Who Stole My Motivation This Time?!

Hello Internet People!  Mother is still stuck in that not doing shit rut again and I am not having any luck getting out of it.  I have killed the entire morning again on Facebook and I still have no clue what I want to work on.  I just cannot find any motivation anywhere, no matter how hard I look for it.  I think someone stole it.  Yeah, that must be it!  Someone stole my motivation.  Unfortunately, it was probably me.

Hey, maybe if I set my sights to spending the day here, writing, then maybe I will find my motivation hiding somewhere between the keys.  I reckon it is worth a try, nothing else seems to be working.  Now all I have to do is figure out what to write about.  Aw, fuck.  There is always a catch!  Well, damnit, now what?  I guess I could just ramble away at you about nothing like I usually do, or I could sit here staring at the screen and not typing a fucking thing, which I often do as well.  But neither of those things sound like very much fun for either of us at the moment, so I will have to keep working on finding something to work on.

This is yet another reason I hate this time of year.  I have no room to work when I am confined to the indoors.  At least in parts of the Spring and Summer and Fall, I can work outside and spread out as much as I want, in the winter that is NOT an option, at all.  Unfortunately there is so much "stuff" in our house that it leaves very little room to actually do stuff when we are confined to the indoors.  I keep telling my husband that our "ideal" house would actually be a warehouse with a couple of little rooms separated off with walls for sleeping and bathing.  Just one huge 4000+ square foot room for everyone to spread out in.  To me, that would be the perfect home.  Although I still think I could use up the whole space all by myself and still feel crowded.                   

Oh well, not like that is gonna happen anytime soon, so I need to quit fixating on things that I cannot do anything about, and figure out something that I can do.  Like, go make lunch for the kids.  Now there is something I can do.  And I reckon I better get about doing it before the little creatures take a page from the dog's playbook and start gnawing on me!  I shall return, later.                      

                             

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties

Hello Internet People!  I am so totally freakin lost at the moment I have no clue what to do, so I figured I might as well come here and type at you all for a while until I figure this shit out.  Thanks to some stupid jackass with no life of his own who thought it would be great fun to infect innocent websites with nasty maliciousness that they then spread unknowingly to any unsuspecting visitor, I now have a fucking virus in my desktop computer.  My husband is diligently working away trying to get rid of it, but it is not cooperating, so I cannot use my main computer until it is fixed.  And of course all of the things that I had wanted to do today require the use of that computer, so I have been floundering around all damn day trying to figure out something else to do that I don't need that computer for.  Of course, because I cannot use it, I cannot think of a single thing I want to do that doesn't require it.  It is a little fucking ridiculous.  Hell, I have even resorted to cleaning my damn house because I cannot figure out what else to do!  This must be stopped before someone gets used to it!                

                 

In other news, I suppose I should apologize to you all for that last "Negative Nelly" type Blog post.  I usually delete those rather than posting them, but I thought maybe, just maybe, it might help somebody else out there to know they are not alone in this kind of insanity.  I know I am not the only one who does this counter productive crap to themselves, and if I can help even one other person to realize that they aren't either, then maybe that can help them.  Not sure how.  Hasn't helped me much.  But I am trying, at least you could give me an "E" for effort or something.

So I have been sitting here trying to type this post for well over an hour, and this is all I have come up with so far?  My gawd my brain is just frazzled!  I hate not having something to do, or more usually, lots of things to do.  And I do actually have lots of things I probably could be doing, and way more things I probably should be doing, but there is nothing in particular that I really want to be doing at the moment, at least not that I have the capacity to do, so therefore I am fucking losing my mind!  See how that works?  I swear I am going to drive myself clean off the deep end one of these days.

I suppose, before I reach that point, I should decide on something that I can work on until the other computer is fixed.  Don't know what the hell that might be, but there has to be something.  I guess I will go work on some art for a while, even if it is bad it is better than doing nothing any longer.   Back to work!

                       

Mother is "Down" For The Count ...

Hello Internet People!  I wasn't planning on writing today, but I just finished putting the binding on my third quilt of the weekend and I am really not feeling like starting on anything else at the moment, so here I am.  I only have four more quilts left to be quilted, at least that are pinned and ready to quilt.  Two of those are big ones, so I am not in a hurry to get around to them.  

I have been running ideas through my head for designing the rest of the quilted clothing I want to make.  And I have been playing with some new ideas on what I really want to do with my art.  I have given up on the idea that I will ever be able to sell any of it anyway so I might as well just do what I want to do and not worry about whether or not anybody else might fucking like it or not.  The idea that I might be able to make a living at anything that I could actually do is just fucking ridiculous no matter what I try to do, so I am not even going to fucking try anymore.  Yeah, I still have to work for my husband, and hopefully I can help him get back to being able to make a living for us, but on my own I am just fucked, so there is no point in fighting it anymore.

                       

That would be what I refer to as my "down" swing of my ego, it is usually the one that is based in reality anyway, so I should probably learn to just go with it.  Unfortunately an "up" swing is just around the corner where I will start thinking that if I just tried a little harder, maybe someday I could do something worth something to someone besides me, that ain't gonna happen of course, but I will start thinking it might, only to crash back to reality when I finally remember it won't. 

So, fuck it.  I am just gonna go back to making whatever the hell I want to make with no concern to whether or not anybody might possibly ever want to buy it.  I could be a better artist than Leonardo da Vicni and no one would ever want to buy what I made so it really does not matter what I do.  Besides, I will probably never fucking finish any of the "art" pieces I ever start anyway.

Yes, I know how ridiculous I sound, but the sad part is it is totally true.  I will never be anyone, or do anything.  To believe otherwise would be to feed the delusions and at the moment I am just not up to it.  Don't worry, tomorrow is another day, and by then I may have swung in the other direction, in which case of course I will be invincible and capable of great feats of delusional thinking.  Until then, I will be sitting here beating myself up for ever thinking I had a chance at doing something productive with my life.                     

Mother's New Pants Redux

Hello again Internet People!  Mother is back again at the end of another long and fairly productive day.  I did make me another pair of those comfy warm quilty pants today (these even have pockets!), and I put the binding on another quilt so it is also finished now.  And I even put in a few hours working for my husband this morning!  I am almost halfway through round three now!  Yippeee Yahooie!

Anyway, I am getting stuff done which is helping me put thoughts of that freaking holiday out of my head at least for a little while.  And I am staying warm for the first time since September, so that is freaking awesome!  I downloaded a pattern for some slippers I found online that I think I can work with, and I found the slipper gripper fabric that I bought 20 years ago and never used.  I think it is time to fucking use that shit!  I have a lot of things like that.  Supplies that I bought decades ago, that I have hauled around through at least 12 different moves, many of which are still unopened in their original packaging! 

I am a collector of supplies and patterns.  Hoarder might be a more accurate description if I was being honest here, but we will stick with collector.  I have enough scrap booking supplies and papers to make more than 100 scrap books.  I haven't touched 95% of it, other than to pack and unpack it to move, in the last 7 years. And No, I could not sell it to someone who might actually use it, because then I would not have it anymore, and then I would need it.  This may be where that "crazy" thing I talk about fits in again, but one can never really be sure.

I have this issue with my creative pursuits, when I want to make something, I want to make it NOW.  I do not have time to wait until I can go to the store and buy the stuff to make it, so I need to have every possible supply I could ever conceivably require, here and available whenever the urge may strike.  And this goes for every possible creative pursuit I have ever had.  I think it all goes back to when I decided to learn to sew.

I had been doing hand embroidery since I was around 8 years old, but I hadn't done a whole lot of actual sewing until my first child was born.  I wanted to make clothes and toys for him, but I didn't have any fabric in my house.  I ended up cutting up some of my old clothes and using the fabric from them to make the first things for my son.  I guess that may be part of why I have always had this need to have plenty of supplies, I don't ever want to be caught without whatever the hell I need to do whatever the hell I want to do again.  The obsessive/compulsive thing is just an added bonus.                   

For now I think I will head off to bed and try to figure out what other supplies I can use up tomorrow.  I am sure there are more than a few out there calling my name.  Until next time here is a picture of my newest Awesome Warm Comfy Pants to tied you over ...       

Mother Has a New Pair of Pants!

Hello! Hello! Hello Internet People!  Mother just finished making herself the most awesomest pair of warm and comfy pants!  It only took me two fucking years to get around to doing it, and less than a day to actually put them together, but they are done, they are comfy, and they are warm!  They don't even look half as stupid as I thought they might, in fact I think they look pretty freakin cool if I do say so myself.  But more importantly, they are warm!

What I did was take one of those quilts I had in the pile to be quilted, and I did the quilting much closer together than I normally would and then cut a pair of pants pieces out of the quilt.   I did an overcast stitch all the way around the edges of both pieces before sewing them together so the seams won't ravel out.  I put rib knit cuffs on the bottom and elastic in the top and they are done.  And, as I may have mentioned previously, they are warm!  And here they are:

Aren't they cute?!  Well, I think so, and since I am the one wearing them, that is all that matters to me.  Sorry folks, that's as close as you are gonna get to a picture of me anytime soon.  And yes the pants probably make my ass look fat, but fortunately I don't care.  They were designed and created for their warmth, and since the back of the quilt is flannel, they fulfill that requirement very, very well!

I am thinking to make myself another pair of these, and then maybe some new slippers and a jacket at some point.  I need a new purse too, but I think I am getting ahead of myself.  It took me two years to get around to making these.  I have a whole freaking list of things I want to make, that could be useful and practical but I seldom take the time to do any of them, especially if it is something that I think of as being "for me".  Now I have no problem at all wasting hundreds of hours dyeing fabrics, or even cutting them up into little tiny pieces, but actually putting them to use in something that serves a useful purpose?  Now why would I want to do a silly ass thing like that?  I am being sarcastic here, please don't try to help me get over my aversion to doing practical things for myself, I am perfectly okay with it.  I do get them done when I get around to it, and as I am sure my husband will be more than happy to attest, I spend way more time on myself than I probably do on anything else, so I am good.  Truly.

I sure am happy with my comfy new pants though, and I do think I will make another pair from the other quilt in the pile that is like the one I used for these.  It is all ready to go so it shouldn't take too long, especially now that I know what the heck I am doing.  As a matter of fact, I think I will go get started on them now ... 
                

Progress and Regress

Hello there Internet People!  Mother is back to try this whole writing a Blog post thing again.  I spent a couple hours here doing that last night, but all I ended up with was paragraph after paragraph of me either bitching and moaning or saying shit that I probably shouldn't be saying in public, so it never got posted.  I am feeling much better at the moment, so I thought maybe I should try again.

I have mentioned (repeatedly) that I have been working for my husband for the past week or so (could be less, seems like way more).  I am officially 2/3s of the way through round one as of a couple hours ago.  I have no idea how many rounds there will be before I am done, but I think this is the biggest of them, so getting through it is a major accomplishment for me.  The work I have to do is mind numbingly tedious, boring, and repetitive, so I have to celebrate the milestones whenever possible or I would lose my mind completely.

I am having a hell of a time figuring out what the fuck I am going to write about today.  I have started this paragraph and deleted it 7 times in the last hour and still haven't gotten anywhere.  My ego is in a down swing on the whole art thing, so I don't want to talk about that at the moment, and I think I have lost touch with what the hell else there is in life that I can talk about.  I have been doing some baking, but most of it was from boxed mixes off the shelf and not too exciting. 

I have mentioned that this time of year just fucks with my head.  In years past I managed to block out all the negative crap in my head by obsessive-compulsively making presents for people who never appreciated them or me.  I am not doing that this year, so I am kinda lost.  I can't decide whether I want to finish some of the projects I have already started or start something entirely new and different and so I end up not doing anything at all because I can't decide what to do.  I am driving myself batty.  Good thing that is a short trip.  For now, I guess I will go make lunch for the boys.  At least I will be doing something, even if it is only for a few minutes ...         

                   

My "OCCD" - Obsessive Compulsive Creativity Disorder

Hello Internet People!  Mother is still alive and as well as can be expected given her particular life.  I have been keeping busy working for my husband and being extremely obsessive-compulsive with my art.  You know I joke about that all the time, my being obsessive-compulsive about things, but it occurs to me that you all have no clue how accurate a description it really is.  So I thought I would show you a small example ...

                      

This is part of what I have spent countless hours doing for the last several days.  Cutting thousands of teeny tiny shapes from my fusible backed hand dyed fabrics.  Why? You may ask.  Frankly, I have no fucking clue!  I had absolutely no plan in place for using them when I started cutting, I just needed to do it.  And the more time I spent doing it the more I needed to do it.  I even have two more like the larger container in that picture that have the same shapes in them, one in all greens, the other in flesh tones.  As well as another, bigger, container containing just slightly bigger pieces in the same shapes. I have literally cut tens of thousands of these teeny tiny shapes, just because I had a need to cut them.  This is what I mean when I talk about my "OCCD" - Obsessive Compulsive Creativity Disorder.

I don't get nearly this bad about anything else.  Just creative things.  Unfortunately, I am this way with pretty much ALL creative things, and I have been from the beginning.  I guess I am kinda the same way about learning things, but the two have always gone hand in hand for me anyway so that isn't really surprising.  I have always heard about other people who are OCD about cleaning, or stuff like that, yeah, I don't have that problem.  Sometimes I wish I did.  But I get over that fairly quickly.  

Now, before you all go off thinking I have lost my mind entirely (which I have, but that is a different story entirely), I have had some thoughts on what to do with all those teeny tiny pieces.  Granted, most of them came after I started cutting, but that really doesn't matter.  I even used a whole bunch of those pieces up already on this ...

"Family Values" - a work in progress

 It is not finished yet, of course.  There is much to be done on this piece before it is finished, like the quilting.  I am working on the wording for that, but I don't have it all figured out yet.  The quilting will all be words if you hadn't figured that out from my convoluted attempt to explain it, and the words will be an explanation of the quilt's meaning.  Does that make more sense?  I hope so.  Anyway, there will be more embellishments than that added as well, but, all in due time.  Wouldn't want to rush into anything now would I?  Nope, not me.  I never do shit like that ...