn down over break so I don’t have to worry about those any more.

Then back to quilting the miasma of birth control options…the screwdriver is not one of those, by the way…to be clear.

There’s all the heads!

They look awesome. I have one arm left to do, plus the moon and stars and an asteroid. Then background quilting. That’s today. I’m at 9 1/2 hours in the quilting. Then tomorrow, off to the quilt store for binding. No way do I have yardage for that at the moment. The back was a glorious mishmash and I’m OK with that…not so much on the binding.

So yeah, I gotta leave the house today. More blood tests, who knows what else? Calli isn’t leaving…

Silly old lady.

Seriously, I think I am more focused when I have pajamas on. You should try it.

*Red Hot Chili Peppers, Snow (Hey Oh)

I Just Keep Losing My Beat*

I think I’m voting today “the day I stay home and don’t go anywhere, not even to take the dogs out.” I wanna lounge around in pajamas and do nothing but read all day. Ha! Because that’s what some vacations should look like, but I’m not in that mode…quilt needs to get done and so do about 12 thousand other things. No reading for you! I tried reading during lunch yesterday, but the girlchild called…so no reading. Have to schedule that stuff apparently.

I graded another assignment last night. Two down, four to go. One of them is big, though. It will take a significant chunk of time. I’m not ready for that yet. (I may never be ready for that. Who am I kidding?)

Yesterday I went back to look at my developing Patreon site. I honestly don’t know if anyone would back me, but I came up with 4 levels of rewards and did some writing on it. It would be more work for me…but potentially could be a good thing? Or not. Waffling like crazy on the time/work commitment. Guess it’s back to the thinking board before I decide.

What I really did yesterday, besides get blood sucked out of me (get to go back, thanks to some weird results…woo hoo!), was work on the quilt…batting and backing on the floor…can’t go much bigger than this.

Calli gets upset that she’s not allowed to be in the entryway with me…

In fact, all the animals make an attempt to be in there ON things. The quilt top folded in half on top of the batting…

And nice and flat…boychild had to maneuver around this to get out the front door. It’s why we have more than one door! Not really. It just happened that way…

And yes, I have moved the bench and the table to get me more room to lay out quilts before…luckily, I didn’t have to do that yesterday. It only took about 45 minutes to lay it all out and pinbaste it.

Not the hour and a half I thought it would take the night before. But I was tired. And worried about getting enough sleep. I don’t know why…I’m tired again this morning and definitely didn’t get enough sleep.

Kitten in the sun…

Lots of weird animal things going on in the house this week. Boychild just put Simba on the chair, and then Simba thinks he’s not allowed to get down. Or he’s scared to get down. It’s hard to say.

Someone should clean the counter off. Yeah. Me. OK. Everything is me sometimes. Although boychild has demolished the rotting treehouse quite efficiently. Should send him out back with a chainsaw.

So I started quilting in the afternoon…

The machine is mostly behaving…some thread issues as I got to the end of a spool.

And somewhere in here we walked the dogs and I made dinner. Then I filled in more spaces on this…

And finished stitching down all the wool bits (FINALLY) on the June blocks. That took a long time. Not sure why. I did all the tree spots while watching Westworld…which I’ve decided is all about sex and killing…those are the only human purposes I’m getting out of it. Not sure if I like it or not. Guess that might be the point.

Then back to quilting. I’ve done both sides of the landscape, both arms up to the shoulders, and the baby.

That was almost 4 hours yesterday. I’m aiming for 5 hours today. Or more. We’ll see. I don’t really wanna deal with anything else on the to-do list. I took three quilts down from a show yesterday. I need to clean up the girlchild’s room before she gets home Saturday night (although she won’t sleep here until Sunday)…and all the quilts are in there, but I’m waiting on one notification tomorrow, so I made the decision not to clean the quilts up until I heard, so I wouldn’t have to put them away and then pull them back out (wishful thinking?). I’m ignoring the three or four boxes in there that also need to be dealt with.

I’m feeling annoyed by people, so that’s why I wanna hermit. Plus the redo on the blood tests is freaking me out. And the holidays are stressful. I probably need to go on more walks or draw some or just finish this damn quilt so it can get photographed on time. Right? Yeah. Well get on with it then.

*Queen, Somebody to Love

The Long Turtle in Earth’s Core

I am extremely confuzzled at the moment. Brain is full of fuzz and I’m trying to get my focus on for school. Boychild is home with no plane drama. Well, he’ll argue that it was delayed, but I’m like, you got OUT. You got here ON TIME. That never happens.

I got about an hour and a half into the stitch down at quilt class last night…at my quilt teacher’s house (you can barely see her on the left). It’s an absolute crap picture, much like my brain function.

That’s after reading a lot of warmups that went something like this.

Oh my, a long turtle. I have no clue what he’s talking about. Language learners can be amusing, even when they don’t mean to be. Add in the age (12), and there’s no end to the giggle factor. Or maybe I’m just bordering on hysteria. It’s highly possible. But the more I get graded today, the less I have to do over break. So I’m sticking with it.

May the end of the day come early…may the jerks stay home and be jerks to their parents instead of me. May there be plenty of cookies and wassail (the non-alcoholic kind, at least until I get home) to get the teachers through the day. May the stars align and everyone turn their shit in with the least amount of drama. May my room get clean so I don’t have to come back over the weekend. May I remember to get all the perishables out of the fridge so we don’t come back to a mold collection after break. May I remember to water the plants so they don’t die over break.

I think that’ll do.

First-World Problems of the Introverted

Sunday afternoon after 9 days off of school…well, 9 days of not going to school. I’m so impressed by my teacher friends who managed to do no school-related stuff for the whole break. I’ve done that before. I did not do that this week, but I’m feeling better because of it. I’m mostly caught up. I have two assignments to grade and they’re both small. That’s a plus.

This is what I got done (minus the online stuff) over break…just for school…

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But my brain is looking into the big future…I have stitching friends and quilting friends all over the world, which is cool. I only have a few here in San Diego who I hang out with regularly though. I’ve been doing that since soon after I gave birth to the boychild (who is almost 22)…in fact, some of the friends from way back then are still my friends. My quilt teacher…I took my first class from her when I was 23, and soon after, I signed up for her applique club, which met once a month for a million years. But she’s close to teacher retirement, and will probably move to her daughter (and grandbaby), which I totally understand.

But it means I need to start thinking about what quilt people I might hang with…I don’t fit in most places, and I totally appreciate that I’ve always felt like I fit into my teacher’s space (although I think she still owes me one applique quilt…did she ever actually draw the last one? I don’t remember.). For stitching, I think those two friends will be around for a while, so I’m good. Our group is small but persistent. I don’t think they’re going anywhere anytime soon.

Women, especially, I think need these creative groups where we can stitch or sew or draw or whatever with a group of others…especially if you generally hermit, like I do. I didn’t leave the house at least 3 days last week until I was dragged out to dinner or a hike or whatever. Which is fine…unless that’s my entire existence. I go to work and get some interactions, but I really do need people with thread and fabric around me. Creative folk. I can’t even really explain it. It could be printmaking, it could be painting (I suck at painting, but maybe I’ll be joining a watercolor painting class en plein air just to get out with other humans at some point). But it needs to be something. I used to do a life drawing class or two…but you have to go regularly to get to know people, especially if you’re an antisocial beast like me. Sigh.

OK. It’s in my head. Susan, you can’t leave until I find another accepting quilt group that meets once a month. OK?

I know…first-world problems of the introverted.

I’m a God-Dang Rolling Stone*

Monday mornings. You know already what most of the day looks like. It’s gonna be hot. There’s a cool thing you’re doing in science, but then kids have to turn a major assignment in, and that’s always a hassle. “Did you mean TODAY? I’m not ready.” So where I worked over the weekend to make sure stuff was graded and done for YOU, you chose to do nothing, the same kids I caught trying to do their homework in class on Friday. We don’t work at home? I do. Maybe that’s a mistake (I don’t think it is), but certainly it’s something you should know how to do. Being successful in college doesn’t mean getting it all done in class…the same with many jobs. You make time for fun stuff too, true. I do that. Not as well as some of my students, ironically. Ending the day with my favorite past time…a staff meeting. Oh yeah baby.

So in good news, I finished the quilt. My photographer’s not answering email (minor issue)…but it’s ready for photography. It took almost 100 hours. Seriously, like 7 minutes short of 100 hours. I spent a good chunk of time on Saturday and Sunday sewing down binding and sleeves. Big is not fast in this instance…

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Saturday night was out and about…this had no name…but I loved it.

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Plus this sign…

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And these lights…

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Home relatively early, so I did three nights of catchup on this…

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Finishing the eyeball. Still not as free and loose as I’d like, but maybe that’s just me.

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Last night, I inked the quilt…just some additional shading and detail. Sometimes I feel like they need it…sometimes they don’t.

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And then I piled it up on the ironing board, ready for ironing and dehairing for the photographer.

It’s hard when you finish one (late, like 9:30 at night) and you have the next one ready, but you’re not ready to start it…mentally. I often don’t have a lot of down time between pieces, and the next one is a drawing that’s enlarged and ready for all the rest of it. But I needed some space from this last one. I graded for a while…was really efficient for once. But I’d been on Facebook and Instagram, and the #MeToo stuff was getting to me. For one thing, I don’t like following a lot of trendy/fad stuff online. But this was legit, in that I think most men don’t have a clue that every woman or female-identifying person around them has dealt with this…and not just once…many, many times, some violently, some so vague that you didn’t know it happened until you were processing the day in your head. Some annoying, some creepy, some downright scary. It’s harder having a daughter, because you know she’ll deal with it too, and you’re fairly sure you didn’t prepare her for it, especially because she comes home and tells you about some incident where her friend behaved the way you would have, shut it down, but your own kids thought you were just paranoid, when in reality, you’d just tried to impart years of bad experiences, and obviously didn’t say it right. Or because of that mom/daughter thing, she doesn’t listen. She has to make her own experiences, and you hope that it’s more of the mild instances and not the scary ones. The irritating, annoying, is that all you think I’m here for? instances. Instead of the ones where you’ve got your keys in between your fingers and your heart is racing and you’re evaluating all the ways out and how fast you can run. Or even worse, it’s your boss and the way out means losing your job and benefits and you can’t really afford to do that.

So I drew. It’s not an awesome drawing. It’s just a drawing. I’m a visual person. So there it is.

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And I’m lucky to have one of those men in my life who’s sitting there shocked at all the women in his FB feed who are typing out that hashtag, and who comes in and hugs me, says he’s sorry, sorry for all those assholes who don’t get it, who think they’re entitled, who may not even realize what they’re doing, because they don’t think before they act, or worse, those who have thought about it and can’t see why not. Does this hashtag rebellion reduce the impact of what Harvey Weinstein did? Fuck no…because he’s in a position of power, but even those who aren’t think this behavior is OK, and we need all those men who do NOT think it’s OK to yell about it too…because we women already know it’s all too easy to tune our voices out.

On that cheery note, happy Monday. May y’all survive the start of the work week, and maybe the catcalls and abuse will abate slightly today because of everyone putting it out there.

*The Roots, The Seed (2.0)

I Never Felt So Much Alike*

Hello morning. You are way too dark and you came too early. Ha. Ha ha. Oh dear, my head is not pleased with the lack of sleep. It will have to deal…because…I finished quilting! It was (apparently) loud and fast, but a little over 2 hours later, I was done with the background and all the weird little spaces and the one bit of outlining I missed and the green of the chalkboard. It took a little over 13 hours to quilt the whole thing…less than I thought, but I think that’s because I really did try to reduce the detail in this one to get it done in time.

I was successful. Good to know.

Working on the eyeball still. I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I finish the sclera. Maybe just sew flowers all around it.

We’ll see. Ha. Ha ha. Eyeball. Get it? See? Yeah. Brain. Thanks. My early morning brain is a punny teenager.

Even Midnight doesn’t think it’s funny. Sometimes she gives me these looks while I’m quilting and I think I’ve greatly offended her. This is one of those looks.

Really it was just a lot of beige on beige.

I think that’s the first beige quilt I’ve ever done.

I had a few of these little filler spaces to go back and quilt. The last fiddly bits are always the biggest pain in the ass.

The back. The light color is the chalkboard, which I didn’t quilt tightly at all. It needed some quilting, but not a lot. The crazy stuff on the right is quilting around the atom model.

I laid it out for binding measurements and to do a rough check that I hadn’t missed some totally obvious thing I was supposed to quilt.

The sucker is big…currently about 70×65″…but it will trim down a bit.

I’m not uber-fussy about the quilting. Some people are into very tight quilting, but it’s usually part of their finished image, how they want it to look. I want the fabric to be the image…the quilting works as a drawing line with the outlining, and then to make the background recede…and to hold the damn thing together…but I’m not a fancy quilter. I don’t think my quilts need it.

There’s the atom from the front. I was lucky and had a green thread that worked well with both greens of the chalkboard.

Today I buy binding fabric and get the binding sewn on so I can do the handwork. That’s going to take about a million years and I have so much grading to do still. Ugh. Oh well. I will be getting it done this weekend. I should email the photographer, right? And then start trying to mentally process the next big one…the due date is a while out, but it’s a big one, so I need to be realistic. Whatever that means. Because I’m a little crazy when it comes to making these sometimes. I do love making them though…even when it hurts to look at them. That’s probably a good thing.

*The Clash, London Calling

I’ll Just Be Myself*

Apparently at some point during the quilting, it gets faster and more mindless and I guess even easier because you’re not tracing around things…you’re just filling in space. I don’t really like quilting the backgrounds. It’s boring. It goes on forever. But for some reason, last night it didn’t. It was fast and easy. It was hard to make myself stop and go to bed (although I did). I kept thinking I could go until I finished (that would have been a mistake). Sometimes being an adult with a grownup job just sucks. I’m jealous of friends who can do art all the time (although they don’t…they do other stuff…like sleep and read and raise kids). Kidding. I did quilt for 3 hours last night though.

I did this first though…still working on that crazy eyeball.

Speaking of crazy…the dinner break required much furry beast interaction…

And this happened.

That’s some serious ear cleaning. At least he knows his job. And she doesn’t mind. He tried the other cat too, but he wasn’t having it.

The days I do an hour of tutoring after school, I really don’t feel like coming home and working. So I don’t. Usually. I went straight to quilting after dinner. I finished the little bit of outlining I had left…

And then started quilting the space around everything.

I remembered to keep it big and loose instead of tight and time-consuming.

That was a good plan, because I made it more than halfway around…

I have about a quarter of the bottom, the left side, and a bit on the top, plus a few inner spaces between arms and armpits. Then trimming it and binding it (that will take a while). But it means I can shop for binding tomorrow. That’s good. That’s more on schedule. Deep breaths…this asshole is almost done. It’s not that I don’t like the quilt…I do (and I really wasn’t sure in the beginning)…I’m just tired of the subject. It hurts to quilt this one. I have a hard time even looking at it.

So. Yeah. There’s that. But now I have to get to school early for a parent meeting. Hopefully one that will go somewhere. Ha.

*The Puppini Sisters, Jilted

Day after Day I Get Angry and I Will Say*

Hey, so sometimes a thing pops up and you think, hey! That’s cool. That’s really cool. Social Justice Sewing Academy is one of those things. When I was on the web last year, around the time our newest president reared his ugly head, I found the Instagram of a woman, Sara Trail, who was making banners for protests. She had posted patterns online (I think I wrote about her back then). Turns out she works with a group of kids, the Social Justice Sewing Academy, helping them express their ideas…wait, not just IDEAS, but ACTIVIST IDEAS…in fabric. And sewing. I think this is awesome, and they want to expand the program, so there’s a Kickstarter here. Watch the video, read the stuff…just looking at the art they make (their Instagram is @sjsacademy) makes you wanna back them. These kids deserve all the help they can get; I would love to see a program like that down here. Yes, I backed it. You should back it too…not only because it’s fabric, or even because it’s getting the younger generation into fabric, but because these kids have a lot of great political stuff to say and we should expand that to more voices, diverse voices. We’re gonna need some young, strong, loud voices to fight some of the shit being thrown around. She focuses on kids of color, kids who need a voice even more than most. Go. Look. Watch.

More on the eyeball…watched a movie and graded shit last night…

But sewed two nights of Whites of Your Eyes first…

Weird puppy…

So I broke two needles last night AND stabbed myself in the finger with a knife (OK, that was while making dinner and was just lame, but it still hurts this morning). I don’t exactly know how I didn’t see that safety pin, but it’s nice to know the needle can pierce it. Or is it?

The second needle broke…I don’t even know why. It was not an auspicious start. I think both broke in the first 10 minutes and I swore prodigiously, and then I got my rhythm back and got about an hour and a half of quilting in.

I didn’t want her to have a weapon, but I wanted her to be able to stop him, to hurt him, to catch attention. So octopus tentacles. Best I could do.

Most of the male figure is done…just his head and one arm, plus the thought bubble…

And then start quilting the background. Remember not to quilt the background in tiny little squiggles…because there ain’t no time (nor necessity) for that. Start seriously considering the next quilt, because it will be big too…about this size…and it doesn’t exist except as the beginning of a drawing and a list of ideas. Not that it’s a bad thing…drawing it will be nice. No, it’s not a happy topic…still…but it won’t be guns. I don’t know why that makes a difference, but it does. Because I feel like I can make changes about climate but not about guns? Who knows. Because one is nature and what we’ve done to it and one is human nature and that worries me more?

I do have an opening coming up on November 16 at the Rose Gallery at Francis Parker School…three pieces will be in that show, one never-before-seen (except here). The opening runs from 6-8 PM. It’s a really nice space…plus school kids are gonna see my work! OK, I had to do no nudity on this show, but it was worth it.

OK…to the day job, then the night job. Go back that Kickstarter. You know you wanna. And it’s totally worth it.

*Violent Femmes, Add It Up