Traveling Again…

It’s Monday again. It’s like it happens every week. This one feels like a bit much. I really enjoyed my three days away from home, wallowing in quilty stuff. It was a relief. Talking to people about quilts and art (and politics, because that came up over and over again)…it was nice; it was a relief. Seeing all the quilts…yes, I have a million pictures and I may put some in here when I have time (when do I ever have time???)…even though I don’t make that kind of quilt, some of them truly sing to me. Having one’s head solidly in something that is not school-related is a blessing.

And now I’m back. Woo! Actually, I had kids emailing all weekend and a slew of coworker texts on Friday that just about made me implode in the car on the way to Phoenix. More last night. Anyway, I’m sure that will just be the norm from now until June 17. Wait, probably after that too.

So before I left for the show, I hung out and stitched with friends…

I thought I would work on this on the trip. Nope. Not at all. I did make a spectacular knot in this thread on Thursday night, and three stitchers valiantly tried to unknot it and got it to this…

Two well-managed bits on each side and then an uncontrolled disaster in the middle. Kind of a metaphor for life.

We drove to Phoenix, leaving Friday morning. We had a nice little cottagey condo, with these guys in the kitchen…

And their friends on the fence out back…

I’m a fan.

We spent a tiny bit of time out here. I spent most of my time at the convention center.

It was a comfortable place though.

I went to two lectures: Susan Hudson of the Navajo Quilt Project, which I’ve sent a ton of fabric to…

Don’t sit close if you want to see their faces…I will send her more fabric when I get around to going through it. I didn’t make it through all the colors.

And Anna Maria Parry (was Horner)…

No, I don’t make quilts like her at all…I do love to listen how artistic brains work though, so it was fascinating for that. Same with Susan’s.

Somewhere in between all that, I was back at the cottage.

Relaxed and exhausted.

I sat at the SAQA booth on Saturday for a couple of hours with my quilt, Woman 3.0, which is traveling with the StitchPunk exhibit.

It was nice to see her. And I finally met Maddie Kertay of BadAss Quilter Society and got one of her ribbons.

That was nice. Appreciate the ribbon too.

Saw some art that wasn’t fiber…

And took a nighttime class (with a lot of caffeine) from Nichole Vogelsinger (aka Wild Boho). It was fun; I enjoyed my tablemates and time to stitch…

Again, this was more about listening to how the artist thinks than trying to make her stuff. I did buy way too many sequins though…

And beads that didn’t arrive in time. It’s OK; I went through my stash and ended up using stuff from crazy quilt swaps I did a million years ago.

The Man walked back from the convention center with me at 9:30 PM, and we saw this amazing thing…Janet Echelman’s ‘Her Secret Is Patience’. Beautiful piece.

Then Sunday, we drove home, I pissed off someone in a Zoom meeting (well, I didn’t agree with her), and tried to get a bunch of stuff done. I didn’t draw at all this weekend. It’s OK, I’m fine with that. I inked the drawing I did on Wednesday night…

With no help from Bowie…

Or Nova, who kept taking my seat…

Yes, I bought fabric. I notionally said I wouldn’t, but I knew that was a lie because I was looking for e bond’s new line and the African fabrics fascinate me…but not a huge haul…

Fun stuff.

Anyway, now I’m back and need to grade a million things and deal with kids and adults and parents. Ugh. Starting with this morning and a meeting that starts in 45 minutes. Did I tell you that 4 subs canceled on me for Friday? So I got the one I’d requested in the beginning that the district made me cancel? Long (stupid) story. It’s fine. We’ll see how the kids did in a few hours…making them do presentations today on what they should have done Friday. We’ll see how that goes. Tons of meetings today and then clay. And grading. And hopefully drawing after that. I’m back and there’s nothing planned until Spring Break, which isn’t really planned. And may not happen. Sigh.

Don’t Call Me Maybe…

Oh hey, yeah I’m totally off on days this week. Oh well. Travel does that to you. I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning for Phoenix for QuiltCon, where I found out, one of my quilts IS actually hanging, but in the SAQA vendor booth. Check it out!

That’s my quilt, Woman 3.0, on the right side of the middle. IDK whether it’s random that it’s hanging there (this is part of the StitchPunk exhibit that’s been traveling) or they knew I’d be in the booth, but I love it! If you’re at QuiltCon, you should go see it. It’ll probably be the only time I’ll have a quilt at QuiltCon.

I’m totally jealous of all the people posting that they left early and are touring all the parts of Arizona etc that are naturally awesome (like as In Nature). I won’t have time for that this time. And school makes it always hard to tack on any extra time.

In other quilt news, I finished this piece, which has notionally been called Self Portrait for the four months I’ve been working on it.

I may or may not retitle it. It needs to be cleaned up and photographed. It’s got body bags and bunnies, bullets and a fox, lots of political stuff, lots of personal stuff. All drawn in October, before the election and all the crazy shit that is going on now…stuff I’m not even sure how to process into a visual image.

I have a deadline coming up, so last night, I started figuring that out. It needs to be a certain shape and size (book shape-ish). So I’ll need four ‘pages’. I started drawing one of them last night…

My goal is to get them drawn in the next few days, although I kinda have a shit ton of crap going on, so we’ll see how that goes. In the background, with all the writing on it, is another possible deadline. One I’m interested in, at least…I’m going to have to read a book to complete it though. Not that it’s usually a problem, but I’d need to read it, process it, and draw something in the next three weeks. Hmmm. It’s not impossible. I could. If I have an idea, I can draw it fast enough. And I’m trying to clear some weekends in March (ha!) because February is such a mess. It’s a GOOD mess, but hell, this day job just kicks my butt when anything else is going on.

In clay, girlchild made the boychild a chip and dip bowl for his birthday…

Although she then left it with me to bisque and glaze fire and it just came out. It’s pretty. One air bubble. No breakage! A miracle.

I also finally got to do some building…it’s been rough getting into the studio the last two weeks. I worked on the right arm and hand, which still need work, and lengthened the left arm.

The bottom piece is dryish, but I want to paint it with underglazes…so I’ve been spraying it to rehydrate it, but then not having time to paint (or in this case, I forgot the glazes and I barely had an hour to work anyway).

Normally I’d go tomorrow after school, but I won’t be in this state. So Monday it is. Maybe I’ll remember the glazes. I can paint at the bisque stage…but I think I want to carve into the underglazes, so that needs to be at this stage. I keep having to beg people to NOT put things on the shelf where I pulled the base off…it’s big and only fits in a few places. I’m constantly fighting to keep it in the same space. The top is on my shelf, so it’s OK, but the drying shelves are really full right now.

OK. Today. Yikes. Need to pack. I had ordered supplies for my Saturday class but they aren’t coming now until next week, so I had to raid my stash for stuff. I don’t have much in the way of sequins…plenty of beads. So hopefully the instructor has some or I can buy some at the show. I’m looking forward to messing around with stuff, but I did not do a good job of editing threads or beads. The Man will have to deliver a bag to me right before class so I don’t have to carry it all day. I need to finish/edit sub plans and print them, copy seating charts, prep my kids for not being dumbasses while I’m gone, start a group project, be observed teaching vocab, finish the notes from yesterday, be totally efficient during prep period, go to at least one, possible two kid meetings, and drive to a stitching meeting tonight with a quilt that has sold. WOW. Maybe eat dinner. I mean there are no guarantees. Oh yeah, do laundry so I actually CAN pack. Maybe sleep, but probably not. Why sleep when you can lie awake with stupid songs running through your head (see post title) and a list of all the things you need to get done (grading! FFS). Yeah. Don’t try this at home, kids.

Fabric Is Calling

So where am I at in the Thanksgiving Break/recovery from school and a sinus infection? Ugh. On new meds…they’re working, but slowly. I occasionally breathe normally. But still sound like (what did my PT say?) Zooey Deschanel. I do not think this is true. I think I sound like someone whose head has been filled with snot for 5 weeks. Not pretty. I’m still sleeping a lot, napping, resting. I did pilates this morning for the first time in 10 days. I did OK. I napped this afternoon though in response. That seems fair. It does seem like a hike is not happening tomorrow morning, as is my Thanksgiving preference. Hmmm. We’ll see. I might feel more energetic tomorrow morning. Right now? Not so much. I have finished four books (to clarify, I had already started and was ensconced in three of them, so don’t freak out). Wait. Shit. I finished five books. OK. So there’s that. I finished cutting out Wonder Under, which wasn’t that hard, because it all happens sitting in front of a television…

It took 10 hours and 4 minutes to do that. Not bad. I started Friday and finished Monday night. No, I wasn’t feeling well for most of it. Good choice to be able to do that. Last night, I sorted all 1606 pieces (there’s more because I missed numbering some, but I didn’t count those…they’re all ‘a’s of other numbers))…

Sorting took an hour and 15 minutes. Now the next step is ironing to fabric, which requires me (a) to clean my office, which is a fucking disaster of partially done ceramics pieces and fabric that needs to be put away), and (b) to be able to stand for extended periods of time. Questionable today. We’ll see. I might have a run of energy later. Right now I’m in nap aftermath and it feels tiring. Tired. Headachy. There’s meds for that. I should take some. I am So Tired of taking meds.

I also started grading (finally!) last night. Not a lot. Just a little. Nothing hard. Ugh. I don’t want to not get the hard stuff done now, when there’s a lot of silence and time to space out…I don’t want to have to do it in December, when things are loud and rushed and overwhelming and stressful. I realize I might not have a choice.

I have this video of my two pieces in Glendora at Citrus College…

Thanks to Lydia for taking the video. Not sure I’ll be able to get up there when the college is open.

I managed to make it to ceramics on Tuesday morning, finally…9 days of not doing that. I picked this sweet pot up…

I also worked for a couple of hours on this thing…which is a beast.

It’s big and heavy and this is only the bottom half. Or third.

It’s time-consuming. And delightful because of that. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to go back…holiday season is complicated. Maybe Saturday? We’ll see.

Also I have another piece in a museum in Florida…

It’s on the far right behind the coat. This is Ft. Pierce, Florida. The other piece I have in Florida is there through December 20, I believe, in Miami. All good. More work than I’ve ever had in Florida at any one time, I think.

Requisite photo of girlchild and Simba…

He is very good at laps.

That’s my lap. Good dog.

I’m currently having a messaging argument with my cable company who offered a higher price service that would still be intermittent instead of giving me a solution to the problem. Give me a discount assholes. Tell me what the problem is and when it will be solved. Don’t offer me hotspots…I’m on a damn desktop. WTF. What if I were fucking disabled? What would you do then? Not everyone can take their device in the car to another location. Stupid companies. This is not getting better in the next four years. It’s not.

OK. It’s not worth the irritation. Make tea. Consider your views on climate change.

I love Greta. I don’t love Amy. I really don’t want to make another Supreme Court quilt y’all.

OK. Well. Make tea, try to clean office/studio enough so that I can start picking fabrics. Wait. I don’t have a background big enough. Or do I? I might. I’ll have to clean to find it. Maybe I should go read my 6th book instead. Or take another nap? Not sure. I should definitely post this before the internet disappears again. Tomorrow is the Man’s Fam’s Thanksgiving, where I just show up and try to be coherent (questionable right now). I do need to get my turkey into the brine soon. Our Thanksgiving will be Friday. I’m in charge of the turkey and the green beans. And not much else. Ugh. Take headache meds. Drink the tea. Fabric is calling.

Why?

Omigod omigod omigod, Spring Break is finally here…well, in 8 hours and 8 minutes, except I have to do duty after school and then set up or clean up or something, so a little bit more than that. Yes, I’m still sick, but not as bad as the two I live with were, so that’s a plus. Knock on wood. I met with a contractor last night who will start fixing the things that caused the flooding in January (or at least caused the shit ton of rain to come in the house…I don’t doubt we will have more instances of shit tons of rain, unfortunately). It won’t be cheap. There isn’t much I can do about that. It won’t be a quick fix either; we’ll be doing stuff in the summer too. Ugh. My summer already is problematic. Ah well. It’s not summer yet.

I was planning on finishing these two small quilts in the next few days. On Wednesday, I pinbasted the one I need for a show at the end of April…

And then continued stitchdown on the one that’s been hanging around for a while.

My machine needs service, a good cleaning. I had it on my list to call today after it was being fussy the night before, and then last night during my stitching Zoom. I had done about 35 minutes on it and then walked away to eat my dinner.

Usually the machine powers down if I don’t turn it off (and I didn’t want to reset everything, so I didn’t power down), but when I came back, it would turn on, it would beep, but the touch screen wouldn’t turn on. I restarted, I unplugged, I googled, but it looks like who knows WTF is going on, and I can’t sew dammit. REALLY? WHY. WHY. WHY. Deep breaths. OK. Calling them during my prep period. It’s fine; I can start drawing tonight instead, but My Goodness. Universe, you suck.

In better art news, they made personalized marketing for two of the upcoming shows…this is awesome!

Turns out Stitchpunk will be in Oregon in summer 2026. Plan that trip now in my head at least. Warn the Man it’s coming.

Nice choice. Fierce Planets isn’t coming close yet.

There’s still time.

Interestingly, I only have to teach advisory and two classes today, due to the dumbass planning of the literacy team. I’ll be in the library for the rest of the day. Planning things. Sounds lovely, eh? It’s pajama day too, so I’m enjoying that. Although I would have sewn up this pocket in my PJ pants if the sewing machine wasn’t on strike.

This is for my absent co-teacher…

Who talks about dinosaurs and space in equal amounts.

I actually finished coloring a cover page for once…

Penis-shaped volcanoes. Fun times.

And this…if you remember, I posted an appropriate version earlier this week. Although weird in the end (like how does that stick baby get out?)…and then there’s this one, from one of my not-so-sweet ones.

Seriously? Must have opted out of sex ed last year. I feel for his girlfriend, who I also have in class. Ignorance is real, y’all.

Anyway, gonna go do the things for as long as I have to, drink lots of tea, get as much schoolwork done as I can so I can do less over break (I already know I will have to come in to print things and set up), then get the fuck out of there for two weeks. Seriously. This year needs to knock it off. I’m done. Peace out though. Spring Break is a much-needed and appreciated respite.

Hazardous Mattress

Well I love short weeks at school. Must say it. Three-day week…just about what I can handle. It’s OK. Then we have two 5-day weeks and then a 3-day weekend. I don’t love coming home exhausted and rewriting my to-do list every day with nothing crossed off. I took a 20-minute nap yesterday (yes, I set an alarm). I stayed later at school to clean up the lab (which went really well) and set up for today, so blood sugar was crashing on the way out the door (hello yogurt!), then got home and opened every window (no A/C here), peed the poor dog, grabbed the mail and trashcans, ate more stuff because blood sugar still not happy with me. Then napped. Then Zoomed while editing 20 videos of kids doing the lab into 1. The best group yesterday all worked together, awesome, 2/3 special ed kids. Super impressed with those kids. All the kids seem OK so far, but it’s really at 2 weeks that we see for real what it might be like. We have some high flyers from last year, one who is already driving me a little bonkers, but not too bad. Last year, I had COVID for the first 10 days of school, so we didn’t do any of the fun stuff at the beginning. I’m a little behind in planning and making assignments because I wasn’t here those days, so I have to create new stuff, but I think it’s all working out OK. We’ll see.

The lab was about teamwork (always), so they had to dump one cup of M&Ms (toxic waste) into another empty cup (neutralizer) without touching the cups with their hands, and without putting their hands in or above the red haz-waste zone.

I had the kids tell me what they thought ‘haz-mat’ meant, and most of them figured it out, but my favorite, laugh-out-loud moment was the kid who yelled out ‘hazardous mattress!’. Oh yeah. That’s sticking.

I got the awesome news Wednesday that Woman Version 3.0 got into Stitchpunk and will be traveling with that show, which opens at the New England Quilt Museum in April 2024. Maybe it’ll even be during my Spring Break and I can go (but probably not!).

I really loved making this quilt. It’s a lot of weird biopunk, genetic engineering, and mutational wonder. You can thank my reading Margaret Atwood for the last 30 years, plus all the other dystopian sci fi I’ve read over the years. Plus my overactive imagination. I’m glad it will travel.

Meanwhile, I’m carving out that hour (plus when I can) of ironing every night. It’s hot, so that doesn’t help my motivation. My current school shoes suck, so my feet hurt by the end of the day, and this is standing at an ironing board, so that doesn’t help either. Plus I can have a fan under the ironing board, but not on my face, because the Wonder Under pieces would fly away, so that is also hard. That said, I do it anyway. Wednesday night, I started ironing the swamp under the questionable justices…

Last night, I finished the swamp by ironing the alligators and the Swamp Thing. It didn’t seem like much, but it took most of an hour. I also laid out all the 200s. Yeah, I have officially ironed 200 whole pieces in a lot of hours. I’m hoping it gets faster. It usually does. I don’t have anything to grade yet, so I really have no excuse for not coming home and hopping in here, except for the heat and the exhaustion. Yeah. Well. Tomorrow would be a great day for ironing, but I have a retreat thing to do. These are the times I turn into an ultra-introvert. I don’t have any weekends truly free until that glorious 3-day weekend.

That’s two weeks away, so hopefully I’m done ironing by then. But maybe not. At this rate. Sigh. It’s slow because there’s a lot of choices to be made. I can do huge numbers of pieces when lots of them will be similar or the same…but this quilt doesn’t have a lot of that. Even with the justices and their robes, I will need multiple black fabrics, and each justice overlaps another, so I will need to be able to see the differences between them. Ah well. Again, it is always the designer’s fault. And that’s me.

Trying something new on Simba’s crusty nose.

Seems to be working, although he’s not truly a fan of the process. It’s all natural, so when he licks it off, it’ll probably just help his coat be smoother. That’s what I tell him anyway. He gives me side-eye.

Still avoiding spiderwebs everywhere I walk in the yard.

I told the spiders this morning about the hurricane/cyclone headed our way. People are freaking out. I’m not a fan of high winds myself, and we have a fire southeast of here that doesn’t need wind at all (think Lahaina)…so the boychild is on hold for a few hours. Not sure if he’ll be home in the next few days or not. Someone asked me if they’d cancel school on Monday. I doubt it. They don’t cancel school for much…power outage once (countywide), smoke from two major fires (countywide). Yes, there’s supposed to be a lot of rain Monday, but…I doubt it will mean a day off. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be home and watching my trees (not falling, hopefully) than at school, but if there’s no power, I can’t iron. I’m up on a hill, so flooding isn’t much of an issue for us. I know it will be for some though. Until they finalize landfall, though, we don’t know much.

OK, so SpongeBob safety assignment today. Gotta love that little yellow square guy. Then hopefully ironing tonight. I had forgotten how much easier it was to teach just one subject, which I haven’t done since the year we went out on COVID. So much easier. I do miss my co-teacher though. She’d be horrified by the prep room at the moment. So many things I don’t know what to do with. Actually, she’d probably just come in and figure out where to put things, which might be part of why I miss her. It’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out. Maybe today I can have the teachers’ aide I’ve never met sort washers into piles by size. Yeah! One thing at a time.

There We Are…

And it’s here. The first day of school. My room is mostly ready, miraculously. I seriously thought I wasn’t going to make it, and I came in yesterday with a 28-point to-do list, mostly tech-related actually…set this up, copy that (so then the copier went down). My A/C has been out, but they fixed it (hopefully) yesterday…although the tech was such a geekboy that he had to come show me that the system thought my room was 163 degrees (it did feel that way), but it would cool it down to 156. Nice. The HELL system, I’m thinking. It did get down to 71 (aka 156) by the end of yesterday, so that’s doable. Today the kids show up and we pretend we know what we’re doing. I didn’t stay up all night worrying about it, so that’s a good thing. Mostly I’ve been exhausted enough to fall directly asleep, so that’s also good. Although last night, I was asleep and then got woken up. I could do without that. I also made it to the gym yesterday (wanted to read my book), so I am all the things today (tired, sore, not ready).

I did wake up to an awesome email; Woman Version 3.0 got into the SAQA Stitchpunk exhibit, so she’ll be at the New England Quilt Museum next year and then will travel places, I know not where.

She was fun to make, a real challenge to get all those ideas from every dystopian, world-ending book I’d ever read. OK, maybe not ALL the ideas, but we can start with Margaret Atwood, for sure. So happy she got in. With all her buggy friends.

I’m going to be ironing this one down to fabric for a LOOOONG time based on how long it’s taken me to do the first 100 pieces. Seriously. Here’s Monday night…

Got part of the Earth ironed down…then last night…

Finished the little Earth and the sky above it. I think tonight I start the swamp on the other side. More limited colors may go faster. Almost 3 hours for 100 pieces? That’s crazy. Wish me luck.

TV watching time after eating dinner has me working on this tiny applique…

Complete with dog and cat hair. Don’t get excited…it’s someone else’s pattern that I modified. I need something to do with my hands while watching. Last night, I didn’t work on this one. I wanted something less fussy…but I’ll be back to this one soon. I think there’s 10 smaller blocks and one big one? I don’t know. It took me a year to finally pick fabrics for this one, which is block 2. I’m not in a rush, apparently.

Boychild tried to throw the little blinking plane we found in the yard ages ago to the neighbor we thought it belonged to. One neighbor said it wasn’t theirs and the other never answered (I am surrounded by children)…I’m not impressed by his aim. See it?

Here. Now do you see it?

I think it’s still there…until the next Santa Ana wind event, and then it will probably end up in my yard again.

It’s “walk into a web” season.

So many spiders. We used to have these giant orange orbweavers…now these are about half the side and nowhere near as bright. Strange. But they bracket the pathway in a very disturbing way.

And as I go into the new year, which involves a sex ed committee with parents and school board members to decide what we will be teaching our sweetums, there’s this.

Also you don’t want me to groom them to be LGBTQIA and/or to understand gender pronouns. So ignorant and pregnant! Woo!

OK. I packed my lunch. I have a banana. I don’t know where my school shoes are. It’s warm already. My start-the-year T-shirt is clean and mostly clear of cat hair. My room is ready. I’m not, but I’ll survive. I’m doing two demos today. Why not? Then Pilates, cooking dinner, collapsing into a sweaty heap, and my book is at 90%, so what I REALLY want to do is finish it. Yes, I’m putting it in my bag. These early days, I don’t need to do a lot during prep. No grading yet. I do need to set up posts and my gradebook, but not immediately. Yeah. I think this is my 20th school year? Nope…my 21st. Wow. There we are.