Diva #249

This week's challenge celebrates 5 years of the Diva Challenges. Well done Laura. I admire your commitment to this art form and to the Zentangle community.

I started working on my first tile this morning. I used red as a celebration - happy 5th birthday. The idea for the layout came from a tile I saw on the Instagram page of akseona. Her work is beautiful - check it out.

My second tile is more sedate and reflects the weather here. It has been raining solidly all day today, it rained most of yesterday and we are in for more rain for the rest of the week. We desperately need the rain, so I'm feeling kind of mellow and relaxed, hence the green in the frame.

A question for Tanglers: how do you keep track of the Tangles you know?

An issue that I'm struggling with is how to keep track of the Tangles I know and am learning. How do others keep up?

I know that many of us participate in different challenges each week. I'm also assuming that most of us subscribe to the TanglePatterns updates. 

There are so many Tangles out there, how do people learn new Tangles, keep track of old and new Tangles, and then decide which Tangles to use in their non-challenge drawing?

I'm getting so overwhelmed by this at the moment that it is affecting my ability to just sit and draw. 

Below is a new Tangle for me called Eddy-per. I think I found it in a weekly TanglePatterns update but not sure.

What else is going on in the world of Miss L

• Helping Moo purchase her new double bed from IKEA, and the reorganising the study to accomodate her old single bed. BoyBoy is doing a great job of helping her build it.
• Continuing to do a major spring clean in summer.
• Enjoying playing with Arthur, the new kitten.
• Enjoying Luna re-discovering the joy of play, which she lost when Dobby died a few months ago (Luna, Dobby and Arthur are all cats and all named after Harry Potter characters).
• Continuing to watch old seasons of The Good Wife
• Continuing to watch Longmire on Netflix with the Husband and BoyBoy.
• Enjoying catching up with friends.
• Trying to get back into the habit of Tangling each day.
• Trying to get back into the habit of exercising regularly.
• Listing to music that I got for Christmas while I draw and clean.

Have a great week.

Miss L

IAST #125/ Meet Arthur

It's a new year (how original to say that!). The busy-ness of December is finally over and I can slow down. That means getting back to drawing regularly and participating in online challenges.

This week's IAST uses string 125 and the Tangles Bubbles, Sprocket and Tipple. Tipple is the only one I've used before.

Here are my two attempts.

Meet the newest member of the L family

Yesterday was New Year's eve. I celebrated by getting us a kitten. 

The kitten is called Arthur. We got him from the RSPCA which is our local animal welfare and rescue organisation. We wanted a calm kitten who likes a cuddle yet who will be active and play. I think we succeeded. Arthur is sitting on my lap as I type this and has finally stopped trying to play with my hands or get both hands patting him - for now. 

Here's a couple of photos.

We named him Arthur after the character Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter novels. Our older cat is Luna (Lovegood) while the recently deceased cat was Dobby (the house elf). Arthur doesn't have red hair like the Weasley family in the novels because Dobby was a ginger and we couldn't bear to be reminded of him with another ginger cat, plus it would be disrespectful to his memory.

If I ruled the world, I would live in a zoo and make pets of all the animals. Luckily for the animals and the world that I don't rule it. I'll make do with my two cats, one dog, several tropical fish, frogs in the pond and by admiring animals in their natural environments.

Happy New Year to all. Best wishes, best health.

Miss L

Christmas on Lord Howe Island

Welcome to my blog. It's been a couple of weeks since I last updated it. Thanks for being patient.

For the last week my family and I have been staying in paradise, otherwise known as Lord Howe Island (LHI).

LHI is a little island about 800km NE of Sydney, Australia. It is made up of the very old remnants of a volcano and is surrounded by coral reef. Less than 300 people call the island home and there is a cap on the number of visitors allowed on the island at any one time.

Looking south across the lagoon to Mt Lidgbird and Mt Gower 

Our family has visited this magical place a few times before. The first time for the Husband and I was on our honeymoon, over 21 years ago. Every time since then we've taken the kids. This was their 4th trip and our 5th. Every visit is different and we discover new things each time, despite the island being pretty small and most of it unaccessible, densely forested mountains. (The highest mountain is over 800m above sea level, which is about 200m higher than Canberra.)

We arrived on LHI on Monday 21 December and left the following Monday. Our week encompassed Moo's 19th birthday and Christmas Day.

Lagoon Road

Christmas Day with a LHI twist

The day started normally, with a traditional breakfast of pancakes. Then followed some Christmas present sharing. We brought our own tree and decorations with us. Weight limits for the flight over are strict, so we had to be careful about the size and weight of presents, as well as the tree.

A pause in gift giving while the Husband and I went to church. Church was a 5 minute bike ride from our lodge to the church. The congregation was a mix of locals and visitors.

Leaving church on my bike, Christmas morning

Back to our lodge (Ocean View Apartments - we've been staying there ever since we first brought the kids to the island and now wouldn't stay anywhere else) to finish gift giving.

Lunch was great. All the other guests of the lodge had lunch at one of the restaurants. We couldn't be bothered with a heavy meal so we stayed at the lodge and had the place to ourselves. Lunch was whatever we could throw on a BBQ. Bacon, haloumi cheese, onions, pineapple, and a few sausages of course.

After lunch was time for a quiet sit to allow the food to digest and time to look over our presents.

I normally find Christmas afternoon a bit dull and a bit sad. Our family is so, so small (only 4 or 6 celebrate it together out of a possible 8). There isn't the noise and activity and hours of eating and talking and making merry that the Christmas hype leads us to expect. This year, however, was different.

This year my little family of 4 went rock-pooling. We spent about an hour and half exploring the rock shelves at Middle Beach. It was brilliant. We found sea hares, sea cucumbers, hard coral, hermit crabs, giant clams, soft coral, fish, star fish ...... We stopped because the tide was coming in which covers the whole of the rock shelf.

Pink coral, Middle Beach rock shelf

On our way back to the lodge we stopped for a swim. It was low tide so the swimming wasn't that great off the jetty but at least we did it.

Another bucket list item ticked off - snorkelling on Christmas Day

Dinner was cold roast chicken on burger buns followed by chocolate for dessert. We played a couple of games that had been under our little Christmas tree.

Christmas this year was so, so special. Everyone got along, there was no tension, and everyone pitched in and helped. Then we got to spend it in on LHI doing very LHI things - bike riding, rock pooling, swimming.

Hanging out with the turtles, Old Settlement Beach

Jumping off the jetty

Swimming in the rain

Other things we did on LHI

• swam with sea turtles
• swam with reef sharks
• snorkelled at Old Settlement Beach, Lagoon Beach, Ned's Beach, Comets Hole, Horseshoe Reef, Erscott's Hole and the Sylphs' Hole
• rode bikes
• walked a lot
• ate wonderful food (can you eat too much fresh sea food?)
• got rained on
• viewed coral 
• got friendly with sea hares and hermit crabs
• poked giant clams
• took photos of nesting sea birds
• got rained on
• paddled on the lagoon in kayaks
• got rained on while paddling on the lagoon in kayaks 
• spent time with the Husband, Moo and BoyBoy
• looked at the view
• jumped off the jetty
• swam - in the lagoon, at Neds Beach and in the pool at our lodge
• I also had a 2 hour spa treatment at a Day Spa. 
• sat on the deck just doing nothing much

Things we did very little of

• did not drive a car
• used the internet very sparingly
• did only basic clothes washing
• not much cooking
• didn't draw much, which surprised me
• very little shopping

Happy New Year to all.

Miss L

Diva 248 - give the gift of Zentangle

Hi and welcome to my blog.

If you are reading this you have probably come here via the IamthedivaCZT blog spot. If not, please let me know in the comments as I'm interested to know.

I have been blogging for only a couple of months and have been participating in the weekly Diva challenges for just as long. There are a couple of things that really make the Diva and her challenges stand out for me.

1. I love reading about her family and seeing photos of a place that I have no experience of
2. I learn new skills, tangles or strings each week
3. I learn from what other people do in response to the challenges. I often file these away in my inspirations folder for later use.
4. I like the immediacy of the way the Diva has set up the response section of her website. I might visit her site multiple times so I can see what other people have added before I start, then look again after I've submitted my link, and then again later just browse and see where the links take me. 

This week the Diva asked us to think about giving the gift of Zentangle. From my humble point of view, I am the recipient of the gift of Zentangle. 

I am so grateful to:

• Rick and Maria for sharing this wonderful, versatile, accessible, creative medium with us
• people like the Diva, Adele and Linda Farmer for putting the time and effort into websites, blogs and challenges that keep us all hooked and drawing
• Shelley Beauchamp CZT for letting me come and learn from her earlier this year
• Kathleen Murray CZT and Beckah Krahula CZT for publishing Zentangle books that keep pushing my skills and providing endless inspiration for my drawing
• Readers of this blog. Your visits and comments give me encouragement as well as an unexpected sense of belonging to a community that is spread across the world.

Thank you all so much.

This will be my last post for a while as I'm off on holidays soon to a place with no internet or mobile phone coverage. However, this place has lots of sheltered beaches, palm-fringed and filled with coral and tropical fish.

To end this post I've chosen a cute photo of my dog Milo dressed in his best. Milo is a 9 year old pure bred Kelpie. 

Happy Christmas to you all. Happy holidays to any non-Christians. Happy end of the year for non-Christians and people who will be working over the next couple of weeks.

Miss L

Diva 247 plus my son's Year 10 graduation

A major milestone was reached this week by my son and his friends. They have finished high school.

In the ACT that means they have finished Year 10 and now go on to college. After college it is work or further study. Last Friday was their final day of school. Last night was their graduation - not a big event at my son's school but significant nonetheless.

Tonight is their Formal. This is their end of school party. They dress up and are treated to a rock star greeting when they arrive.

My son chose to wear a purple suit jacket. The jacket has enormous personal significance for him. It is his story so I won't tell it here. However I will say that it represents personal growth, overcoming fears and learning to trust himself and other people.

Anyway ....

The arrivals at these events is part of the fun. Students can spend a lot of time working out what car to arrive in. A lot of money can go into this as well. For BoyBoy and his friends the cost was less than $4.

Here's why.

Their Formal arrivals vehicle was a cardboard box car, complete with wind screen, headlights and number plate. It was manufactured in our garage over the past couple of days.

The boys walked it to the venue from our house. They passed the venue on the other side of the road before lining up with other cars to take their turn arriving.

I was in the crowd as they came by. I was a very happy and proud mother when I overheard people calling out and laughing.

Diva challenge 247

Here are my attempts. Not great but I have had other things happening this evening!

Thanks for viewing my blog and leaving comments.

Miss L

Diva #246 - Monotangle tree

This week's Diva challenge was to create a monotangle using a tree as our inspiration.

Here's what I came up with. 

This tile features Ahh and meant to reflect the weather where the Diva is. While the Diva and her family experience snow, in Canberra it is day 1 of summer. Today we had hot winds, 34 degrees, and a total fire ban. Then there was a dust storm to top the day off. It is cooler now that a southerly change has brought cooler winds and some rain.

This tile features Tripoli. I finally seem to be getting a consistent shape of these little critters. 

My last tile features Cruffle.

Below is a monotangle of Cruffle that I created some months ago. It was part of a collection of monotangle teapots that I framed. One set is in my house while another set I sold.

I hope you enjoy these images. Please leave a comment.

Miss L

A busy weekend

It's Sunday night. My kids and husband are out at the movies. I've just come back from walking the dog. I had to end the walk sooner than planned as it started to rain. The bonus was seeing a massive double rainbow as I returned home.

It's been a busy weekend. Here are some of the highlights.

Seeing Pete Murray live

Pete Murray is an Australian singer-song writer. I've been listening to him for years but haven't see him live before. On stage it was only Pete, his guitar and one band member with his guitar. The style is possibly acoustic rock? 

Here's a story about his tour.

Pete Murray acoustic tour

It was a very intimate show, with lots of interaction with the audience. He described it as being a show for his fans. He encouraged us to call out songs for him to play. I called out one - Happy Ground - he heard me, spoke to me and played the song. Gotta love live music.

Pete Murray Happy Ground

A highlight was Pete stepping away from the mike as the audience joined him in singing Opportunity, which is one of his better known songs and one that still gets on the radio 8 years after it was released. It sent chills. Again, gotta love live music. 

It is a wonderful thing to share your enjoyment of a particular artist with the artist themselves and with other people who like them. In this case it was about 800 others. 

Moving. Beautiful. Blissful. Wonderful. 

Pete Murray Opportunity

The link between Pete Murray and this blog is that I listen to my Pete playlist as I draw. His music suits the mood I want to be in when I sit and Tangle. 

Harvesting potatoes

The Husband has a small vegetable plot in the backyard. This spring he planted potatoes which we harvested on Saturday. We ended up with 20kg of spuds from a 3 x 1.5m plot. The variety he planted were Royal Blue. They have a deep purple skin and white flesh.

Dinner tonight was wedges with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce - a staple cafe item here in Oz. They were THE BEST wedges I've ever eaten. 

Meeting a new frog

We got home from the Pete Murray gig at about 11pm. A movement caught my eye near the front door. It was a frog. We get frogs in our backyard pond but not usually near the front door. The frog was about 5cm long. 

This is the pond system in our backyard. It has an outlet at the top then 3 pools below. The outlet is connected to the top pool by a rocky creek bed. We designed and constructed it ourselves with bought bits and pieces. We then experience about 5 months of calling frogs mostly during the night but often during the day as well.

My first visit to an IKEA store

Big news for Canberra has been the opening of an IKEA store. It opened about two weeks ago. 

The Husband and I visited it today. I put my exercise tracker on to see how far we'd walk. We walked 2.5km. Some of that was to and from the car, which we parked in an overflow car park but most was in the shop.

Imagine walking for 2km. In. The. One. Shop.

This is not an experience I'm going to repeat very often. 

Below is a picture of the flat pack section. The size of this section did my head in.

Drawing, drawing and more drawing

I spent a pleasant few hours drawing. Yesterday I put all my Diva and IAST tiles into a folder and did some more Diva #245. It featured Hollibaugh. I love this tangle.

Diva #245 - my tiles

Today I finally produced some tiles using Mooka that I'm pleased with. The four tiles form a set. The moral of this story is keep trying with those tangles that you can't quite get.

Thanks for reading my blog. Happy Thanksgiving to those readers who celebrate it.

Miss L

It's a string thing #120 - Thanksgiving

This week's IAST challenge is Thanksgiving themed. As an Australian, this is not a holiday I celebrate. However, I do appreciate the value of taking a moment to reflect what I'm thankful for.

I took a few days to get time and head space to be able to work on this week's challenge. Normally I complete it within a day or so of Adele's post. This week work has been super hectic - I'm a teacher, end of year reports are due and the students are all restless.

The odd thing was that, when I finally worked on my tile, I was at my tiredest. It was Friday night. I was too tired to watch TV or read but was too amped up to be able to got to bed. I knew I wouldn't sleep. My husband suggested I draw for a while.

Then I tackled this week's challenge. I was too tired for everything else but I wasn't too tired to Tangle.

Here's my tile.

On this weekend of Thanksgiving in some parts of the world, I am thankful for peace and safety that I experience in my part of the world. I am also thankful for all that Zentangle brings me - Creativity and Connectivity. I love being part of the Zentangle blogging community.

Miss L

Diva 245 - Hollibaugh

This week's challenge was all about Hollibaugh. Like the Diva herself, Hollibaugh was one of the first tangles that I learnt and one that I return to often.

My first tile uses a lot of black. I struggle to get the black even. Any tips?

I've used the Zenstone tool to add highlights to the next two tiles. This tool is great for Renaissance and black tiles. It can be used to draw strings and guidelines as it fades into the background and can be rubbed off with your finger. It also provides a very soft highlight - great for people who are nervous about highlighting.

The string in the Renaissance tile is based on Purk, which is another favourite tangle and shape.

The final tile combines a tangellation of Zander with Hollibaugh. This is not a combination I've used before, and I've not used Zander on black at all.

Thanks for your comments. I will be back commenting on your work and supporting you once work and family busy-ness calms down a bit.

Miss L

More tiles

I really, really love drawing Hollibaugh. Like many others who posted on the Diva's site this week, this Tangle got me hooked on Zentangle.

I continued to play around with this challenge after viewing other people's efforts. Other Tanglers are so skilled and inspiring!

Weekend getaway

This weekend The Husband and I went to the Blue Mountains to visit my brother and sister-in-law and to get out of town for a bit.

The Blue Mountains are west of Sydney. The area is known for sandstone cliffs and valleys that rival the Grand Canyon in the US in terms of size. The big difference in the Blue Mountains is that the cliff tops, valleys and canyons are lush and green, not desert.

The Husband and I did a short walk to a look out called Pulpit Rock and then walked for a while along the cliff top. The views were spectacular, as always in the Mountains, but not as good as normal because there was a lot of low cloud. We enjoyed it anyway and took lots of photos of the wildflowers.

In the afternoon we wandered amongst the shops in Leura, which one of the better known villages in the mountains. Dinner was spent with my brother and sister-in-law.

Ian has recently come back from fishing in Alaska. His stories of meeting Grizzly bears, black bears and moose were pretty funny. He even saw a bald eagle steal a salmon from a grizzly bear who was fishing just along the river from him and his friends.  Pretty amazing stuff.

It rained on Sunday so we didn't get any walking in. I had hoped to walk along the cliff top track which has stunning views in the Jamison Valley, or at least wander around town looking at the houses and gardens. Not to be this time. Instead, we took our time over breakfast then went browsing through some antique shops on the way down the mountain.

I managed to add to two teapots to my collection. They are made of tinted aluminium. These were popular in Australia in the 1960s I think, and something I associate with my Nan's house. I can't imagine how awful the tea would be. They will do nicely in my eclectic teapot collection.

We took lots of photos on our walk. I've made a collage of them. Hope they turn out well on the screen.

Enjoy.

Miss L

It's a string thing #119

This week's It's a string thing challenge was inspired by the 100th anniversary of Coke. 

When I looked at the string I didn't see a coke bottle. Instead I saw a wine bottle. As I practiced the tangles I thought the string and the tangles reminded me of those wine bottles that are half encased in in twine baskets.

Here are my attempts. I'm not happy with the finishing of either. They look rushed to me, which is what they were. I'm also not finding the Inktense pencils easy to use. Any tips?

A message to my followers and the Tanglers I follow

I offer my apologies in advance for not visiting your sites or commenting on your tangles this last week or over the next couple of weeks.

The last weeks of school are the busiest for me, and other teachers. Marking and reports are taking up all my energy and time. The heat is not helping matters either. It's very hard to work when it's over 36 degrees outside and no air conditioning inside. 

Then there's quite a bit of family stuff going on - happy things but busy, busy, busy.

I will get back to your sites and tangles. I promise.

Miss L