This one surprised me.  I am traveling deeper into several areas in my life at the moment:  meditation, friendship, beginnings and endings, and even the chaos and fear in the United States.  Which means I'm working more deeply and consciously to cultivate equanimity.  I did this drawing over two days, last night and this morning, and it reflects my inner state.

I heard a quote this afternoon that really sums up what this deepening is revealing to me:

"One kind word can warm three winter months."
(Chinese saying)

Actually that's only the first part of the quote.  Here is the rest:

Indeed.

Many thanks to my dharma brother Ed Niembro, for his wisdom and for sharing this quote. 

It has never been more true.

I was able to spend more time practicing yesterday and working out the rust and kinks from not having tangled much in the past months.

And here on the right is my pre-practice Palrevo "Mini-Me" with instructions and information noted on it:

Palrevo is definitely a high focus tangle, but very rewarding.  I completely enjoyed myself.  I warmed up by doing the tangles I posted yesterday.  It is totally wonderful to be tangling again, now that I have a bit more time.

Every day I make time for meditation practice.  I realize I need to make time every day to draw.  It's not called "practice" for nothing.  It makes all the difference in meditation, and in everything else.

Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice reduces the imperfection.
--Toba Beta

I hope to fill up this page further, while still leaving enough white space.  Here are tangles from the first 11 days of Inktober 2020, using only a black Micron 01 and graphite.  I will likely need a second page to complete the 31 days without making things look horribly overcrowded.  This page is already far too busy but I don't care--the experience is such fun.

Most of these tangles are new to me, so this is really more in order of a "scratch sheet," for practice, rather than anything finished.  Inktober is a terrific way to get back in the game.  I've got a long way to go but I have to say that this kind of practice is a big help--and anyway, my primary motivation is always the relaxation that comes along with tangling, rather than the results.

Finally my schedule is starting to clear, so get ready for some "bad tangling."  I'm amazingly out of practice but happy to be starting up again, and here are the so-so results. 

Why am I posting these?  Because they are true.  This is where I am now.

Just as in daily meditation, I am essentially beginning again.  We all do this hundreds of times every day, with many issues, without realizing it.  A meditation practice is cultivated over time, time each day.  And with Zentangle®, just like with meditation, lack of practice will show. 

But in essence, WHO CARES?  There are no meditation police, and there are no Zentangle police either.

Julia Child's motto (The French Chef on PBS for so many years) applies here:  "Who's going to know?" she chortles in her fabulous high-pitched voice, as she picks up the raw chicken she just dropped on the floor as she's being filmed and goes on preparing to cook it.  As she pointed out, the oven would take care of any germs.  I have always loved this moment of her show.  She was always beginning again, with humor and enthusiasm.**  Someone undoubtedly ate that cooked chicken, and no one got sick or died.

So FINALLY--yay!!!!--I am getting to begin again after months of not being able to tangle.  Here is what that looks like.

It's "Inktober" again, so tanglers are embarking on a daily draw.  This is an experiment with the tangle Flux, drawn on a tan tile.  No pen used, only General's Chalk Pencils in olive green, white, and a scoche of blue.

I was curious about what would happen without the hard line from a pen, using a lot of blending.  This is the result.  I nicknamed this one, "It's only a dream," and went to sleep shortly after finishing it.  Sure enough, I had vivid dreams all night long, and they were just as vague and ethereal as my tangling before bed.

Here's the Inktober link for tanglers (meaning, this is specific to tangling).  Inktober has a number of genres--sketching, writing, etc.  There is a prompt for every day during the month of October every year.  I'm following the one for tanglers, but you may want to google some of the other genres if it interests you.

** According to Snopes, that episode was slightly-but-not-very different from what I remember:
"She was cutting the poultry up (which, as I recall, was a chicken), and it slid off the table onto the floor. She picked it up and said either, 'We’ll pretend that didn’t happen,' or 'Just pretend you didn’t see that.”' She continued cutting the chicken up."

To continue:
Sure enough, the rust in my hand shows up even more here. 

Once I sat down this morning I couldn't stop tangling.  Although it's only the 2nd day of October, I have tangles from the prompts for Days 1-5 on this page so far.  If I keep on, the page could turn into a hot mess, but hey.  I'll keep on anyway. 

The ONLY tangle here that I knew before this morning was Flux (upper border).  Every other tangle was completely new for me. 

Oops, I take that back--I know and love Pepper (day 5).  But Anthem (day 3), Jackstripes (day 2) and Unbirthday (day 4) are all tangles I've never heard of before.  These are all first-attempts.

You can also see some pencil-drawn string lines on the page; we'll see if I do anything with those.

As my idol Julia would say, "Just pretend you didn't see that."

Sometimes we are dealing with circumstances that beg for a focus on equanimity or calm.  (And who doesn't need that these days?)

I've been taking a 3-session class with Alina Smolyansky of Vancouver called Neurographica for Artists.  Very, very interesting.  Today we did the final class, a Tree of Life with a theme, and my theme was "Calm" or "Equanimity."  We had just a small introduction to this method of art and healing, and it was fascinating.  While I'm probably not able to take a Basics for Users class right now--just too busy--I intend to at some point.  Another wonderful form of art to explore!  Eventually. 

Equanimity requires some practice, and practice requires time.  In order to achieve my own equanimity, I need to cut down on commitments for a while.  Otherwise I would have signed right up for her "Basics" class.  Thanks, Alina.

Another insomnia tile, drawn one night and added to a bit the following day,  then finished 2-3 days later.

Here is the tile as I finished drawing it, with no shading or color.

I think I do some of my best tangling when I can't sleep--and I rarely have consequences (tiredness) the following day.  If I can't sleep and don't tangle, I'm often exhausted the next day.  Hmmm.

Hotter than Hades where I live this week; I'm lucky to have good air conditioning or I would be prostrate on my floor. 

Instead, I have been too busy to tangle or do any textile art.  It's all been great--I am engaged in teaching two meditation classes each week in July.  Both are practicums for my 2-year Teacher Training Program and the outcome will determine whether I get certified to teach mindfulness meditation or not.  When my in-person practicums fell apart due to the pandemic, my kind and generous fellow CZTs rescued me by signing up in droves for the two online courses I hastily put together. 

CZTs are incredibly nice people.  I was amazed by the level of interest in learning mindfulness meditation and will probably teach a couple of additional courses to try to accommodate those on the waiting list--and the global time zones of the would-be participants.  They came to my rescue from all over the globe!  Thank you from the bottom of my heart, my friends.

This has meant that I haven't done any art in weeks.  So about 4 nights ago, not having the energy to think, I decided to just draw lines on a tile that I had begun years ago; I had used a leftover "snowflake" paper cut-out I'd made years back and then it just sat there for a few years.  I found it the other night and my first three nights were spent just drawing random relaxing lines inside the string.  I did not use any tangles except Tipple.  And perhaps a case could be made for Pokeleaf but I wasn't even aware of or intending to draw that.

Here is the initial finished black and white tile:

It's possible I should have just left it plain like that, with some shading.  But today I did add color and shading and ended up with this.

I'm not sure what I think, or even if it matters; I am only sure that I enjoyed every line I put into this, so whatever the outcome, the process was very relaxing.

I've been so busy teaching mindfulness meditation that I haven't had time to tangle (except for that last post) in weeks.  Oh boy, do I miss it.  Today I took a class called Renaissance Gold with Stefanie van Leeuwen in Holland.  (I love Zoom!  It has opened up a globe-full of teachers.)  This was the tile I produced in class.

She's a gifted teacher.  You can find her by clicking on her name above.  This has been a wildly popular class for her and you can see why.  The class was packed with Certified Zentangle Teachers (CZTs), always a good sign--sort of like going to dine in a new-to-you ethnic restaurant and noticing that many of the patrons are of that particular ethnicity:  You immediately know you are in good hands and that your meal will be the Real Deal.  We all had a relaxing time.

Art offers sanctuary to everyone willing to open their hearts as well as their eyes.
--Nikki Giovanni

"Never forget that Justice is what Love looks like in public."
-Cornel West

With everything that is underway in this country, I have no words except to quote Cornel West's thoughtful statement on what Love should look like in public.

Tonight is cloudy, but last night's moon--on its way to being full--was glorious.

Despite the turmoil and troubles in this country right now, I had a chance to take a class with Zenjo this morning, just to get myself going on tangling again.  Yes, it is so important to make our voices heard.  And, it's also important to take time to center ourselves so that we are responding effectively and skillfully, not just reacting from our (horrified) emotions.  And so I chose to take two hours of a class to find my center.  Here are the results--we first did a black and white tile, and then after the class was over I decided to tart up the tile with color.  Thanks, Jo, for a lovely calming time.

"And if you are to love,
love as the moon loves.
It doesn't steal the night.
It only unveils the beauty of the dark."
--Isra Al-Thibeh

An old friend--a former terrific boss who quickly transformed into a friend decades ago--has been asking me for some of my artwork.  Her name starts with and L so I decided to do an "embedded letter" piece for her.  I used Ellish as the main tangle since it's based on an L, and went from there.  On a renaissance (tan) tile with a black Micron PN, black Micron 01, and white chalk pencil.  With a touch of graphite.

This was the result of a class I took with the gifted teacher Romi Marks this afternoon.  She really can teach anything.  I'm calling this Big Fish Little Fish (and yes, I know one could see it as a Pisces image).  It was a lovely relaxing few hours.

"Spend a new penny on an old friend and share an old pleasure with a new friend."

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.” ―Fred Rogers

Normally I don't do any type of tangling on representational art, but I made one exception for this small project yesterday.  It borders on being too cutesy for me but what the heck.  It's the product of a webinar I took from Zentangle® headquarters  in lieu of the large multi-day seminar they had to cancel due to the pandemic.

We'd all like to "fly away" from our current global situation.  I am lucky to be healthy so far, but have at least one sweet friend who is battling for her life at the moment.  Everyone fighting this (and really that's all of us, even those who aren't sick) is under stress.   I'll Fly Away is an old gospel song done by many choirs and artists since the 1930s.  It's in the repertoire of the hospice chorus I sing in.  Since I finished this tangled balloon, I've been hearing the song in my head.  If you click on the link above you'll hear Alison Krauss's version, recorded for the film, O Brother Where Art Thou, which had such a great soundtrack.

Here's the same piece photographed this morning in better light and on a white background.  Amazing how different things can look under different light.  Much like the way we view problems in life.

"Better to be busy than to be busy worrying."
--Angela Lansbury
I have been both for these last couple of days.  A friend is very ill with Covid-19.  There is nothing to do but wait.  I took a break to do some Zentangle®.  As always, it was calming.  My prayers are going out to her.

                                                               Bizarre.       Surreal.
Just some of the words I'm thinking and also hearing from others as the pandemic ramps up in the USA and other countries.  There's the cascade of cancellations, the hoarding of odd things (toilet paper, really?) leading to empty shelves in stores.  I could, but won't, go on.

With all the cancellations I've been able to focus a bit more on art.  I just finished this small piece that's part of a group challenge.  Meaning, a number of us are doing the same-sized piece with the same word on it, but other than that, we are each deciding on our own colors and border patterns used.  It was fun to do this, and I'm doing a second one as a punch-hooked piece.  I hooked this one in traditional fashion.

I didn't plan this and just made-it-up-as-I-went.  And it probably looks that way!  I like it though. 

Today I took an online class with Joanna Quincy (a CZT from the UK) on the tangle Mooka, which I've used for years and love.  But I know I can always learn tips and tricks and get better at anything, so I signed up.  We did lots of fun practice and all did a similar tile.  As you know if you read this blog, tangling is like handwriting and looks wildly different from person to person--part of its charm, fascination, and fun.  Here is mine:

And here is the mosaic of the entire class' tiles:

Both rug hooking and tangling are incredibly relaxing, a much-needed, outrageously helpful characteristic right now.  All forms of art practice can help us get through this.  Read this fascinating article on the topic.

And finally, a quote from the late John Lennon which captures it all:

Nobody told me there'd be days like these;
Nobody told me there'd be days like these;
Nobody told me there'd be days like these;
Strange days indeed -- strange days indeed.

This is a short tale of trust and patience.  It's been weeks since I've had time to do any drawing at all--an indicator of how over-scheduled I've been.  Yesterday I had a scrap of time in the morning and thought I would do some tangling...and then noticed a curious reluctance.  It had been so long since I'd picked up a pen that I was losing my confidence and was afraid to try.  Not good.  So I went to my desk and began with a new-to-me tangle called Avos by Maria Venekens, CZT.  This was my first attempt with it.  I was surprised at how tentative I felt.

I started with this, below and really did not like it:

Nope, not happy at all with this.  I had to force myself to start adding color.  Did not feel like I had drawn it well, even though this was a first attempt. 

The internal critic was in full voice. 

I considered tossing it, BUT I know from experience that Zentangle® teaches patience, persistence, and trust in the process.  So I put it aside when I ran out of time and vowed to keep going later.

Last night I went back to it just before bed, and I'm so glad I did.  Here's the final result:

I deeply appreciate the lessons the Zentangle process teaches about life, not just about art.  A particular result may not be a masterpiece, but it's possible to love it all the same.  What I've learned from the process is to keep going and trust, and things will usually work out fine.  Perhaps not perfectly, but certainly "well enough."

Meanwhile, this is a lovely tangle and I hope to use it more in upcoming projects.

This is my first attempt at the tangle Khala, by Anica Kabrovec, CZT.  It's gorgeous and what's known as a "high focus tangle."  I have a long way to go to learn this one!

However, I've not been able to tangle in weeks.  It's been totally crazy here and that will undoubtedly continue for a while.  All good, just overscheduled.  At times like this, it's all I can do to squeeze in any time for drawing and I truly did not want to take on anything challenging; so I treated myself to one of The Tangled Yogi's instructional videos and picked this one. 

Sometimes the best way to practice is simply to copy.  Even when you copy, you still end up with your own version.  Thanks to the Tangled Yogi for her very accessible videos, which enabled me to do SOMETHING, even if it's not my own thing.

Although I worked on this only two times, it took twenty days to finish it because after I got it started on the 4th of January (see below)--

--it took three weeks before I had time to get back to it.  I kept looking at it with longing, but simply could not carve out the time to sit down and finish.  This type of dilemma always points out to me how over-committed I am.

Here is a picture of how it looked yesterday as I picked it up again and was about 1/4 of the way through finishing it.  I had put down a first layer of color on the green "leaves (top half) and was putting down a blending layer (bottom half) when it occurred to me to take a picture at this stage.

and here's another photo, different from the one at the top of the page (different lighting) of the finished piece for contrast.

It's interesting to contrast this version to another version I did (in December) as I was taking a class with The Tangled Yogi.  The December 10th version was a situation where I just had to go with pencils I happened to have on hand; this one is more "me" in terms of colors and execution.  I highly recommend Romi's videos and classes as I learn a lot from watching and emulating. 

A video is also a great way to jump-start one's practice after a long hiatus.  After I've been away from tangling for a few weeks, it's so helpful to follow along with what someone else is showing in order to rev up my own mojo.  Once I've done that, I'm ready to go off on my own again.

Doing a bit of practice with Zen Gems today.  I've done these before but took a class with Joanne Quincey ("ZenJo") who has a great website HERE, and who gave the best explanation of blending with colored pencils that I've ever heard.  Kudos to you, Jo, and thanks.  Will be practicing more.  I love studying with other artists.

"Better a diamond with a flaw then a pebble without." 
(supposedly said by Confucius, but if everything attributed to him was proven, he'd still be alive and talking, right?)

With apologies for the bad photography, I wanted to experiment with Lynn Meade's tangle Fassett for an upcoming class.  Fassett is based on triangles.  Here is Fassett done on four Bijou tiles (2x2"), each tile with an increasing number of triangles.  (The class will only be doing the very first one on the far left)

And here below are the four strings that I used to create the four tiles.  You can see the number of triangles increasing in each.

Fun to experiment like this.

The beginning of a new year and the beginning of a new tangle project.

I've a long way to go on both.

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Whew.  The last two weeks have been a blur, and none of it holiday-related.  I'm not a holiday celebrator (no offense to those who are--if you enjoy it all, more power to you), so most years, while others may be stressing out buying gifts, sending cards, gathering with family, I am nurturing my introverted self with quiet and reflection--I love it!  But not this year.  Visitors--welcome indeed but unusual for this month--a few minor health inconveniences, a couple of intensive workshops, and  on and off insomnia have combined to create more stress than usual.  But it's all good, and it will all straighten out.

Many projects are underway.  I have been working to finish my punched pillow.  First I had to un-punch and re-punch some areas, and then begin the finishing process.  It's a time-taker but I hope it will be worth it.  Here's what I re-punched:

I got that fix done (all will be revealed once I get the pillow completed), and now I'm into the messy process of creating and binding the back.   This boring looking beige-y broadcloth was the single fabric I could find that would not clash horribly with the front.  Hopefully it won't show once it's done.  I'm creating an "envelope back" for the first time, and sure hope it works.

Next up:  a good friend and I were lucky enough to go to a workshop with the Zentangle® folks at the Kripalu Institute in Lenox, Massachusetts, and the focus was creating a Compass Rose.  I had made one before in 2016, and you can find it HERE in this blog.  I wrote about the origins there as well.  We used a very different method this time (no protractor, just folding the paper).  All of us made small Zendala versions first and here was the class mosaic (some are missing from this mosaic):

We then moved on to beginning the actual Compass Rose.  I wish I'd thought to take more pictures.  I only have one "before" photo, below.  Wish I'd taken pics from the folding-stage through the initial black and white stage, then adding color, then embellishing, etc.  This (below) was perhaps almost halfway through.  I wasn't enamored of it at this stage.  That is an understatement.

We then added the North arrow and used the Embedded Letter tangle technique.  I liked it a bit better but was still dubious.  We added a bit of gold gellyroll as well.  Still dubious.  However, that was as far as we got in the workshop and I took my tile home, where it sat for over 2 weeks until I had time to get to it. 

That happened today.  Below is the finished (??) piece.

Yup, working and taking my time on it definitely improved things.

Finally, I took a chance on a product I saw on a Kickstarter campaign and it arrived last night.  I haven't yet had a chance to play with it:

Looks like it will work great, but I've yet to take it for a test-drive. 
Just too darned busy. 
A good night's sleep would also help.

Whatever possessed me to start and finish this 6"-in-diameter Zendala in one day?  I am truly ready to fall of my perch.  Tired...

This was another class from The Tangled Yogi, whose wonderful videos and fine classes you can find by clicking on her link in this sentence.  She has a unique and incredibly helpful way of teaching.  I wish you could have seen the mosaic (collection of student work) on this one.  No two looked anything alike--coloring was wildly different.  Similar, yes, but still, vastly different.  The magic of Zentangle® for sure.

I advise students on the subject of color as follows:
If it looks good enough to eat, use it.
(Abe Ajay)

Teaching myself the tangle All-Stars by Tomàs Padros.  I'll be doing this one again soon, so this one was just for practice.