Sometimes tired old things just need to be dressed up a bit to shine. 

Cue the comments on whether that's true for all of us!  I'm talking about things.  Ha.

This morning I found a gray tile that I'd tossed some lavender-ish watercolor on long ago, in an early attempt to map-tangle.  The color had spread out over most of the tile, with absolutely no interesting shape, and was incredibly plain.  BO-ring. 

Out came more watercolors today and I tarted it up, used my heat gun to dry it, and went to town with some of the Inktober tangles.  Better.  Every tangle except one was brand new for me.  Some of them turned out more successfully than others, so I'll re-do the ones that really didn't have enough room to show themselves off.  Perhaps that'll be the task for tomorrow.

This is what happens when I run out of black Micron 01s and still want to tangle.  Spynes, which I tried for the first time yesterday, is a really fun tangle for experimentation--I couldn't resist this second try.

The Stone House Runner is nearly done; just the usual finishing steps left.  Here it is:

A meditation on the preponderance of spirals in the cosmos.

"In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance to knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade."
--Vera Rubin

I enjoyed every moment of this one.  Enough said.

How many ways can a drawing go wrong?

Just watch.

I haven't laughed this hard in a long time.  Oh gosh, I started off drawing the tangle Dewd, which I have never quite grasped.  (an understatement if there ever was one)

The first thing to go wrong was that I discovered that my beloved Micron 01 was dying.  I searched for a new one, which was when I found out I did not have another 01.  What to do?  I picked up an 05 instead.  Oh dear.

That's one of the things that gives this very funny tile a look of having been drawn by Edvard Munch (the painter who created The Scream).  But wait, there's more!

Dewd is the tangle around the edges of this Zendala.  I kind-of-almost had it at first, and then totally lost it as I moved in toward the center.  At several points I thought, "Oh for Pete's sake--this is rubbish, I can't go on."  But hey, it's Zentangle®.  We always keep going and see what happens.  One line at a time.

So instead I started to laugh and plowed on.  I added another tangle in the center.  Oh my, a nice one but it didn't help.  Edvard Munch lives on.

Well hey, in for a penny in for a pound, right?  Will it help if we tart this up with color?  (no)  Out came the Silver Shadow Gellyroll pens.  These are always tricky to use as you never quite know how they will look when dry.  I followed that up with a liberal application of General's Colored Pencils in two colors.  Thus proving the saying by Oscar Wilde, "Nothing succeeds like excess."

Because despite it all, I kinda like it.  And I laughed my way all the way through, which is always fun.

It felt great today to just sit and tangle awhile.  Quiet and relaxing.  I'm rusty but the annual 'Inktober" Challenge adapted for tanglers got me going and I couldn't be happier, even though we're already nine days into the month.  I plan to do what I can and thoroughly enjoy doing it.  It's good to be back.

 And here it is, my current punchneedle embroidery project.  You've seen the progress in the past few posts, from the beginnings to the middle and now it's about 2/3's done.

This is a relatively large project.  It will be 9"x20" when completed.

Slowly but surely I am getting there; punch by punch by punch.  There will be thousands of punches by the time I reach the end.

In meditation, we go breath by breath.  I often think I was well prepared for meditation by the textile pieces I did as a teenager, so many years ago.  Stitch by stitch, breath by breath.  Cultivating an ability to stay with each moment, with each stitch.  With each breath.