That’s Some Desk!

It might not look like much.

But that’s my living room table-slash-sewing table-slash-second desk, a.k.a. Mission Control. I’ve got a presentation tomorrow (did a mini one today, too) and so many things due and last week I was in four states. I have decided the best way to keep things straight is to a) focus on one thing at a time and b) take pictures of everything and label them with numbers.

(Just kidding about the second thing except it’ll be fun to do it right now so let’s do it.)

Here’s what’s on my desk:

1. The “Heart Plus” cloth bucket my friend Theresa made for me when I went to Portland last year and saw her and the gang at the Portland Modern Quilt Guild and Fabric Depot. I use it every day, T. (My sewing machine is about two inches from the frame of this picture, by the way.)
2. My class readings for The Literary Animal class (orange notebook) and my “citizen scientist” fieldwork journal. We read Virginia Woolf’s “Flush” for this week’s discussion. Do you know that novel? It’s great! Woolf wrote it from the point of view of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel. What a woman!
3. My Tivoli radio. I have to bang on it to get it to work and that’s half the fun.
4. Pencil cup.
5. A printout of Winslow Homer’s “Croquet Scene,” 1866. I can’t tell you more at the moment, but just you wait. I’m gonna blow your mind later this week when I tell you about this picture! It’s part of an assignment. I’m freaking out!
6. I went to visit my friend Sophie’s School of the Art Institute (SAIC) studio today. While we were talking, she took an illustration of a girl reading books in a library off her wall and got out a spiral thingy and took out this thing that looked like a cross between a three-hole punch and a paper cutter and she made me a journal. While we were talking and eating generic M&Ms. She knows bookbinding and just like, made me a little spiral journal while I was complaining about needing just 2-3 more hours in the day. This is art school, I think.
7. To-do list. (Second one today.)
8. My latest poem: “The Field Mouse.” See No. 5 and stay tuned!!!
9. My day planner (yep, paper) and a handout that are the exact same color of banana yellow. I didn’t even plan it.
10. Log cabin blocks that I showed in class today. Yup: all-white. So many things to tell you, so much art to make, so little energy left in my fingers to type it…
11. High-contrast blocks I also showed in class today. Guess what? Everyone loves patchwork. Everyone melts when they see fabric in pretty shapes sewn together. Isn’t that what we do, quilting friends? We take soft fabric and we make pretty shapes and we sew them together. When you share patchwork in a class full of art people who are getting writing degrees, you inspire like 90 stories or poems or journal entries, etc., etc. I saw it happen. I was there. It was so awesome.

There is a No. 12.

It is me, asleep under the table. Goodnight!