Adjusting…

Well. OK. Over break, the amount of room in my head that I allow for school issues, not grading stuff or prepping lessons, but the role we teachers play as counselors, motivators, substitute parents, besties (not really), motivators, disciplinarians, doctors, psychiatrists (without any training, of course), and all the other jobs we do…I reduce that amount in my head over break. It’s nice to walk away from it and not go to bed worrying about what this kid said or how they behaved or what they did or what you know is going on at home or how their behavior means probably this is what break was like for them. It’s nice to not wake up in the morning to emails that are huge red flags for mental illness or a mental break or something significant that you will have to persuade someone else to take action on, because you are just the teacher, one of the many teachers, for this kid who is obviously (to you) on the brink of something possibly really bad, or another kid who you think has reasons for what they’re doing, but sometimes other people don’t agree and you watch the kid continue with who and what they are and hope that by adulthood they have figured it out. Because I can’t fix all of it. And that’s one of the hardest things about being a teacher. Wanting to fix it and not being able to…and sometimes not even having enough extra space in your head to help that one over there, because they mostly seem OK and no one else thinks there’s a problem.

All that. After one day with the kids. Oh yeah. Why I don’t sleep well.

But what did I do yesterday? I drew this…

I still need to color it. I’m behind. I was grading all the late stuff that showed up yesterday. Getting things into the gradebook. Like a responsible teacher. I tutored after school. It uses up all of my mental energy usually, but I needed to deal with some grading stuff at home, so I did. For an hour. But I popped out the backyard to get this.

It’s usually hard to get the sunset on my side of the hill. I did notice the dead branch the tree trimmers behind my house dumped on my hedge. Great.

I made a huge pile of vegetables for dinner. Good stuff. Note: roasted persimmons are tasty. And I cut this stuff out. More of it.

Two or three hours more of it…

What’s left to be cut out? Those fleshy bits in the top box.

Getting there. Maybe tonight? Hard to say. I really need to grade another assignment tonight…but it’s hard to come home after all the energy gets used up and find more energy to stare at assignments. I know I should. I just don’t know if I can.

This week is always an adjustment…with sleep, talking, standing, energy, emotional energy, food, peeing! (teachers understand this). I should remember that and give myself a break for not solving everyone’s problems today. (ha! or anyone’s…really…)

Art Tonight. Long Day First.

Back to work is a whole different world. Luckily, we started yesterday with no kids…professional development (I use that phrase lightly) in the morning and time to “plan” in the afternoon (aka get my room under control). That part was nice, because usually we have to either come in really early on Monday or come in the weekend before to set up and make sure we have everything. For instance, I forgot that I needed more folders because I misordered back in summer and got some with no metal prongs, and that ain’t gonna fly. I think I thought it MIGHT fly back in the summer? But no. So I have one class that will feel all left out because their new folders won’t arrive until Thursday. Well, Friday for them. They will survive.

Our district has this focus on healthy and happy kids, and although I don’t think that’s a bad idea in general, I know that for some people, happy isn’t really a thing. Being told to be healthy and happy can be really frustrating, like if we just tried a little harder, we could be those things, but when you know people who don’t have happy in their vocabulary, but they are content or passionate about something specific, then you balk at that word. And healthy is another issue…I have multiple students with health issues that are out of their control, and to force this concept of healthy without qualifying it…it’s not something I agree with. I’m more into being the best person you can be, wherever that is in the spectrum. Contribute positively to the world, whether it’s person by person or worldwide. Take care of yourself and your people, whether friends or family. Because some people’s families suck too. Anyway. I drew yesterday, but it wasn’t fun or interesting…I kind of think of this as teacher busywork, because I think the district already has decided what our best practices etc are, and they just want us to feel like we’re part of the process.

But I’m pretty cynical about school districts too. Maybe it really is meant to be collaborative. At some point, though, when the groups are made up of 30 people…I don’t think we’re doing anything productive with that. Others disagree with me. That’s OK.

So focus on the afternoon, when I got shit done. That was good. And it means I am more prepared (well, my room is) for today. My brain is still not on fleek. (wrong use. Totally.)

I booked out of school as fast as possible and headed out with the dogs and the boy to try to get an hour in. We failed to do all three miles (light fading and coyote incursion imminent), but we did close. We could have gone further probably. Plus we almost got the car stuck…even better.

Insert interesting pods…

And ferns I’ve never noticed before…

We were standing up slope with the dogs as people went by…I’m sure they’re there all the time.

When I got home, I graded for a while…trying to get caught up. Always trying, never succeeding, until June, when the final grades are due.

Then I cut out stuff for four hours straight. Because I couldn’t deal with anything else.

Definitely progress showing here. The box in the middle is all that’s left. It doesn’t look like much, but there’s a lot of little pieces in there. It will take a while. I’m honestly having a hard time getting my head into this. So that will change when I start ironing, I’m sure. And maybe once I get back into the routine of school. Maybe. Right now I’m not feeling it. But feel it or not, the work day starts in 42 minutes, so I’ve got to get going. Art tonight. Long day first.

Into the Fray!

Aargh. Mornings. Monday mornings. Monday mornings the first day after break. Monday mornings the first day after break when the sweet asshole of a cute dog that you have barked until after 2 AM at the coyotes who were singing all over the neighborhood. That last part. I can handle one late night a week and recover successfully (the wonder of being old? I used to be able to do multiple nights in a row), but the first night of the work week? On the first week back? I might be functionally useless by Friday. (Might be…ha!)

Well, it’s OK. This week is all planned out. Hopefully I even copied everything back in December that I need this week. I know I ordered the lab materials. It’ll be fine. Really. (stares off into space. ugh.)

I do like teaching. I especially like teaching science, despite my degrees being in Literature and Art. I even like teaching middle schoolers…they are an interesting mix between maturity and weepy snot. A challenge! I like challenges. They keep me moving, going, progressing. But the daily grind and the build up of stress and the worry about the kids and the to-do list that comes from teaching and the district and all the other crap we have to do? I could do without that. That is what makes me look at the calendar and think, when do I get a break? Well, there’s a 3-day weekend coming up, so there’s that. But grades are due before that.

Anyway, I’ve got art to make! Well, and some of what I want to be making is just process-driven. I bought these small square dyed moons, 18 of them in two batches, from Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth…

just because I liked them. But then what to do with them? I really want some of my stuff this year to just be about stitching, by hand. And I’m not worried about what this will be, but it will be something for me. So I cut blocks out of 4 or 5 fabrics and paired moons (and one star) with them, and then let them percolate. And last night, I cut some paper to the size of the finished block and drew some things…

These are all people, but there will be other things. I was going to fuse, but I think I’m going to hand applique instead. I like the look of hand applique. I just can’t ever make quilts like that because I will never ever finish them. You’ll see one of those hand appliqued art quilts from god knows when showing up this year. It’s in the pile of to-do. So this was Sunday’s project, but maybe I will choose fabrics and cut some freezer paper patterns for them tonight. There are 14 more moons. Some will just be moons I think. We’ll see.

I like not knowing.

I graded yesterday. I put away ALL of my clothes (hasn’t happened since summer, scarily enough. They lived in hampers…). I packed up a sold quilt to ship it off. I made lunches, but not breakfasts, because those are harder for me to stomach. And I drew…the 23rd drawing of Winter Break…

Yeah, it’s weird. So what? I like weird. I like just drawing. Amusingly, even though that’s the last drawing of Winter Break, I have at least 3 hours of a staff meeting today, and what is in my bag? You got it…one of the small sketchbooks. So there. I’ve had about 4 hours of sleep. I’m gonna need something to keep me from screaming. (I hate staff meetings.)

I cut things out for a little while.

Not long enough. The pile of stuff that’s cut out is now bigger than the pile that’s not, but I should have been DONE! OK, there are good reasons why I’m not, but there’s a deadline on this one too, although it’s pretty loose. I could miss it and the world would not end.

Here’s one of my pieces that got into the Surface Design Association Exhibition in Print…titled Family Matters. My piece is And Then There Was One, from when I first sent both kids off to college.

Look guys! You’re naked in print! I know. My children are severely annoyed by me on a regular basis. Interestingly, the boy’s interests moved away from law, but the girlchild still cooks. I didn’t know then that she would be into environmental science or that he would have done all these government/philosophy classes. Things change. My hair still isn’t gray either.

Here’s the magazine cover…

with an intriguing piece, Untitled American Family, by Hale Ekinci, who has some interesting work on her website.

With that, I’m shoving my computer and my sketchbook into a bag with my lunch and some snacks, and about half my brain. Into the fray! We go!

Blow My Mind*

I think I have work in four shows that are closing in the next three days. Something about this week of January. Close it out, change it up. In a similar vein, it’s my last day of Winter Break…there are a few 3-day weekends coming, but then no break until the middle of April (96 days away. Yes. My phone tells me that.). I feel a need to gird my loins, to pull myself up by my bootstraps, to do my laundry (that last thing is probably the most important).

I’ve been doing one drawing a day (a night, really) since the beginning of break, trying to get drawing back in my life, a constant instead of a means to an end, and I’ve been successful with that. I’ve done 22 of them, some more time-consuming and complicated than others, and only a few that will become quilts. Some might be the starting ideas of quilts, like the one I’m working on now came from a drawing I did in a staff meeting that had to be redrawn about 5 times over a 9-month period before it was ready.

So the real question is, what now with the drawing? I don’t think I can realistically continue every night. It takes me on average about an hour to do one, and that’s if I’m concentrating and not trying to do something else. With a job that takes an average of 60 hours a week, I can’t really justify drawing every night, because I would be limiting the time I give to the other art stuff, the actual finishing of quilts and the like. In the past, I tried to schedule drawing one night a week and failed miserably. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Except I know I will draw tonight. Because it’s the last night of break. Anyway. So many things to consider. Like steps toward making a coloring book. I’ll need help, that’s for sure. Wonder what the boychild’s going rate is…

Yesterday was mostly a meeting day. I finished a bunch of things that had to be done in the morning and then we drove a million miles to a meeting (OK, not really, but it seemed like it), which was a good thing, because there’s a show coming up in October and some organizational stuff, plus half the people in this group are in other groups I’m in, and all of us seem to be having aging pains, not growing pains, but what do we do as things change and how do we change to our benefit? When I got home, I did more of those little things that need doing and had dinner and did my daily drawing…

Some simpler than others. Trees and birds in most of them. We had a discussion of why I think it’s important to be part of the change and to take on more work to help these art groups survive. I’m not the one that sits back and waits for other people to do it for me. I’m one of the people who is in the background doing things, taking on stuff for which I have the skills, because others don’t, and they ask for help on things they know I can do (or they guess I can do, because it’s often something I’ve never done before). And sometimes after doing one of those things, I’m like, nope, uh uh, never ever doing that again, and sometimes I’ll be fine with it. So does that take away from time for my own stuff? Of course it does. But if I don’t take on those tasks, those responsibilities, then whatever it is falls apart, the group is no longer, and I’m a member of that group because I need to be. It serves a purpose for me. So I do my stuff.

And for school, when I take on things, it’s because no one else will, or if they do, I don’t trust them to do it right, to be responsible for what the kids need, but mostly it’s because someone else won’t do it. Which annoys the crap out of me. But whatever. It’s always a balance between giving to the group and making sure I have time to get stuff done too. But there’s something in my nature that makes me do the group stuff. It’s important. If you’re in a group now, stop being the one who does nothing (but complain…because trust me, the do-nothings are always complaining). Take on a task for this year. It can be a small one. Realize other people are carrying you and step up. Then maybe one of those doers can take a little break, can take more time for themselves or their work.

Anyway. I also cut things out for about 3 hours…

Getting there. Not there yet. But getting there. Box on the left is cut out. Box on the right is not. Yes the couch is chaos at the moment. See the cat at the bottom of the photo? She’s blurry movement.

Today.

Wish I were these guys. Wish I could replace this carpet too. Not a thing right now.

Today. Get ready for school. No kids tomorrow, thank god, but I need to be ready for them the next day. I’m so behind it’s not even funny. But it’s normal. It’s OK. It will be OK. Go pack up that quilt and mail it off, so I can pay for the phone I just bought (mine was dying). Do laundry! I said that earlier. Clean up. Organize. Get ready. MAKE MORE ART. Really, that’s just one drawing and cutting a bunch of stuff out. Did I mention I didn’t get into the show I was hoping to get into with the last quilt of 2018? I don’t think it’s in the gallery of recent work, so I’ll go put it in there. Oh well. It will go somewhere. They always do. I am very happy with it anyway.

*AWOLNATION, Passion

I Finished…Something.

It’s Saturday. Y’all probably already know this, but I keep having to tell myself what day it is because I conveniently forget when on break. It’s a nice thing to get to that point, except when you have to be somewhere at a particular time and people want you to be there ON time and with all your crap so they can leave with you. So I’m watching the clock and probably need to get my act in gear soon.

In awesomely good news, I finished the Project Paint thing yesterday…in fact, it’s all I finished, although I left the house twice for things I had to do, and in both cases almost got creamed by another vehicle who was driving idiotically in my lane when previously they had NOT been in my lane, so it kinda makes me think I shouldn’t leave the house like ever. Not happening, of course, but it’s what my core brain is saying. Don’t leave! People drive badly! Just stay home! It’s nicer here anyway!

OK, brain, I hear you. Still not happening.

I started with ironing bits together…this is the easy stuff…

These are part of the strips for top and bottom.

I wanted a relationship between the people and the place they live…the bigger place.

And that one monkey made it underground.

Plus a rocket into the sky.

It’s so fast to do these little pieces…

Then I put each one onto a background…

So I could piece things. Here’s where I admit that I suck at measuring and piecing. One reason why I’m not a traditional quilter. The second one being that I hate all that repetition.

I pieced the top, adding a canvas square in there for my collaborator to paint something on.

He says he’s more abstract normally. So he can go sky abstract here if he wants. Or whatever.

And here’s the bottom strip getting stitched down, with another canvas square in the ground…for ground abstract.

We’ll see what he does with these.

This part made me nervous, the stitchdown on the actual canvas, so I tried it out on a scratch piece first.

Seemed to work. So I went for it…

Slow and steady.

I did all of it…with no problems…there’s the back…

OK then. Now piece it all together…strip on top and bottom…

I was thinking about how I didn’t want to bind it, but I needed to finish the edges and figure out how to hang it. I need it to be able to go back to the original guy so he can finish painting, but I won’t get it back before it goes in the show.

So I put wide-enough strips on that I could use it to finish the edges.

Then I made the backing. The rules are that I can’t use a piece of fabric that’s bigger than 6″ square, because they might be able to use it as a disguise.

I’m not arguing with the prison system, but I feel like once you sew them together, they are still a really bad and ugly disguise. Bleck.

Batting, backing, oh I skipped the whole thing where I quilted around each box and then inside the fabric stuff, but I tried the quilting on the paper and decided it would be a clusterfuck.

So I left the center piece unquilted. I pinned the extra around the back and then put two sleeves on, top and bottom, for hanging.

And then sewed the whole thing down…

And stitched the sleeves down. Done. A day early. I still need to do a write up before I leave this morning, but it’s getting delivered today. Whoo! Off my plate! I’ll see it again in May. We’ll see what he does with my crazy. Me? Outside my box. It’s good to do that sometimes.

Speaking of crazy. This dog.

She’s such a weird sleeper.

I finished that other stuff around 9:30 PM after working on it a goodly chunk of the day. Then I drew this…

Cool. I like the idea. Might run further with this someday.

And then I cut stuff out for a little while.

Still way behind where I wanted to be. Oh well. And I’ve graded nothing for two days. Probably need to do some schoolwork. School starts Monday. Ugh. So not ready. Never ready.

And there’s this. The second installment in the weird mailing I got a few weeks ago about an imaginary relative…now bringing in time travel and artifacts and my duty as the descendant of this relative.

I still don’t know who set this up, but it’s cool…we got all the letter snippets into some order and will wait patiently for the next installment. Don’t ruin it! I know it’s a gift thing and I am appreciating the mystery. Plus looking forward to time travel.

OK. Shower, food, pack stuff up to take with me to meeting, long drive to and from meeting, long meeting, need more time before Monday, but maybe it’ll all be OK anyway. Don’t even ask about my blood sugar. It’s a disaster. I am, as always, a work in progress.

Well, I Got One Foot on the Platform*

OK. I need another week. I realize most of you don’t get a 3-week break around Christmas, and you think I’m a whiner about this, and maybe I am, but all of the deadlines and to-do list items just slammed into me like a Mack truck and I’m panicking. It’s OK. I do this every Winter Break. But when your diabetes nurse is telling you that stress increases your blood sugar and you’re still trying to get that under control, thinking about stress causing that just causes more stress and maybe I should blow off everything and just go for a long hike. There are many arguments for that.

But I am also a responsible adult. Apparently.

So I drove back from Arrowhead yesterday morning. We all left early to get back to life. And deadlines. And stress. Aack. Seriously. I need to get a hold of this.

So let’s remember this…because it’s pretty. Although effing cold.

I don’t think my feet got warm until like 6 PM yesterday night.

Lots of lolling around with dogs. Reading books. On devices.

I didn’t finish mine, but I checked out three more and then went on airplane mode so the library couldn’t suck back the book that was due yesterday that I’m almost done with but literally have no time to read what am I thinking. Sigh.

Wednesday was the boychild’s birthday. He made everyone dinner and cake, but then the sprinkles container exploded all over the kitchen.

Well then. Impressive.

More sleeping puppy.

We played Settlers of Catan (need to get us some extensions I think) and I drew and if you follow my Insta, you saw the in-progress drawing that I did while gaming. Yes, I’m not a super serious gamer because I draw or stitch (or sometimes grade) at the same time, but I almost won this time. Maybe. Or we all almost won and the girlchild did win. But here’s the drawing…

This one could be a quilt. Totally. In fact, it shall be. I don’t know when though. Don’t ask me that.

Wednesday night’s cutting…I am so far behind on this.

But there is progress. That’s a plus. I didn’t work on it yesterday though. Yesterday I panicked about a piece that is supposed to be done by Sunday, but it would be really convenient if it were done by tomorrow. Noon. So. Yeah. I don’t know if I can pull that off, but it’s what I’m trying to do.

Yesterday afternoon, I trimmed all the pieces for the Project Paint piece…

There’s about 161 pieces I think. Not a ton.

Then I ironed the first section together…

Ironing eyeballs separately. So the inmate I’m working with had painted a young boy picking his nose and playing with a barrel of monkeys…so I did his older sister…

She’s playing solitaire, because her little brother is too annoying to play with. You know. And then I ironed her onto the canvas that he had painted on…

Now honestly, I could stop there. Well, I need to stitch some. But I didn’t stop there. Because I wanted to go beyond relationships between siblings and games and older/younger…I wanted to go out into the big wide world.

So I’ll be working on the top and bottom strips today, then stitching down, and deciding how to finish it. And wondering why I do this to myself, except I think it’s a good cause. I still need to write a response to the inmate as well and figure out how to get it done before noon tomorrow.

Don’t talk to me about the other things I need to do today.

I did have my stitching meeting last night. No, I haven’t implemented my one piece per night thing yet. I’m still on break. Plus I’ve been working on this one at stitching meeting forever. I finished the zebra and started the antelope…

But realized I am probably going to run out of the thread I’m using. I can’t figure out what it is, and I thought I had more of it. I lost the label for it. I haven’t looked too hard yet though. I will see if I can get around the antelope’s body and then maybe find a replacement. I still need to do the other flowers on this block too…but they are on the other instruction sheet…the one I don’t carry around.

It’s interesting. I put stuff on my to-do list that really isn’t necessary, like the drawing a night thing…here’s last night’s.

But I do that for my sanity and to make sure that the job stuff doesn’t take over the world. Because it would if I let it.

OK, I’ve got work to do. Later today? Dog walk and probably phone replacement. And more of this stuff. A drawing. Maybe some stitching. Most definitely trying to finish the Project Paint thing. Some school stuff maybe. Not forgetting about that quilt I have to ship. Aargh. Too much. (Do not ask me about grading. My principal called me yesterday. On break. Yeah. Teaching. The job that sucks up your brain and spits it out.)

*The Animals, The House of the Rising Sun

Time Compression

So I just realized the silly app on my iPad tossed all these photos into the post in backward order. Sigh. No. I don’t have the patience to move them all. Seriously. Hmn. Wait, there might be a workaround…there is! Sigh. Yes, I’m on three different devices up here and none of them is the best for getting stuff where I need it to be. And one needs to be back in airplane mode before it deletes the book that I am reading…I only have 100 pages left to read, but it’s supposed to be due sometime tonight, and I won’t get all those pages read by then. I’m losing time, it seems. It’s always like that in the days before we go back to school. Time compresses strangely and disappears without notice.

So I wanted to iron the Wonder Under to fabric for the Project Paint piece before I came up the mountain, so I did. Here they are…

Hopefully I’ll get them cut out tonight. I also need to cut the other stuff out, but that’s going to take me longer I think.

I used all the fabrics from the last big quilt, except I added a few…these…

Nothing much…just needed to fill a space.

Here’s the pile from the last one…the fabrics I used are all on top of the boxes.

Plus random dog toy. I meant to leave for the mountains at around noon…well, it was almost 2 PM. Whatever.

I made it up before dark…ensconsed myself on the couch with the computer, and finished one of the hellish grading things I had created. Girlchild with puppy…also on couch.

It was pretty cold, 30 degrees, when I got here…a delightful 27 this morning. I don’t have clothes for this. It warmed up today, though. Mostly we are all sitting around reading or watching things. It’s the boychild’s birthday and he will be cooking…impressive. The sun is already dropping and I’ve gotten very little done. I’m in the middle of grading another assignment. I didn’t do a very good job in the middle week of getting crap done. Oh well. Being a teacher is a crazy thing sometimes. I can’t be a teacher every day.

I did cut some stuff out last night…not a lot…the grading sucked up my brain.

Plus we played Sorry. I lost. But not as bad as some people. Still a lot of cutting to do.

Still drawing. In space. With aliens.

It will maybe be hard to stop doing this? Or not? I’m not sure. I know you have to do something like 30 days in a row to make it a habit. Meditation too, right? Supposed to be doing that. Ugh. Can’t remember to do everything.

So today was some shopping, wherein mostly the boychild and I stood around and watched the other two buy things, but we realized most of the shoes in the Bass outlet store had names, like people names. So we went around and judged the hell out of that…this was the closest to mine (I’m not a Kathleen), and I was thoroughly offended that I was the bog standard loafer. Ugh.

Although I feel like I could be cheaper. Seriously. I don’t think I even wore these in the preppy high school era of the 80s when they were the thing. I think I had knock-offs for a while, but I mostly gave up on that stuff and went Kmart and thrift shop. Much more my style.

Anyway, back to grading after walking dogs, then cutting things up and another drawing tonight, plus some gaming probably. Maybe I’ll read some more too. Who knows?

He Played It Left Hand*

The dogs are perturbed. The kids just left for a hike without them, leaving them with me, the boring old lady who irons all day. I do actually have a hike planned for next week, and I was going to walk the dogs today, but I’m down a car and don’t want to go to the wildlife area (with coyotes) by myself with the dogs. But I can walk them locally…a little later maybe. I’m not quite awake yet. Fuzzy brain caused by lack of sleep. They did get left alone for a chunk of yesterday…while we cooked pasta from scratch.

This was around the corner from where we cooked…a nice, colorful mural.

We actually were at Hipcooks, next door. The man’s family is large and extended, and we were invited to cook with them…

Wherein he showed a skill for beating eggs that has been previously invisible…

Good to know.

Boychild in charge of a pasta filling…

Pretty sure the girlchild was in charge of mushrooms…but I don’t have a picture of that. Oh wait, I do. She’s texting and cooking at the same time.

Obligatory food picture, first course…

The second course required the pasta attachments…

Mostly we let the kids do that, because they really liked it…but so did this guy. I didn’t take any pictures of the second course. But it was good…and we had a good time. Not rocket science, but an enjoyable afternoon.

We came back home, and predictably, I ironed. This is Figure 4…

I did that before dinnermaking…

At some point, the girlchild came in here to book a flight to Portugal. Of course. Her computer is still on my floor in here.

She brought a dog.

After dinner, I drew this. The birds came from the show I was watching, Seven Seconds.

I don’t know where the rest of it came from. I’m just exercising my drawing brain at the moment…letting it wander aimlessly.

I ironed for about 3 hours yesterday…got into the 1000s…about 2/3rds done.

I started stressing about school and life yesterday. I graded a little, but not a lot. It hurts my head.

I took a break to hang out, and then it got late…so I never put all this away. I just left it piled up.

I’m still ironing all the bits that go with Figure 4. I’m just about to start the snakes that make up her hair. Complicated stuff.

Right now, I’m listening to her snore…

She hides back there and sleeps on piles of batting. Sweet kitty.

Yeah, school stress is keeping me awake at night. Life stress. All the stress. Yes, I’m on break. That’s why I need a walk today. Or something. First I need to find the money for girlchild’s rent and college, and then maybe iron a bit. Then the dogs. Then more ironing. I want to be done with the ironing. Not sure that’s an option today…seems like a lot more hours will be needed. I’m guessing 7. We’ll see.

*David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust

Scissor Love

Happy Boxing Day! Seriously, if you’ve survived the holidays so far, you’re doing great…just a few more things to get out of the way, right? The year is almost ready to end, there’s still some family stuff to do, there’s post-holiday cleanup, there’s trying to use up all the gift cards and certificates before you forget about them. You have a bunch of books to read, if you’re from my family. I have a lot more fuzzy socks than I did before, which is good, because a bunch of mine had holes in them. It’s all good. Well, just don’t think about deadlines or going back to work or finishing grades, and everything will be fine. I think I’m officially halfway through my Winter Break, and my phone map thinks I need to go back to school. Because it’s Wednesday and I’m not at work yet. Eleven days until back to school? That’s less than half left. Or exactly half. Something like that. So many things to get done before then! I tried to grade yesterday and mostly failed at it. Granted, it was Christmas Day, but in between this and that, I thought I could be efficient. Not so much.

First of all, back to Christmas Eve…I ironed in between the morning event and the evening event, trying to finish up all the bits that belonged to Figure number 2, like this bird.

Meanwhile, Kitten is watching real birds outside.

And in the evening, I drew my requisite, geez, aren’t they getting weirder and weirder, drawing…

There is a second figure bending over on the right. It has to do with how I drew the arm. She didn’t fit with the arm any more.

And then I laid out all the pieces for Figure 3…

I’ve been using a different run of flesh fabrics for each person, but honestly have not paid much attention to what might happen when they overlap, which is really just where the arms are. There’s always ink and thread for that issue.

So Christmas Eve, when I gave up and went to bed, this is all I had used. I have tried to keep the fleshy bits for each figure in a separate box, just so I can see them.

There’s lots of fabric in this one. And here’s all the Wonder Under bits that are not flesh but still part of Figure 3.

I didn’t get to those until Christmas Day…because in the years past, I have managed to stay out of the cooking/food prep part of Christmas evening (mostly) and so I can do art stuff in the hours in between. I would have walked dogs too, but it rained most of the day, so I opted out of outside.

Rushing ahead though. Here’s the pile of stuff to be cut out from Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day is opening presents and cuddling animals…

Animals with chew toys.

Animals who resemble presents…

That tile is from Spain. Or Portugal. Now I can’t remember.

All the animals…

Well, until he’s ready to guard us from the rain. It really did pour for a while.

We got over half an inch. Which reminds me…I need to go turn the sprinklers off again.

Kitten did a damn good job of guarding the bed…

I brought her a catnip toy to entertain her. She’s kind of antisocial.

Rainy driveway.

Today of course is beautiful and sunny. But we have an afternoon thing that will keep me from enjoying it. Oh well.

I did fabric stuff for about an hour in the afternoon, and then we headed off for Christmas dinner, which is a mix of stuff to keep everyone sort of happy.

Girlchild is a good cook. Which is nice.

I worked on the zebra for a bit.

No, he’s still not done. They’re never done.

And then I mostly drew this in the dark. Which might explain my spelling issue.

It might explain a lot of things. This would be a hellish quilt to make. But it was relaxing to draw.

Back to the ironing. While I’m actually picking fabrics, this is what the fabric pile looks like.

It’s a little chaotic. When it gets really bad, I clean up…here’s everything used so far…

I got through Figure 3 and all the attached bits…like this snake…

I’m ready for Figure 4, which has snakes for hair. Complicated overlapping snakes for hair. Yup. What am I, nuts? Don’t answer that.

I’m 12 1/2 hours into the ironing, and barely over the halfway point for pieces…about halfway through the 800s, I think.

The box gets more and more full.

My hours per week are up in the last 7 days, but still not where they need to be. I need to be fully ironed to fabric before I leave for the cabin, and honestly, I’d like to be done well before that and cutting the pieces out already. Done with that by the time I get back, and then ironing down, because then I go back to school. Yikes. No time for that. The next figure is also on fire. I really am trying to use totally different fabrics in each figure, even the reds for the hearts, although the last one had a gray heart. I want to cut into fabrics that have never felt scissor love. I want to use up things that I have large pieces of and that don’t need to be quite so large in the stash. Kitten just tried to turn on toggle sound on the computer. She’s using the keyboard as a pillow. Nice one, cat.

OK, but for now, I need to get ready for the last official family event, which means breakfast and a shower. And then maybe iron a bit before we leave. Figure 4 for tonight then. Some more grading at some point. Ugh. Some exercise some time. Tomorrow probably. Scissor love though. Gotta love me some fabric.

I Wait for the Minutes to Burn*

OK I’m writing on a Sunday because I didn’t realize it was a Sunday because I’ve finally reached the part of my Winter Break when I have no idea what day it is until someone tells me. And this clears my brain and lets me set goals for the day or even the week, although right now, let’s just focus on one day at a time, because more than that makes me panic about deadlines and stuff like that, and that’s not a good place to be right now. Right now should be all cookies and kittens, people. Maybe some puppies or bunnies too, and a cute little sloth or hedgehog would also be appreciated. Plus clean floors. Still don’t have those.

So with that, I spent a lot of time yesterday ironing…for good, not evil, no worries. No clothing was harmed in the process. And I’m totally OK with having all that time to iron. I wanted it. I did not leave the house. And it was fine.

Before I did that, I cut some background blocks for the moons I bought from Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth…I’m planning some of my typical fusing on each block and then a bunch of hand embroidery.

It’s not something for a show…it’s just something for me. What a concept! Trying something new anyway. That’s always a good thing. This is the project that will occupy me on Sundays, so I needed to get it up and running. Fusing next.

Then I hung the drawing for the new piece…twice, because it does have a top, but sometimes I get confused by where that is.

Goddess forbid I label the damn thing with TOP. It’s big…more horizontal than usual. More horizontal than vertical.

There’s a lot of flesh in this. Five heads means five different flesh runs. This is the first and the smallest of the figures. Kitten is fascinated.

Geez. So there it was after I found all the pieces for that person…I think it’s the only one that has a torso down into the legs. They all have arms though.

Some of the biggest pieces in here are arm parts.

For once, I numbered intelligently. I numbered everything in each figure and then everything that touches it that’s not another figure. So logical. This is the third fabric in the flesh run. Fitting all the pieces together. I am giving a talk at my local quilt guild in January and I need process pictures.

I don’t really like puzzles, but I also don’t like wasting fabric. So I’m very thoughtful about how I iron.

Then I started picking fabrics for Figure 2…bigger pieces, but still only a run of 5 fabrics for the main fleshy bits. I have to worry a bit about having enough of each fabric to actually cut out the pieces…the second one was a bit tight.

Or maybe it was the first one. Can’t remember. It’s OK. I want to use up fabric and have them be in quilts. I don’t want them to languish away in drawers, lonely and bereft of admiration.

I did take a few hours of a break and finished grading that big assignment (yay! Yes, there are 6 more, but they’re all smaller, hallelujah) and then drew this crazy thing while watching a movie with the sick man.

I can’t explain it. I just didn’t know what to do with the legs. They were too far apart to put a body on them, and besides, the paper wasn’t long enough for that, and it was really about being underground anyway, and someone was making me watch the news at some point, and that’s never a good thing.

When the sick guy went to bed (hope he’s better soon…he’s miserable), I went back and ironed down the last of the fleshy bits on Figure 2. Here’s everything ironed down so far.

I still have to do all the non-flesh bits of Figure 2, like the heart, lungs, and eyeballs. I ironed for almost 5 hours yesterday. Perfect! Hoping for a repeat today, but…well…we’ll see. More stuff going on today. I’m not sure where I am in the pieces…I pulled from the 200s and the 300s, but didn’t iron all of them down, so I probably have at least 300 pieces ironed. I’m guessing it will take about 20 hours to iron all of this…so it’ll be sometime this week. I think. I do have other stuff to do, lots of family stuff, which is good, but eats into my artmaking time. That sounds cranky, but I am in serious hermit mode right now and didn’t leave the house yesterday. I won’t be able to pull that off today. I will have to fight holiday grocery store crowds and be nice about it. Ugh. And I should grade something and I will definitely draw again. Hopefully something less psychotic, but honestly, it doesn’t matter, because I’m just drawing to draw…and I finished that sketchbook last night (from 2014), and found another one that I started in 2014 (why? Why two in the same year? I cannot say.), so now I’ll try to fill that one.

But for now, I’m waiting on the children, so I can go to the grocery store and get that over with. Woo! Love it! Yeah! Then ironing. Please.

*iamdynamite, Hi Lo