Big Swathes of Wonder Under

I brought work home last night. And then refused to do it. All in my head, of course. I need to get some work done, but by the time I dropped my stuff on the floor at home, I knew I needed a walk to clear my head more than I needed to get work done. So that’s what I did. It got dark earlier than I wanted, so I had to cut it short…only 2 1/2 miles instead of 3 1/2, but it was definitely worth it. Since going back in person, it’s been really hard to get exercise in during the week. I’m managing one Pilates class mid-week and that’s about it. Working on that…but it’s work that gets in the way, unfortunately. Too much of it. At least Monday’s vote on revising the master schedule was a big hell no, status quo. That change would have added hours of work in the short term.

I have a ton of projects and units to grade. I’ll get to them. Just didn’t do it last night.

Meanwhile, I’m still tracing things. Mostly I’ve been tracing pieces of sky and land for the last two days. They’re big, complicated pieces, so they take longer to trace. I can’t do 100 of them in an hour. I did get over the 1000-piece hump last night, finished the sky, so all I have left to do is about 500 pieces in the bubble. This is not fast, though. Maybe by the weekend I’ll be done? We’ll see.

The big landscape pieces use up big swathes of Wonder Under…

Some of these yards have 300 pieces on them; some only have 10 really big pieces. I’m up to 6 yards, though…with at least one more to go, I suspect. We’ll see. I have a lot of space on a few of those yards that could be filled in with smaller pieces.

It’s my dad’s 81st birthday today. Last year, he almost died, so 81 feels particularly good to me.

I bought two SAQA blocks this year from the auction…because I sold two quilts and really liked both of these.

Laurel Izard on the left and Paula Dean on the right. I need to get them up on the wall this weekend.

I packed up a quilt for a show last night too. I think there are two others I need to ship this weekend. I have to deliver this other one after work tomorrow. That will be a long day. Hell, they’re all long at the moment. We did labs yesterday and the inability to listen and be safe was an issue. It’s gonna be a rough lab year. So we talked about that. I have one kid who can’t participate tomorrow…so far. Hopefully no more.

Views from the walk…

It got dark quickly…

Squiggly moon as I came down my hill to the house.

Walking was good. Tracing was good. Ugh to the rest. I need to water the plants tonight. I have Pilates, oh good. My hips and back need it. I’ll try grading stuff again tonight. Hoping I don’t lose my prep period to having to sub someone else’s class. That stuff sucks. I need to call my dad. I need more food for dinner, because the boychild came home earlier than we thought. So all that. Plus labs all day, crazy switchout between block 1 science to art to block 2 science…all different equipment and supplies. Ugh. OK. But I can do it. And then it will be done.

Growl Mode…

I’m in growl mode. Didn’t get enough sleep. Didn’t get enough done. Trying to be all zen about today, but it doesn’t feel zen. Want to go back to bed. Want another few days off work. Not an option. Yeah, it’s Monday…maybe this is all about Monday. Some really cool stuff is going on…I got a new sewing machine. My parents surprised me on Friday…told me mom had picked up my machine at the store where I had dropped it for repair (she goes there a lot), so I went to get it from her. And they had traded the old one in and gotten a deal on a new one. I’ve never had a new machine. I owe them some money, which is fine, because they don’t want it right this second, but here she is…

It’s a Viking…I’ve always sewn on Vikings. Looking forward to getting to know her better…many thanks to my parents. May she sew like the wind for a good long time.

I’ve been tracing every night…

It doesn’t look a whole lot different each night, but I made it to the 900s last night, so more than halfway done.

With about 9 1/2 hours in…

I’ve been tracing a lot of small things. The background will be a lot of big things, if I ever get there. Maybe by the weekend? We’ll see. Some nights, I get an hour in…some an hour and a half. Not much more than that. Always have school stuff and grading to do. I spent a lot of time on that yesterday…a good 5 hours or so. Did I finish? Do I ever finish?

This is cool…one in cocoon and one just starting…

That was Friday or Saturday…I should go check again. But I have to work first…today is a challenge. Have to get kids to finish all the things and turn them all in…and then grade them. Never-ending stuff that. Plus a staff meeting where we get to decide whether to upend the schedule completely or grow some classes on the large side. The opportunity to separate some troublesome kids who shouldn’t be together? But we could do that one kid at a time if we needed to. It’s an UGH meeting. OK, they are all UGH meetings.

Drew this before dinner on Saturday. There was no Sharpie in my purse…not sure why. So I was stuck with a ballpoint. Hate that.

Takes too long.

OK. Cranky mood notwithstanding, I still have to teach. Lack of sleep not helpful. I went to bed early. My brain was just not in the best place. Let’s all hope it gets to a better place (or exhaustion) by tonight. Until then, I know I will get to trace later tonight. And I did get a lot done yesterday, even if it felt like a work day (because it was). Crossing lots of things off the to-do list is a plus.

Fast and Furious

Well I have about 8 minutes here to write. Fast and furious. It’s been long days at work, interspersed with some tracing and a little stitching with friends. On Wednesday, the union meeting went for almost 3 hours…I managed to get these graded before and during, as I was listening.

This is the only way I can grade art. Lay it out in the spectrum. So different than grading science.

I get an hour or a little more of this done every night…

I’m in the 400s…only 1100 to go or so.

I just have the head to do on the second figure. IDK how many more to go. There’s a lot of people in this quilt.

I managed stitching last night with friends…well I stitched and they crocheted.

It’s nice to hang out with humans who aren’t pre-teens. And cats…

Luna on her pillar. Yes, I had to cover the top because she kept scratching it. She doesn’t scratch the bottom of it. Ah well.

Unit 2 at school is ending Monday.

So there’s lots of panic on the kids’ part to get work done.

Or not. Some kids don’t get the urgency. It’s been a rough week. I’m looking forward to a couple of days off. Parent meeting this morning with someone who will probably be a major issue. Love those. Enable your kids’ behavior. Please. And then trying to get kids through the assignment. I’m tired.

Ah well. It is Friday. Fridays are often tired. Saturdays will be art and more art with some grading probably. Maybe not. That’s something to look forward to. And more tracing. Meditative. It’s good to do that right before bedtime.

It’s Like Meditation

Well. Morning arrives bah boom. 12 texts later and I’m sort of awake, although tea takes a while to percolate up to the brain. I don’t know if you know, but I’ve been going to sleep earlier than I used to for about 8 months now. I’m less tired, but yes, I get less done too. I suspect it’s better for my health in some ways, but sometimes I wish I could do art for longer at night and sleep less. Some nights, I barely feel like I sleep, even though I’m in the bed place. That’s probably a different issue.

Last night was Back-to-School Night…I saw a whopping 5 sets of parents…it’s COVID, no kids allowed (which means the translators are all gone!). Plus families can’t always leave kids at home, and some can’t get off work. We don’t usually have a lot, but this was really low. Understandable. It does explain my exhaustion last night and today though. Today is a union meeting, back on Zoom for those, not sure for how long. Some parts of school are easier this year…teaching in person is easier than on Zoom, for sure, although some of the behavior stuff would be nonexistent on Zoom, because those kids just wouldn’t show up. Some parts are just a pain, though. I can’t keep up with the workload, at the moment. I get close and then realize I’m only caught up in one subject, and the other one is yelling at me. I’m not sure when that will change…maybe it won’t this year. Ugh.

So coming home and spending at least an hour making art is one of the things that keeps me sane. Right now, I’m in the tracing stage…I’ll probably be here for about 20 hours or so, so that’s a while on the one-hour-a-day thing I’m doing at the moment. I try to trace at least 100 pieces before I go to bed. Sometimes I do more.

I hate wasting Wonder Under. I try to fill in all the blank spots. Then I remember it’s pretty cheap stuff and it’s not really a waste, because my time is worth something.

And sometimes I worry about how it’s not very environmentally friendly. Sigh. Then I tell myself that making art helps. Me, definitely. Hopefully somewhere else too. Who knows?

Anyway, I’m tracing and it’s like meditation and that’s good. I have a union meeting after school today, so it’s another long one. This week is just bad…but maybe I’ll have time for a walk after the meeting. We’ll see. And maybe I’ll get a lot of shit done at school too and it will feel less overwhelming. I have a list written down. That’s a good place to start.

It Doesn’t Look Like Much…

On to the next step on this quilt…I finally finished cutting everything out last night. Here’s Friday night, where I can tell I’m getting close.

Saturday night…some people would say, why not just finish that? It doesn’t look like much?

The man wanted to be in the photo. Yeah, it doesn’t look like much does it…that’s almost an hour and a half worth of cutting right there…because that’s what I did last night to finish…

Just over 20 hours…

This is a complicated quilt. It’s not huge; just complicated.

I also found the 7 quilts that will be in this show…

They need to be delivered Saturday, so I needed to make sure they had slats and all that. They do, mostly, except for the newest one, which was actually made for this show. The others are invited because not enough people entered. Ah well. That shit happens. I will be at the reception, at some point, I hope, unless my school is doing a back-to-school night that I don’t know about. Also, that’s a work night, so I’ll be half dead. But otherwise, yeah, I’ll be there.

Saturday was all about running errands and then a longer hike…

Marian Bear Memorial Park…it’s pretty enough, although the water is stagnant right now…

And there’s a shit-ton of poison oak…

Also, it runs parallel to a freeway and under major roads, so the noise is a bit off-putting.

The exercise was good.

It was definitely cooler than it will be this week. I keep waiting for summer to slap us upside the head.

Kitten is good. She could live with summer or not. Actually, she’s on probiotics (I did not know there were such things for cats) so we can see if her digestive system will stop being the way it is. I’m not sure she’s sold on them. I wonder if they put enough flora in the powdery stuff that I mix with her food so that if she is picky and only eats a little that she will get enough of it. Who knows.

Nova sat on me for a bit until I kicked her off so I could keep cutting things out.

Tonight hopefully I’ll get the pieces sorted so I can start ironing everything together. Getting closer to a time when my machine will need to be fixed. Not sure what’s up with that. We’re back to almost 6 weeks since I took it in. Ugh.

Am I ready for school today? I am not. I could not deal with my classroom on Friday so I didn’t do all the things I needed to do before today. I don’t have morning duty this week though (I think) and it’s short periods, plus I do actually get a prep period, so hopefully I’ll get through it all. I also get to do a staff meeting on my own, which is nice. I wonder if the Delta variant will let us continue doing staff meetings by ourselves…it would be nice. But unlikely. OK, gotta go to work anyway. Art tonight.

Nice of You to Show Up…

Hey Friday. Nice of you to show up. Appreciate it. I’m back to that world where I look forward to maybe sleeping in on Saturday morning (dependent on neighbor noise and animal incursions). I do already have stuff to grade. Ugh. How did that happen? Oh yeah. My own fault. I’m still trying to get my head around this crazy schedule we have. Mondays and Fridays are normally all the classes, but Monday is shorter. Tuesday through Thursday rotate through blocks of four classes a day, so some days I will have four different things I’m teaching and some days, I will only have two. Today I have three different classes and no prep period (because today is not a normal Friday because we started on Tuesday, don’t even ask, I honestly have a headache about that), so that sounds exhausting. I needed to pee after two classes (they’re LONG) yesterday…three in a row today might be an issue. Certainly, having art at the end of the day with 6th graders is difficult…that’s three days a week. I’m just tired from science teaching and then have to switch gears, from science brain to art brain. Art brain is like, what? I’m tired. Leave me alone.

But it’s nice being back in person (when I don’t think too hard about COVID exposure)…because we can do the things!

Ah science and art in person. What a concept.

Prepping for art is different too…it’s hard to know what they can do in person because I taught it all online last year. So lots of decisionmaking going on in my poor tired brain.

That said, the first week back is almost in the books, and (knock on wood) no one has been sent home yet. It’s a miracle, considering the number of kids who can’t keep a mask over their noses or mouths…

Artmaking has been OK this week, despite the tiredness. My goal is an hour a night, and last night, I managed two plus (because I was in a Zoom meeting for part of it). I’m still cutting things out…this is Wednesday, with Simba’s help…

I also did some embroidery on the Social Justice Sewing Academy block…still just getting everything attached.

My plan is some decorative embroidery in the letters, but I need to do a stethoscope too. Need to mark that this weekend.

Last night, I had a Zoom quilt meeting and cut out the Wonder Under for the one Patreon reward I have left.

So I can iron that to fabric this weekend. And then I cut a bunch…

Both on Zoom and later…

The middle box is getting emptier; the bottom box is getting more full. I watched some news…still trying to get my head around Afghanistan. I feel like I’ve spent 20 years trying to get my head around the Taliban and people like it. I have classrooms full of kids who fled regimes like that. I’m OK with that…they’re hopefully better off here, although sometimes I wonder.

Kitten shows a side view…

Yeah, there’s still a lot of pieces in that box. It probably won’t get done tonight…but hopefully this weekend, I’ll get them cut and sorted, and be ready to iron together next week…more standing after all day of standing. Well, it’s better than too much sitting, I’ll tell you that. Ironically, I still need more exercise at the end of the day; maybe today will be a walk. Tomorrow will definitely be a hike. Plus art. Plus grading. Plus IDK exactly what I’m teaching next week for art. I should figure that out. Plus I have a million posts to put together for classes…hopefully can get those done in class today. I’d like to keep weekends clear of work. I know it won’t happen, but I’m trying. Ha!

OK, off to work. Mornings are hard, y’all.

I Should Cut More Stuff Out…

Today, I gird my loins and conquer my classroom, which is an incredible disaster. I also figure out what the hell I’m doing tomorrow in class and make sure I have all the shit to do that. I might even sleep before tomorrow…certainly, hopefully, more than last night. I have never been so unprepared…wait, no, the year I started two weeks in because we were waiting for a background check and they wouldn’t even let me on campus…that year was worse. It’ll be fine. I’ll remember how to do this in person. Last year will stop clouding my brain. It’s PTSD over the workload more than anything. Ugh.

So I’m at school today until it’s done…or I collapse from exhaustion. Which might be by 9:30 AM. That’s what tea is for, yeah?

I finally organized all the fabrics for the current quilt. This is my documentation of the 185 fabrics I used…

Lots of earthy stuff.

I started cutting out Thursday night…continued on Friday…

Friday was fairly exhausting. Then Saturday, the neighbors have a wall being built, so there was jackhammering and Mexican polka. I had a headache most of the day, unfortunately. Tried to do some schoolwork and just couldn’t get my head around it (see distractions above) and ended up cutting out pieces for hours…

Seriously, like 5 hours of bingewatching and cutting.

I also drew a Patreon reward…

Numbered it…

I was trying to make it less complicated than last year’s…failed. Oh well.

And then I traced it on Wonder Under…

And then kept cutting out pieces on the other quilt. I’ll cut these out sometime this week and get going on that.

Then last night, I kept cutting.

I’ve been cutting trees for days. Seriously.

I finally got to some different stuff late last night. I might be halfway? I might not. It’s just hard to tell. I’m sure you’re looking at these and going, yeah, can’t see it. It’s not until I see the bottom of the box peeking out that I think I’m almost done…and I can’t see that yet. That’s about 10 1/2 hours of cutting there.

But it’s progress.

I also washed the dyed stuff out. I like the backgrounds, but I’m not sure what I will do with them.

Because I don’t want to cover any of it up.

Maybe I will have to draw something specifically for it. To fit into the background.

I think I missed one…there should be four, I think. Ah yes, my favorite.

The best thing in the world is ironing these and seeing all the interesting little bits of dye overlap. Anyway. We’ll see what happens next with these. I also did socks…

I need to clean out my sock drawer so they have room to breathe in there. I’m a bit of a sock whore. Ironic since I don’t wear even shoes for a good chunk of my existence. Anyway. I have socks.

I finally photographed all the January and February Homegrown blocks too…

Embroidery that keeps me sane in stupid meetings or on nights when I can’t deal with anything else.

Gophers killed one of my milkweed plants and I found this little guy wandering around on the dead one, so I moved it to the living one.

I have a bunch of baby milkweed plants that I’ve been trying to grow in a shady space, away from the bunnies. They won’t be ready for this caterpillar though. I hope there’s enough food.

I need this in a poster.

It’s been hot.

Petting animals is helpful for back-to-school anxiety…

We got up early Saturday and walked before it got hot…so many sidewalks were marked up.

Some sort of abstract art.

So many of the apps we use for school are not up and running yet. Ironic.

I have to be up and running, but with none of the things.

This is accurate.

Seriously accurate. OK. I have to go to school. I was going to meet with my principal in person and I was debating masks. He’s vaccinated but he has small children. So many decisions to be made. I might just stay masked all year. But now his kid’s class is quarantined (yeah, that shit is still happening), so we are doing it on Zoom. Then get keys to the art room (and supplies!) and meet with the art teacher. Attack my room with some sort of plan. Make lists. Eat lunch. Counseling. That’s necessary. More room attacking, more lists, possible shopping post school for the shit I don’t have. Probably not sleep well another night. I should put a walk or trip to the gym in there somewhere. Then tomorrow is the first day with kids. Oh yeah, I should cut more stuff out. Always.

Never Ready

This is my last full week of Summer Break. We go back next week. Never ready. I’m not ready to teach…our site hasn’t even picked a schedule yet for next year. We get that Friday. We can’t plan without a schedule, although I’m guessing which one I think will pass the vote (shorter periods…all the others are over 106 minutes per class, which is just crazy cuckoo). I’m not ready to be in an enclosed space with multiple people for a long period of time. I haven’t done that AT ALL in 18 months or so. Well, except the gym. But even that’s not all day. Doors open, windows open. I’ll get used to it. The block schedule also screws up my blood sugar until I get a routine going. Four hours with no bathroom and no food break…welcome to our world. Last year was easier…I could get to the bathroom in my house in a really short period of time. Not so much at school. Plus getting kids out of the classroom on Zoom is a single button click, which is much easier than in real life. Then thinking about art supply storage and how to move materials between science and art classes. That’s complicated.

Adjustments to life are gonna happen. I’m hoping that planning is easier than last year. Certainly my co-teacher and I can do the same things again, and I don’t have to make everything digital access. I think. With quarantines still happening, the district hasn’t really told us their solution for how to get those kids curriculum. I think they believe the science curriculum is an easy digital source, but it’s not. So much supplementation and creation of assignments had to happen last year. We’ll see how that rolls, but local schools have quarantined kids on the third day of school, so it’s not like we can wait a while to figure that plan out.

That said, this week is NOT school. I do need to think about some of it, but hopefully more art time than school time will be happening. I have an electrician coming next Tuesday to do a bunch of things I’ve put off for months, nay, years in some cases. One of them may involve attic access, which is in my office/studio. In the closet. Which is filled with fabric. To get access, I have to remove half the fabric and one of the shelves so they can even get up there. So that needs to happen before next Tuesday. I’m currently trimming Wonder Under. The next step is to iron all the Wonder Under to fabric. It would be much easier to have everything done and ironed before the electrician comes. See? Now I have a deadline. It’s totally arbitrary and I could adjust, but this is the one I’m following right now.

I started cutting out on Friday during the Quilt National talk, and then finished a second yard that night…then cut another yard out on Saturday night…

It doesn’t look much different. Sunday’s yard was one of the most complicated ones. It had all the trees in it, so fussy pointy pieces.

So that’s what four yards of trimmed Wonder Under looks like. I have two to go. Today. I have a talk I’m listening to this morning, and hopefully can start cutting the easier yard; then I’m going to try to get the other yard done before nighttime, so I can sort tonight and maybe clean the studio today as well. We’ll see how that goes. It’s been hot, and that often sucks energy away from doing the things. But I have a plan and that helps. I’ve been cutting for about 7 1/2 hours so far, but some yards are more time-intensive than others. I’m assuming 3-4 hours of cutting today.

The girlchild was home for about 10 days, but working every day. As always, she brings home clothes that need fixing. This one was a bit of a pain…needed darts and had a lining and all that.

But it turned out well. I hope. The others were slightly less time-consuming. Certainly she should learn how to hem her pants when she rips out the hems. She left last night on a red-eye for home…

Boston at 3:30 AM our time. Yes, I was awake. I don’t know why.

I volunteered again for the Social Justice Sewing Academy embroidery, and got this block on Friday…

I volunteered in June 2020, so it took a while to get to me…there are some embroidery suggestions provided by the artist as well. So I’ll get started on that once I have all the Wonder Under cut out. Emily Lang made this block, and says “My block is about Ableism, how society seems to attach value and love only to health, thinness, and ability.”

I also got the Olga Norris quilt finally. Her husband was kind enough to mail it to me from the UK, and we watched it wander all over the US before it got to me.

It’s beautiful work…I need to decide where (and how) to hang it. I have a couple of pieces that need homes on the walls.

We walked on Friday, not too far, just a couple of miles. Still aiming for flat.

It was hot and muggy. Walking is hard in this weather.

Calli is hanging in there. She still wants to chew on pinecones that she drops in the pool.

She needs a little help with it. But it’s hot, so the pool is probably good for her.

So I have a plan that might get thrown by the weather, but hopefully it will work. I won’t think about school. I lie. We have three hours of training videos (bloodborne pathogens, pest management, sexual harassment, mandated reporter, etc.) that have to be done before the end of September. I always try to get them done before school starts. I’ve done the three shorter ones so far today. I can do them while doing other things, luckily. Annoying to do them every year, but whatever. Looks like I need to go down to Visions Art Museum too and see the exhibits there. I’ll add that to the list…along with fixing the sprinklers. Maybe I’ll think about making a syllabus after that…surely that won’t take long. Ha! Art. Make the art.

Cat Interference…

Woke up early, not enough sleep, not enough caffeine, did the Quilt National talk, forgot my headphones keep the sound from showing up from my video, oh well, answered questions…

Photo stolen from the QN Instagram. I’ve actually watched all but one of these. I find them fascinating. You can see all of them (they haven’t uploaded this morning’s yet) and all the artist videos for this year on the Dairy Barn YouTube channel. Also, if you want to see my studio tour with sound (because that was missing this morning), you can see it here.

I know. As a teacher, I should remember how this shit works, but my brain was not awake. So there.

I spent the time cutting out Wonder Under, because I find it easier to listen carefully when I am doing something with my hands…

Which, yes, means I finished tracing last night.

So many cat interactions on this…

It took quite a long time to trace, longer than normal.

More complicated pieces than normal? Maybe. Also maybe that I had to think extra hard about overlaps.

I could just blame the cats. They were in the way.

18 hours and about 6 yards. Now I just need to cut them all out.

Yesterday, the man and I did a little driving reconnaissance for some possible training hikes.

Water is an issue. But he has more physical therapy in store and hopefully will be back on the trail in a few weeks or so.

This lizard…I think he’s the one I follow up the steps sometimes.

He jumps up the steps in front of me like he’s showing me the way.

Anyway. The day is half over, because of the talk and the car had to go in and a bunch of school stuff happened (that gave me a headache) and then lunch and I had to record a video for another art group I’m in and it only took about 17 tries to get the words right. I’m tired because I got up too early, but will be walking later. And cutting out lots of Wonder Under. And hopefully crossing some stuff off the to-do list because it’s insanely long at the moment. Stupid long. Maybe nap. Nap sounds nice. I tried it yesterday but cats interfered. Ugh. Ah well. Whatever happens, art will be involved.

Self-Care…

I had a wondrous massage this morning. I feel like the next time my school district says anything about self-care, I’m sending them a bill for massage. I mean, y’all need to put your money where your mouth is. You want me to be more chill and relaxed about the crazy shit y’all throwing at me? Give me a massage every week. We might be able to talk after that. Also, less crazy shit. That would be good. Yes, the school nightmares have begun. I am trying to hold them off until next week, but I need to do a related Zoom today or tomorrow, and there are tons of questions already, so that doesn’t help. I did order all my folders for the year (or at least the first half of the year), so that’s done…plus pens. What teacher doesn’t like pens? Especially fun-colored pens. Yo, district! Buy us nice pens. And make them fun, not just the damn district logo. And those massages. I’m not kidding about those.

Yeah. It’s too bad the people in charge don’t listen to us flunkies.

In preparation for school fucking up my art life again, I’m trying to get this quilt into a good place. Whatever that means. I’ve been tracing every night. It’s harder during daytime…hot…and I am more tired during the day strangely.

They’re LED lights in the light table, luckily, so they don’t put out any extra heat, hallelujah. I bought LEDs for my office/studio, but still need to install them. I hate installing things. Kitten is not really helping here…with tracing or installing.

I’m almost to the 700s, so about 350 pieces to go. Not bad. I’m hoping to be done tracing by the weekend. I’m up into the mountains right now…the trees were really complicated and difficult to trace. I’ve found about 6 pieces I didn’t number so far. I just add ‘a’ to the number if I need to number new ones.

This part is pretty boring to watch or read about, but it’s really nice and meditative for me. I put some show on that I don’t really need to watch and just stand and trace for a couple of hours.

Kitten, as you can see, is helpful wherever I am.

Maybe I should dust my keyboard. She puts her head on the right side, so it’s not dusty there.

I’ve been doing a bunch of computer work lately…for two art groups that have regular posts, one daily on Instagram, which I was able to schedule out until mid-August, and one weekly on Facebook, which is dependent on people sending me info. I check it once a week, and usually it’s an easy setup using Business Suite, but these two were complicated. Ah humans. You complicate things. Plus I’m making a video and a slide presentation for my Quilt National talk this Friday. Taking more time than it should…as always.

I am trying to get back on a regular exercise schedule. The last few weeks have been wonky with travel and visiting folks, but yesterday, I did my normal 3.6-mile neighborhood walk.

There’s always something new to look at…

Mountains in the distance. Yeah, it’s warm here, but not as warm as it will be in a month. Get the hikes in before it’s awful. Gym, pilates, hike, repeat.

The man finally has gotten in to physical therapy and it sounds positive. He’s hoping to get back on the trail in the near future, so life will all be up in the air again, as usual, honestly. School starts in a couple weeks, man will be on trail, blah blah blah. You can see how my art is the constant calm through all of this. It’s night time? What stage of the process are you on? Go do some of it. Spend an hour tracing or cutting or ironing or quilting. It’s a good thing. It gives me a good end to any kind of day (unless the machine is being a big weenie). No I don’t have my machine back…I’m borrowing my mom’s to fix the girlchild’s clothes…I don’t think I can quilt with it. Let’s hope I have mine back before that’s an issue.

OK. Today is more than half over…I’m going to work some more on the stuff for Quilt National, then trace, then pilates, then trace some more. Looking forward to it.