It's hot and humid outside, not my preferred weather.  Demotivating. 

However, I see the value of "warming up" in other contexts, like when doing any kind of art.  Warming up = doing anything mental and/or physical to get oneself going.  Even sitting down for only ten minutes when there is supposedly NO TIME.  Here's last night's warm-up below, a quick tangle done just before sleep, inspired by the Sunday night Tangle Time with Amy Kam.

This morning I noticed I didn't want to meditate.  Not. At. All.  So I applied the warm-up idea to meditation, telling myself that I only had to sit for ten minutes.  And reminding myself that I could look right at the resistance the whole time if I wanted to, and that everyone has resistance at times.  I did, and of course discovered that I easily meditated for my entire usual time (way longer than ten minutes) and enjoyed it.

Yep, warming up...I may not like it when the weather does it, but it's pretty darned handy for the arts and for meditation.

After warming up today, I did this:

I'm not sure it's finished yet.  Probably is.

This was my second try at drawing Tisoooh (see my first attempt HERE) and I could not believe how much easier it was.  So much easier!  I want to continue to explore. 

Thanks to my friend Susie Ng in Thailand, who actually tried the same video I described in my previous post about it and then went good-crazy into experimenting with Tisoooh on her own.  You can see her amazing results HERE (scroll down until you find them but prepare for a visual feast along the way).  Susie is a phenomenal artist, as you'll see!

It began like this.  I'm still "blobbing."  A great way to try out various watercolors and watercolor techniques.

These are Yatsumoto metallic watercolors.  Very subtle unless you really load your brush.

There was a teeny bit of Inktense Watercolor Pencil tangling going on in the upper left quadrant.

So it started out as this way...

This is all I'm capable of today.  The night before last I had only 2 hours of sleep, who knows why.  All day today I've been dealing with credit card fraud in a major way.  It's taken hours to straighten things out.  And I made a major blooper with some friends that also took quite a while to straighten out (assuming I even did get it straightened out). 

Isn't this just how life is--some days great, some days awful.  (I could re-write that sentence substituting "hours" or "minutes" for the word "days" and it would be equally true.) 

There is nothing else to be done but to respond to each moment in the moment.  And what a challenge it can be to respond skillfully.

So all I can do is work on a few small blobs.  In fact, I am a blob myself today.  Neither happy or unhappy, but still just a blob.  Sometimes ya gotta go with the flow--even when the flow is temporarily blocked and becomes blob-like.

Here was how I started out, after watching a really fun video on IG TV by Yvonne West, CZT < @ywestart > which I thoroughly recommend.

My blobs before I tangled them.  The video was fun to watch and if ever you don't feel energetic enough to tackle a full tangle, this is a terrific exercise for experimenting with watercolor in a low risk way.

A kind neighbor brought these marigolds in a tiny bottle.  She collects old bottles and also grows flowers.  A wonderful combination.

I could actually have given this post a much longer title.  Something like:  "Kind Neighbors, Marigolds, and Other Favorite Things."  Too long.

Finally, a quick late-night tangle I did last night after watching Amy Kam's weekly Tangle Time.  The tile had been given a watercolor wash years ago.  I added the tangles (Gneiss, Black Pearl, Crescent Moon, Shattuck), along with colored and chalk pencils and graphite.  I threw in some white gellyroll.  And I still couldn't sleep--however I didn't wake up this morning until almost nine.  Oooh, a lovely sleep after all.  Once it actually came.

No idea how this happened.  A friend and I were fooling around daubing several types of metallic paint on a variety of Zentangle® tiles a few months back.   I've no idea what specific paint we were trying out here or even what I did.

The tile sat around with the paint scattered on it for weeks, and then I picked it up today and inserted a few scribbles.  It was fun, although I'm not sure I made it better and may have made it worse.  Just experimenting!

Just this.

A quote from one of my most beloved poets.

Early Morning, My Birthday
by Mary Oliver
                                                                       4.
The snails on the pink sleds of their bodies are moving among the morning glories.
The spider is asleep among the red thumbs of the raspberries.
What shall I do, what shall I do?
The rain is slow.
The little birds are alive in it.
Even the beetles.
The green leaves lap it up.
What shall I do, what shall I do?
The wasp sits on the porch of her paper castle.
The blue heron floats out of the clouds.
The fish leap, all rainbow and mouth, from the dark water.
This morning the water lilies are no less lovely, I think, than the lilies of Monet.
And I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead children out of the fields into the text
of civility to teach them that they are (they are not) better than the grass.

Waking up early this morning I could hear rain pounding down.  It's  a lovely soothing sound under normal circumstances, but clearly something is very out of whack when half the continent is in a drought of emergency proportions and the other half is experiencing unending rain.  If we could only share and balance...but we have interfered too much already.

 I like this tile very much and am enjoying having made it.  It's my interpretation of what Amy Kam was suggesting in her wonderful meditative Sunday night "Tangle Time," now on Eventbrite every week; and yet, the cloudiness and darkness reminded me of our recent storms and weather issues.

There is a balance between taking "right action," based on a true understanding and wisdom, to correct an issue such as climate change, and rushing in to "fix things" with no clear understanding of what we are doing.  Or acting out of some form of individualistic greed.

It is the same in meditation.  First, see the thing as it is.  Take time to be curious.  To understand, to experience.  Only then will wisdom come, and be accompanied by right action.

I needed this reminder.

This was my own version of another fun composition from Amy Kam of The Peaceful Pen.  The big central diagonal attention-grabbing tangle was new to me.  A sparkly watercolor pre-coat on the tile made it challenging to draw.

And here's a quote that applies equally to tangling and to meditation.
              ---------------------------------------
Learn to poke around. Take your time. Go slow. Get down on your hands and knees and dig around. Sit in one place for an hour at a time and let the world come to you.

(John Bates  - A Northwoods Companion, Spring/Summer issue, 1997.

Today more than a hundred CZTs from around the globe gathered online with CZTs in Singapore to do an hour-long meditative tile on behalf of those who have suffered from Covid-19. 

These were the same CZTs who last year donated $10K US and this year donated $12K US to Covid relief efforts as a result of their two very successful and well-run schools for tanglers.

What I loved about doing it, though, was that 3 or 4 different CZTs from the other side of the globe led us all through an hour-long meditation in which, as we drew, we focused our compassionate attention on anyone who has suffered from Covid.  They did a superb job leading the meditation.  I so admire the structure they've created to support humanitarian efforts.  Thanks!

And now for the tiny treasure.  Yesterday I went to my local bead-and-jewelry-repair shop to get my watch battery replaced.  While waiting, I spotted this wooden box, which is no more than about 1 1/2" square.  With what appears to be a tangled Turtle on top.

In fact the box is so small I had to take a picture and enlarge the photo in order to see the fine detail on the turtle, which just blew me away.  The top of the box slides off so smoothly it's just a marvel of craftsmanship.  It's so small that I cannot imagine what to put inside. 

This continent was originally called Turtle Island by the First Nations People, and I still call it that.  I am very fond of turtles and simply couldn't resist this tiny masterpiece.

And this leads us right back to the meditative nature of the turtle:

Here she is, the icon. 
The original. 
The exquisite.





But since nothing is sacred these days...

She apparently was photographed attending a party shortly after posing for Leonardo.

This is her "riotous party smile."

Uh-oh.  I know this is a sacrilege, right? 

But what fun to try.

Romi Marks had a wonderful workshop called "Zenovating the Mona Lisa," and since I'm in full-on learning-and-practice mode I wanted to take it.  My motivation actually was learning to tangle on photographs, especially on photographs with a lot of dark areas in them.  I want to try this out on pictures that I've taken, and I knew there were tips I needed to learn first.  Romi is a marvellous teacher and I learned a lot doing this.  Next I want to try some of my own photos to see what I can do.

So many art opportunities, so little time.

Is there such a thing as perfection?  Does it even matter?  The closest thing I see to perfection is in Nature.  I took this picture on the 15th of June, standing in my street looking west around 9.20 pm.  That perfect crescent moon, the stunning clouds, the clear air, the silhouettes of the trees.  That's about as good as it gets for me.

My camera isn't perfect (though I love it!) nor are my photographic skills, so the crescent is "glistening" and a bit fuzzy rather than sharp.  But as with all imperfections, I love it anyway.

I will never be a perfect meditator; I don't believe there is such a thing, nor is it necessary.  But as with the moon above, I love it anyway.

As Ryokan says:
The thief left it behind:
the moon
at my window.

This was my interpretation of a well-done class by Vandana Krishna, CZT in Bengaluru, India, as a part of the Artifex series I mentioned in the last post.  While I'm not sure my version actually looks like a magnifying glass, I really enjoyed the process. 

On a night when--for no obvious reason--I simply could not get to sleep, working on this tangle was relaxing, fun, and absorbing.  I have occasional bouts of sleeplessness, and am so glad to have drawing to occupy me when it strikes.

Here's how it looked when I finished the linework, and then on the right is how it looks after adding some color and shading.  There's currently a big boo-boo in the center of the tangle (I'll probably fix it at some point), which I left in place for now.  You can see it in the large version--a misplaced black line.

 Last night I tuned into Tangle Time with Amy Kan CZT and was delighted to see that she was using the tangle "Gotta Go" in her Sunday night practice.  I love this tangle and can't imagine why I don't use it more often.

Since I knew I'd done it before, I looked back through my work and discovered I'd last used it as a tangle in 2015 (see below).  I haven't done it since, especially as I don't tend to do grid-based tangles.

This is one reason I enjoy learning from other CZTs--if I'm practicing with someone who likes grid-based tangles,  I'm forced to do one too, and I need that prod.  And it's fun!  Here was the 2015 version I did in an old "Tangle-a-Day" calendar, with the tangle creator's name, Lianne Woods:

Out of practice means out of mind.
(Kathy Ostman-Magnusen)

This applies to meditation, as well.  Except with meditation, if I neglect practice, I am IN the mind 100% of the time, rather than being mindful. 

I love the life lessons I constantly learn from Zentangle®.  This was another big one.  I set out to draw one thing, ended up getting hopelessly lost, and by the time I finished the preliminary linework last night and forced myself to stop and go to bed, I was looking at a hot mess.  I didn't think it could be salvaged.

But this morning I just had to keep going to see what would happen, and ended up with this--which I quite like.  [Although it does bear a resemblance to "St Patrick's Day on Steroids," don't you think?  But that's ok, I like it anyway.]

                                                                     ********************
Here are the details for you tanglers out there (no need to read this part if you don't tangle--it could be boring for you):  I fell in love with an Emiko Kaneko CZT video (HERE)* and thought I'd give it a try.  But I misunderstood what it was:  She clearly labeled the video "A Tangleation of Tissooh," but all I saw was "Tissoooh," which is a high-focus tangle by Tomas Padros CZT that I've always wanted to attempt.

Emiko made it look so easy that I was sure I could do it and learn. 

Well.  I did indeed learn, but not as she intended! 

Mine has some resemblance to hers, but I ended up with a lot of weird space in the background, and things are not in the same places as on her tile.  So did I learn a lot?  You bet.  But now I need to go back and find a simple stepout for ONLY Tissooh and have a go at that one tangle--this tile combines Tissooh with something like Bales, Tripoli, and Orbs.  However, I do love my outcome.

For years I've heard that it's lways good to learn by copying the masters, and Eri is certainly a master of this art.

For me, the biggest learning is that no matter how bad something looks, it's highly likely that it's worth it to try and save the thing.  Or as the I Ching would say: "Perseverance furthers."

*Thank you to Susie Ngamsuwan for catching the fact that I'd attributed this tile and video to the wrong CZT.  Wow, much appreciated.

                                                                    *******************
Note:  I've been doing a LOT of copying lately, along with watching videos and going along with them.  I always credit people as I'm copying.  I'm on a mission to learn from a wide variety of tanglers whose skills I admire, and if that means I am copying for awhile, that's ok.  It's a powerful way to practice.

Here are three quotes about copying as an effective tool in learning art:

It would have been the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's attempts to copy the Sistine Chapel. (Malcolm Cowley)

But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be;
Within that circle none durst walk but he. (John Dryden)

If my students seem to copy me when they are learning, that is good. It shows they are listening and trying to do what I tell them. They will develop their own style soon enough. (William Draper)

                                                                **********************

Finally, I took these two photos only one minute apart.  The first one, on the left, was taking on a white background in indirect daylight.  The second one--using the same camera with no setting changed--was taken a minute later on the blue background and in direct sunlight.  WOW--look at the difference!  It might as well be two different pieces, but it isn't.  Isn't that incredible!  It never fails to amaze me how light and a different color in the background can make the same thing look totally different.

PS:  The one on the left is the actual coloring of the tile.

Looking out the window this morning, I noticed the back yard appeared to be covered in light snow, but of course it was merely cottonwood puffs adhering to the grass. 

Everywhere.

It's that time of year again, when we have a blizzard of them floating gracefully down to earth.  As I look outside just now, I see them coming down at the rate of a snow-squall, despite the late spring warmth and the heavily leafed-out trees. 

From what I recall, this goes on for weeks.  Two weeks?  Three?  This area was (and still is) a major source of poplar wood.  The leaves of the poplar (another name for the Cottonwood) are somewhat heart-shaped and may have inspired the following tangle.  Or not.

This was inspired by a class from this spring's "Artifex Eruditio," (Latin for "Art Learner").  Actually the class sample looked absolutely nothing like this--I went entirely off-road as usual, so mine doesn't look like anything that was taught in the class.  I did some of the line work yesterday, more this morning, and then added color this afternoon. 

I am not usually fond of using hearts in my pieces, so I'm blaming this on the fact that it's Cottonwood Season.

I am a very fortunate person.  Very.  Yesterday, a weekend day, I had to call for help twice:  My air conditioning broke in this very hot weather (mice in the compressor chewed thru the wires and blew a fuse) and later I had to call a plumber because of a leak in my kitchen faucet spewing water everywhere.  Why is that lucky?  Because when I called, both of them came within 60-90 minutes even though it was a weekend, both were wonderful and both problems got resolved completely.

I'm also very lucky because I have water.  And because I even have air conditioning.  But especially because I have water, when so many in the world do not have safe drinking water for miles, let alone in their homes.  I know how lucky I am.

Below are two pieces:  the first is my attempt to draw a tangle called Drawings (pronounced "Draw-Wings").  I've never been all that good at this tangle but I love the way others do it.  Yesterday I was determined to improve so I drew it on a post-it note and gave myself permission to mess up bigtime if that's what happened.  So of course it came out pretty well.

I was really interested to see how well it came out when I deliberately reminded myself that the outcome did not matter.  Just the practice.

After doing the post-it, I looked over at a tile I'd been stuck on for several days.  I mean, I was REALLY stuck.  I was planning to discard it.  It was not symmetrical.  The center sphere wasn't really a sphere.  I had no idea what to do next and most of it was blank.  I'd done the two tangles Snelly (as the "string" or container) and inserted the tangle Aleuba--this is a tile for Hanny Nura's Full Moon Mosaic on FB where each month she suggests a string and one or two tangles, always involving the moon somehow, and then everyone does what they like with them.  Including adding other tangles.  So I'd created the string and inserted the second tangle she suggested but the tile looked awful.

What the hell, I thought, I'll throw in some Drawings tangles in those big empty spaces.  Just for practice--this can't get any worse.   And then I'll add a bit of color.  What came out was this, which I quite like even though it's still asymmetrical.

Well of course the big lessons are:  Unless it's a life or death issue (just about never), give myself permission to screw up and see what happens.  And the typical, constant lesson from Zentangle® is:  don't give up on something.  Keep working.  If it fails, so what?  It's just a fifty-cent tile.  It's just practice.  I feel like I got lucky again.

Seems to me that all of life is just practice.  Right?

Where the heck did that come from?  Sometimes one cannot control what falls out of the pen.  This is the result of going to Amy Kam CZT's free, ongoing Sunday evening gatherings called Tangle Time, which I've mentioned in my previous post and several others.  Somehow I can never stick to the script and this oddity is the result of last Sunday's work.

I'm trying to get another rug underway and running into some design issues, so that explains the recent lack of tangling.  I'm missing it, have lots of things to explore and hope to get back on track this coming week.

More Sunday night Tangle Time with Amy Kam (see previous Sunday posts) of The Peaceful Pen.  This was great fun.  Below are the original black and white tile, then the shaded version, then the third one is actually a print-out on my computer (which is why the entire tile looks darker) and with added color. 

This was such a fun experiment!  I ended up liking all three--the plain unvarnished first one, the shaded version, and then to my surprise I liked the color as well.

                   Art, like life, should be free, since they are both experimental.
                                                          --George Santayana

Yes, spring definitely continues.  I can tell by my constantly running nose.

It's totally worth a runny nose to have such a gorgeous spring.

Today I did this in celebration.

Before I added and activated the watercolor pencils--which I am quite enjoying--the linework looked more or less like what is below.  I must have prepped that Zendala with watercolor years ago because it's just barely visible there.

"Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment."
--Ellis Peters

I did this during a class with Debbie L. Huntington, CZT.  I was impressed by the wildly different results achieved by the students--each Zendala was completely unique.  It was my first try at watercolor pencils; it won't be my last.

A tile done last night just before sleep.  In the silence of the house.  Inspired by the Sunday night free "Tangle Time" led by Amy Kam CZT of The Peaceful Pen.

                                     Silence is better than unmeaning words.
                                                                 --Pythagoras

I'm in a liminal place:  In between rug hooking projects, in between books I'm reading, in between tangling projects, and just "in between" on a lotta things.  The mind doesn't like being so in between, but that's just how it is right now.

Here's a map-tangled tile I prepped a while back and finally got around to tangling last night.  I'm not sure I enhanced it.  I kind of liked the prepped version before I added anything.  But I'll see if it grows on me:

The most closely-watched trial in this country in a long time ended today, with three guilty verdicts.  Perhaps this signals the beginning of some kind of reckoning for racial injustice in this country.  There is so much work ahead.  I put my head down and sobbed when I heard the convictions--relief, and sadness.  All mixed in.
                                                                             ***
Allow me to change the subject completely, as I do not want to get into the habit of posting political thoughts--that's not the focus of this blog.  So there was another ending today:  I finished this rug, which I've been struggling with for quite a while.  I had one color scheme in mind, and it didn't work out. 

Not. At. All.  Which meant I had to rip out a large proportion of the rug, think about what else might work, and then re-hook a large proportion of it.  I did, and just finished binding it today.  Next I gave it a good steaming and took a picture.  Tonight I'll sew on the label.  Hurrah!

The pattern is by Pearl McGown; I believe it's a very early design of hers, done while she was still in her "geometric phase" and before she started designing the florals for which she's better known.

I did the color planning--much trickier than it sounds, as I mentioned above--and of course I did the hooking using largely #8 strips (with a few 6s and maybe even some 5s) from my stash.  I bought a few scraps, but nearly all the wool (some of which I dyed) was from my stash so this rug didn't require more than perhaps a total of one yard of new wools.  If that.

There was a LONG period as I worked on this where I was aiming only to "get it done," thinking it was so ugly that I'd never want to see it again.  But now that I've changed the colors and done a lot of re-hooking, I like it.

My "Duncan" was inspired by one I saw in 2009 at a rug show of the late Lida Skilton Ives' work.  The show was held at UConn in Storrs CT and the "Duncan" Mrs. Ives did stopped me dead in my tracks--I fell in love on the spot and knew I would hook it one day.  Gee, it only took me twelve years to start my own version.  Mine doesn't resemble hers one bit, but she completely inspired me.  Thanks also to my friend Kathleen H who, when she saw the photo of the Ives rug, told me it was a McGown pattern--I would never have guessed.  And Kathleen had already hooked her own version before we ever met, and since then has hooked a second one.  Phew.

The beginning?  Time to begin cleaning up the mess the production of this rug generated.  And to begin a new rug.  I have just the one, ready to put on the frame.

I've now become a monomaniac about finishing my rug, and have been spending all my spare time on the binding.  After that I just have to steam it and sew on a label.  I am trying to focus on just this--getting this done.

Nevertheless I did drop on on The Peaceful Pen's Sunday night free tangling session and produced this.  All three tangles were new to me--what fun to try out new patterns!

My country is in trouble on so many levels at this moment.  I am aware every day of my sorrow and concern.  I am sitting with both, and experiencing these feelings.  Under no circumstances will I turn my back on them, or on what is going on here right now.

At the same time, I took a walk today and was greeted by the utter and complete beauty of a spring day. 
I hold both in my heart, the sorrow and the beauty.

I have also reached the point where I am binding the rug.  Who knows if this is going to work or not?  I'm trying a crocheted binding, which I have not done on this size rug before.  I have some doubts about it but here it is so far.