Sitting Untouched and Growing Cold*

You know how I like to make art every day? Well it isn’t always possible, but I do try to at least do something with fabric and/or thread every day, although I guess technically Wonder Under isn’t fabric, but it’s fabric-related, and same with drawing, damn, I just talked myself out of my own plan. Fuck. Anyway. I try. Something. But some days, especially Fridays and Saturdays, there isn’t time or energy or whatever to let me do that, and most days during the school year, I don’t touch anything art-related until after 9 PM. So yesterday was one of those days, and that’s fine, because it was gaming night, and while I am gaming (no we aren’t freaking done yet even though we killed the Prince of Ziinch holy crap it’s Tzeentch they never showed me his name and now I know why they were pronouncing it so weird or something I don’t even know who he was, but he had feathers and was way smarter than any of us and wouldn’t freaking die, I shot him 3 times and so did everyone else, and now I have all these crazy wounds and flea buboes and I think I have chaos gases surrounding me), like I said WHILE I am gaming, I stitch. Because my Friday brain would otherwise be snoring away, exhausted by the day…damn, the week.

In the aftermath of the game, where I stopped stitching, just before we started putting away 7800 chips, another 450 dice, and all our other crap, each of us sporting a pile of wounds. But no. We’re not done with this campaign. It’s OK…it’s just kind of amazing.

Slow progress on this. I finally finished the July blocks…at least, I think they’re the July blocks, by finishing the hippo’s ears. The August blocks are the three across with the rhinos, bird, and butterfly. So that’s what I’m working on now…

Then I think the other three that are randomly not done are the September blocks. Maybe. So there’s the rhinos. They still need more work. But I got most of the flowers done. The blue flowers are complicated as hell…

They have french knots in slippery rayon, drizzle stitches, outlining with more of that crazy rayon shit. I’m still outlining…

Petting small furry things…

The boychild is followed around by animals all day and sometimes he gets annoyed and brings me one or two. This morning, they followed me around, well, the cats don’t really follow unless the little one thinks there’s food and the big one wants pets.

So last night, after gaming, I graded stuff. Because that’s what you do at 11 PM on a Friday. I think I’ve actually made my life easier (eventually) with the new warmups. They take longer to make/plan, but less time to grade. And they’re still writing.

Then I got up this morning and finished packing up quilts, wrote 4 statement pages, found some nails…delivering in about an hour.

I did NOT cut any of this out. I don’t know when I WILL cut any of this out. Sometime soon, for sure.

I did get into another show yesterday, Futurecraft at the Boehm Gallery, Palomar College, with Allied Craftsmen, one of the local groups to which I belong. The openings are Thursday, October 11, from 1-3 PM, and Saturday, October 13, from 2-4 PM (that’s the one I’ll be at). The show runs through November 7. There’s also an artists’ talk on Thursday, October 11 from 2-3 PM. I won’t be at that either. I have two pieces in the show…Part-Time Oasis…

And Mammogram…

So that’s one acceptance out of eight entries so far…not bad. Then again, this was the one where I was guaranteed to get one piece in, so not so impressive.

OK, on with quilt delivery, then an art exhibit, then some drinks, then IDK what. Food probably. That would be a good plan. Art will come in eventually (besides the management and delivery of said art).

*Cowboy Junkies, Cold Tea Blues

Try to Catch the Deluge in a Paper Cup*

This Friday arrived just in time, although I’m pretty sure I was supposed to get some more shit done yesterday and just blew it off. There’s always tonight…maybe. I did finally get the tracing done last night…whatever exhaustion I felt Tuesday night has strangely gotten better. I could look at my daily step count and maybe account it to that. Seriously, Nida, sit down once in a while. The graph of steps related to evening exhaustion is very telling. Wait until next week…I have a school-related meeting/activity after school every day next week. At least two days, I won’t be home until after 6. It looks exhausting. I better rest up this weekend. And occasionally sit down next week.

That’s amusing really…I have quilts to deliver, an art show, grading, gaming tonight, who knows what else. And I have to get to school early today to discuss moving a kid out of one period into another, because otherwise WWIII is gonna start in there. Not something I’m a fan of…trying to explain to a 12-year-old boy why “pussy” is offensive. No, he didn’t get it. I ramped down the feminist rant. Although I did call a kid on the whole “girls are bossy” shit. No sweetie. We’re just confident and you’re not doing anything, so she’s getting your ass on task. High five the girl off to the side and then explain that yelling at him probably isn’t the most effective way to get him to work. She’ll be someone’s boss some day…a GOOD boss. Me? I check my speech so much more than I used to do when I was younger. Which is good.

So I had my stitching meeting last night…and it took me an hour and a half (about) just to chain stitch around those damn rhinos. One and a half rhinos. With rayon thread. Pissy rayon thread. Such annoying thread…

I’ll be doing more of that at gaming tonight. I left the stitch book at home by accident, so I had to read through the instructions until I could find something I could do from memory. Chain stitch it is. Not Palestrina…haven’t done a million of them yet. I can do bullions from memory. I can’t do woven picot from memory…couldn’t remember what side to start on…top or bottom. Plus I didn’t know how many spokes, because it was the instructions from March again. DAMN. I don’t carry the whole notebook of instructions around with me, so that’s annoying.

Then I came home and I was still awake (miraculous), so I started tracing. I didn’t have a ton left, maybe 150 pieces. The dogs were gone with the boychild, so Kitten came out to clean her nether regions on my light table…

She spends a lot of time whacking her tail at me for disturbing her while this happens. I traced the head and the crazy hair and the tree with all its leaves and the cat and the bird…it didn’t take long…maybe a couple of hours?

There’s less than 3 yards of Wonder Under…and it took about 5 hours and 40 minutes to trace all 578 or so pieces (there’s more because I doubled up on about 5 pieces…but not a lot more).

So now I’m ready to cut them out. I might be able to handle that tonight. Well, the start of it. So I’m a little behind my plan. It’ll be fine. I’m not really expecting to get much done on it this weekend, but cutting it out shouldn’t take more than about 4 hours…so maybe I’ll be ironing by Monday or Tuesday night? I’ll have to think about what I want for the background…I don’t want to buy more fabric, if I can help it. Let me rephrase that. I’d love to buy more fabric…always…but I shouldn’t need to for this part. And I really shouldn’t. The house may be taken over by fabric some day if I don’t watch it.

This is a special portrait of Kitten and her frustrating gecko friend…frustrating in that Kitten is inside and gecko is outside, so much batting and banging of the window occurred.

There’s a gecko (is it the same one?) on this window most nights. It’s like cat TV. Now I really wanna know if its the same one or not. Need to catch it and mark it so I can tell. Yeah. That’s happening.

OK, off to work, more walking around in circles to manage kid work and behavior, plus all the other good teacher stuff that we do. And then a weekend. Looking forward to that, even though it will include grading 140 warmups and another 140 essays. Trying not to think about that part…

*Crowded House, Don’t Dream It’s Over

Might Have Known What You Would Find*

There was a quote in my head last night when I went to bed from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the movie, which I watched last night…possibly for the second time or maybe not, while I was packing up quilts). I wrote it down somewhere. It wasn’t the whale or the petunias who said it…definitely it was Marvin. Now I can’t find it. Perhaps I wrote it down in my sleep and dreamed the whole thing?

I got home yesterday and the plumber showed up to deal with the water pressure thingie and some other doodad wasn’t attached right (who knows who the hell did that) and all of a sudden, the place was jumping and water was flowing down the driveway quite boisterously but eventually everything got back in place and people could flush toilets again. Very important. Plus the boychild cooked dinner, which is always a wondrous thing. Somewhere, if I were smart and/or organized, I would keep track of all these random contraptions that get installed and then go bad with no warning. I need a house that thinks a lot harder than me. Or remembers stuff, because I can’t.

I have 4 quilts that have to be delivered Saturday so they can be installed next week up in Orange County. One needed a label, two needed slats and hardware, they all needed ironing and dehairing, plus I needed to figure out how to pack them up. None of that sounds like fun, because honestly, it isn’t. I have been putting it off. I forced myself to deal with most of it last night. I now have two rolls that need to be put in boxes…

And then I need to write (or find) statements, but otherwise, they’re ready to go. So that’s good. It took a while though.

Before that, during the dinner TV hour, which is more like 43 minutes, I was working on these. I think there’s about 15 more of the dark orange balls to go.

So that’s 5 or 6 nights of embellishing, but not the next 4 nights, because I won’t be home for any of those. Impressive, eh?

Puppy helped. He’s three today, so no longer a puppy.

As you can see, turning 3 is exhausting.

So it wasn’t until 10:30 PM that I was ready to trace. Ugh. This was supposed to be faster. Oh well. Life does what it does. I got another hour in…

I am still filling up the second yard. I’m at piece 437, which is the neck. So I have the head, the tree, and the cat/bird…otherwise known as about 250 pieces. I have a meeting tonight, but maybe I’ll be able to trace afterwards. Gaming tomorrow, another maybe after…at some point, I am not as tired after school. I can’t remember when that is…October? Maybe. The weekend is getting busy too. But I’ll get there. Not as fast as my brain wants me to, but I will.

*The Church, Under the Milky Way

Some People Say I’ve Done Alright for a Girl*

I wake up in the morning and my brain is still heavily involved in a conversation it was having with itself last night before I went to bed. Like maybe it went on all night while I was sleeping (not that I slept all night; y’all know how that goes…it might be why my eyes are a bit twitchy this morning) and it will continue to go on while I’m teaching and maybe I’ll get reinvolved in the conversation some time after school. If it lets me. I wonder sometimes if I’m a little insane, because it really does feel like parts of my brain are over there discussing things without telling me until something is decided. And then I remember Art Brain. I constantly let her go wander around with drawings. She always comes back, sometimes years from now, like the most recent quilt.

This is Womanscape.

She’s big…54″ wide by almost 82″ high. I like to do one really big quilt a year, usually over the summer. Last year was a bit weird for that, because I finished the big one in January or so. There’s a lot going on in here…honestly, this is a picture of my brain having a bunch of mostly related conversations…starting with a drawing from 2012, tearing it up into bits, and reworking it into this.

I also finally photographed this one, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman…

Yup. It’s me. Back when I was young and skinny. My kids are in this one too. Shadows. I just realized girlchild has what looks like a target on her uterine area. Whoops. She’ll love that. Anyway, obviously I made this one for the IQF Power of Women show, but if she doesn’t get in, she’ll get in somewhere. So that was the summer…two quilts. Nice.

I think I entered 8 shows in the last 3 weeks. Waiting to hear on all of them. It’ll take a while. Probably be a bunch of rejections too. I do have one where I’m guaranteed to get one piece in. That’s a plus.

So I finally finished all those pink bullion knots! A miracle. There were a lot of them for some reason. Now I only have one color left, this blush orange, they call it. And here’s why I left it for last. That stitch. It’s crested chain stitch. It’s not HARD…but I keep having to look at the book to remember what to do next.

Plus I’m not very good at keeping it even yet. Oh well. It’s progress. I always feel like I could embellish these Sue Spargo quilts forever, but then I remember I have more of them and maybe I should just finish it and move on! I know. Crazy.

I did finally get to tracing around 9:30 at night. I had tutoring after school and then went to Home Depot for wood slats for the quilts I need to deliver and then I was trying to book a hotel or AirBnB for the Chandler opening of Things That Matter in November. Yes! I’m going! It’s a long drive, and I may hate myself in the middle of it, but I’m going. We’re going. November will be a clusterfuck of travel. What’s new? Anyway, I traced for about 45 minutes, and then I was tired and nausea took over my brain.

These new diabetes meds are a constant issue. The positive is they’ve brought my blood sugar down. The negative is they regularly make me sick to my stomach. I’m not sure what to do about it. I thought it was getting better, but the last week wasn’t great. Patience, I guess. This is how they make you lose weight (it’s one of the side effects)…you can’t eat or you throw up. Fun stuff.

Anyway, I took a break for about an hour and then felt better and started tracing again. I don’t do well with nausea. But then it was late, and even though now I felt fine and wanted to keep going, I also want to survive a day with middle-schoolers, so I went to bed. I’m in the 300s somewhere. So much for being done last night. I’m just under 3 hours in. More than halfway.

Maybe tonight I will get more done and/or feel better. Some nights it doesn’t bug me…not sure why. And I get dehydrated but plain water makes it worse.

This is Kitten Television. She has pushed the slats over so she can watch the birds and the bunnies in the front yard.

And if she’s really offended by their existence, she bangs the slats and wakes me up. My cat is so weird.

*The Dollyrots, Brand New Key

Drive Until You Lose the Road*

It’s a shorter work week…normally someone would make me do back-to-school night this week too, but it’s next week for some reason. I actually might have some brains this week. Who knows? I’m feeling a little rough this morning, but I know I didn’t sleep well. The brain wouldn’t turn off and I couldn’t get comfortable, either mentally or physically. I’ve had crazy dreams the last three nights. Can’t remember what they are…just that they’re crazy and they wake me up and I’m lying there with hot flashes or shivering (make up your mind…), trying to remember why it was so bad in my head. At least if I remember the dream, I can parse it out, make some sense of it. Not remembering seems worse.

I’m sitting here, trying to remember what I’m teaching today. Oh yeah! I’m giving a quiz. It’s OK…it’s open note. They’ll survive. We’re still short computers, though, so that’s an issue. Everything online has to be printed out…ironically, I’m teaching digital citizenship and some kids will be doing it on paper. Sigh. Deadlines though! I have to get everyone in my homeroom through the lessons and passing the test by a certain date, and it always comes up faster than you’d think.

Anyway. School. So much mental energy goes there.

I’m still doing these. Who knows if I will ever finish? Well, I only have 1 1/2 of the pink balls left to embellish…

So there’s progress again. I have no idea what stitch I’m supposed to do on the orange balls. I left it last, so it must be complicated. Maybe. Who knows. I’ll find out tonight, I guess. After my prediction that I’d be done with these by the end of July, I’m hesitant to set another date…but end of September? Seems reasonable. So did the end of July, though.

Yesterday, after the hike, I basically ran around doing bits and pieces of things. I found the four quilts I need to pack up for Saturday. One needs a label. I pulled that one. I found wood slats for the quilts that didn’t have them. I’m one short, unfortunately, so that’s a trip to Home Depot after school…today I have tutoring, so I might be dead by then. I paused all that until the wood is purchased. I started using the new composter…the old one needs to sit for a while. There’s too much stuff in it. I’m going to let it go for a while, turn it occasionally, and then empty it onto the front yard dirt. The logistics of that might be somewhat complicated. How to get dirt from Point A to Point B. Through the house. I have a couple months to figure that out. I took my sewing machine over to my mom, so she can drop it off this week. I did some school stuff, setting up those digital citizenship lessons, at least through this week. I read my book for a while! I love being able to do that. It’s a good book too. It’s my book club book…and I probably won’t be able to go to book club for a second month in a row. Oh well.

And then finally, I started tracing Wonder Under. This piece won’t take long. I mean, it will be weeks, but I could probably finish tracing Wonder Under tonight. I could have done more last night, but the hike did my feet in. They were tired. Standing can be hard.

I got to piece 194, but that’s when I realized that there were two of them. I really don’t know how my brain skips backwards while I’m numbering. Maybe I walked away from it. But there’s duplicates from number 183-192. Hmmm. Thanks brain. Your dedication to your job is noted. So I’m about a third of the way through, with only an hour and a half in. I could easily finish tonight.

I keep track of all my time…last week, I only did about 4 hours of quilt stuff…compared to the previous week, with 15 1/2 hours. Then the week before school started, I got almost 22 hours in. Four hours is a little light, but that’s mostly because I was between quilts…I drew some, but I don’t count those hours until I enlarge a piece. Then any further drawing time counts toward the final total. Anyway, I’m not expecting a lot of hours this week, with gaming and tutoring and a meeting and who knows what else I’ve committed to in my head that I’m not remembering right now. I’m caught up on grades until Friday. But I think I can get the Wonder Under traced between now and the weekend…and I should be able to start cutting it out as well. So hopefully I’ll be ironing to fabric by next week. That’s the current plan anyway. You know how those change.

*The Fray, How to Save a Life

I’m Unusually Hard to Hold On to*

I’m thinking this was a very good weekend. It helps to have an extra day, doesn’t it? Especially for teachers, who usually lose a half to whole day of their weekend to planning and grades. I spent a significant chunk of time on school stuff, only because I had to organize the parent email for Sunday, but it wasn’t too bad. I know it will get worse, so I’m enjoying this weekend, when I had some time to laze around with a book or just NOT do something, which is really hard for me.

So we went to a couple of local wineries on Saturday afternoon…this one was nice, because of the view.

It was a great day for grapes as well…

And they had alpacas.

We came home after and had some dinner, and I started trying to finish this drawing…

And then decided I should stitch these to their boxes…these and four quilts need to be delivered next weekend for the Soka University show that opens on September 20.

I’m going to have to figure out when I can go see it…since it’s only open Monday-Friday.

I’m still working on these…I have 5 pink balls left to embellish, and then all the dark orange ones…

And then I’ll have TWO wool quilts that need quilting.

Puppy sleep…

Ah yes, on Sunday, I finished the drawing. It’s good, although I’m still debating something in the top right.

And then I numbered it…

High 500s, I think. Not bad. Not huge. Not too complicated.

Then we planned a hike to Hollenbeck Canyon this morning…need to get in one good long hike each month. Today was the day.

It was shady and cool at the start…

Those weird gourds…I’ve never seen the yellow flowers before though.

And these spiky things are pretty cool…

It’s definitely summer to fall here…

Old oaks, mostly dry grass…this is near the top of the hellish hill…we hiked up from the dark green in the middle right. Boychild took a different (aka longer) route…

You can’t see him, but he’s waving from the crotch between the two hills. He eventually caught up with us. Long legs and youth…I never had the first and I barely remember the latter.

The path down into the back valley…

There’s a coyote in this picture. Wave if you find him.

Dead snake…probably got hit by the bike that went by earlier.

And the long view out toward the south and the Jamul mountain range.

Boychild for the win. It was a little over 5 1/2 miles. Not bad. Home before lunch!

There’s all the parent emails I input and/or checked on Saturday. Kitten’s got this under control, yeah?

OK, so on the schedule for today: enter one more show (I’m up to 6 or 7 I think), drop sewing machine at mom’s so she can take it in to the shop for me and they can figure out the tension/feed dog thing, make my lunches for the week, start tracing Wonder Under, pack up the 4 quilts that need to be delivered next weekend, put a label on one of those quilts, maybe read my book. Not a bad ending to a 3-day weekend.

*Sara Bareilles, Love Song

Tell by the Way That You Switch and Walk*

I’m posting a little late today, because honestly, I didn’t do anything last night except try to finish my book because it’s overdue (I didn’t finish it yet, and now two more are at the library to pick up…the horror!) and cook dinner and import a bunch of email addresses for school and try to make sense of what my students typed in the form in the first place. Oh my. I’m not done with that mess. Although it was better than typing them all in myself.

But after a decent night’s sleep, I was ready to do some art stuff. Although then I remembered the hand stitching that I was going to do on the quilt I dropped off at the photographer’s last night. Whoops. Oh well.

Actually, here’s what I did in class yesterday…the first unit cover page for the new year.

How to alternately scare and fascinate your students in one go! Yeah!

Then I worked on this again. More embellishment of balls. Remember how I was going to do 3 a night and be done at the end of July? Yeah I remember that too.

Laughing hysterically at that one. I was also going to quilt that wool quilt…and honestly, I need to take my machine in. In fact, I should call about that right now. Hmmm.

OK, I called. She’s going in this week. The feed dogs refusing to stay dropped is what persuaded him. Cool.

Meanwhile, I enlarged a drawing that I originally thought needed redrawing, but now I think it just needs more. Then I taped it together this morning…

Looked at the size, since there are limits…

And added some to the bottom and the left (needed room for the tree’s leaves)…

Then debated, and added some more to the top. I’ve got some drawing to do now.

So I started.

It needs to percolate in my head more. My nature friend Julie is currently wracking her brain for what animal I just drew. Who knows? It’s fuzzy or spiky and has naked legs and a naked tail and a pointy little nose. And it likes cherries. Who doesn’t like cherries? Well…half my household, that’s who. Or some of them only like maraschino cherries, which make me gag. So there’s that. But y’all know I totally made up that animal.

OK, the plan for today involves wineries. So that’s good. It may or may not be conducive to drawing. Hard to say. But this quilt is gonna get a significant start this long weekend, that’s for sure. I also need to clean up and pack 4 quilts and 2 boxes for the Soka show that will open in September. Yikes. That’s work. Plus deal with all those emails. Sigh.

*Violent Femmes, Gone Daddy Gone

Master the Weekend

Successful day yesterday. I can’t say I did everything, but I did lots of things. Although I did not wrap the girlchild’s present…because it wasn’t on my list. Everything needs to be on the list. I didn’t find the quilt I need to ship (it’s OK, I didn’t even try). I didn’t copyedit. I did go to school, dump a bunch of stuff off there, set up my technology so the interlopers can teach their class next Friday, move all the stuff off the counters that’s supposed to be on the floor, find the table I like that they don’t like and switch it out with the other crappy table they tried to force on me, and GEEZ this was the worst part, after having to sit through an hour’s worth of videos and quizzes about integrated pest management (is it more important than bloodborne pathogens, angry parents, and court-mandated reporter rules?), I found this in my classroom…

Someone (custodial) left food containers in that trash can. Hence line of ants. Did they not watch the video? I like never ever leave food leftovers IN my classroom…I always put them outside. Sigh. Yes, I aced the IPM quiz. Oh wait, I missed one because there was a timing component or something and I didn’t watch carefully enough to memorize that. But I know how to keep ants out of my damn classroom. So ironic.

I came home and watered the dog.

This summer has been rough on all of us.

Then I ironed for a while. I WANT TO BE DONE. I don’t know why. There’s just another stage after this one that requires me to sit in this hot little room. Except when I’m sewing, I get TWO fans on me. I can’t use the other fan while ironing because it will blow everything away. I’ve already lost an eyeball (a fabric eyeball, chill out) and found some finger wrinkles attached to my shirt due to the breeze (ah, the breeze, when it happens, it’s delightful).

So I ironed this hand. Ten years from now, people will ask me why that hand is orange. I think most of you know why.

Then the parents, coming for their baby.

This…

On the next thing I was ironing were a lot of these little pieces. Turns out I didn’t need all of them. That happens sometimes.

Birth control pills…guess she will be short three of them.They won’t fit.

Let’s hope she’s not really depending on them to keep her unpregnant.

Then off to gaming. No, we’re not done with the game yet. We think every time we meet that it will be the last time, and it’s not. It’s OK. We can handle it. I sewed more embellishment on the blue flowers and worked on the hippo some more.

The hippo has nostrils and eyeballs, but I’m still working on his ears. Plus you can see the additional flower embellishment. I still need to stitch around them with that hellish thread that ravels like a bitch. Rayons are not my friends.

And then I managed to continue ironing after gaming, mostly because I drank more water than wine. That has been true all summer. So I ironed that hand and birth control pack on the left and you can see the ICE steal on the right.

Tiny things like this take a long time to put together. And it needs outlining.

Then my last goal for yesterday was to get this momma ironed down…

She’s got some tiny little eyeballs. The iris on the right is the one that has disappeared…I just cut another one.

Not ironing the baby down yet.

You can see where she goes on the left.

So all I have left is about 500 pieces (I’m in the mid 1300s) and two large figures, each of which has about 25 loose leaves with stems that will have to be ironed down to the background one at a time. I could iron the base down to the bottom of this piece, but I suspect it will be easier if I iron the two women together, attach them at the top, where they belong, and THEN try to get the base on, iron the whole thing down to the background, and then do all the leaves. It sounds like a lot because it is.

I’m leaving to pick up the girlchild in about 30 minutes. I have about 18 1/2 hours into the ironing. I probably have at least 7 hours to go. I will probably get some of it done today and tomorrow…hopefully ALL of it, but I can’t guarantee that because plans need to be flexible. I am, as always, panicking about time. 15 hours to stitch down? Maybe only 10? The other big quilt I finished last year was only 7 hours of stitch down. So maybe 10. Then a couple hours to sandwich and pinbaste it. Probably 20 hours to quilt it and another 8 or so to bind it. 45 hours left. Plus the 7 of ironing. That’s gonna be tight. Deep breaths. I can do it. This quilt is going to be epic once it’s done. Until then, my stress about it will be epic. Laughing at that. OK, gotta make more tea. I woke up early with a massive headache. Probably weather related. Oh well. I’ve taken meds and drunk the first cup of tea. I’m ready to see my kid and then master the weekend and whatever comes after.

She’s over by the Corner*

I’ve started trying to train myself to get up earlier, as the beginning of the new school year veers dangerously close to my summer brain. I have a ton of stuff to get done today, and lying around half asleep is not helpful…although standing around half asleep is pretty painful. Normally I would try to avoid school until the day I was actually required to go back, but because the district-wide conference is going to be AT my school and IN my classroom, I have to go back today to figure out how fucked up my room is after summer school was in there. I have stuff here at home that has to get into my classroom. I have stuff there that has to be hidden or moved. I’m going to try to organize stuff a little bit, but that’s hard to do when you know total strangers will be in your room all day and they might not respect your space as much as you’d like them to.

I still need to finish copyediting and cleaning the girlchild’s room out, and I’m really really trying to get the ironing done. My friend has gone back to her life in Northern California, although we did get out and about yesterday before she left…plus now I have a fridge full of Indian food…yum.

First, a gratuitous picture of Kitten with her favorite petting instrument.

My friend stayed at the Sycuan Golf Resort and what I loved about their free water was that it didn’t just say WATER…it’s MY WATER. Interesting thought living here in California, where water is sacred and Nestle owns a shitload of it. OWNS water. Sigh.

ENYA HA Nestle.

We headed out to Balboa Park…we didn’t have a ton of time, but we wandered around…like you do.

It was bloody hot there too.

We went to the Timken Museum to see my friend Bhavna Mehta’s newest work, Leela, who is made completely out of paper.

This piece is in response to that painting you can see across the room…

There’s a lot of amazing construction and vivid color going on in this piece. I love that it’s not a direct representation of the painting. Bhavna talks more about her interpretations in the catalog, also available at the museum. I really enjoyed taking all of it in and thinking about how we portrayed women in the past and how we can portray them now. Leela has power in her stance.

Of course, I lost my friend to the docent at one point…

Take an artist to an art museum day. I tolerate docents. They are nice people. I just like to figure stuff out more than be told their version of it. This was the second docent that tried to track us down. My friend likes docents more than I do.

So the rest of the day was sort of kamikazing around to meet with people and sew…I finished the Palestrina knots around the hippo, but then once again forgot to photograph or bring the rest of the hippo instructions from March (they’re in the notebook!), so I couldn’t finish the June blocks. Tonight!

So I started working on July’s blocks, which are the three in the middle. I did the stems and leaves, and then started on the blue flowers.

It’ll be a while before I get July done. Then August is the one with the tree and the two down at the bottom right. I have September sewn down and October cut out, but I think it will be easier to embellish September first before I sew October into the mess, because then I think I’m sewing most of the quilt together. Because working on wool things when it is 100 degrees out makes sense. And once it gets big, it’s hard to cart around to gaming or anywhere else with limited table space. The piece I’m working on here is already a bit too big.

Remember how I was going to be done with embellishing the circles on the bird quilt by the end of July? Didn’t happen. I have been working on the art quilt nonstop. Plus did I quilt the other wool quilt that was on my list at the beginning of the summer? Fuck no, I didn’t. I got one unfinished non-art quilt done this summer. Better than nothing.

So I started ironing around 10 PM, after my evening meeting and eating dinner. I had a couple of graffiti walls to put together.

Not too complicated. Lots of pieces, but pretty easy to put together. The hardest part was cutting out all the holes in the little letters.

The other wall, plus a talk bubble for the figure below the wall.

I’ve been putting sections together and then ironing the big sections together when it makes sense. So I did the hill behind this woman…

Ironed her into her space…then the walls to the sides. Obviously, I have two things that need to go into the hill where the big white spots are. The big piece I showed before will get ironed to the bottom of this.

This is not the first time I’ve put a woman holding the Earth into one of my quilts.

This is Watch Me Go from 2010…

So this new woman is about immigration though…I really feel like we need to look at the world as one place for all the people. Trying to build walls or claim that there is One Right Way to get into this country is kind of idiotic. Read the history of immigration here in the US and then realize that your ancestors mostly likely immigrated here for similar reasons to those trying to get here now. Why is their plight not as important as your ancestors’? Anyway…so she holds the world in her hands.

I have about 15 and a half hours of ironing done and I am finally past the halfway mark. I’m in the mid-1100s. So there’s another 700+ pieces to go…probably 9 hours of ironing, easily.

I’m hoping to get the school stuff and bedroom stuff done early enough that I can iron for a few hours this afternoon before gaming. Sometimes gaming is long and I don’t get much done afterwards…but maybe I will get some done tonight. Then the girlchild arrives tomorrow morning, so I can’t predict what will happen. Well, except for squealing and very excited dogs. That will definitely happen.

*The Velvet Underground, Foggy Notion

It’s No Better to Be Safe Than Sorry*

This summer, the heat is really getting to me. I don’t have a lot of extra money in general…even less so during the summer…but I’m sort of currently obsessed with installing A/C in my office for NEXT summer…and maybe the bedroom as well. Although I think my lack of sleep is more about noise (of the ceiling fan) and my brain not shutting down properly than about temperature…so A/C in there won’t help. It’s hard to say. I’m currently fighting heat rash on the inside of my elbows from ironing…I think if I could get my sliding glass door to open in here, that would help at night. I’m ironing more at night because (in general) it’s cooler. It’s at least dark. Sometimes there’s a breeze. So today, my plan is to get the sliding door to open and to finish the ironing. Then I go on to cutting things out…and YES, I’m a good three days behind where I wanted to be, but that’s reality, so you just suck it up and move on. I have no jury duty today, but there’s no guarantees on the rest of the week, and after this week, things get hinky. Sigh.

Anyway, I did manage just about 7 hours of ironing over the weekend…not great, but progress. My total is currently almost 22 hours, so maybe I will finish at about 25 hours. Hard to say at this point.

So let’s walk through the weekend. I entered another show on Saturday morning and did some techy stuff to help with that group. Kitten helped.

Calli also helped. She’s especially helpful when I’m trying to walk across this small room to get to the drawers of blue fabrics. Usually she leaves after I do that a few times.

More sleepy Kitten. She’ll be 10 in two weeks.

So the first thing I needed to do was pick the fabrics for the hill behind everything. I did finally decide on greens (no florals though)…and I dumped the last one…the lightest one…because it was too busy. I found another interim one and bumped the second-to-last one down.

I really like that fabric, but busy isn’t good for backgrounds…usually.

This is a lot of fabrics for what was two tiny figures on the hill.

I’m having to pull a different flesh run for every body…in this case, only a hand. It means I’m using a lot more fabrics than usual.

This was the pile before we left on Saturday for the man’s show…

And this is the to-be-cut pile. Growing growing growing.

Interesting wall near the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach. I really like this wall…wish I could afford to put one in my yard.

So we had to be up there early so the band could set up, but I wasn’t allowed in (no problem)…so I found a coffee shop and drew. I have a piece that needs to be done by the end of October.

This drawing is pretty close actually. There’s some things I would change.

I ate and read my book and then walked back to the show…this wall was on the way.

No doubt about that.

Announcement board…

Here’s that drawing so far. Tree needs stuff. I think the whole thing needs more space. Not sure about the bottom leg.

In the Belly Up, we had an hour wait for the opening act…so I drew some more.

And another one…

The show was great…they did well. Hopefully it will turn into more shows for them. I don’t get to see all of the shows…the next two are high school reunions, so those are harder for me to get into (I do crash some things). I guess that means more artmaking time. On a Saturday night. Ugh. I do like to make myself get out of the house and do stuff, but sometimes, making art is easier.

So I started ironing late on Sunday. Got up late, did a bunch of stuff, groceries and all. This is the run for the next human…a light one.

I had to move 3 of the now 5 boxes of fabrics being used in this quilt so I had enough room on the ironing board…it’s the three smaller boxes on top of the grays. I’m still pulling from those boxes.

One of the fabrics I picked had a piece ironed to it…from I DON’T KNOW WHAT. Seriously. I obviously forgot about it, and probably had to cut it from something, but it’s a very low number. Strange. Maybe that small quilt with the hand?

Kitten is still holding down the fort. She likes to be near me, but isn’t keen on being out in the living room. This feels safer for her.

At some point, I looked at the clock and went Huh. OK. Well past bedtime. Wide awake, brain racing along, but I knew I’d have to pee both dogs and I’d be woken up at 6 AM and you’d think I could fall asleep that late, but no…my brain was going overtime on the next figure and how to make it stand out from the background. Sigh. I need to get the brain under control before school starts.

So the pile grows.

More today. I think I’m in the 1400s at the moment. I lied. I’m in the 1500s…about halfway through, but a huge chunk of that is leaves, so they’re all chunked together and will get ironed in one fell swoop. So I have about 350 pieces left. Easy peasy.

I did some Palestrina knots on the hippo last night at the parentals…

Almost done. OK, need a shower, some food, finish ironing, do some GISH stuff (google it), wash a sleeping bag, try to clean a tent that was immersed in Madagascar mud (yup, it’s been a while), and maybe check some other stuff off the to-do list. Running out of days. I start looking at school stuff August 1. I need to put my classroom back together too. Ugh. Don’t wanna.

*a-ha, Take on Me