Zentangle is...

The Zentangle® Method, created by Maria Thomas and Rick Roberts, is an easy to learn, fun and relaxing way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns.

Sunday, September 30, 2018

Diva's Challenge #369: Absorbed in orbs

Thankful, so thankful, for the Diva's challenge this week to use orbs. This one gave me some peace and perspective in an incredibly wrenching week for our country, when women seemed to be eternally doomed to second-class citizenship. 'Nuf said. Here's my journal.









Yesterday was a very peaceful day. (No news!) The autumn seems to want to settle in, so temperatures are a little cooler and the air is a bit dryer. For the first time in weeks, I could leave windows open and enjoy the fresh air. (If you've ever had a hurricane come your way, you know what I mean. The humidity is stifling.) Pete had his first sniff of the (local) great outdoors, albeit from his perch near the window sill in a sunny spot!


"Une maison sans chat est comme un aquarium sans poisson."--Jean-Louis Hue
("A house without a cat is like an aquarium without a fish.")

I wanted to draw something different, and found it in Eni Oken's "Blue Sun". Although I didn't quite have the right colors, I really enjoyed doing this.


Thank you for your visit. (I enjoyed visiting your blogs last week, but was having no luck getting my comments to show up on blogspot.) Hope your week is pleasant and peaceful!







Sunday, September 23, 2018

Diva's Weekly Challenge #368: Just Straight Lines, and a new friend

This week I've been in post-Florence mode. My dear friend Anne-Yvonne has called me from France every day for over a week to make sure we're okay. (This is why she's my bestie.) My French has improved a bit, especially in terms of hurricane vocabulary, e.g. "storm surge", "crest", "flood stage", etc. We've spent hours together every day. In between calls, I cleaned up my garden, used the emergency stock of water, helped to load some trucks filled with relief supplies for eastern North Carolina, celebrated my 59th birthday and got a cat. His name is Pete and we are in love. I tried to take his picture and this is what I have to show for it. Not very flattering for either of us! No worries, you'll surely see more of him in the weeks to come!


I have a lot to be grateful for, and have used the Diva's "straight line challenge" in my gratitude journal this week.




I also made a new journal, this one in honor of Pete.


Although I don't usually think of myself as a straight-line kind of tangler, I did enjoy this a lot. The new journal cover, which has a used tea-bag, was especially relaxing to fill in with the aura lines.
How about you? Were your straight lines relaxing? Did you learn something new about your tangling?

Thanks for visiting! Have a wonderful week!





Sunday, September 16, 2018

Diva's Weekly Challenge #367 and Florence, the unwanted houseguest

The lights here have been flickering this morning, so I want to quickly post this.

Here in North Carolina we've had a frightful week with Hurricane Florence, who doesn't know when she's worn out her welcome, if she ever had one. Though she is now a tropical storm, she still lingers over our state. Lar and I live in Chapel Hill, which has been spared most of the destruction from her rain and winds. Our ground is completely saturated, which makes us a little nervous about all the surrounding trees, but we are grateful for being safe and dry, for having electricity and water. I am also grateful for the daily calls from friends in France who are checking to make sure we're okay. My gratitude journal has been a constant companion this week, on my lap as I sit in front of the news updates on TV.

The Diva's focus on N'Zeppl was a joy.




Starting Wednesday, my drawing had a definite spin going on. Thank you, Florence.



By Friday, we were starting to experience the hurricane's bands of wind and rain, and consequently, to see more debris from the trees.


Last night's drawing focused on the easy "Mooka" that Maria posted on the Mosaic app this week.


If you can send some loving thoughts to those touched by Florence's devastation, it would be greatly appreciated. At this point, 11 people have died, including a young mother and her infant. Sadly, the long awaited departure of the storm only means more danger, as evacuees try to regain their homes and fatigued rescuers deal with massive flooding of historic proportions. I also think about all the animals who were abandoned as their owners left in haste.

Thankful for you all, for the hundreds of folks who have come from across the country to help, for the outpouring of concern and well-wishes, I want to pass on one comment from a respected meteorologist here in our area. "Hurricanes exist in order to re-distribute an excess of heat that has accumulated over the ocean. When there is too much heat for the planet, a hurricane forms to pick it up and move it to an area with less heat." We must learn to respect our relationship with the planet, to understand that the planet is an entity with an operating system that supersedes our imagined needs for fossil fuel produced energy. I'm hoping that we can move to put more resources in environmental protection and eventually lessen our need for emergency management, and that the three or four hurricanes still off the coast will weaken and disperse.



Sunday, September 9, 2018

She's back!!!!

Hurray for Laura Harms, our Diva CZT who has graciously returned to post another weekly challenge after a well-deserved break! I know we were all so excited to see her 365th challenge this week.  I probably would have missed it had I not seen Annemarie's and Michele's posts in my email box! Thank you, ladies!

The challenge was to return to our beginnings and do a basic tile, with corner dots, border, string and black ink on white paper. This was so relaxing. No need to think or plan.






Yesterday I spent a few hours in my art journal on the "strength" prompt.  Starting with a used tea bag, I added the collage and then some tangles. Since I'm reading Reckless Daughter, David Yaffe's biography of Joni Mitchell, I thought I'd listen to her music while completing the page. So relaxing.



I don't usually listen to music when tangling. (If I watch the evening news, I always tangle, to keep me calm!!) I may just do this more often.
What about you? Do you listen to anything while you tangle? Does it depend on your mood?

Thanks for visiting! Have a "back to basics" week!



Tuesday, September 4, 2018

Long time no see?

The past two weeks have made tangling somewhat of a challenge, but I have managed to find a few photos to share.
Inspired by Adele's string and Ria's 3 tangles, I thought I would tackle the IAST #256. Talk about a challenge! I find drawing small hexagons really difficult, and eventually ordered a template to get me started! I pulled out all the training wheels I had available, and practiced Hexa for about a week before I started to be comfortable. (Part of getting comfortable was to start by drawing the two parallel lines, then adding the ends, and finally the < and > to make hexagons! That seems to work fine for my hand / eye / brain.) Mazorito is such a lovely tangle, and I love the little fox faces that I see. (Do you see them, too?) I had a hard time with spacing the dots and orbs, so I just drew the curvy Vs and left room for the orbs. That worked fine. My Horti just looked like Tagh, so that needed some work, too. This seemed like a lot for one tile, so I turned to my art journal. (Since my inner auras on Hexa were all wobbly, I added some rounding.) This took several days to work through, but I think I'm happy with it now. My favorite, most Zen moments were putting in the weighted lines on Printemps with my pencil. Aahhhhhh.


Even after completing the challenge, I still had some more Hexa, Mazorito and Horti in my pen and on my brain! These are entries from my gratitude journal.





Thank you, Ria for a great workout with these beauties! I'm sure I'll use them again and again.

I still have lots of leftover bedsheet, so I made another serviette this week, after seeing one of Maria's on the Mosaic app. This was my first time using a Micron 01 on the cotton, and I loved it. No more IdentaPens for me! Occasionally the Micron tip gets caught in the weave, but it's really not a problem.


Now that the sunshine, and summer heat and humidity, have found there way back to North Carolina, the garden is busting out all over! I spent several hours weeding and pruning last week. I have a few chrysanthemums that I bought on sale last year that have grown to about a meter high and wide. I've never seen any this big! I also transplanted some mums last spring from a shadier area into the sunnier part of the garden. I'm not sure, but I think they're Sheffield mums. They seem to grow several inches every day or two! I hope they will remember to bloom, too!


The mums and chrysanthemums are in the front.
Who needs fertilizer?

Fauna-wise, Lar and I went to a wonderful presentation at our local bird food store and saw an African raven, a screech owl, a barred owl, a skunk, a groundhog, a snow owl and a kestrel that had been rescued. We had a great time seeing them all! I held the raven, but because the others are protected in North Carolina, we weren't allowed to touch.


When Snerd the Groundhog has bananas, he gets a little messy.


What a beauty.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a magnificent week!