processing ideas

With this week’s challenge no. 120, diva Laura Harms provided, for me at least, a chance to really dig in and explore a tangle. Her assignment: use bales, one of the official tangles of Zentangle, and play with it. Here are the instructions in an issue of the Zentangle newsletter. One of the fun things about Zentangle is that play is allowed and encouraged. There’s even a name for creating variations on a tangle: tangellations.

In my first tile, as is often the case, I loosened up and tried a few tangellations that didn’t stray too far from the grid with arcs on all four sides.

I felt that I wanted the tic-tac-toe grid lines to go away, or at least not be as apparent, so I came up with the next tile to try different options.

Ah-ha! I really liked the tangellation with high-contrast stripes, so I decided to fill a tile with that idea.

balancing act

This week at diva Laura Harms’ weekly challenge, we are working with equal parts black and white within a tile… based on a suggestion from Maria Thomas, and this post on the Zentangle blog. It will be interesting to see how the two balance for everyone. I chose tangles that are generally darker or lighter, or some that I could tangellate to fit the area I was working in. I drew a string, and then added lines to divide my tile into four horizontal stripes (the demarcations between black and white).

This was an excellent challenge. I’ll definitely be keeping it in mind for future tiles.

I used sláinte, flukes, lotus pods, cadent, betweed, and striping.

great growing things: yards and art

Just in from tending to the crazy growing thing I call my back yard, urging to life the things I want to grow, and clipping, snipping, pulling, and trimming those things I don’t.

That’s a lot like how we tend to making art, don’t you think? In Zentangle, there is no eraser, so there is not a lot of trimming and clipping after the lines are drawn. But, if something isn’t looking quite right, I stop and choose a new tangle. I’m not completely anchored to the string, in that regard… I use the underlying pencil foundation as just a suggestion. Sometimes a tangle grows like a weed, pushing the boundaries, while other times they stay all neat and orderly inside the lines. It’s a great adventure.

Every week I look forward to a new adventure at the diva’s website. This week it was a UMT (use my tangle) by fellow CZT Katy Abbott, called Kuke (her instructions for the tangle are here). It’s based on her observation of a slice of cucumber.

In my first tile, I use kuke, diva dance, widgets, eye-wa, striping, lotus pods, knase, a few black pearlz, and a little bit of knightsbridge.

Here, it’s another new one to me, quare, plus kuke, sez, striping, groovy, tripoli, shattuck, hibred, and knase.

 

a new tangle: kitchener

The kitchener stitch, in knitting, is a way to graft two sets of live stitches together. I don’t knit very often any more, but I really like the name. And, this new tangle is based on the design that’s on my kitchen floor. So… kitchener, get it? Ha! I thought you would.

I took a long look at the tangles over at tanglepatterns.com, and could only find one, click clack, by Jane Monk, that has a similar mode of creation. I thought that kitchener was enough of a departure to be its own tangle. If I have inadvertently copied someone else’s tangle or tangle name too closely, please let me know. There are so many out there, it’s hard to keep track, even with the amazing library that is tanglepatterns.com.

There! Now everyone can recreate my kitchen floor whenever they like. Here are a couple of tangellation ideas.

In addition to kitchener, I also used phicops, sand swirl, flux with some tipple, flukes, and knase.

This tile is made with knase, knightsbridge, poke-leaf, quandary, and sláinte. Oh, and kitchener, of course.

If you use kitchener in a tile, I would love to see it. Put your link in a comment on this post.

Enjoy!

drawing blind

This week’s diva challenge 116 involves closing your eyes to draw your string. I liked it, and thinking in the usual Zentangle fashion… when have I closed my eyes to choose a path in life, and what happened (what did I make of it) when I did?

I used these tangles: équerre, betweed, vigne, striping, onamato, tipple, crescent moon, copada, and shattuck. Oh, and at the top, one of my own that I call kitchener. I’ll get the step-out drawn soon (though I think you could figure it out).