OK. It’s official. My Spring Break to-do list is taking over the world and there’s no stopping it. It just gets worse every time I try to cross things off of it. I mean, right now, I’m staring out the window at a beautiful blue spring sky and the yellow clover flowers (are they clover? I don’t know. The bunnies like it whatever the fuck it is…it’s definitely a weed, but it dies off pretty easily, so I only pull it when it’s in the way of something else that’s trying desperately to grow) are covering the slope, and all I see are the new growth suckers that need to be trimmed off the ashes, and that one branch that seems to be broken and hanging toward the ground. UGH. So much yard work.
Last night, I sorted the Wonder Under pieces finally (didn’t have the brainpower on Saturday night)…it took a whopping 14 minutes, y’all. So I could have done it at any time.
And here’s why I put it off…I then needed to spend 90 minutes cleaning the office so I could pick the next quilt’s fabrics. I folded, I ironed, I cleaned up. Mostly. So tonight, I can iron. Sigh. I want my sewing machine back dammit.
Saturday night’s opening was busy and overstimulating. Here’s my piece, Damaging Earth’s Fabric in the Allied Craftsmen show at the Oceanside Museum of Art.
And me in front of a piece by William Leslie and Alessandra Colfi…
That was about all the energy I had for the night. It rained all day until we left (well, and then rained on the way up). I was tired. I didn’t make it to the ceramics studio in the morning like I’d wanted to. I ended up going after we got home from the opening. I was tired and irritable, and wanted to get to the next stage on this thing…there’s a fine line between too hard and not hard enough to support stuff. So I went in at 8 PM for about 90 minutes and got some more coiling done…
Made a cat butt…
And then added it to the thing…whatever it is. OK, it’s human, mostly female. I think. Think about my drawings made 3D in clay and that’s kinda where I’m at right now.
IDK if the boobs will stay put…everything was a little soft. Ha! Not really. We’ll see later today hopefully. I need to find out how tall I can go. The head might need to be separate. I also just signed up for an sgraffito class. So there’s that. Yes, I still love fabric. Yes, I’m still making quilts. I’m just side-obsessed. It’ll be fine.
Yeah that. Constantly. Mostly I’m OK with the awkward. Sometimes it’s awkward.
That’s not entirely true. I’m still grading things and trying to lesson plan. There was a cat in the way this morning though and the chair was in the sun, so I let her have it. I’ll do some later.
Here’s cat TV…
That moth was still wriggling.
OK, doc appointment (lots of those this week), then I need to do some of the to-do list, then go to the gym, then go to ceramics. Those are all good things. I can read my book at the gym. It’s a nice day out too. So some yardwork is called for. It’s a Monday but not a school day. I can enjoy that.
A day late. That’s OK. I was in the mountains. I forgot it was Friday. Today is Saturday. If I keep telling you what the days are, maybe I will remember them myself. I have doctors’ appointments next week; I have to remember to go to them.
We were up on Palomar Mountain for a couple of days…one full day really. It was nice. It was cold. There was still snow up there. We had a discount to stay in a really nice yurt and it was cool.
These are nice yurts (Baileys on Palomar)…take advantage of discounts if you can. We had a mid-week discount. I’m pretty sure it’s snowing up there right now though, so I’m glad we came home yesterday.
Inside was warm, sometimes too warm. But nice.
My drawing brain was mostly out of it. This one isn’t going anywhere.
And this one might. Maybe.
We couldn’t get a fire started the first night…pretty sure the wood was wet from the previous storm. The second night, after 5 firestarters and some weird juju of frustration (the Man’s, not mine…or the fire’s, for that matter), the fire started and kept going…me drawing by the fire…
The Man telling me about something circular…
It was cold out. I think this was still firestarter fire, not real fire.
Eventually we got cold and came back inside and got violent and slappy with this game.
I won.
That was after hiking to Palomar Observatory, which I’d never been to. The hike wasn’t hard or long…well, it was 5.3 miles with 800 feet of elevation. So not too bad. Certainly my legs were feeling it yesterday.
Those are some really big acorns…
My app says Canyon Live Oak. Acorns and their caps fascinate me. I brought caps home. Dunno what I’m going to do with them.
It’s funny, I only saw the observatory once from the hike until we were on our way back.
It was cool. San Jacinto in the distance…definitely snow up there too.
It was a nice day to hike…mostly not hot, mostly not too cold.
Definitely at elevation snow. Not a lot by the time we got there.
I stitched a little too…finished this block.
I remembered a chalk pencil for the bike. Started another block while I was there.
Forgot the proof of life picture. Yes! We were in the same place together.
It happens.
We came back, cleaned up, I peed some dogs. The one on the right is hunting bees. Or bunnies. Hard to say which.
Stood in line for 3 hours at a quilt store that’s closing so I could use up my gift card and my mom’s too, because she showed up halfway through and handed me more. Then held my place in line so I could find more stuff to buy. She’s a good mom. I’m supposed to be at the ceramics studio right now but there was a full on flood-level band of rain that came through and dropped like half an inch of rain, so I didn’t drive in it. I will now, because I think that band is done and I can wait out the next one. There’s an art opening at Oceanside Museum of Art tonight, though, and that’s gonna be a slog if it’s still raining this hard. Ah well.
Last night, I suffered cats. Lots of them.
They missed us. And then I finished trimming this one…
Time to sort and then to iron. Meanwhile the girlchild and friend camped in the Northern California band of this storm last night. They were not washed away.
There is a tent under there. There is also a rain fly. The tarp is just extra. I wonder if there is a tarp underneath as well? Hmmm. Did we train her well? Maybe not.
OK. Art opening tonight. Ceramics studio for now: gonna see what came out of the kiln plus do another level on what I’m building…maybe start something new? I need to be back here by 3 PM I think. Ugh. I’m sure it made sense to sign up for things weeks ago, but today’s brain is not up for it. Typical.
I think I finally feel like I’m on break. Even though I put in about 10 hours on schoolwork in the last two days. Had to take an asynchronous course on writing. Of course. Like you do. Passed that quiz, no problem. The other one, ugh. Retook it yesterday and passed. So that shit is done and I don’t have to think about it any more. Still working on vocab slides for when we return. I got two weeks of school planned minus the vocab, so that’s a plus. Need one more week done so I can print a table of contents. OR I’m gonna pull the space stuff and make it one packet. Not deciding that today. Today, I am packing for two nights in a yurt! Not far, just Palomar Mountain, but not HERE, and I think that’s a plus. Also the nasty rain won’t start until we get back. I miss our long 10-day camping trips…sigh. I can’t even plan for this summer because I don’t know when I’ll have to do surgery. Sigh. SIGH. And I feel like I’m not getting quilt stuff done. It’s fine. This is just a short break until we go back and I get through this year that sucks and do things that make me happier. Speaking of…I went in early to my last ceramics class yesterday and worked on my piece, and some of the regulars were in there talking about the classwork, and the one they were talking about was MINE, which is still not dry, so hasn’t gone into the kiln yet. Which is fine, because I need to buy glazes for it, I think. I cannot decide. Next week, I will go to Blick and check out what’s there. I’m distracted by too many choices. And expense!
Then, we had glaze class, which was messy and overwhelming. Here’s all my fired pieces…
The cool cups and cactusy-looking things are NOT mine. Mine are all the weirdo things.
And then I glazed. Randomly. Because everything looks red and most of it will not be red. Which is confusing.
And the big ones were very drippy and messy and I think I tossed a toilet brush of glaze at one point. I am a klutz, in case you don’t know that.
The one on the left has three glazes on it. We’ll see how it goes. I suspect I may need to tone down glazing a bit if I’m actually going to do fabric pieces inside them. We’ll see though. They’ll be out on Saturday. Woohoo! Then I can try some fabric things. Three of those are actually pots that plants will go in. There’s a small tray. The two bigger ones are for fabric. I think. And the one that’s not fired yet.
Then I finished tracing the newest quilt. I’m gonna have so much stuff to finish when I get my machine back.
It took a little over 4 hours to trace that. I started trimming last night…
Got a lot done in just under two hours. It’s amazing how fast small quilts go. I still want to draw a big complicated one over break though…break that is disappearing as I write. Right? Ah well. I’ll get there.
In dog news, Simba had a rough day on Monday…very mopey, kinda sad, a bit flinchy, like he was in pain.
Poked all over him and couldn’t find anything wrong, and he seemed fine the next day.
Annie was quite glad to see me for her peeing event.
She has mellowed out a bit; she’ll be visiting us next weekend. Hope Luna is ready. No bullying!
Check out the owl video…
I keep forgetting to go out at night and listen for a baby owl again. I was so sure the other night, but maybe it was just mama? I don’t think so though. The moon is in exactly the wrong place for a lot of the night…it blows out the camera function, so it triggers from movement, but we either get fog or bright light and nothing else. It’s weird.
I was just looking at how many hours I was spending on art stuff in the last month and realizing I need to keep track of the ceramic hours if I want to be able to price anything I make. I’m not really planning on selling pots and trays…I do need to make some things for the house though. But the ones that eventually get fabric, it would be cool to be able to show them in an exhibit, although shipping them could be difficult. We’ll see. Keeping track of the time is something I should do for a while though. Just for info. More info good.
So it seems Medicine Tribe might be a band, which is fine…it was the skull on the back shelf that got me.
Anyway, I need to eat and pack and read my book (oh wait, that’s not required to get us to Palomar…just desired). And get more greenery in the trash cans. And probably do some other stuff I haven’t thought of yet. Hoping for trees and fires in firepits and peace and quiet and no to-do lists for a few days. It’s not much but it’ll help my brain fog…which has lifted a bit since Saturday and Sunday, so that’s good. Maybe I’ll grade something else today so that I’ll have less to worry about when I get back, yeah? Maybe. I’m not feeling motivated to do that at the moment, but I know next-week’s self would appreciate it. So there’s that.
Look! It’s a Monday and I’m not at school! I don’t even need to go to school tomorrow! Well, I kinda do because I left a couple of things and need to get them. But no kids! No work stress! Just home stress! I’m trying to cut down on all that. Certainly today’s blue skies help, although the pool is doing things, my eye is doing things, there’s still the boob thing floating around, I have a doc appointment today where she will once again tout the Mediterranean diet that I sort of follow anyway, but not really. I also got the door code to the ceramics studio so I can go ANYTIME. And I went and meditated with clay on Saturday.
I made a thing.
It started as one thing and then became another. So now it’s an in-process thing. I’m hoping to work on it a bit tonight before my orientation (required) and then I have my final class tomorrow, which is about glazing. I always had issues with that part. It’s weird. Painting. I don’t like shiny things really. Not big shiny things. So there’s that. And glazes are expensive, so I’ll need to figure out what I want to do about that. My studio provides some, just not the stuff I like. And I want all the colors. And that’s not a thing. Unless you’re rich.
Anyway. More clay over break…that’s my goal. Put it in the calendar with the gym etc.
I did grade yesterday. I didn’t bring home much, but I did bring home some. “Bring home”…it’s mostly on the computer. I have one paper homework, one academic digital assignment I haven’t started, and one academic digital assignment that I still had two classes left to grade, plus warmups, last week’s digital homework (graded itself!), and another digital assignment. Plus all the kids turning in late work. So I did the warmups, one class of the academic digital thing, input the other digital things, and got a goodly chunk of the late work graded. Still have a few hours of grading to deal with, but also need to spend some time (hours) planning for after break. I need a table of contents for the Monday we get back and I have about one week of three planned out. Then we start test review, which worries me (it’s kinda boring), then a quick egg drop, then sex ed, and we’re out! It sounds fast, but it’s not fast enough. You know? I did appreciate this…
Be safe! There’s my sink, my eyewash, my doc cam, my rulers, my stick-figure body. All accurate.
I also took in my sewing machine on Saturday and it wasn’t a quick fix. I was hoping it would be. Ten days. No, I don’t have a backup machine. I can go to my mom’s house if I get desperate, but it made more sense (don’t question this) to start something new. I did want to spend Spring Break drawing a big new piece to get me through the end of the school year, but my brain is like mush at the moment and all I could do is pull one of those 12 drawings I copied back in December or whenever and start tracing.
It’ll be fine. The crone quilt is building itself in my head. We’re going out to Palomar Mountain for a few days later this week to stay in a yurt. I’m hoping to get my head around a drawing out there. There is too much crap to do here for my brain to back the fuck off and stop the to-do list.
So tracing Wonder Under makes sense right now.
Meanwhile, two shows opened this weekend with my work, one in Wayne, PA: Art Quilt Elements…
My piece My Body. My Choice. is on the far left…
And here, on the right…
I always have to scroll through Facebook looking for images from the shows.
Here’s one, Sweet Delicious, in a gallery in Japan…
Between the two women.
Interesting flyer…my info is the only stuff in English.
Also I guess that’s my name in Japanese?
It was a little scary to send stuff off to Japan, but now I know the two guys in charge of this show (they’ve been in my studio at least), so I feel better about it. I send work off all the time to people I don’t know, but it’s almost always been to a venue that has regular shows. Somehow that seems better. I don’t really know why.
I’m sitting around waiting for ophthalmology (I cannot spell that word correctly the first time for the life of me) to call me back, but I also need to take a shower before my doctor appointment, so I feel like as soon as I get in the shower, they will call. Right? Yeah. But I have a book to read (or 17), art to make (but not finish, because no machine until next week), a house that is never clean or functional, a pool guy to replace (seriously sick of this guy), and who knows what else on the list. But I’m not at work, and that’s the plus. And ophthal…fucking-A can’t spell it…called back and they don’t think it’s an emergency unless I see flashing lights or a veil over my eye (oh my). So next week for that. Ugh. During my opening…guess I won’t make it to that. Or I’ll be late. Whatever. I can’t do ALL the things. I just can’t.
IDK what happened this morning, but it’s already late and I’m not ready. Really, today, I’m sitting in my classroom while someone else does a presentation that will apply to maybe 10 of my students, if that, but it’s not MY decision to make, so I’m just going to use the time to work so I don’t have to do it all after school this week. Win maybe win? We’ll see. I know I need to put in a healthy chunk of time this week on work because I didn’t do it this weekend. I finished grades Friday night, then mostly blew it off for the rest of the weekend. I was busy with other stuff.
I went to my quilt guild meeting and worked on this…
Then went to a baby shower and handed over this…
Then went to dinner with this guy…
And drew this…
Friday night, I finished tracing this…
And Saturday night, I turned it into this…
And last night, it became this…
I had picked a background fabric, but I don’t think it’s gonna work. So I’ll need to pick another one.
This was me trying to finish grades Friday morning.
Thanks to our grading program. It eventually figured its shit out. Typical though. I also gave a quiz (it was one question) and then got to deal with this.
I guess. Huh. Fun times. Both A students. Come-to-Jesus moment for them. I guess.
I just now noticed Kitten had thrown up on the top part and under the keyboard. Sigh. Ugh. Cleanup is fun. And somehow I’m still late this morning. I wonder why.
Good explanation there.
OK. Sigh. This week. It’ll be fine. As long as the thunderstorms stay away from the field trip day and all the things work and nothing more breaks and maybe even some good things will happen, in between my boob hurting (still, apparently can for up to 4 months, shoot me now) and my stress levels. At least I have art at night and books on my iPad.
So in totally awesome news, even though we trimmed the shit out of the trees, the owls are back! I finally got the camera up and working and there they were! I was so happy. I thought I’d heard them, but not the young one I’d heard before for the last 9 months…that one left after the tree trimming. We would hear it every night, going out to hunt. This must be one of the original parents. Much quieter. The male parent last year was loud as hell too. But so far, these are quiet.
It’s the weird little things that make my days.
This weekend was rough…I don’t feel like I got enough of any one thing done, unfortunately. Crunch time for school plus a lot of art things going on. I got a little bit done on the piece I’m doing with a partner…just some tracing done on Friday and Sunday night…
I think I had a whopping 26 minutes last night…
I was speed grading before that. I’m in the 200s…just about 150 pieces to go. I could finish it tonight, but I have a baby quilt that needs to be done by Saturday. Ha! Well. Hopefully.
I put borders on it Friday, then pinbasted it Saturday morning.
I did a little quilting on Saturday after buying an insane amount of thread, because I didn’t have the right kind.
I didn’t get any more quilting done all weekend unfortunately. It won’t take long…I just need to do it. Hopefully more tonight. But grades are also due and that’s stressful. So yeah. I’m trying to do all the things.
Saturday was the pop-up opening of Collective Retrospective, a show with a current piece and a piece that’s at least 10 years old. It started on Instagram. I only had the old piece, and it will be 30 years old in October.
This is The Cold Cement Basement of Our Love from October 1994. It’s a screenprint that I then drew all over with Sharpie…some things never change. Lots of words and DNA and a cup of tea. And sciencey things going on in the body. Before I ever taught science. I did work in science though.
I absolutely sucked at pictures of this show…I do know this is Judith Parenio’s piece…
I got a picture of her speaking (there’s video of her rousing words on the Insta link above)…
Except this is before she actually talked. Cool things happened. But I was there for like 3 1/2 hours. Time. Sigh. There was a beautiful sky though…and friends came by to see me and my art.
The Man stopped by at the end to help me load my piece into the car and then we went to dinner…
He had a show the night before that I was supposed to go to, but he texted me while I was driving that they had stopped letting people in; the venue was full. So I turned around and went home and graded instead. He didn’t get home until almost 2 AM, so we’ve barely seen each other this weekend. Yesterday was two art Zoom meetings plus trying to grade.
Anyway. So I’m quilting this week, hopefully tracing, obviously grading and lesson planning. Listening to owls. Reading when I can. I’ve got my second ceramics class tomorrow…already have ideas. It’s coiling. I love coiling. Busy weekend coming up. Again. Lots of art going out, which is good. Wish I were making more of it, but it’s here. I’m getting there. After a staff meeting today, teaching pedigrees…actually, letting an assignment teach them. I did my part. It’s time for them to do theirs. Ha! Hopeful anyway. First full week of teaching since January…with holidays and COVID and doctors’ appointments. It will be weird.
Hmmm. It’s Friday. Kinda forgot to write. I got up and posted stuff for school and worked for a while. Then rested and read. And worked some more. School. Sheesh. I am better, though. I’ll be back at school on Monday, hopefully testing negative so I don’t have to rock the mask, but whatever. I’m going to have to reteach all the stuff they didn’t do for the last three days. Sigh. Could do without that. Ah well. Can’t do anything about it.
I’ve been reading a lot. It happens on a couch in a mostly prone position, which I hear is good for recovery. Yeah, I also graded and planned a lot, but that’s still easier than standing and talking all day.
Wednesday night, I finished tracing all the pieces…
And last night, I sat quite happily on the couch with a cat and cut them all out…
392 pieces is like nothing. I need to sort them and then see if I have the energy to stand long enough to start ironing to fabric. I haven’t done a ton of standing. So yeah. But that’s the next step.
I also need to draw the one I’m doing with a partner, plus quilt that thing for a friend without getting COVID on it. According to the internets, the virus shouldn’t live on fabric for more than a day. I think I’m good. I do have to go to school this weekend to copy stuff for Tuesday and cut it out. Hardly any of my students completed work online; hopefully they did the paper stuff, but since the online stuff was to help them with that, it’s unlikely. Ah well. Three lost days.
So this is the bedroom wall, minus the drywall that was wet. Those lovely golden bits in the black are sunlight…SUNLIGHT…where it’s shining through the exterior wall.
Problematic.
This is my increasingly older Kitten in her grumpy nighttime phase.
This is a incredibly blurry and pixelated picture of a bird taking a bath in a birdbath.
And last but not least, a hawk perched on the heavily trimmed eucalyptus, probably wondering where its perch went. Better view now? Hmmm.
So my weekend plans are somewhat squashed. Still not sure if I can exercise Sunday. I do know I have lots of work left to do on all fronts, and the Surface Design Association conference continues tomorrow, which is cool. I forgot about it all week until yesterday at 4 PM, when I remembered to log in for a social hour. That was cool. I appreciate hanging out with other artists.
Still raining on and off here. We dug out enough of the front area that the water didn’t make it inside, but the stoop outside the door slants backwards to the house, which isn’t helping. And we need gutters and drainage and to get rid of that damn stoop. Plus actual walls would be good. Otherwise, things are fine, not stressful at all. Uh huh. Gonna go read for a while longer before doing something else that seems useful. I can’t always be productive.
You know, I teach in a petri dish of diseases. I’m lucky when I don’t get sick (knock on wood…oh wait…too late). Seriously, I was just thinking how I hadn’t been sick this year, that my immune system was rocking! And then we got info last night that one of the Man’s bandmates tested positive for COVID…he tests, he’s positive, I’m like get away from me, I can’t be sick right now, went to bed, laid there trying to meditate, contemplating my nose that started running around 10 PM and my throat that started scratching right after, fuckity fuck fuck. So I didn’t even get sick from my students. FFS. Well. I got up and tested positive, requested a sub for the next three days, then wrote sub plans (at midnight), emailed about a thousand people who were affected either by my being sick or by my being out, wrote a post-it note of what needed to happen in the morning, and tried to sleep. Fun times.
Got up at 6:30, printed some stuff, drove to school, masked, set up my classroom, grabbed the two assignments I needed to grade (I still need to copy shit for next week; Sunday plans?), made a video of materials for a teacher who needs them today, copied seating charts, left it all and was home by 7:15. Sat down, posted all the assignments, and then tried to record a video for tomorrow (trying to teach Punnett squares by video is hard), fucked it up, did it again. I’m waiting for it to process now so I can make an Edpuzzle out of it so kids will have to write stuff down to get credit (many will still blow it off). Oh hey, Edpuzzle emailed me that my video was ready. Nice. Talked to the nurse about paxlovid. Still need to write lesson plans for tomorrow and Friday and do a video for Friday. I don’t feel too bad at the moment, but I’m listening to the Man and I’m not sure I’m going to feel better tomorrow. Which sucks. Canceled pilates, need to notify sex-ed committee (shit, I sneezed. I remember that), texted kid who lives here part time (he got clothes and food and left again, until he tests positive and then he’ll be back), texted parents (saw dad Saturday, think I was OK, but the Man might not have been…they didn’t interact though, so we’re probably good).
Still need to dig out part of the entryway before the next big rain hits tomorrow…hoping for feeling OK to do that for 20 minutes today? But not counting on it. Spacey head for the win. No water in house? Sigh.
Plus I think I got about 4 hours of sleep. But until I have tomorrow’s lessons planned so my co-teachers can print them, I’m not ready to rest. The reality of being a teacher out sick. Last year when I had strep/scarlet fever, I was REALLY ill. So ill that the videos I made, the kids told me afterwards that I sounded awful. I’m like, I recorded one of those at like 4:30 AM because that was when I could sit up. Briefly. So knock on wood, this won’t be as bad as the last time I had COVID and I’ll be back at school Friday or Monday. No sub Friday. Yikes. We’ll see.
I love having to revise all my lesson plans at the last minute. Not.
Art progress: Monday night, I was fine. I started tracing Wonder Under for the new quilt. I did the sky, mostly. I didn’t have a full hour.
I didn’t get super far. Who the fuck thought fancy divided stars was a good plan? It was me. I did. Hmmm.
Then last night, I felt fine until I went to bed…OK, my nose started running as I was tracing, but I was in denial. I got to piece 207, which is more than halfway. Not sure how I’m going to feel today, but hoping to trace some more. We’ll see. Currently just want to lie on the couch and nap. Should do that for a while.
I could finish in a couple of hours I think.
The other two quilts I need to do…well I need fabric for one, which means shopping, which I was going to do Saturday. Let’s hope I feel better by then. I suspect I haven’t hit bottom yet because I barely had symptoms last night. It’s OK if it has to wait for a week. I have time. The other one, we’re figuring out sizes, but it’s going to be small, maybe 11×14″, so that should be relatively easy. I do want to do some handwork on it, I think. I never have the time to do that…
Anyway, sure, working on three, maybe four things at once makes sense (I actually don’t usually do that). Plus I need to finish that quilt for the friend of mine, but I was thinking, damn, how long does COVID live on fabric? Because I don’t want the quilt to give her COVID. Sigh. OK.
Also made an appointment for the followup mammogram…because they hadn’t called me and I don’t like not knowing, and not knowing for 2+ weeks is more than I can deal with right now. I’m still trying to figure out concrete drying and siding replacement and drywall replacement and maybe everything just waits until it stops raining. Luckily, it’s Southern California, so after the rain dumps this week and next, we might be in the clear. I’m a little overly stressed at the moment. House then boob then sick. That’s enough. Back the fuck off, 2024. We’re done.
Nap. I need a nap. Then finish lesson planning. Then more napping.
Woke up to Careless Whisper by Wham!. Not sure what to think about that, on the first day back to work in 2024. Can’t get it out of my damn head though. So there’s that. Hey you know there’s 74 days until Spring Break! You know the worst part about coming back is when you don’t feel rested and refreshed, and everybody is all asking you if you feel rested and refreshed and please share one relaxing thing you did over break, and I’m like I READ 78 BOOKS BECKY precisely because that was my escape from not feeling rested and refreshed. Also I’m just a cranky old lady sometimes, and today is one of those times. Not enough sleep. Not enough shit got done. As always.
Speaking of not enough time, I really am trying to up the ante with this quilt, getting it done in an insanely small amount of time. How? Grabbing minutes when I’d normally do something else. I had 45 minutes yesterday afternoon before driving out to an art meeting, so I ironed instead of lesson planning. I had 30 minutes waiting for the Man to get dinner ready…same deal. I got the room cleaned Saturday in the hour before going to see his show, and when he sent me an updated start time (later), I sat down and got half a really complicated exhibition entry done. It’s good, but it feels like I can’t ever just sit down and relax. Hence my post-break feeling of no, not rested, not relaxed. My fault, but semi-necessary at the moment. I’m not letting another year of school fuck up my ability to make art. I’m gonna figure it out.
So I had everything laid out and ready to go on Saturday…wait. Stop. I need to be chronological about all this.
First of all, on Friday, I ran a million errands. I even wrote the blog late because of it. I spent about an hour staring at this asshole…
Which is the slow annoying one, because our faster one has been broken down most of the fucking school year, so we’re stuck sharing this with the front office, who keeps telling us we’re not allowed to use it. Uh huh.
Fast forward to Friday night (I did other stuff, very little of it art related)…I drew at dinner.
I was in a pretty positive mindframe at that point. Except she is holding her head. Legit position. Then we went out to see a friend’s band play…
Sonic Moonshine…ironically, we’d be back here on Saturday night for the Man’s band, Radio Thieves. But some drinking and dancing happened, probably too much of both.
Saturday dawned early, as it always does. I had a quilt guild meeting, so I worked a little on her face.
Slow stitching forever! Might finish in 2030.
Then came home and focused on cleaning up the art space, putting fabric away, even cleaned the floor because there was something on it that made it very slippery in one area (don’t wanna know what) and I was afraid I’d fall and break something. Like my leg. That would make life fun right now, right? Oh wait! Before I cleaned up in there, I had to deal with this. So we have this older friend who isn’t a quilter, but she had these blocks she cross stitched, and then I sandwiched them for her and she quilted them (the white threads are all my basting threads)…
And then I couldn’t deal with the sashing on a quilt-as-you-go, so we mailed it to a friend who used to live down here (she’s retired) and she put it together, mailed it back to me, and then I took it BACK to our friend and she hand-stitched all the sashing sides down (I taught her ladder stitch…she’s really NOT a sewer). Then it came back to me and I put the borders on and shoved some batting in there on Friday and Saturday, and then I removed all that fucking basting thread I put in last summer or whenever it was (2022? this has been going on for a while).
See pile of threads in the top right? So that happened before and after the quilt guild meeting. I needed this to get off the ironing board so I could use it for ironing.
Then I quilted one of the white squares on Saturday…
And one on Sunday. Yes, I could just do it all in one go, but it would take a few hours and then I would feel like I got nothing of my OWN done, and I cannot abide that at the moment. Nope. So my goal is 1-2 white squares a day and then the damn sashing and borders. I’ll get there. It just won’t be quick.
Then on Saturday, I laid out the first 100 pieces (after cleaning the whole room, floor, etc).
It’s not a big quilt.
Then I went to see the Man’s band play (more dancing, a little drinking, learned a lesson there I guess).
Home again. Spent Sunday getting ready for school, but also carving out time for ironing. I’m in the mid-100s, I think…something like that.
I got almost 3 hours in yesterday. Good times. You’d think I’d have more ironed, but there were a lot of little things going on and they took some thinking.
I also went to an art meeting and sewed down (during dinner) 9 of the 48 circles I need to stitch down for my mom’s thing.
See, I AM doing all the things. I’m just cranky about most of it. Except the ironing for my quilt. That is joyous and not cranky at all.
I’m sure everyone has seen some cool art or fabric in a TV show and screen shot it…this is the wall art from an episode of Suits.
Fascinating. I had some stuff burst into my head from this. Too bad I have to go back to school today instead of nurturing my Art Brain with some drawing time. Luckily there are no kids today…just adults and the bullshit the district wants us to do. Am I still burnt out? Oh yeah. I am. Do I have some plans for keeping myself from fully burning out? Uh huh. I do. Watch this space. Still got that damn song in my head.
OK. Self realizes last real day of Winter Break is upon us. The to-do list is heinous. The month is ugly. I’m still feeling burnt out from school…not a good sign after three weeks off. But it is what it is. What I can have in place is a giant pile of books to read as a reward for doing whatever yucky thing is that I had to do to earn the reading, a solid exercise plan that moves for nothing and no one (almost), an art project that has a deadline, so it cannot be shunted aside. It would also help if I had a cook and a cleaner, but I’m not holding my breath for those. Best I can do today is cross off a bunch of stuff. I’m dropping my school computer off this morning and getting a loaner so that I can actually use it in class. At home, I’ve been projecting it to another monitor, but I still can’t see the login box (I don’t need to see that to get in, luckily), and a goodly chunk of the doc and tabs are unavailable. So I’m glad they were available to get me a loaner today. I’m also shipping the Supreme Court quilt to its new owner. I made some videos before I packed it up, so I’ll be hopefully getting those processed and on the blog this weekend. I’m picking up another quilt from a show; I’m glad they were open today so I could do that. Trying to do all this stuff during a regular work week is really challenging…half of these places aren’t open late enough for me to even get there. Frustrations aside (is that even possible? I feel like it’s a daily occurrence to be frustrated these days…ask me after today.), I have today planned pretty solidly. Hoping to get a hike/walk in there, but we’ll see.
So I’m on the speedy track with the first quilt of 2024. Why? I have a collaborative project I’m supposed to be doing in the next few months, and I also need to (want to!) make a baby quilt for a good friend having her first. Also there’s a deadline and I don’t have anything at all for it, which is weird and frustrating (there’s that word again). So I traced the whole thing in just three nights, I think…
Spending more than an hour a night, obviously staying up too late, sigh, those are the hours I am most efficient, but also the hours I need to be asleep so I can get enough sleep so I can get up at ugh in the morning. It was less than two yards of Wonder Under. I started cutting it out Wednesday night after finishing the tracing…
Didn’t get far, but did the rest of it in a couple of hours last night…
Today, I’m going to sort it, make sure I have a background, buy one if I don’t, and start ironing to fabric, which means putting everything away from the last quilt first, and honestly, I need to put the borders on the other friend’s quilt I have had for a over a month first, because I need the ironing board and table for that. So do that first. Realistically, that’s a lot, considering everything else I need to do today, but we’ll see how it goes. You know me; I’m all about progress.
OK, I’m going to have to write the rest of this later; need to book. *** Time Passes *** So I wrote that at around 8 AM and now it’s 12:15. I’ve been productive. I have a loaner computer and mine is winging its way (well, probably driving) to Apple for repair. I copied all the papers needed for the first two weeks of school (one copier is already down, so I stole paper from it and went to the office copier, so that reduces my Monday stress). I picked up my quilt from Visions, because the show ended. I shipped the sold quilt with insurance, which is why I had to drive into a part of town I never go to…it has to go to a customer center, not a UPS store. Annoying because they’re not open past 2 PM, so doing it during the school day is impossible. I might even have partially solved the insulin shortage problem; we’ll see about that. Why am I short insulin? Long story involving a defective pen months ago that still isn’t solved. Yet.
I also washed my storage bins that I use for sorting fabric and Wonder Under. The pencil had been transferring off of the pieces onto the boxes, and I didn’t want the fabric to get dirty. To be honest, I only washed the first 6…because that’s all I need right now. So later today, I’ll be sorting fabric. I also checked my background stash and I have something that will work well for this quilt, so there is (unfortunately) no need to go shopping. Wah. But also, that’s probably a good thing. I’m waiting for the loaner computer to finish updating so I can go lesson plan for a while…not my favorite thing to do, but I have a chunk of time when I’m not super tired, so I should do that now. My future self will appreciate it.
I’ll take a break while lesson planning to put the borders on that quilt and clean up the sewing room, so I can start ironing to fabric later today. The Man and I have a date night planned, since he has a show tomorrow night, so we’ll be going out to dinner and to see some music for a while. Tomorrow, I’m planning for more lesson crap and more ironing joy.
Last night, during my quilting-friends Zoom, I made wontons from scratch, to provide me with three days of lunch joy (and last night’s dinner). It’s too time-consuming to make during the school year, but it’s one of my favorite meals, so I make it once during break if I can. Then I started pinning the snowflakes on the borders of mom’s Tinsel quilt. Oh, I put the borders on the other day…
We changed the snowflakes to two different sizes of circles…
And then changed the borders from the pattern, only using 6 of the snowflakes Sue Spargo planned.
One of the other participants did it this way and added a bunch of different embroidered snowflakes randomly throughout the border, and I liked the way it looked better than the original. So my job is to applique down the 48 circles. Then I hand it over to mom and she does the embroidery. Then back to me to sandwich and quilt…she could probably do that, but that’s OK. I’ll give it back to her to stitch the binding down by hand. Then it’s hers. And when she’s gone, it’s mine. Unless my SIL or some other close family member wants it more. Then it’s theirs.
So those circles are my evening stitching after eating dinner. It’ll be a week or two to get done.
Here’s where I’ve been lesson planning. It got dark last night while I was working.
It’s kind of chaotic, but it works better than sitting on the couch. I did finish grading that last academic assignment, so that’s good. I have progress report grades due in a couple of weeks, and I don’t want to stress about it. I don’t have TIME to stress about it. Every weekend from now until February 10 has stuff on it. Some of it is art or music, but that doesn’t make it any less busy (there’s also tree trimming and mammogram, so it’s not all fun and games). I’m eyeing February for camping or something, because I’m gonna need it.
Kitten is such a good baby. Fifteen and a bit. Definitely likes the sun.
And to be near me. Sometimes annoyingly so. But sweet here.
The composter in the front yard has a visitor.
Probably rat. Need to put more water in there. They don’t like it when it’s super wet.
Also, she’s touching me. Make her stop touching me.
Anyway. Coping mechanisms in place. I’m on some new supplements and hoping they will help with sleep and energy. And hot flashes, which may never go away. We’ll see. But for now, I’m going to eat happy wonton lunch and plan for a while and then not plan for a while. The art is what saves me, on a daily basis, y’all. Without it, I’d be bonkers, seriously nuts. I’m so glad I have that.
Kathy Nida 