HELP! Frustration abounds

Today, the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge was due at noon. Well, I didn't make it. But I'm really frustrated. It isn't as if I haven't been working on it. What you see at left is as far as I've gotten. Maybe you can help.

You see, this challenge was to write a haiku and do a quilt with it. I thought about this while I was at Palestine...in fact, I've been thinking about it ever since it came out. Haikus aren't my favorite thing to do because I think that it is really easy to make them forced, and that is it very difficult to write a good one.

I mentioned in my previous post about the house which had been moved next to and made part of a barn. Here's a corner of it.

One of the things which intregued me about this, other than the round window and the whole concept of what was once a house turning into a barn, was that the barn and the house were covered with grapevine.

The grapes had once been domesticated, as you can see they are white grapes, which I thought was rather unusual. The grapes which were grown on old farmsteads around my home in Michigan were Concord grapes, a wonderful purple skinned variety.

These are obviously white grapes. I was wondering if the choice of grapes was dependent upon the heritage of the farmer. In this area, the majority of the homesteads were German. My home in Michigan (both homes) were settled by people from Connecticut/Massachusetts and New York State (but probably from New England originally, just stopping before winding up in south central Michigan.

Isn't the round window great? The green color is corrugated fiberglass.

You can see where the plaster is coming through the lath, the keys (that's what the smushed out part is called) are mostly still there, even though the exterior siding is partially gone. The reddish color on the bottom is corrugated sheet metal siding.

The grapes have been there so long, the vines are huge and tearing the house apart.

So, I started on the Haiku (supposedly 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables).

Once tended, now wild.
Once Home now shelter, forlorn.
Nature claims her own.

I've worked a long time on this....and I still don't like it. In fact, I worked so long on the haiku, I didn't get started on the quilt.

I assembled the pieces thinking I would start tonight. I'm not inspired. Concept is neat, but when I tried to draw the leaves...well, they just looked weird. So that's when I scrounged around in my box of silk plant parts. Not quite the color I wanted, and the glitter...well, it doesn't quite go with what I was thinking.

Am I being too literal? I want to do something with this, especially with the house cum barn. I'm probably making this too hard. I don't want it to be something I'm not proud of, but I'm really struggling. Comments and suggestions, on both the quilt and the haiku would be greatly appreciated.

Of course, this week has been a struggle. I've been on a dead practically since August. Getting ready for the photo shoot for Meg, going to Montana, getting the Dayton Landmarks stuff together, getting the application for the MVAQN exhibition into the Dayton Visual Arts Center, having a garage sale because I have to clean out the area so that the furnace can be put in, having my friends visit, going to the doctors, going on retreat, preparing for a lecture on quilts and historical fabrics which I gave today, helping my daughter write essays for her college applications.


On top of all this, I found out that I have to start Chemo....again. Dealing with getting the information I need about that. Do I need a port put in? Why haven't I got a date to start, is the insurance hanging this up like it caused problems with my Faslodex shots?

The chemo will not cause me to be nauseous. It will cause me to lose my hair (again!) and is likely to cause fatigue.

All of this has caused me to wonder about what I'm doing. I'm mom to a high school senior, who (thank heavens) just ran her last cross country race. I sell books on Amazon. I participate in two quilt guilds and am a member of a third although lately I haven't been doing much with them. I am one of three people spearheading a sectioned quilt based on photographs of Dayton. I am the Exhibitions chair for the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network which means that I am trying to find venues for us to show and writing applications. I teach a workshop on art quilting for the Batty Binders, I try to participate in the MVAQN's art quilt study group which meets once a month and is going through Lyric Kinard's Art + Quilt (and so far, I'm behind in the exercises and what I have done I'm not happy with), plus, I garden and keep the household running. And yes, I participate in the Fast Friday Fabric challenge which does a small challenge once a month. I want to get my bedroom painted and the area for my Handi-quilter set up.

I am overwhelmed and feel like I'm not getting anything accomplished. I especially feel like I'm just spinning my wheels art quilt wise. I think I have to jettison some things...but what?