YT

I am so sorry I missed last week's Tackle It Tuesday challenge, I don't know how it happened - put it down to old age. Anyway I have both tiles to post here and as this week's challenge is to use the first letter of our last name then last week's tile will fit in too.

I was glad to have a challenge to distract me. My front tooth broke in half and I have had to have an emergency appointment today with the Dentist to get it sorted out. Fortunately I am not afraid of Dentist's, but it is stressful wondering if you can get an appointment and how much the whole thing will cost. I needn't have worried, they gave me an appointment straight away this morning and I have to return later today to have the gap filled.

So here I am, tangling and blogging, to calm down. The results are fairly unremarkable tiles, but I have used the Zentangle method to calmly draw two Zentangle tiles, one using the letter Y for tangle choices and one using T. I just added a touch of colour in the Y tile.

This was my Y tangle for last week's challenge. Of the two tiles this one is my favourite. I used Yuma, YAH, Yew-Dee, and Ynix.

For this week's challenge I used T tangles, Tizzy, Twing, Tripoli, and Tri-Bee.

Tangle within a Tangle

I was so pleased that The Diva had a good time at Artoo's school on their purple Friday. I thought her cell phone/text explanation was brilliant.

I am afraid it is only a quick post today, thank you all for your comments last week about my Dragon.

This week for the challenge I have chosen the Zentangle original pattern Cyme to tangle, which I drew into my sketch book. I still haven't got Zengems out of my system and the centre of Cyme just seems to demand one.

Pais

A musical note is the last of this series of strings for Joey's Challenge and one in which we have to use Pais.

Being a bit slow on the uptake, I have just discovered that Joey has asked us a different question about music each week. For some reason I had overlooked this, and having answered the first question I didn't look any further. The answer to last week's humming question would have been no, I don't hum as I draw. I suppose maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can't sing in tune so I would probably hum out of tune too.

I used to listen to a lot of music when I was younger, but now I rarely turn it on. I have always hated background music, I prefer to sit down and actually listen to it and now that I am older I find music or noise in the background prevents me hearing what others are saying. Finding a time to sit down with music just seems harder these days.

Despite rarely having music on I can't say I really listen to my breathing when I tangle. I am not sure if I get into the 'zone' or not, but I certainly find it relaxing. On more than one occasion I have fallen asleep nose down onto my tile causing my pen scribble, rather like those pictures of toddlers falling asleep face down into their food lol.

I really liked this last string. It just seemed to divide the tile up nicely. I need to practice Pais more in order to get some of those nice organic shapes as in the step out, I kept trying to draw it like Flux. As I did last week, I emphasised the string in gold.

Here There Be Dragons.

Here in Ireland we have a dragon, his name is Lig-na- Paiste. There are several translations of Lig-na-Paiste, but the one I like is 'Last Great Reptile'. You may know that we don't have any snakes in Ireland, this is said to have come about because St. Patrick chased all the serpents out of Ireland. This included all snakes, worms and dragons, however the Irish Dragon called Lig-na-Paiste remained overlooked. He lived near the source of the Owenreagh River, and outlived Saint Patrick. He would often curl around a small green hill nearby and hold his tail in his mouth. Unfortunately after Saint Patrick died he started terrorising the neighbourhood until at long last St Murrough defeated it. He did this by putting reeds on the dragon, which the dragon thought would be harmless, but St Murrough turned them into bands of Iron which imprisoned Lig-na-Paiste and he has remained like this forever since.

One of the Zentangle books I have is by Anya Lothop and in it one of her outlines for a ZIA was this dragon which I enjoyed drawing yesterday. It looked just like I had imagined Lig-na-Paiste would have looked.

The Diva this week tells us that it is Moebious Syndrome Awareness Day on Sunday. I was very interested to read about her son's disease, as this time last year I hadn't discovered the Diva Challenge, and knew nothing about Moebious Syndrome. I just love those photo's, they are all so cute, Artoo looks a lovely little chap. Apparently purple is the colour for MSAD so I decided to follow suit and do my tile in purple.

Next I decided to I should use Diva Dance in the tile. I use Diva Dance a lot, especially the rock 'n roll version, not just when Laura will see it. I really thought Laura should be represented in the tile as she has had to go through so much as well looking after that little boy.

So where is the Moebious Logo we were asked to draw? Well you see, I drew it in the centre of a four tile ensemble and when you place them together this is what you get:-

A Natural String

Joey's Challenge today is a musical natural using Chillon. I love Chillon and use it quite a lot. I decided I wanted to make more of an effort to emphasise the musical string in this series so I have drawn the string in Gold. I may go back and do the other musical strings again so that they will sit alongside each other. I will see how much time I have.

In the meantime here is my entry for the 'Natural' challenge.

Tackling It With B

B is the letter this week for the Tackle It Tuesday challenge. B also stands for Back to Basics, which seems to be the theme for the week for me. Keeping this in mind I used a simple string and the tangles Betweed, Beelight and Bumper.

Tumbling Knightsbridge.

This week the string is a Sharp in Joey's Challenge and we are to use Knightsbridge. The sharp seemed an obvious shape for Knightsbridge tangle however it took some time for me to decide how I would draw it. In the end I decided to do one of my tumbling sketchbook pages.

On the little bijou tiles I draw straightforward Knightsbridge with the sharp running through it in various forms and for the large tile I used Bales to divide up the tile and Centipede across the two sharp bars.i finished it off with Knightsbridge within a barberpole ribbon. It is surprising how difficult it is to firstly, block in the black without leaving white patches, and secondly, to get the alternate squares correct. If you look closely you will find one or two slip-ups, but my decision was to live with them ;-)

Back to Basics and Resolutions

I had such a good Christmas and Santa was amazingly kind, I got all sorts of tangling presents. White gel pens, coloured markers, a tile storage album and several tangling books. As the Diva said, so many new things I don't know where to start.

I mentioned last week that my New Year's resolution is to use the Zentangle Method® more, as opposed to just creating Zentangle® Inspired Art for fun, so The Diva's challenge this week is just the thing for me. 

First I put some gently music on then sat down with my tile. Today I drew a string which was the first that came to mind, a sort of figure of eight divided by a slightly wavy line. 

Next I have a bag with the tangle pattern names on little bits of old card in it. When it comes to choosing a pattern for a section of the tile I just pick a card out and use the tangle written on it. The names that came out this time were Beelight, Hamail, Chillon, Ennies, Gust and Betweed. The one choice that I made myself was when I sat back and looked at it this way, that way, upside down etc. and I choose which way I liked it best and put my initials on that side of it. This is how it came out. 

Abundies and Akoya

Hope you had a great time. I was very lucky and got quite a few tangling gifts. One of the books was Jane Monk's Tangle Stitches about quilting tangle patterns. I used to Quilt and would love to make some of the things in the book, especially the pile of pincushions that look like a pile of stones. It is a while since I quilted and am not sure if I will get back into it, but the photos in the book are great to look at and daydream about.

There are quite a few new themes amongst the challenges for 2016 and Tackle it Tuesday is one of them. We are starting with A and have to use Abundies and Akoya. I also added Axlexa. This challenge made me practice both Abundies and Akoya. I don't use Abundies much because I find it had to fit in with other tangles. Previously I haven't been able to make Akoya wrap around itself like it should but I think I managed it better this time after practice.

Nolliag na Mban

Happy New Year friends, I missed you all :-)

I had a great day yesterday. Here in Ireland, on the 6th Jan, we celebrate Nolliag na Mban. That translates as Women's Christmas, also known as Women's Little Christmas. Apparently, traditionally the men took over the job of looking after the children and household chores whilst the women gathered together to celebrate the end of the busy Christmas season. It was meant to thank the women for their hard work, but of course it made more work as most women prepared food to leave and everything else done beforehand so that the men would be able to manage by themselves. The celebration began to die, but is currently having a revival as it is used to celebrate the contribution women make in all spheres of life these days.

Here in my village there is an old windmill complex which is used a lot by the local community and it has a cafe. On Nolliag na Mban they hold a women's afternoon when we all gather there and share stories, sing carols together and listen to music played by some of the women. It is great craic and I love being able to join in.

Today I am thankful to The Diva for the contribution she makes to our Zentangle community by holding these challenges. Whilst I love drawing Auraknot I do struggle with getting a nice star shape and so instead I draw what I called a WonkyKnot. I am quite pleased with my duotangle of WonkyKnot and Diva Dance, as it turns out it sort of looks like a Daffodil flower and makes me think that Spring may be almost round the corner (well in my part of the world at least ;-)

Happy New Year

Hi, Happy New Year Tangle Friends :-)

How are you all doing? I managed to tangle my way through Christmas but New Year went crazy and tangling had to take a back seat. Now I am behind, but at least I am starting to get back into my normal routine.

So Joey's New Theme this year is Music, and although Joey hasn't mentioned it yet I think we will soon be celebrating challenge number 100. That is something to look forward to. Music, what an original idea, I am delighted. My New Years resolution was to get more into the Zentangle Method side of tangling - as opposed to the fun artistic side - so the music theme will be really good for that.

I spend a lot of time tangling, so there is usually all sorts of things happening sound wise around me when I tangle - very often the television of course! I often put on gentle classical music (as opposed to rousing music) when I can sit down to tangle quietly, but today I have put on some New World music, the sounds of trees which was very relaxing, and I took my time. I didn't think I would like to tangle in silence, but then I read Jennifer's blog where she discribes hearing the sound of the pen whispering across the paper, so now I would quite like to try that tomorrow.

As Joey has chosen a b flat for the musical string I thought, in addition to the required Retro tangle, I would use tangles with a musical connection and chose Opus and Diva Dance. Here is the result:-