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!