I have a significant callus on my middle right finger from a teeny tiny needle poking the crap out of the same spot. I don’t thimble, because I just move to a different finger if there’s a thimble there. Can’t figure the logic of that out, but if you hang out with me long enough, you’ll realize logic isn’t my strong point. I’ve got it…it just doesn’t look like yours.
I had a goal last night of finishing grading one assignment from December (ugh) and then I would be allowed to work on the two quilts that are hanging out in my office at the moment. Or is it my studio. Some days it’s hard to tell. It’s my Offudio. Or my Stoffice. My Studice. Those are awful. It’s my workspace. Anyway…I managed to grade everything during the girlchild’s game because she was sick and only played 20 minutes…so instead of sitting there and stitching (I could have worked on birds…although I haven’t been doing that much), I graded those suckers and got them done. Insert hallelujah here. Don’t get really excited yet though, because the huge project from before break is still ungraded and mocking me.
Dinner was in the crockpot, although despite an email, a verbal reminder, and a text, the boychild forgot to put it in and turn it on (sigh)…when girlchild got home, she put it in on high though, and it worked fine. So while dinner finalized (aka tater tots…the sign of a good mom), I logged grades and listened to the snuffles of the sick child who has three college apps due today that she has not done. After dinner, I started working.
I started with the outline quilting of the FFAC The 100 donation quilt…
This is not a big quilt. When the outlining was done, I went on to the background quilting…
That didn’t take long…seriously, total quilting was barely over an hour.
Trimmed it. It’s about 10×12″.
Then I trimmed the other one that’s been lying around for days and found a binding that worked for both of them…they’re kind of in the same blue tone, although the donation quilt is much brighter…and I got the binding on…
This one is bigger, about 19×18″. It needs ink too. I’m about halfway done with the binding on it. Yes, I stayed up way too late. At some point, I looked at the clock and chastised myself, realizing I COULD stay up and finish the binding, but that was fucking crazy. So I went to bed. You don’t want to know what time.
I did actually finish the binding on the little one. Ouch.
The ouch is for the hole in my finger. The quilt’s really not that lumpy…in the picture above, it’s all pinned and it distorted it. I’ll photograph it for real this afternoon. It’s nice and flat and square corners. Really. It still needs a label. I couldn’t name it last night…but this morning while resizing the photos, it came to me: Fly, Be Free. I say it all the time. So there’s my third finish of 2015. If you like it, you have a 1 in 100 chance to get it through the FFAC The 100 donation drive on February 4.
It’s funny. I want to make another big quilt before Spring Break. I really do. And I have no shortage of drawings that could become a large quilt. But then it’s so easy to make these little ones…it’s tempting to just do one every couple of weeks instead. I have enough smaller drawings…I could totally do that. And there’s the greater possibility that small pieces will sell. There are two small ones I’m doing after this, the hand/cancer cell pieces. The big ones are the better pieces for shows though, so I need to work on that (so I can get more rejections! Now there’s attitude for you.). Realistically, I can only make 5 or 6 big quilts a year, and that would be starting now. I’ll have to decide soon. Because I have this art drive that does not freakin’ stop. No down time, I guess. I should not complain…no artist’s block for me. Knock on wood.
Soccer…yeah…even sick, she played well…
Although this was a moon ball.
Back to work. The school type of work…another day of trying to explain how the brain works. I probably shouldn’t be talking…
Oh holy vacation we call Winter Break, as you slither from my fingers and wither away into workload from hell, I miss you already. I spent time yesterday writing homework for next week. I had to go to school to find the journals I thought I had brought home with me. I have tried to pin my brain down to decisionmaking on the lesson-planning front at least five times, and it wanders off halfway through, complaining that it would like to finish the book it’s reading, or go see a movie, or even clean the kitchen, because that is way more engaging than slogging through a lesson plan revamp. Or is there any point in the revamp? All the science standards change next year…why am I working so hard on adjustments this year, when I won’t even be teaching this content next year?
Who knows. I don’t. It was easier last year to let things like that drop. I should keep remembering that. Let It Go. Oh god, now that fucking song is in my head; make it stop.
All right. So yesterday was a giant clusterfuck of you have to be here or there or everywhere and then sit for an hour in a parking lot, and girlchild’s formal dress disaster (aka the genetics of the female body and how none of us look good in those skimpy dresses), and finally at some point, I found myself realizing that I need to get this cancer quilt done. Or at least started. It’s not going to take long, but I know what the next three weeks look like and I’m flailing.
So instead of taking the endless Christmas stocking that will never be finished (hence the endless part) to my monthly stitching meeting, I took my sketchbook and a couple of pens. I figured I would force myself to draw and even if it was crap (boundless crap), I would have a start and maybe I could come home and draw something that wasn’t crap. The night before, I started with the hand in the middle…
Totally fucked it up. Decided to keep going and drew the mouth, and then the pizza just jumped in there. Crap drawing. But drawing. And I haven’t been doing much of that, so I’m out of practice again. Remember my plan to draw every Friday night? Yeah. So do I. OK. The drawing isn’t crap. The cat is crap. The rest…I could do something with that. The hand sucks. Whatever.
So then I was staring at the paper in this Starbucks in a Barnes & Noble, and although I often draw in public, I don’t really draw with people watching me much. So I drew the hands…
Which I think are good…remember this had to be simple. But then the bird. And I hated the bird. This morning? Staring at the picture of it? I don’t hate the bird. But he’s got too many damn pieces for this one. I could do the hands again and put something else there (like an anatomically correct heart…not a uterus…I mean, I COULD put a uterus there, but…that would kind of mess with my decision that this piece should not scare the crap out of some poor donor in some state that can’t handle the existence of a uterus). So reject. For now.
Meanwhile, I’ve got Julie and Kathy talking to me about cells and cancer and infusion and ports (I purposely took the sketchbook to this group because Julie’s a survivor and Kathy’s a science person…I knew they could throw some stuff at me that would poke at the sleeping drawing brain cells and wake them the fuck up). So we were talking about more abstract representations of when the chemo goes into the body and attacks the cells, which Julie has obviously visualized (and experienced), and I’m trying to get my head around it, to make an image out of it that is still a Kathy quilt but goes where I want it to go…and I started with the side view…
Except now I have a breast in there, which breaks my rules for this quilt, and then it deteriorated into a tattoo from a photo I saw online and then there were antennae. If you are in charge of filming my retrospective, you should totally record Julie and Kathy, in a Starbucks in a Barnes & Noble, describing my drawing process. Because Kathy knew it was endoplasmic reticulum. And Julie wasn’t sure about the antennae.
Hell, I’m not sure about the antennae. But I’m getting closer. Really. I know it seems like I’m flailing all over the place, but I’m getting closer.
When I got home, I was tired…but wanted to get a start on the quilting of that other small quilt, which now has a name…
I woke up to it this morning…the name, not the quilt…
I do not take my quilts to bed with me.
I finished the outlining. It’s not really dark on that side…I just couldn’t get the camera to behave last night and I was too tired to fuss about it. Now I just need to do the background and bind it and it’s done. Except what I REALLY should be doing is lesson-planning and grading. UGH. I hate responsibilities.
Speaking of, I finished the two commissioned birds and sent them off to their owner yesterday…this is Owl 3…
And this is HeyBird 3…
The first two quilts of 2015.
I’m still watching a lot of this…
And honestly not getting a whole lot done while I watch. A tiny bit of grading, maybe some stitching, but mostly just watching and brain dead. I know it’s OK to have some down time after finishing major work, and I’m trying to let my brain have that, but there’s definitely a push in my head for getting the next thing done…today being the last real day of vacation before going back, I’m definitely kind of buried in that rushed feeling of checking stuff off the to-do list. Which sucks. And I still need to draw the cancer quilt. Damn.
Time off for teachers: with so many constantly watching us and thinking we have so much free time (ha!), loads of vacation (I work every vacation, no extra pay), too much pay (I have a Masters degree…seriously? Not too much pay), it’s hard to explain to them why I need three weeks off right now. NEED. The fact that I’ve been working 60-70+ hours a week (with no overtime pay, and certainly not a paycheck worthy of professional standards in corporate world for those who don’t get paid for all those extra hours), mostly creating curriculum from scratch, figuring out Google Sites by myself, determining that my in-class wifi wasn’t working, and troubleshooting a hundred different tech problems a day…maybe an hour on some days. AND keeping track of 140 students, letting no one fall through the cracks. Much. Because that’s kind of impossible, actually.
Plus I make art in a pretty serious way on the side (can we really call what I do “on the side”?), and I’m a mom, and sometimes I cook dinner from scratch. House isn’t clean though. Christmas tree is half-decorated, and my Christmas shopping is in some serious trouble. FUCK.
So. Yeah. I need these three weeks, not only to get the shopping done and clean house, or to finish the quilt that’s supposed to be done in a week and a half (I started stitching down on Friday, hoping to get done today…AFTER hiking 12 miles), but to give my brain the necessary downtime to Do It Again. Because that’s what we do, as teachers. We work our butts off and then we take a few weeks off (when we usually spend a significant amount of time planning for the next bout of teaching, plus grading like crazy people), and then we go at it with the same intensity, sometimes even harder, because what we were doing before wasn’t quite working, and we do that until the next break. Repeat. Until retirement or job change or death.
I want to draw tonight. I want to be in my art brain and let it wander about freely, because I have barely been able to do that lately.
That said, I have probably 20 hours of grading to do over break. Seriously. Ouch.
I’m not starting today. This morning, I am going on a hike with my regular hiking group and the boychild, who came home Friday night (no photos…he doesn’t like ’em). I’m looking forward to more hikes and hanging out with kids and girlchild being done with college apps so maybe she’ll be less cranky and all kinds of other good stuff like baking. And vacuuming. And maybe even starting a new quilt. Yeah. I know. Got some stuff to finish first, but then I will be starting something new, and I don’t even know what it is yet. That’s exciting.
Meanwhile, I’m spending a lot of time doing this (two tournaments in a row)…
But they made it to the finals on Monday, so that’s good. And I finished a bird. A miracle.
So even though I didn’t get home until 8 PM last night, and then I made a breakfast casserole for today’s holiday party at school and cookies for people who deserve way more than that for how they support me, I was determined to finish ironing last night. By my standards, it wasn’t late when I started, around 10 or so. I start that late all the time, and honestly, there wasn’t that much left to do. So I ironed…
She looks creepy with no eyes.
This quilt really isn’t huge or complicated compared to most of mine. It’s funny that 768 pieces is what I consider uncomplicated. Yeah. I know. So I have 11 days to finish this and get it photographed, and if I’m really nice (and smart), I’ll email my photographer now and let him know that…although I think I could get away with an informal photo on this one, at least to start.
I got another art rejection the other day. I’d forgotten it was coming, but it wasn’t a surprise. They took 38 out of over 700 entries. I need to enter more shows soon. Although I have more work to do for shows as it is. It will be a busy Winter Break getting started on all that. And starting to think about the big quilt for summer, whatever it might be. There are some calls for entry that are intriguing, but I haven’t had the mental space to figure them out in terms of my own work yet.
Anyway, I had gotten to that point above, and it was late, but not really late, and I didn’t know how long ironing it down to the background would take…sometimes it’s a total bitch, especially with all those tree branches and leaves. When they come loose from the ironing sheet, they get all tangled up and make me swear a lot. But I wanted it done. Because I knew if it were done, I might stitch down tonight. Maybe. Although boychild flies in tonight.
So I went for it. Because this is where my head is. In the art. It’s what it wants to do.
I had a significantly stressful and shitty day at work. Technology (and kids) kicked my butt. I was cranky as hell, going out to dinner with friends made it worse (they were talking about school), and then the girlchild was an absolute brat in between (separation from mom imminent), so I had no mental strength left. And finishing this would make it better…would make me less likely to go to bed feeling like a complete and total failure.
Yeah. We all feel like that some days, right?
So I did it.
Yeah. I like it. With black outlines in the quilting, this is gonna rock.
Sigh. Deep breaths. Because I’m at the point in my art where the last three quilts have just felt so good to get to this point, where I can actually SEE them. I can finally take what’s in my head and really just bang out a good piece of art. Just like that (100 hours later). And that is awesome. I am so grateful for that. Finishing that ironing last night makes it easier to get through today.
Yeah. Sorry. Still makes me all emotional. Not that you can see that part. Someone remind me of that all day when kids are running rampant.
Part of yesterday’s mental exhaustion was leaving school right when the bell rang to get to the girlchild’s soccer game…
They tied. Not that any of that matters. I took two wrong turns to get there because my brain was offline.
She’s always angry at me these days. I know it’s normal. It’s just hard to get that every day and not have someone standing behind you, holding you up and telling you it’s OK. It will be OK.
Sigh. Look at the quilt again, Kathryn. It will be OK. One step closer to done. Sometimes you just have to do it all yourself.
So I’m about halfway through. And that’s OK. I’ve got Wednesday…maybe some time on Thursday. That’s enough. Four soccer games this week, though…and the boychild comes home in four days. That’s freaky. We’ve survived the first four months of college. Me without his calming influence; him in a brand-new, demanding environment. I wonder if it will feel relaxing being here, or just more stress? At least there is good Mexican food here.
Halfway through the ironing, by the way. I don’t think I’m halfway through anything else, except maybe my life, if I’m lucky. I have 5 hours and a bit of ironing done and I’m in the low 400s on the pieces. Now that said, I think that pile of bodies was the worst of it. Everything else is pretty straightforward, so you’d think I could get it done in less than 5 hours. About 350 pieces to go…a little less than half.
We’ll see.
So first of all, when I got the pile ironed together, I realized there were a couple of spaces that needed the dark fabric behind them…
There’s two right there. No biggie. This is easypants. So two pieces traced…
And then ironed underneath.
I like that my iron is Anti-Calc. I also did not enjoy Calculus, but mostly because of my teacher. He was kind of a jerk. Assumed math was more important than language. And yeah, I teach science, but writing? Words? Communicating? Pretty damn fucking important. But here’s an interesting question, from last week’s warmup for my kids: words or pictures? If there were someone you liked and you could ONLY communicate via words OR pictures, which would you choose? Yeah. I prefer drawing to express myself really, but words would make more sense to me in communication with others. I love that someone I was texting this week corrected himself, his SYNTAX. Wow. In a text. Can’t beat that.
And then I had these two random pieces left over. Here’s one.
No freakin’ clue where it belongs. Or the other. Just set them aside. Obviously not crucial.
Moving on. Ironed the damn cat.
I don’t usually draw the cats as the two black cats in the house. Not sure why. I usually draw calicoes. I think personality-wise, I am a calico. Raise your hand if you know what I’m talking about! Yeah. OK. They’re feisty. And troubled. Black cats…they can go either way…we obviously have the Queen here…
And she’s a total bitch. I am going to get in so much trouble with the boychild for not combing her belly for the last four months, but she claws the fuck out of me as it is when I comb the rest of her, so he can handle that shit.
The other black one is just mellow. Mostly. So I don’t fuck with her. Much. I can’t really tell you why the calicos end up being in the quilts most of the time: Juniper, Limbo, Kitten. Even Cinnamon, if you go back enough years.
So there’s DNA hand again. Like we can control any of it…
The background on this quilt is a deep dark blue, so this hand is gonna pop right off of it.
And then there are the flying hearts.
These have popped up in the last few months. I think of them as hope for my future. Like I have a heart and love and all that gooby stuff, but they’re just loose, flying around, waiting to land/be captured, I’m not sure which. So this is like the third or fourth drawing where they’ve appeared. Never been in a drawing before this Fall, I think. Weird, huh? I used to always have Christmas lights in my drawings. None of those today.
I did pull that drawing from yesterday out again, but it didn’t speak to me tonight. Weird how that works. Sometimes it’s so adamant that I hear it, that I draw it; it just fucking takes over and commandeers the pen, grabbing my brain and making it listen. And then…then it’s silent, like I pissed it off too many times. It won’t listen. It lies in bed with a pillow over its head.
So fuck the drawing.
I was going to stop and go to bed, but it (the ironing) kept dragging at me, so I started the tree…
The stuff on the tree is next, and then the human figure in the middle of all that.
It’s exciting. I like when the image starts to appear…when it starts to BE a quilt for real. When the shit in my head gets out there and kicks some real-life ass.
Speaking of kicking ass…blurry pictures due to late night, fading light…
Girlchild made an absolutely awesome twisty header goal…
And then her coach, being a rancid idiot, barely played her for the rest of the game. But when he did put her ass back on the field in the last 7 minutes, she continued to kick ass. Thus proving that assholes are out there and we all have to deal with them.
Sigh.
So here’s what you need to know about me this week. It is survival this week for teachers. We are about to explode on a daily basis, because we are in a classroom with kids who cannot stop thinking about Christmas. I’d like to say they were thinking about other things, but in my school, it’s all about the presents…not the present. So even though I’m trying to get them through a major project, by the end of third period, I’m about to throw things. And I significantly appreciate those who bring me back down to Earth, who ground me with their sanity, their competence, their caring, their profanity, their beauty, their hugs, their Google Docs. I will be saying Thank You about a million times this week. Maybe even out loud. Maybe I will just hug it out. I think I actually told my co-teacher that I loved her for managing the tail end of a meeting so I could go to my kid’s soccer game.
Working on a creative endeavor, a quilt that means a great deal to me, to my existence, to my core, this week makes it all that much more…well…HUGE. So that’s good. And the rest? Well, fuck it. Hug someone. Then move on.
So my original plan of getting all the fabric picked for the Women at War quilt did not happen. That whole watching-soccer and planning-for-school thing just kicked my butt. Plus digging holes and trimming dead branches off trees. And maybe sleeping. But only a little. Sleep is still not my friend.
But I’m not giving up. I set these goals to keep me on track. Like writing…I am still trying to do some every day; I’m just not worried about hitting a word limit every day any more.
This is what my NaNoWriMo graph looked like…
I was pretty consistent. I’m happy with what I did.
Then Saturday night, after late-afternoon soccer, I started ironing again…here’s the 4 different flesh piles I had…
Because this quilt has more bodies in it than I think I’ve ever done. Well, maybe not. I have some with tiny bodies…but these are big…and there are about 9 of them. I think. Hard to tell, honestly, down in the pile. By the end of Saturday, this is what I had in the bin to cut out…
And these are the other fabrics I’d used besides the flesh tones.
And here’s the pie I had in the middle of all that…
So the last two nights, I kept ironing, trying to stay on top of it…
This is Sunday night…and honestly, I wanted to be done Sunday, and I wasn’t…
Here’s all the fabrics I’d used by then…not very colorful.
Lots of browns and a ton of flesh colors (which aren’t even in that pile). Here’s the box of pieces to be cut out (guess what I’ll be doing next?)…
Monday night, I laid them all out so I could see them…again, this is still without the flesh colors…when you realize the red, yellow, blue, and green pieces are little tiny pieces in the big picture, it really is a mostly brown and flesh-colored quilt.
I finally got to the main figure last night. Usually, I number so that the main figure gets cut out first. I don’t know why I did it differently this time. I only had this much of the lightest fabric…
I had to fussy iron the pieces on there…but I really wanted to use it. So I made it work.
As of last night, this is what’s left to iron.
Here’s the pile of fabrics I used for the main figure. That tiny pile on top is what’s left of that light fabric. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it…
Make a really tiny flesh thing. So it was after midnight when I finished cutting out all the flesh of the main figure. This is what was left…
The bones, hair, nipples, lungs, heart, bandolier, and bullets. Oh. And a gun. Fun stuff. I was too tired to deal with that many choices, so I left it for tonight. And it’s only Tuesday, so I’m two days late. Not so bad. I should set another goal now. I plan to have all the pieces cut out by (Kathryn, think this through…you have gym and a soccer game in the rain and a meeting and a hike)…let’s say Sunday night. Then I can iron it together next week and (holy crap, I was looking at my calendar and freaking out about how much time was left, and then I realized it was still on November. Damn.) start stitching down the following week, and get it quilted Christmas week. Right? Sure. No problem. We’ll see what that looks like in real life.
Saturday’s soccer…
was playing against the team whose coach is the same for my daughter’s high-school team. We’ve never liked him, so it was awesome when girlchild made the first goal against them…
And I think we went on to make 4 more…
I was grading papers. I also wrote some of the novel. It was not particularly warm.
Yes, we had soccer yet another day…
Girlchild is playing well, no back problems at all. She starts the high-school season this week.
So I’m going to be spending a lot of time freezing and/or wet on metal bleachers.
But it’s the last year of that, which is kind of weird. Guess that’s part of why I’m an emotional mess all the time. Oh yeah, well, and there’s other stuff. But whatever. I’m getting lots of art made. And entering more shows. And reading a lot. It could be worse. I could be holed up in bed and never taking a shower. You’re thankful I’m not like that. Hell, I’m thankful I’m not like that. I wish I could say that making all this art makes me feel better, but all I can say is in the moment, while I’m picking fabrics or drawing or stitching, in the moment, there is peace and some level of forgetfulness of all the shit, and that is a good thing.
So yeah, I’m back. I’ve actually been here all along, but as I’m sure you realize, that whole holiday-with-family thing kind of eats up your free time. So I sleep even less. And at 1:30 AM, I’m not willing to START writing a blogpost. And mornings have been fraught. So here’s what happened.
On Wednesday, I spent a lot of time cutting out Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is for a theme of Women at War, with interpretation pretty open as to what that meant. I’ve felt like other people have been coming after my uterus and everything within and around for quite a while, despite some nice-guy misogynists telling me I was imagining it. I mean, what the fuck do you know as a privileged rich white man? Best thing you can do as a man? Admit that you mostly don’t have a fucking clue what it’s like to be a woman. You might have an inkling, but otherwise: Not inside, biologically, with periods and pregnancy and mood swings and menopause; not outside, trying to walk somewhere in public, dating, safety, being perceived as an object, wearing the wrong thing, whether you’re showing stuff off or not, it’s always wrong. Not breastfeeding, not being the mom, not with society’s expectations. I’m not saying being a man doesn’t have similar issues; I just think there are more “acceptable” options for men (in terms of what society believes). And I full-on admit I don’t understand what it’s like to be a man. Some men have some of a clue, but mostly it seems not. The better men are understanding even when they don’t understand.
So the drawing was full of all these stereotypes and yet she stands tall on a pile of men. Because every man came from a woman, y’all.
Anyway, my rampant feminism aside, I need to get the quilt done in the next…um…5 weeks. Yup. So speedy mode. Midnight? Not helping…
Licking my elbow does not help me. This might even have been the night before. It looks awfully dark. It is! It’s Tuesday night. I sit on the couch and watch all the stuff I have saved on Tivo…
If girlchild is still awake, I have to watch her stuff. Some of her stuff is also my stuff…top box is pieces, bottom box is trash…in case I drop pieces in it (which I often do).
In the late afternoon (because I had to run a thousand errands), I managed to finish cutting and sort them all into bins by 100s. This is a smaller quilt, so there’s only 8 bins! A miracle.
Of course, I also did the two birds that need to be done in December, so that was two more bins.
And then because this time of year isn’t crazy enough, girlchild and I hiked Iron Mountain in the dark with the group I often hike with.
She wanted to show she had conquered the mountain.
That night, I realized I would need to clean the office up a bit to be able to cut fabrics out. I hadn’t put everything away from last time (and honestly, it’s a disaster area in here anyway, because all my school stuff lives in here too). So I had drawers open that cats had slept in and fabric piled everywhere…
I like a fresh start. Plus I need that table cleared off because that’s where I put the Wonder Under pieces.
And one section of the floor, I think the cats had knocked a bunch of stuff down (they get a bit rambunctious sometimes), so I needed to clean that up. Finding floor space in here has been a priority this last month. Two feet at a time, people. Two square feet is all I ask.
I had a ton of fabric to put away, both from the last quilt and from Houston, so I started by stacking by color, because everything in here is stored by color, except for the ones where I can’t figure out what color it is.
That was about halfway through. There were some issues with storage. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I use…it is not enough.
And I found this from a million years ago, from an Ellen Anne Eddy class.
Hand-dyed silk velvet plus thread-painted fetus. You know, like you do. That may still be in here when I die.
So at that point, it was Thursday, and although girlchild does most of the cooking, that means I get stuck with the cleaning (and then she complains that she can’t find anything because I moved it…from the couch to her bedroom), and I also cook a few things and I constantly try to clean up in the kitchen, which drives her nuts, but I can’t stand having to do it all at once.
So this picture is about 10 minutes before dinner is served. She’s making gravy. The fire extinguisher is out because she spilled turkey juices on the stovetop and it got in the box where the controller things are (technical term) and short-circuited something, and for a few minutes, we had loud popping noises and big sparks and electrical fire smoke. So yeah. A typical Thanksgiving…
The wine? Well. Obvious. See fire extinguisher. Especially after loud pops and sparks. And no, it’s not fixed yet. It’s actually not top on my list at the moment. The rest of it works, I got everything cleared off of there because of the fire danger, and I have other things that are more pressing. No really, the sink is completely clogged and getting fixed this afternoon, so I can finally do all the dishes. THEN I will deal with the stove.
Thanksgiving was small this year…just my parents, me, the girlchild, and the ex…
Guess he has decided Brits can celebrate that holiday…food was good, of course…
She makes a mess in the kitchen, tries to set the house on fire, but it always tastes good.
And yes, we’re still eating it. Ex came over last night and took away two platefuls of food. Sent a bunch home with my parents as well. And then we realized girlchild wouldn’t be around next year to cook.
Shit. I think we’re going out. I do cook. I just don’t want to spend that much time cooking for so few people.
Or dogs. I don’t feed dogs people food. Dogs LIKE people food.
Oh yeah. Pie and pi. All good.
Once the food was all eaten and I had cleaned up as much as I could with a nonworking sink, I finished cleaning up the studio (ah, much better)…
Hung the new drawing where I could see it, assumed the background fabric I had would work, and started the next fabric-picking adventure…
I don’t know what YOU do when chock full of tryptophan. I told you I was a bit crazy.
I picked all the stuff on the bottom…
And then started thinking about the fleshy issues…a pile of 7 or 8 bodies that I need to be able to distinguish from each other? Need at least two sets of flesh runs…
Luckily, they’re pretty simple bodies, so I don’t need the usual run of 7 fabrics or so. Although on the right, that’s the run for the main female figure, I think. The stuff on the left was the first of the male bodies.
Friday morning dawned nice and clear, and soccer was first on the agenda…of course.
Girlchild decided to play for another team, because hers didn’t get into the tournament they wanted. Luckily, it’s local, because we have a game a day.
I graded papers (ah, back to reality) and watched her run around and score one goal…
They beat an Alaskan team 5-1. I’m sure that team was a little hampered by the over-80-degree weather. Then I came home and helped dad do some yard things and went and bought two trees with him to block off that big open space that has been there since April? March? Don’t even remember how long. I need to go out there today and dig holes and trim off dead stuff and be a responsible homeowner (my neighbors will be thrilled). And I went to the gym. See, this is where time goes. But at the gym, I wrote…yes, I’m still writing. The story’s still not done. And I finished my book (the one I was reading). And these were good things. And then I traced some more Wonder Under for another piece, a small one that’s been lying around for a good long while…
Of course, technically it has nudity in it, so it can’t go into any of the shows coming up that need smaller pieces. I’m tired of making things FOR something, though, even though I don’t mind the themes that I’ve been in…sometimes you just have to make the stuff you WANT to make. I’m getting a wave of that feeling coming on…strong. I traced this also because I was watching something on Netflix that I couldn’t watch in my studio and I wanted to finish the episode.
Anyway, then back to the studio…where I kept going on the pile of flesh…
Which is taking significantly more time than I usually take, mostly because it’s complicated to figure out what is overlapping where, and to make sure I have all the pieces for that body, and that the fabrics don’t overlap in the wrong way.
After 4 hours of ironing, I am barely in the 200s. The plus is I should finish the pile of bodies today, so it will go faster after that. I think. I hope. Because remember how I said I wanted to be done with the ironing by the time school starts again? And there are two more soccer games? Plus I have to plan for school, because hey, we do have to go back there, despite the scary adrenaline rush I get when I think about it? I calculated grades yesterday from the stuff I had graded so far after break. It’s possible I should just quit teaching right now. I’m an absolute failure.
Sigh. So. And on top of all this, I slammed my finger in the door and I keep reopening the wound (bandaids forever!), a Golden Retriever is currently trying to play ball with me, my kitchen looks like a hurricane hit it, and the fish at school has probably died because I keep forgetting to go over there and feed it. Girlchild has applied to her first college, boychild got food poisoning on Thanksgiving from something (he did not have turkey dinner), and I’ve been living on deviled eggs for three days (I’m not sure that’s a bad thing).
This time of year just kicks my ass. So I’m going to kick it back by making lots of art. Yup. You can’t stop me.
Here’s Aug(de)mented Reality 2…for some post-turkey amusement…
Here’s to trying to pull all the pieces of a weekend (and a brain) together into one coherent post. Why start now? I mean, sometimes I am probably coherent, but if you really expect me to be all together on a Monday morning, then you’re probably a pretty demanding person, and I don’t want to hang out with you. Leave. Go read another blog…the blog of someone who has perfect hair and wears makeup and is all fashion-conscious and shit. I don’t want you here anyway (OK, you can wear makeup and be fashion-conscious and stuff, but just don’t expect me to be making any sense right now).
Weekends are kicking my butt at the moment. I make lists that are miles long and then I realize I got one thing done on them. ONE THING. I actually took grading with me to the California Fibers meeting yesterday. I needed to get grading done. I graded in the car on the way up and at the meeting. It was a slightly contentious meeting anyway (many of them are, but it’s a good group that gets good shows and there’s a core group that I get along with just fine)…so it was good to have something else to focus on. Artists…we are so emotional and opinionated. It’s hard to have a whole room full of us. Saturday night I actually went to a Halloween party, but no one knew what I was…OK, not true…they knew I was a painting. They just didn’t know who the artist was (SIGH. Jackson Pollack. I know. Maybe I don’t expect you to know, but it would be nice if someone knew. I expect too much.). I’m not much of a party person…and I know these people, but it’s still hard for me to stand around and make small talk and ask the appropriate questions at the appropriate times. It makes me want to crawl back into my studio by myself (yes, counselor, I am isolating myself) and make art. And rarely come out.
I didn’t have a lot of time for that this weekend. No art at all happened on Saturday. Saturday was all about errands and soccer and finishing stuff and being sociable. Sunday was all about trying to finish the stuff I didn’t finish Saturday because I wasn’t efficient enough and going to a meeting. But I finally started quilting around 10 PM.
I didn’t get far, just an hour in, just the very bottom section of the scales, with the two hands. I got the heart done too…
But if I figure I have 15 hours of quilting, then it’s not surprising that I didn’t get far. I wanted to start much earlier in the day, in case I didn’t have the right colors of thread, but I was lucky and I seem to have enough of what I need. I might be a spool short (ha ha ha…is that a euphemism for not having all my brain parts in working order? It feels like it is. Don’t judge.) of the background color, but that isn’t going to matter this week…this week, I will just be outlining. I love the outlining stage, when all the features start to pop, like drawing that black line on the white paper. The defining moment. Except I never use black. Black thread is so dead-looking. On this one, I’m using a dark blue. Anyway. This part of the process is very meditative. I gave up over a year ago on listening to music in this stage. I used to always listen to music while quilting, but music has fucked with the dark side of my head too much, so I just put the sound up real high on Netflix (still watching Star Trek) and listen to the blather instead. Fewer triggers.
I also went to the last official game I will see of the girlchild’s season (she has tournaments, and then high-school soccer, and then more tournaments, so it’s not like it’s OVER over…it’s just the season is almost over…one more game, but I’ll be in Houston)…
She really likes to head the ball. By the way, the ref in the back? Asshole. We used to be on a team with the daughter, who seems perfectly nice, but the dad has a Napoleon complex that makes him a psycho jerk on the field, and he seems to be getting worse each year. So we played half the game down a player because she got red-carded for calling him ignorant (which he is). If you can’t control your game, get off the damn field.
We should have won, but tied.
Toldja she liked to head the ball.
Makes for amusing pictures.
Babygirl is annoying me with her need to be right next to (or ON) the computer. She also wants to be on fabric. Or my hand. Or my leg. She’s very needy at the moment. I really need to clean up the studio and get her off the stuff I need less cat hair on…
I did clean this weekend. One thing (well, besides the entryway floor so I could pinbaste). This:
Yup. A spider web. It was a big one. No one sits in that room now that the boychild’s not here. Kinda weird to realize that.
Here’s a video of the SAQA exhibit that is at Poway’s Center for the Performing Arts until Thursday…my Eyeball Tree made it in the video, so that’s cool
That’s all I got. The brain is still wallowing around in Feels-Like-Shit (the town next to Feels-Like-Crap), so I distract it with books and quilting and trying to push everything into the corner. I stay off the social media, I don’t read anything online. I just focus inward and get shit done. I don’t know if it’s healthy or not. It just is. The counselor warns about not letting myself fall back into the hole, and I really do try…but it doesn’t feel like I have control over that. I have control over that damn spider web. The ability to just switch that part of the brain off…I wonder about the person who can do that, who can shove everything under or in a drawer and lock it up. Maybe it’s healthy? I just don’t know. I do know that I don’t know how to do it. I just have to work through it. Apparently for months on end. Frustrated yowl.
Yeah. I know. I missed a couple posts. I was really tired. And sick. And then I went on a hike, which made me tired again. And sick is still hovering, though mostly only at night. And when I’m tired. And when you hear me talk. Anyway. Hopefully I did enough sleep catchup in the last few days to last for a bit. Still missing a big chunk of my working voice though. Oh well.
The good news is that I finished ironing everything down on Friday night (yes, I went to Sea World with 180 kids and then came home and went shopping with the girlchild and THEN I ironed).
This is what the tree looked like after I pulled it off the ironing sheet…
See why I was scared to do that? I untangled that thing about three times Friday night, trying to get it to fit on the background…because all of the quilts for this show are supposed to be the same size, which I have a really hard time doing. I can easily do a range, but god forbid I draw the piece so that there’s some leeway on each side. NAW. Let’s make it go RIGHT to the edges.
Yeah, I know. My fault. So I cut the background with about 2 inches to spare on the horizontal and vertical measurements, and then made it work. Maybe. We’ll see when I go to trim it.
And then I put the whole mess on the floor and started putting the parts on to make it fit…and that’s where I have to stop showing pictures. You’ll have to wait until January, when the show opens. Here’s the bottom…
I had some issues with the batik bleeding again. I’ll have to figure out what I want to do about that…you’d think I’d remember to use that stuff when I wash it, the Retayne…but I always forget. So either I’ll be using pencil or pen or something to handle that. More work. Oh well. Maybe next time I will remember to wash it special.
I was going to be all gung ho after the hike Saturday morning, but it kicked my butt (yeah, hiking while getting over being sick all week was maybe not a great plan, but I really did need to get the fuck out of the house and into nature, so I just did it), so I didn’t get anything done Saturday afternoon. And then girlchild had night soccer, where I graded…
We were missing a bunch of kids for a variety of reasons, so even though they should have won (they’ve beat this team before), they didn’t…
And the girls basically had to play all 90 minutes, so girlchild went down with a calf cramp after getting kicked there…
Thought it was her knee for a minute…dammit…never going to get her through a whole season! But just a cramp. She’s fine today. But we didn’t get home until after 8, and my brain was in a mood, so I fed it and made it meditate. I haven’t been meditating enough, because honestly, a lot of the time when I’m doing the art stuff, it does the same thing for me as meditation, focuses my brain, calms me, gives me some mental strength. But last night, I just felt unfocused and cranky and tired, so I did it. And it was good.
So I came in and did the final step of the ironing down…totaling the ironing out at 15 hours and 18 minutes (my estimate of 15 hours holds!). And then I started stitching down. I wasn’t going to, because I was still tired, but I really wanted to get a START on it. Because Sundays are notoriously bad for artmaking, due to the grocery shopping and the prepping for school and the hanging out with parents. I usually don’t get to do anything until late at night. I wish I were more efficient in the morning, but it really is the only morning I can just space out and make English muffin pizzas for breakfast and hang out and not have to DO anything or BE anywhere. Yes, I’m hanging out with myself (actually, girlchild was here this morning early), and that’s often depressing, but whatever. Someone claimed they were going to “laugh at the loneliness” once, and I thought it sounded like bullshit then and I still do…you don’t laugh at loneliness. You stare at it for a while and eventually you just embrace it, hold on to it tight, and if you can make it go sit in a closet for a while because you’re hanging out with friends or family, or because you’re at school, or because you’re in the artspace and haven’t come out yet…that’s awesome. But mostly, you can try to ignore it or yell at it or just accept that it’s there and hold its hand…but laughing at it is kinda stupid. It’s not gone because you laughed at it. I laugh all the time. It doesn’t make it go away. It’s still there, staring at you. Stupid depression. Doesn’t help. Stupid hormones. Also don’t help.
Stitching down…
one of the more boring parts of the quilting process. I know that to stay on schedule, I have to keep MAKING a schedule. So I look back at the Celebrating Silver quilt, because I’ve been basing everything on that one (about the same size and number of pieces)…so I’m guessing 5 hours to stitch it down, another 2 to pinbaste, and about 14 hours of quilting. I want it pinbasted by Saturday night. Quilting starts Sunday? I should remember I have some obligations this week…maybe.
Anyway. Progress. It’s always progress here at Kathy Central. If I keep running forward, then the bad shit can’t catch me, right? Naw, sometimes it’s pretty fast and I’m hiking with dead legs (that was yesterday going uphill…dead legs). Now I’m going to be running forward into the 70 million errands I need to run today in order to be ready for the week. And you wonder why I’m so tired.
Hello Monday. I was not ready for you. I finished a bunch of stuff this weekend, but not enough (it’s never enough…isn’t that a song? Of course it’s a song.). I don’t feel prepared to face what you will be throwing at me today. For one thing, my voice and throat are significantly challenged (not a good thing for a teacher on the first day of five days…it only gets worse as the week goes on). I think I am officially sick, but with some really low-level viral beast that won’t just come out and make me actually ill. It’s content to lurk in the shadows and make things feel slightly off. I have a formal teacher observation today, though, so I’m thinking through how to teach this lesson without speaking…can I do the whole thing with hand motions? I think I can. At some point, when you’ve been teaching long enough, you can do just about anything.
I worked on the male figure in the quilt last night…I wanted to get it done.
Looks a lot like the female side, eh? Thought I could do it all in one evening, because it was less complicated than the female…plus I started earlier. Here’s all the 600s laid out.
I finished the 500s and 600s and did a few of the 700s. OK. Well, I got a significant amount of him done. I balked at the hands (hands are hard. I was tired. Tired and hard do not go together.). I got his sixpack done.
So tonight I can do the hands and the briefcase and the head maybe. It’s good progress. I’m getting there. It’s moving along.
At that point, I should have been smart and gone to bed. It wasn’t super late though, and I wasn’t tired. At all. Even though it was almost midnight. So I decided to watch the rest of the episode of Star Trek that I had been ironing to, and to work on some hand embroidery until the episode was done, and then maybe I’d be tired…
Yeah. Right. Made it through a whole ‘nother episode after that before tired hit. Something to do with the cat on the back of my neck? By the way, Data appreciates the embroidery.
It still wasn’t super late, but it wasn’t early. I seem incapable of going to sleep, or even to bed, at a reasonable hour. Seriously, that damn cat is on the back of my chair right now. Gives me a crick in my neck.
We did have soccer yesterday morning too…not super early, but early enough to set an alarm.
Everybody loses to this team. They’re good, sure, but they’re also pushy…and not in a constructive way. In a hand-on-the-back kinda way.
Our girls held their own, though…still lost, but only 3-1, and as you can see above, when their girls threw themselves into ours, most of the time, ours did not fall down. I think girlchild dropped about 4 of their girls just by continuing to stand upright.
It’s amazing to me to watch 17-year-olds who are about to go to college and play soccer with big scholarships (because one of their worst offenders will probably do just that) and they’re winning by being bad sports. Play the damn game, little girl. When you get beat, you don’t run into someone because you’re pissed.
Of course, that’s not true. That is what lots of people do…and not just in soccer. You get pissed? You get hurt? You try to take the other person down.
Soccer as a metaphor for life. Damn that pink vibrates…will be glad when we get back to our normal uniform colors. And one of their parents actually had the balls to come over and tell our girls to calm down? The ref was a good guy, though, and did a good job of calling the dumbass maneuvers.
So a successful game, even if they lost. You gotta lose sometime, right? Not the green team, apparently. They tried to justify their girls’ behavior, saying “well, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Um. So when you break someone’s leg? Will it be a problem then?
So. Yeah. I’ve been sitting with Monday for a while now, and it’s still a petulant whiny beast. I’m not sure I want to spend the rest of the day with it. It’s like an immature 7th-grade boy. Ugh. I got no choice. I gotta deal.
Kathy Nida 