I hadn't intended to draw today as I had too much else to do, but I just couldn't help myself.

My kind friend (and fellow Zentangle® enthusiast), Susie Ng from Thailand (check out her fabulous, imaginative artwork HERE), just sent me this photo below.  She took my single 3-Z tile from my February 22nd post, multiplied it, and manipulated it into this hexagonal mandala.  Thank you, Susie!  I'm assuming you used Photoshop, which I don't have.  Though I keep meaning to look into it.  What fun!

What a nice thing to do for a fellow tangler, Susie.  You gave me a big chuckle on an otherwise crazy day.  Now...I have to look into software that will allow me to do this.

It's been that kind of week--labyrinthine.  So many twists and turns.  We keep walking and we trust we will find our way in to the center and then out again on this challenging journey. 

I hope we are in the center now and will soon find our way out to resume our lives. 

I am still far from home, helping out my friend who is receiving daily treatments.  She is close to the end, however--only three more and she will be done and we will return to our respective homes.  A huge complicating factor has been the sudden illness of someone in her family; it certainly has increased the pressure on her to finish here and go home.  There is much uncertainty.

And yet, we know we just need to keep walking along on the path before us, and trust we will get where we need to be.  In fact, we are already where we need to be, and we just need to remember that.

It took me a few days to do this piece as it's so large.  I learned a lot in the doing and will try again for better results.

My friend also tangles and finds it therapeutic as she waits for appointments.  She is talented and here is one of her latest efforts, a Zendala done on a tile which she had pre-treated with a Fine-Tec paint gold wash.  Isn't this spectacular?  (I have her permission to publish this photo)

Those metallic Fine-Tec watercolors are so inspiring.

...we aren't having any where I am temporarily living in order to help out a friend.  It's winter here but the ground is bare, although in my actual town, 400 miles north, there's plenty of snow.

Nevertheless, the Zenuary2019 project on day 18 had a prompt to tangle something based on a snowflake shape.  Since I am way behind on this January challenge (I'll be working on it all thru February), I've just arrived at day 18.  I cut out the following shape on some previously-used paper:

...traced around it on a Strathmore tile, and here's the end result:

And here they are side by side.

"There is no better designer than Nature."
--Alexander McQueen

Basically no time to write today.  My friend is doing well but because of other circumstances (not my story to tell), we are still on the emotional rollercoaster. 

My heart is broken by some of what I see of the other patients at the treatment center, especially the sick children.  May they all heal, including their parents and caretakers.  May all be at peace; may all be well.

This is another Zenuary2019 tile, made for day 15.  The theme was "donut."  Somehow my donut ended up with a pearl in the center.  Fine with me, since I am not a fan of eating donuts.

"The pearl principle:  no inner irritation, no pearl."  Surya Das

Looks as though the start of 2019 will be choppy for me--I'll be doing some traveling and having visitors when I'm home.  Needing something simple and portable to work on, I spotted another Zentangle® challenge run by CZT Anoeska in Holland called "Zenuari" (there is a private Facebook Group with this information) and thought that might do it.  I won't be trying to complete every day, given how choppy my schedule is going to be, but I'l join in when I can to keep creative juices flowing.

Here is my first entry, for Day 2, with a "star" theme.  I'm playing around with the same tangle from the December 28th post.

 Sure enough, I had the thing laminated this afternoon (see yesterday's post for an explanation of "the thing") and then with the help of an x-acto knife and 3 minutes of work, cut a center hole and installed the works. 

Voila, a completed Zentangle® Spinner.

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm thinking about wheels/mandalas, etc., of which this is only one.

The big one--the Full Moon--was shining in my bedroom window so brightly last night that I thought she was going to come right through the glass and join me.  So I'll be calling this my Full Moon Spinner.

Now if we could all just learn from the quote below...

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
― Edgar Mitchell

This week's Solstice (yesterday) caused me to start thinking about wheels, as in the Wheel of the Year and how that wheel is turning once again.  I've had wheels on the brain.  For example, the Wheel in the tarot (see my previous post on the Wheel of Fortune card HERE), plus I just finished a Zentangle® project that had me creating a wheel, below.

The above wheel is going to grow up to be a "Spinner Board," once its spinner arm is inserted thru the hole in its center.  Before I do that, I'm thinking I will need to laminate and back the piece.  There are 55 different tangles on the piece, and I'm guessing it's about 9x9".  It was fun to do and took twelve days, tangling for about a half hour each day.  It's part of Zentangle's Project Pack 04 and all the relevant how-to videos are on YouTube.

In the process of doing this, my already messy desk grew completely out of control, so today I went on a massive cleaning binge.  It should be noted that, for me, a "massive cleaning binge" is equivalent to picking up one piece of paper from the floor.  I did not get the cleaning gene.  I was happily raised in Lower Slobbovia.

But today I swept my large desk clean and forced myself to sort through things and create a semblance of order.  It's quite shocking.  More work has to be done tomorrow but here is the progress so far.  (Wish me luck with maintenance...not a strength either)

Apparently the wheel turned into a Wheel of Progress for me.  At least for the next 24 hours.

Happy Solstice to all...

  So far, we're having an extraordinarily early winter.  Multiple snowstorms have already struck, and it's been much colder than normal.  We are nowhere near the Winter Solstice when the season officially begins, but it's definitely winter out there.

I spent 2 hours today getting snow tires put on at the very busy local dealership.  More snow due tonight.  Fortunately, it's accumulating more in the hill towns surrounding this valley, but it's often rain or slush here.  We are lurching rather haplessly from storm to storm, with just a few bits of sunshine in between.  Today was mostly cloudy with a couple of hours of filtered sun.  This tangle was done to honor the short days and the occasional lovely brief moments of sun, when they come.

Yesterday's post was all about the sun; ironically, today's is all about the moon.

Here we have an experiment that didn't quite work, but I like it anyway.  I cannot even put into words what I was trying to achieve--it's too hard to explain.  But I still like the ghostly, dusty fadedness of this violet-colored full moon.

Before dawn this morning I woke up and couldn't believe  how much light was in my room.  I turned my head on the pillow and was almost blinded by the nearly-full-moon beaming down directly into my eyes through the window as She sailed along in the northwest corner of the sky.  It felt as though she were tapping on my shoulder and calling to me to,  "Wake up!  WAKE UP!"

Full moon
Make this night
Love will heal the wound
The glowing light
Will make things right
It's alright
--Hird

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.”
--Willie Nelson

Another piece for the Grati-tangle2018 Project.  This is the start of Thanksgiving Week here in the USA, and it's good to be actively looking for things to be thankful for in these very troubling times.

As I worked on this one, I really focused line-by-line and enjoyed the meditative aspect of the drawing.  I was thinking about how fortunate I am to have a home, food, warm clothing, and good friends.  All things that so many people in this world do not have.  I was also thinking about how happy I am that my friend who has been dealing with a very tough health issue is on the mend...not that it will be speedy, but she is getting better.

Lastly, I was grateful for having found this Oriental rug at a local auction last Friday night and paying next to nothing for it.  Only one other person bid on it and I won.

A few days ago, I shared a post called "Inspired By Others," in which I showed some work done a la Ernst Haeckel at our recent zenAgain2018 conference.  We didn't stop there, however, and today's post shows two very different artists whom we also explored.  Talk about crazy fun--this was a highlight of the conference for me.

Indeed, Keith Haring, one of Molly Hollibaugh's favorite artists when she was a child.  After wondering what, if anything, we could do with tangles and his work, Molly experimented and came up with this instruction at zenAgain2018, and below you see the tile I did as a result.  I was SO surprised - and delighted - by this choice of artists!

My own version of a Keith Haring-style tile.  Was this ever fun to do!  Done on a black Zendala tile with White Gellyroll pen #10.  Permission to break all the rules here, and just have a good time.

And if that alone wasn't enough, have a gander at the mosaic below.  Bear in mind that this is only  a partial photo of the whole mosaic.
Prepare to drool.

But wait--that's not all we did.

The next tile couldn't be more different.  (As is true for the "Ernst Haeckel-style" tile we did which I presented a few days ago)

Yes indeed, Master Klimt himself.  I couldn't do him justice--none of us could, really, but we all gave it our best shot and my tile's below, along with a partial picture of the group mosaic.

This is truly only a very small portion of the class mosaic, enlarged so that you can see the detail and the contrasts.

"What inspires me to paint? ...revisiting some old greats like Sargent, Homer, Whistler or local masters... thinking hard about a new approach or idea; or seeing a new painting on a friend's lounge room wall."
(Amanda Hyatt)

We are expecting our first snow of the season, here in the Northeastern US.  Things are growing progressively quieter as people scurry to get home before the snow begins.

This is another Zendala tile for the Grati-tangles2018 Project.  I've nearly caught up now and am so enjoying myself.  I was focused today on gratitude for good friends and for lovely art materials.

This tile went somewhere I never expected.  I was in an experimental mode.

ERNST HAECKEL
was the inspiration for this:

At ZenAgain this week we experimented with tangling that was inspired by other people's work.  This sea creature above is inspired by the work of Ernst Haeckel, and was it ever fun to draw. 

Below is a mosaic of the class's work with this assignment.  We were each given some General's Chalk Pencils to use--we each received different colors and were required to work with whatever colors we got.  Once again, you can see that all of them were similar, and yet, each is distinctly different. 

This was only one small portion of a much larger table with these tiles displayed.

Maria Thomas, one of the founders of Zentangle®, has a remarkable poster with her own version of Haeckel's sea creature on a portion of it.  See her poster below.  I believe this is for sale but am not certain.  (UPDATE:  Yup, it's for sale at the Zentangle® website.)

And finally, below, is a photo of a book about Haeckel's beautiful work (the master himself).  There are many books available about him.

"All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients."
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Yes, this makes three blog posts in one day.  It's true.  Deal with it!  <g>

Ratoon is a new tangle from Molly Hollibaugh CZT (one of Maria Thomas's talented daughters) released earlier this week.  The title of the tangle actually comes from some research that Maria was doing to prepare for ZenAgain this week.  A "ratoon" is described thus:  "a new shoot or sprout springing from the base of a crop plant."  The theme of workshop was SEEDS--all the seeds from our art-ancestors that we use in creating art today, and all the seeds we are sowing as we do our own art and as we teach others.  You can see the seeds represented in the tangle above.

Just as those seeds have and will continue to sprout, so all art stands on the shoulders of all previous artists.  In making our art--even if it's bad art!--we honor them.  One of the many things I love about tangling is that I never know where something is going to go, how it will develop, and the highly calming effect of the process.  We all get the same instructions, and yet all our pieces, while obviously related, are so delightfully different.  I will put a partial mosaic of this tangle as an example of that below (partial because there were so many of us that I couldn't get the entire view).

Yesterday's tangle was titled Rain, and as if invoked, it has been pouring all day today, including thunder and lightning.  We've had a rainy spring, a heavily rainy summer, and now a very rainy autumn.  We have had more than enough rain.

So for today's tangling I decided to use a Bronze Stardust Gellyroll pen in an effort to invoke the sun.  It's still pouring, and heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow so I'm not hopeful.

This is still part of the "Gratitangles2018" challenge. 

Today I am grateful that my friend who just had surgery is beginning to feel better.  And that the heavy cold I have had for weeks now is beginning to lift.

Just for fun I ran the original photo above through my iPhone app and got this, which I like equally well:

There is really no time to write today so I am just posting this tile which was so relaxing to do.  That is, after all, the point of Zentangle®.  Ahhhhhhh...

Now the head cold is really starting to kick in.  After waking up at 2.15 in the morning and being unable to get back to sleep, I did this tiny tangle on a Bijou Zentangle® tile.  Bijou tiles are 2"x2" only.  It's my version of the tangle Copada (not the classic version), done on a white Bijou with an 05 black Micron, graphite, and General's Watercolor Pencils.  Part of Inktober2018, day 11.

Can't decide whether to leave this here or keep going.  This is my Inktober2018 Day 5 challenge response--Fleavy.  I did it on a used coffee filter, a technique I learned with CZT and fabulous artist Cheryl Cianci a few years back.  I thought I was going to fill this in with additional Inktober tangles, but I like this so much I'm not sure.  Hmmm.

PS, I need to iron it a bit to get the wrinkles out.

• Another example in the category known as:  "Something I Was Doing When I Should Have Been Doing Something Else."
  

My bad. 

In this era of fake news (do NOT get me started on which sources are real and which are fake...all I can say is, we each need to be responsible for fact checking and being honest with ourselves about our biases...I feel a rant coming on so I will stop there), I thought I'd post a partially-fake tangle or two.

Huh?  See below.  It began as a real tangle but then I manipulated the image on my iPhone with 2 different apps.  Hence, a "partially fake" tangle.

Then there is this version, using 3 different iPhone apps.

File this under "What I Do When I Should Actually Be Doing Other Things."

Ayup.  Did the mandala (from which this photo was created) three years ago today.  This particular photo was created by manipulating the original mandala in one of my iPhone apps.  [The app has changed over the last 3 years and now isn't anywhere near as much fun.  Phooey.]

I always did love this one.

Three long-distance friends are in town from today thru mid-week next week, so I'm not sure how much tangle time I will have.  Thus I'm just posting an oldie for today and we'll see what the next several days bring.

Last night around midnight we had a ferocious thunder-and-lightning storm with heavy rains.  So much for peaceful sleep...yawning...

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I bought three t-shirts, each with a different design I absolutely adored.   Each one was like a mandala to me.

[Ok, so it was actually only 2 1/2 hours' drive from here and only about 20 years ago.  But I do love these t-shirts.]

Slowly but surely they are all starting to wear out. I got the idea to use the designs for a series of 3 punchneedle embroidery pieces (see the other two designs below), and have just completed the last of the trio.  The designer, Rob McLellan, gave his t-shirt designs titles, and the title of this one is "Elksong."  Many thanks to the folks at University Silkscreen for giving me permission to interpret these designs in my needlework.  I'm really happy to finally be able to share what I've been working on all summer.

Below are the two previous works in my series, Midnight Pony and Redwing Blackbird.  Rob McClellan was an artist who lived in Ohio in the late 20th century. He died in a car accident around 2005.  A fascinating man, he was adopted by the Cheyenne Tribe and much of his art reflects that.

We've had some stellar weather for the past two days, now about to come to an end as the humidity moves back in tonight and for the rest of the week.   Summer is about to put in another appearance...and yet, I can also strongly feel that the wheel of the year is turning.  Some type of shift is underway, and it's dramatically affected me.

I'm thinking about Lammas, the old holiday celebrated around this time of year (in the Northern Hemisphere)  to salute the grain harvest.  Even though summer is still here, the beginning of the harvest means that a change has occurred and we are now moving towards autumn.  I could feel that shift this morning as an internal presence, and all day I've been restless. 

The countryside here is full of outrageously tall corn; the crop is up so high that, driving by, I'm already thinking about the increasingly common "corn mazes" that allow Hallow's Eve revelers to scare the daylights out of themselves in late September and October, once the harvest has passed.  Our roadside farm stands are bulging with corn, squash, and other bounty.  Days are growing irrevocably shorter.

Lammas is all about change.  For many of us--the lucky ones who have "enough" in our lives--it is a time of gratitude for the harvest.  Yet it brings an unsettling sensation as well. 

Change is the one constant in life.  Some of us handle it better than others.