Sunday, April 30, 2006

I Shouldn't Be Wasting Time Online

But I've been a good worker bunny. A bunch of pictures, although none of my son. I just did the quick haircut on him, 10 minutes flat. He says he wants hair that's halfway between a girl and a boy, so now he looks like a young Vulcan. Of course, I had to explain what a Vulcan was, so he decided he's an elf. I'm OK with that.

OK, so last weekend, I was walking in Hillcrest and saw this electric/traffic box. They've had local artists paint most of them in the area. I love the practice, and keep meaning to photograph this one, because I like it. I'm still trying to figure out how to locate the artists, but this one is on Robinson near 5th. Yes, it's sideways. So what. Deal. Do not irritate the cranky woman.


I haven't been ignoring the fabric world. This is the photograph for the next Southwest block. The photo was intimidating, translating it effectively into fabric.


I still don't know if my fabric choices will BE effective, but there's the pile of pieces, finally cut out and ready to go. I did that Friday night.


But before that, I did this landscape quilt as a donation for my niece and nephew's school auction. It's not quite finished. It's from a pattern from Susan Brittingham's miniature landscape class on www.quilt university.com.



I need to put a label on this one and ship it off this week to Pennsylvania. I hope I have a box or a tube that will work.


Over the weekend, I went to ArtWalk in San Diego, in Little Italy. I don't like ArtWalk as much now, as a street fair, as I did when it was visiting the artists' studios. I used to exhibit then, but I don't now. But I did bring home cards from two artists I like. The first, Daniela Ovtcharova, I can't afford, but her paintings are truly gorgeous, with a beautiful light to them. Her website is http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/d/daniela. This is Three Graces. It's sold, but other stuff isn't. Buy it!


The second one I might be able to afford, maybe, deep breaths, sometime soon. I have an obsession with printmaking, being a former (and hopefully future) printmaker. She also likes birds in her art. I wish I could buy like five of these...and they're cheap! But I'm really strapped for cash at the moment. Anyway, her name is Kirsten Francis and she's local. Her website is http://www.kirstenfrancis.com. This is Nesting. Please go buy stuff from her so she can keep making these.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Bound

It's not that I'm not doing anything artistic (or apparently anything at all). There's just nothing exciting about sewing on bindings. I'm getting a hole in my finger from doing it (woo!), but it's no fun to do or to watch. I've finished two and am working on two more. One of them is for a quilt I'm donating to my niece's school for an auction, so I'll post a picture of it when I'm done. I would like to be making art, but my sewing machine is still dead in the water. The store is tired of my harassing them about it. My mom is apparently harassing them too (they've finally made the connection between the two of us). Yes, I'm nuts for preferring to sew on a 30+-year-old machine. But I broke three needles on Mom's super fancy Viking SE or whatever it is, and then came home and broke a needle on her other super fancy Brother. I don't think I've broken a needle on my old Viking in years. I'm sewing it into the ground, but I've got that whole tension thing mostly under control. I don't WANT to learn a new machine. I don't want to waste any of my precious free time fussing with a new system. Even learning to THREAD a new machine is hell...

Rant over. For now. This whole job, making money, paying bills thing sucks. I am incredibly envious of all those artists who are just doing that...I don't know how old I'll be when I retire, but it'll be close to dead.

With that cheery thought in mind, here is a picture of an Easter mole. Because that's what I'm teaching right now...


Sorry...EasterNNNN mole...duh.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Still Life with Bloody Head (no fruit)

Still lives should have fruit in them. This one doesn't.



This piece has taken forever to finish. The quilt top was assembled in 2003, I think. I couldn't deal with quilting the back for the longest time, and then when I did finally find the right thread and the right headspace, the thread was a bitch. But it's done. I like parts of it, but I don't know if I like it as a whole (hole, as my students would write).



I do like the details.



I took it to my quilt group and they wanted me to explain it. Eh. Not gonna happen. Sorry.



I've posted this detail before, but it's my favorite. The bloody head...



Actually, I like it in these photos. Maybe I've been too close to it. Maybe I need to hang it on the wall and live with it for a while...but I can't. I'd have to explain it to the kids. Sigh.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Weighted and Statements


I posted this unfinished earlier this year. It's now officially done. It's called Weighted. It has a binding. (don't tell...but the binding is not sewn down yet, but I don't do that until it gets into a show because I HATE doing it.) That's my official notice that a quilt is done...I've bound it...Anyway...I don't know if I like it or not...and I don't know what it means either :-). No, that's not true.

Here's a detail...


A couple of people asked me for a statement or more info on the symbols in Portrait of an Ex. My first impulse when people say, but what does it all MEEEEAAAAN is...well...what does it mean to YOU? I guess I look at what I do as communicating with the viewer, and that doesn't mean that what I was thinking when I made it is particularly relevant to the viewer. That said, I do write statements (5 or 6 sentences max) for many of my quilts, but only because those damn shows WANT them. And my recent dilemma was trying to write a statement for a quilt I had finished a year ago, from a drawing I had done 3 years ago, and even I didn't remember what I was thinking when I did it, so I thought about what I was thinking about it now and wrote it from there. I'm trying to be better about keeping a weekly journal of art-related blabbiness (what did I do THIS week). It helps me keep track of what I am (and am not) doing and I have seen progress because of that effort. I guess what the art is...it's a changeable moveable adjustable thing. My ex would see something in this piece. My mom would see something. If you have been through a bad divorce, you would see something. If you haven't, you would see something. None of those are wrong...they are just different (and that may be my philosophy of life right there).

Portrait of an Ex does not yet have a statement, and sitting here staring at it, I'm not sure what I'd write if someone required one. I'm divorced. It was a rough haul. I have two kids. My ex is Welsh (that is the Welsh flag with the dragon on it). That's it. This is one of the divorce quilts. It is one of the quilts that I have not shown to my children...I have been very careful to only work on it when they were in bed, and to photograph it after they went to sleep. They can see it when they're old enough to understand. And I don't know if that's when they're 15 or 50. We'll just have to see.

I do have another couple of quilts I finished this week. One I can't post yet in case it gets into a show. The other one I will post later this week. No really. I will.

Friday, April 14, 2006

I Just Stole My Mother's Brother

Uncle Fred, age 60-something. Actually, my very reliable (but very old) Viking just died again. It died in August too, I think, and I borrowed my mom's Brother (her sewing machine, not some old guy) and promptly sewed through my finger for the first time in my life. I'm in the middle of being on a roll of really bombing along quilting the background of this monster purple beast, and my machine starts to get that not-good burning smell, and now the wheel's not turning without major force. Damn. I'll take it in tomorrow, but for tonight, I'm going to burn rubber on the Brother.

Here's that silly cat, fascinated with all the moving parts on the Viking. These parts are no longer moving.




There is no end to the frustration this week. It will change...there's probably some weird astrological crap going on this week. Or my magnets are misaligned. Or the gods are frowning at my depiction of mitosis. Who knows...

Bad Wonder Under

My car is still at the dealer. They have been unable to locate what the body shop did to destroy my lights and clock. I am getting an ulcer worrying about it, because if they decide that it was a random occurrence that would have broken down no matter what due to the age (FOUR?) of my car, I will have to pay for it. And money is very tight.

Hence, I have not finished quilting the behemoth. I had hoped to have it quilted and bound by tonight, so I could photograph it and stop worrying about it. I was wrong. Thread breaks. Back hurts. Foot pedal heats up. This is a closeup picture of the back of the front before I sandwiched it for quilting. It was kind of cool-looking, and now that it's sandwiched, no one will ever see that view of it again. Kind of weird.


So, back to the bad Wonder Under. Melody Johnson (http://fibermania.blogspot.com/) has been blogging about her escapades with bad Wonder Under for a while now, but I hadn't had the same results. The webbing would lift off the paper, but I was using it differently than she was, so I had different problems with it. But when I started trying to pull the paper off, I started to see the same problems she was having, where the paper was pulling some of the webbing off. And when I was ironing pieces together onto the applique sheet, some of the fusible was coming off onto the sheet, which never happens. I did manage to get the whole piece ironed, but now the damn stuff is clogging my needle, which it also has never done. I have one more quilt with trimmed pieces where I'll have to deal with this bad batch. I tossed the rest in the trash. I had been to both my local Jo-Anns looking for good Wonder Under (I'm at the point that I can tell whether it's bad or good just by looking at it), and they both had the bad stuff. So when I was at the conference in Anaheim, I went to the Jo-Anns in Orange, and they had the good stuff! It was wonderful to behold and I am a very happy owner of a mere 12 yards of it. I don't buy it by the bolt like Melody does, because I use a lot less of it than she does. But I'm glad to see it's not just me having problems with it. I should probably go back to those Jo-Anns stores and tell them to send it back...and maybe I will. I'm not sure they'll listen, though.

OK, the whiny twins are squawling. I have to dye Easter eggs now...not fabric, just eggs.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

One of Those Weeks

Yesterday, moany whiny blah irritation (by the way, adding to that, my interior lights are also not working). Today, I get the envelope I've been waiting for, and it feels like it's full of my slides. Sigh. Another rejection. Silly girl...Portrait of an Ex got into Crafts National 40, which will hang in the Zoller Gallery at Penn State University (University Park) from June 6 through July 21. There are catalogs! I love catalogs. So I should stop whining.


Last night I finished ironing the entire top of the piece I'm trying to finish by May 1, which would be a totally attainable goal if Spring Break wasn't over this week. So I'm going to be doing that balancing act where I try to act like an artist, a mom, and a teacher, and things like clean houses and thank-you notes sent out on time fall by the wayside. I apologize to the world for that, but it seems to make sense to me at the time. I've petitioned for a waiver for a 30-hour day because the 24-hour days aren't cutting it, but I haven't heard back yet. And I just spent THREE HOURS cutting my lawn. It's rained every Saturday that I've been home in the last 2 months. I don't know how you people in permanently wet areas do this...I'd have grass up to the roof.

To summarize:
Yesterday: sucked big time
Today: Achievement is mine

Stay tuned.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Frustrations of the Day

A book by...

1. I picked my car up after 2 weeks with the body shop. The in-dash clock and trip-meter reset every time I turn the car off. The body shop says they did nothing electrical. They sent me to the dealer. The dealer made me an appointment. I called the insurance company, who says that because my car is 4 years old, it is possible that the clock was going to die ANYWAY at this time, and it may be purely coincidence that it occurred while some body shop was taking my car completely apart. RIIIGHT. I buy that. I'll let the dealer look at it, but won't fix it if they determine it was a fluke. Can't afford it.

2. I got the police report on the accident my car was in. It was parked. A silver car that was recovered by the police hit a 2nd car, careened off it, hit a 3rd car, and the 3rd car hit mine. I was not there at the time. There is no mention of the silver car's license or owner, so I had to pay the deductible. I think it might be a city councilmember's son or mistress, so this is a massive coverup to keep me in a financial hole.

The pictures are now labeled. I am about to seam the background so I can put a whole quilt top together. Whee. Or I am going grocery shopping so my kids don't starve. I'm still very frustrated about numbers 1 and 2 above. I may never leave my driveway again...then no one can run into, take apart, or otherwise damage my car again...except my kids.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Words Later...I Swear

Or maybe I'll just make YOU figure out how all of these pictures are connected! No really...I'll add words later...


This is a picture of a device made by two middle-school teachers (one science and one language arts) to simulate blood splatter, so kids could see what blood splatter from a hammer might look like. Don't even ask about how this guy went on about cast-off splatter. It's easier to take that stuff on TV or from a detective, but this teacher was having way too much fun. And you should hear him talk about maggots...I know now how to attract flies to lay eggs and about all the different stages of maggots and their resulting buggy bits. Yikes.


This is mitosis. In fabric. With pieces the size of...maggots? No, much smaller. I'm weird. This rectangle is part of a much larger piece...this part is about 4x6".


This would have been much cooler if it weren't blurry. This was at the NSTA (National Science Teacher's Association) conference in Anaheim. It was awesome. I did ask permission to take the picture. I wish I had had time to take more, less blurry pictures.


I did mitosis. Now I do DNA. I am woman. Hear me roar.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

I Have Not Packed Yet (Countdown to Departure...)

Instead of packing, I cut out my next quilt. Actually, I ironed my next quilt. It's called Walking Time Bomb. Here are the fabrics I used today.

It took about 4 hours, but not nonstop. I drink caffeine, so yes, I have to pee a lot. And then I ate a few times. And I read the comics. I need lots of distractions some days.

And here is the box-o-fabrics (no cat this time...she's napping elsewhere...too much frantic fabric ironing going on in this room for a cat's comfort). Packing them up for Anaheim.

I'm feeling like I'm actually accomplishing things this Spring Break. Knock on wood...

Should Be Packing...Again


I got home from Arizona yesterday afternoon (see inspiring picture of weird geological formations below, as opposed to weird photo of truck above...insert whatever word you like at the end of the truck...).


I'm leaving for Anaheim (WOOO!) tonight. Hopefully the rain will have stopped by then and maybe my car will have been fixed too so I don't have to drive my dad's convertible. A girl can dream. I will not be going to Disneyland. If I went to Disneyland without my kids, they would probably kill me. Plus I'm supposed to be doing official science-teacher stuff...whatever that is.

In Arizona, I cut out most of the 543 pieces of Wonder-Undered fabric. Arizona roads, in general, are less bumpy than California roads. It was easier to cut out small fussy pieces in Arizona than in California. Last night, I sorted all the pieces out by number into boxes so I could come home Saturday and iron the sucker together. I also cut out all the Wonder Under for the next piece. I'm considering trying to pick those fabrics today before I leave for Anaheim. There are no cool pictures of this process, because it is significantly boring to view at this stage. Next week will be much more interesting.

I was going to do yardwork today, but it is pouring rain and doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon, so I can justify not mowing the lawn. The lawn is under water. Seriously. This is Southern California and we've had about an inch and a half of rain in last last 17 hours. That's flooding for us dry folks.

Duck Update: See picture of two males and one female. Can you see all the ducks? The last picture is triumphant daddy duck, after he scared off the interloper. Mom has a nest...it's in my bushes. Damn. Guess I can't clean the pool aggressively any time soon. They let me walk right up to them to take the pictures...unfortunately, I couldn't get them to really hold still for a family photo.

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