Happy New Year! Diva Challenge #298

Happy 2017! Please accept my best wishes for health and happiness in this new year, along with many thanks for all the joy you brought me last year.
It seems like months have gone by since my last post. I have been busy with so many different things. Over the past almost 4 weeks--gasp!--I had the joy of reuniting with family and friends for the holidays. There were three particularly special reunions during the week after Christmas: one with my best friend from middle and high school, one with my brother and sister and one with a former 6th grade student who is now 32! Words really can't describe the happiness and wonder I felt with each reunion.  New Year's Eve found me struggling to stay awake by tangling.

These first 13 days of 2017 I have been following in the book "The Kindness Boomerang: How to Save the World (and Yourself) Through 365 Daily Acts". I've been trying to integrate some of the themes into daily Zentangle meditations. (I may do a post on these later.) Oddly enough, the first one was "Senza Paura", without fear, which I saw reflected in our friend Michele's blog.

As you can see, I've been playing with water colors.  When we were hit with 1/2 inch of ice and 6 inches of snow last Saturday, I asked my dear Lar to do an art project with me. He kindly accepted, and we, using Michele's amazing tutorial, did several sheets of water color washes. Then, we cut one of them to 10 inches square, divided it into 9 squares and made a string before cutting the squares apart. So far, we have tangled 4 of the 9. I'll post the ensemble when we finish.

Delighted to be snowbound for 5 days, I bought the new 2017 Tangle Guide and started cataloguing ribbon tangles that work well for the "romanancy" technique. What a rabbit hole! While working on the ribbon collection, I saw that I needed a better way to access my tangles. (I had previously been keeping everything in a sketchbook.) Since space is at a premium, I decided to use Bristol strips cut to roughly 3 x 11 inches.  Pretty straightforward and cheap!

I've also numbered all the patterns in the Tangle Guide so I can use a Random Number Generator to choose tangles.

Yesterday, I was honored to give a Zentangle lesson at the local Memory Café, where folks diagnosed with Alzheimers, as well as their family members, meet up to socialize and relax. Here is their amazing work! Such fun!

Whew.

Lest I forget, today's Diva tile with "Orbs-La-Dee" and yet another attempt at "romanancy".

Will Jennifer ever learn perspective? Will she be forever prisoner to lines that refuse to be parallel? Stay tuned for next week's episode in the ongoing saga of Romanancy!

Thanks for hanging in there with this long post! I'd love to hear where the past 4 weeks have taken you in your tangling adventure!