Alphabet Challenge Letter V

Countdown Z - Y - X - W - V #167 and four more to go to #171. We are ever so close to closing the letter challenge 2017. Am I looking forward to it? You bet!

We avid letter tanglers can all be happy we are using the Latin alphabet and not Chinese or Thai. The Chinese has over 3000 characters. It's a no brainer: never a Chinese alphabet. The Thai alphabet has 44 consonants and 28 vowels. I learnt them a long time ago and still today can read stuff. However, I then have to ask a Thai what it means, duh! But I am good at street signs, you are never lost in the boonies when you can read where to go to hit the main road. Anybody bicycling?

However, I am forever grateful to the old, no-nonsense teacher I had who explained the pronunciation rules and tone marks and made a chart for me. Finally the up and down sing-song sounds were no longer a mystery to me. Thank you, my teacher!

V & v

This week Joey's alphabet challenge is the letter V and the tangle that goes with it is Vano. I really enjoyed drawing Vano; it placed me right into the Zen zone. Now I understand Trudi who draws 120+ Molygons and tons of Tipple. Zen...zen...zen...(∪｡∪)｡｡｡zzz

Oops!

V capital is a bit spiky and Vano not round. Vorago is not as should be either, but looks like it could be. So many wrongs make it right again, says me.

Patterns: Vano, Vorago, Ving

The low-case v tile is more my style. Veezy is a tangle I did before so I chose the Vine Thanks tangle to accommodate my rule that with each letter tile I draw one tangle I hadn't drawn before. Maybe not the best choice, but then...it could be worse.

Patterns: Vano, Veezy, Vine Thanks

Animal Happy Day

You are not allowed to laugh when you see this video.




I had to place yet another video. This one kept me sitting at the edge of my chair while I watched. But as it runs under the heading "Animal Happy Day" it has a happy ending. Thanks heaven - and the farmers(!) - for that!





Link to next Alphabet Letter Challenge: W
Link to previous Alphabet Letter Challenge: U

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Inspired by... May 2017

The Starfish Tangle Family
The main focus on this month's Inspired by... was definitely the Starfish tangle family by Nicole Dreyer. All of a sudden there were all these slightly different Starfish tangle step-outs released and I was hooked. They are organic, they are fun, and they are undeniably beautiful!

Starfish Flower with Mooka

Patterns: Starfish Flower with some Mooka

Starfish-Too with Lapin

Patterns: Starfish-Too with my own tangle Lapin

Starfish Flowerbarrel with Joki

Patterns: Starfish Flowerbarrel with Joki

Starfish Flower on a loop string

Pattern: Starfish Flower on a loop string

Patterns: Loop string for above Starfish Flower

Starfish Double Barrel, Starfish Barrel with Henna Drum, Starfish Flowerbarrel with Cattails and Tipple

Patterns: Top: Starfish Double Barrel,
Middle: Starfish Barrel with Henna Drum,
Bottom: Starfish Flowerbarrel with Cattails and Tipple

There is one more in the Starfish family I missed out thus far: Starfish Ribbon. Maybe one of these days....


Ta-Da! 
(by Margaret McKerihan) I had to put this pillow on the net. It was my exercise tile to the letter challenge T. Undoubtedly, the training tile came out better.

Pattern: Tada

Pop't
Training Tile for my Refresher tile #100. Pop't (by Sadelle A. Wiltshire), like its name, is a real cutey.

Pattern: Pop't

Afterglo
If you didn't recognize it as Afterglo by Carole Ohl, I don't blame you. I have seen better ones, too, but I own it. Exercise tile for refresher # 28.

Pattern: Afterglo with some ends hanging off it

Molygon Coin Collection
This is a belated tile to DIVA's Molygon Study. I hadn't finished enough coins by the time I uploaded the DIVA's Molygon Study page. Better late than never.

Pattern: Molygon

Dutch Hourglass and Longwood
These two tangles are a part of the Refresher #27. Fine, you are not impressed with this tile and wonder why on earth did she waste the place and put it up at all. I agree, I am not impressed with it either. However, sometimes we place a tile because it jiggles happy memories. Yes, I fully enjoyed drawing these two tangles. Longwood (by Jjla Barbera) reminds me a bit of checkers. Dutch Hourglass is by Magaret Bremner.

Patterns: Top left: Dutch Hourglass, bottom right: Longwood

Tamisolo
Again a tangle that I drew for the letter challenge T. Tamisolo (by Hanni Nura) was the pattern Joey gave us. Here I mixed Tamisolo (in black) with Flux inside of Wirlz.

Patterns: Tamisolo, Flux inside of Wirlz

Win-Zetta
Beautiful Win-Zetta (by Loretta West). What can I say. Organic tangle = I love it. This resulted from yet another refresher combination published by Linda Farmer on her website Tanglepatterns: Refresher #154.

Pattern: Win-Zetta

One more Win-Zetta Tile. Here I mixed with other tangles, but I forgot their names. In my sketchbook I remarkt: No Electricity!  On the day I drew this we had no electricity from 9 am to about 5 in the afternoon. Perfect day for drawing and, if you have a gas cooker, you still get your coffee, too. What else does a tangler need?

Patterns: Win-Zetta and other tangles

Hua and Contacted
The band is Hua (by Damy) and the other two areas are Contacted (by A. M. Johnston). Have you ever tried to draw Contacted? It is a headache. And because I like headaches, I drew two areas of it. Both of these tangles are also on the listing for Refresher #154.

Patterns: Hua and Contacted

Faux Weave, U-Bend, Wirrl
This tile didn't come out so well, but I like Faux Weave by Helen Williams (did a whole study on it), U-Bend (by Lizzie Mayne) and Wirrl (by Karin Frank), which reminds me a bit of Narwal. Have a look at Wirrl on this step-out. I bet you want to start drawing it right away.

Patterns: Faux Weave, U-Bend, Wirrl

And the final tangle...

Uncorked
I loved to draw Uncorked (by Adele Bruno or IAST). I chose it for the letter challenge U, the blue tile, but only drew a few lines. I would like to explore it  more, in fact, there are so many tangles I'd like to explore more in depth, but it would take centuries to get them all done. Unfortunately, that much time is just not available to me anymore, hence, this Uncorked is likely it. Unless, of course, Adele decides to chose it for one of her weekly challenges!

Pattern: Uncorked

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IAST Challenge 196

This week's "It's A String Thing" (IAST #196) challenge is to be a monotangle using a new pattern called Plingh and a simple string of just 3 curved lines. I love drawing monotangles. I can just draw the same pattern over and over again which lulls me pleasantly into the desired Zen stage of being here and now. I was so zenned, I drew four tiles before reality set in and put a stop to it. Reality being Saturday equals deadline.

So, now I have these four tiles and the big question arises: which to send to Adele Bruno. So I decided to make this webpage first, look at them all in a combined setting and then decide. So here we go:

The blue one

Pattern: Plingh and Plingh only

The red one

Pattern: Plingh...and maybe some extra Tipple

The white one

Pattern: Plingh...in a wonky grid - respecting Adele's string though

The recycled paper one - there is a reason why this is last. I had some space free in my sketchbook and thought, still in my Plingh Zen stage, I needed some more Plingh tiles. This is a quicky and the string is a round circle in a bigger oval circle. So it does not count.

Patterns: You guessed it, pure Plingh

I looked and looked and can't make up my mind. Red or blue. Red. No blue. Yes, blue it is. But then red.... OK. Simple. I send red AND blue and let Adele decide. Ahhhh! Now that was easy.



Here the Adele's string

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DIVA Challenge 317

In this week's DIVA challenge we get to pick a photo or cut an image out of a magazine, glue it to a tile and tangle around it. Sort of use it as a string. I decided to make two tiles, one where I sketch a model and the other from a photo.

The first is my model sketch (in case you haven't noticed) and the tangles Finery, Wirrl, Mooka, Nouvart, Printemps, and a few others.

Patterns: Finery, Wirrl, Mooka, Nouvart, Printemps

The second tile is with a photo. This tile I made in Photoshop. Cut the background off and added two of my tiles as background. The tangles on the background are Win-Zetta, Starfish Barrel with Henna Drum, Starfish Double Barrel, Starfish Flowerbarrel with Cattails and Tipple.

Patterns: Win-Zetta, Starfish Barrel with Henna Drum, Starfish Double Barrel,
Starfish Flowerbarrel with Cattails and Tipple

Animal Happy Day

This time it is not a dog and not a cat, but a bear girl who went through too much misery in her life. However, because tons of people signed a petition, this handicapped girl is now happy and enjoying her freedom for the rest of her life. So don't think petitions don't work.

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Alphabet Challenge Letter U

Z - Y - X - W - V - U This is my personal countdown to the end of the weekly 'Finish My Tile' alphabet letter challenge. This is #166 which would make Z 171. Aren't you looking forward to the end when you can say YOU DID IT!!! (?). When I started with A in the first week of January I pledged to finish all the letters in the alphabet with at least two tiles, one for the capital letter and the other lowercase. Up to this week's U I was able to keep that pledge and there are just 5 more weeks to go --> it looks promising.

So this week's U comes with Joey's chosen tangle Unme. I have no idea what 'unme' means...unmelt? Undo-me? Who cares! Unme it is and I was able to find a few U named tangles I actually liked although the choice is limited. So here my plea:

Dear tanglers, please! make a few more U named tangles. With your next new tangle just pick a name and place a 'U' in front of it...e.g.: instead of Rope, call it Urope or instead of Taurus, call it Utaurus. 

So here my skinny capital U with Unme and the added tangles of Up In Smoke, U-Bend and Upholstered.

Patterns: Unme, Up in Smoke, U-Bend, Upholstered

And here a blue tile for my more fleshy little u. It is complimented with the obligatory Unme and my chosen Undling and Uncorked tangles.

Patterns: Unme, Uncorked, Undling

I usually don't point out which tile I prefer, but this time I do simply because I think the blue one does not have that 'deja vu' effect...it doesn't look like many of my other tiles. So I opt for the blue u - and blue is my color (jeez, that makes a lot of sense).

Animal Help Line

This is Amy. I felt compelled to place this video on my page because no matter how good we treat our 'best friends', there are tons of millions of them out there that would bet with you, that there is no such thing as 'human's best friends' from their experiences with us.

This is a Viktor Larkhill video, another of my deeply admired people who do so much good for animals. Click here or on the link at the bottom of this video if you want to see more of the selfless good he and his hospital team do. I rest my case.

Link to next Alphabet Letter Challenge: V
Link to previous Alphabet Letter Challenge: T

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IAST Challenge 195

This week's IAST challenge starts with a string of 3 circles within each other and the tangles Strutz, Tessell and good ol' Printemps. Strutz looks weird to me, but it can certainly give a tile that interesting extra umph...it turned my tile into an umph Mars capsule.

Patterns: Strutz, Tessell, Printemps, Tipple

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Alphabet Challenge Letter T

Joey's alphabet challenge has reached letter T and that means we are now way closer to Z than A, or closer to the end than the beginning. Yes, I figured this out all by myself, which was easier than figuring out what on earth am I going to do for the letter T. In the end, after all the thinking and the headaches I came up with a blue T and a yellow t.

The lowercase t is on yellow and believe me, if I had another 10 years to work on it, I doubt it would get any better, blame it on the t. But what I did like to draw was the tangle Ta-Da. Honestly, are you always the proud owner of all your tiles?

Patterns: Tamisolo, Ta-Da, T

Next the blue tile or the T tile. Here my favorite tangle is Tipple...no, Twirl...or maybe Trigue. Yes, most certainly Trigue!...and Twirl, yes, Twirl...Trique? ... Twirl? ...  Well, a brain wired like this explains the result of the tiles.

Patterns: Tamisolo, Twirl, Trigue, Tipple,
and some little diamond shapes I stole from the tangle Trimond

Animal Happy Day

I just saw this video from my favorite dog rescuer Eldad. I thought I share it with you because if you have a lousy day this will cheer you up. I had a silly smile on my face the whole 5 and a half minutes. Yes, mam.

Link to next Alphabet Letter Challenge: U
Link to previous Alphabet Letter Challenge: S

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DIVA Challenge 316

UPDATE May 19, 2017
I feel better know. I made a STRIPES tile and didn't cheat.

Patterns: Henna Drum, 1/2 Wist, Nzeppel, Faux Weave, Jib, Balldox

This week's challenge: STRIPES! What comes to mind? Zebras. Well, that wasn't the idea. So I thought and thought and I just didn't know what to do. However, if you wait long enough and don't force the subject, your brain will jump into action and a solution will be found, says psychologist Susie Ng.

I cheated. I confess. Please everybody forgive me, I used the computer. Having said that, I drew the tile all by myself though, so I only cheated half a bit.

After the tile was drawn I took a picture, placed it in Photoshop, cut it into pieces... I mean STRIPES and then moved those STRIPES up and down, left and right. Tangles I used are Phicops, Starfish-Too, Icanthis (yes, the tangle I so hated when Joey chose it for her alphabet challenge letter "i" starter tangle and I then learned to love), Flux, my version of Praa, and Lapin (my own tangle) as border.

Patterns: Phicops, Starfish-Too, Icanthis, Flux, Praa. Lapin

And then I remembered I made once an A4 drawing of an image I found on the net, it was full of STRIPES. It was last year, in April. Still it counts, doesn't it? I haven't published it anywhere....yet.

Pattern: Stripes

Okay, I agree, it is a post made out of desperation, but it is a post and these are STRIPES!!! Wanna bet?

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IAST Challenge 194

At Tickled to Tangle the It's A String Thing (IAST #194) challenge this week includes a new tangle by Adele Bruno and she dedicated it to her new present day youngest granddaughter Ella. Skip over to Adele's site to have a quick look at the pattern how it is supposed to look. The tangles to accompany (Tr)Ella are Florz and Nzeppel. I love both of these tiles so I know (Tr)Ella is in good company.

I drew the blue tile first (that is why it is first). So when I had finished it, I took my todo list and made a hook next to item "IAST 194". No sooner had I made that hook the idea hit me I could draw Trella only to one side like a droopy willow branch. So quickly out came all my Zentangle gear again to squeeze in another tile and the result is now 2 hooks next to item "IAST 194".

So here my first Trella - all in blue, on blue, and surrounded by blue. Nope, I am not blue and I don't have the blues (in case you are wondering).

Patterns: Trella, Nzepple, Florz

And here my quicky featuring my droopy Trella willow branch version.

Patterns: Trella willow, Nzepple, Florz

Animal Happy Day

I think the people who wrote the title to this website and video (~30sec) got it all wrong. They depict Mr. Elephant to be Goliath and Baby Buffalo to be ... you know who. I, on the other hand, saw Mr. Elephant performing perfect foxtrot steps all backwards and I would have given him a 10 in ballroom dancing. Either way, he is a good sport.

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Alphabet Challenge Letter S

We are at letter S with Joey's alphabet challenge "Finish my Tile". It goes fast now and Z seems just a blink and a wink away.

The tangle she chose for us is Sand Swirl. I used Sand Swirl once before, but wasn't all that fond of it. Now I realize it is actually quite a good one to use as a filler. As always I finished two tiles, capital S and lowercase s.

Capital S here with the additional tangles Slingo, Starfish Flower, and Sekips. What on earth is "Sekips" I asked and googled it. Result: images of guys...male guys. Well, I am no wiser.

Patterns: Sand Swirl, Slingo, Starfish Flower, Sekips

My lowercase s tile suffered a bit. I had to mess it up by putting my finger into still wet gel. I won't do that again.

Patterns: Sand Swirl, Smokey-V2, Spangle

Animal Happy Day

Viva Hong Kong biker guy!!!

Link to next Alphabet Letter Challenge: T
Link to previous Alphabet Letter Challenge: R

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DIVA Challenge 315

I am finally catching up with all the challenges for this week. So here comes the DIVA challenge #315 and it is "Tangle Study = Molygon". Molygon is nothing else but a croissant...multiplied, and each new croissant about half the size of its predecessor. OK, here my study of Molygon.

My first is drawn on printed business card paper. Well, have got to use it for something. What do they say? If you have it, flaunt it.

Patterns: Molygon

Here I dissected some of the croissants cum Molygon...wanted to know what's inside. Also I drew some modernized Molygon in the bottom right hand corner.

Patterns: Dissected Molygon

But this is my real study of Molygon - even Molygon is in Molygon. So with this tile I say goodbye to Molygon. It was a pleasure studying you and may you forever flourish in the tangle world of Zentangle.

Patterns: Molygon forever.

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IAST Challenge 193

Internet Outage

Ah, finally I can access my blogger backend. Huge global Internet level(3) outage today, Sat May 6, affecting YouTube, Gmail (hence no emailing for me), and Google. However, because I wasn't able to access several other sites as well, Blogger (Blogspot) included, I called my Internet Service Provider to look into it. Finally a technician from Bangkok called and he accessed my router via their Team Viewer program I had to download and run. It was weird to watch the cursor on the monitor moving about as if guided by a ghost, opening tabs and changing configurations. These remote desktop sharing apps exist already for years, but never had a popular purpose, but having my computer problem fixed this way has never been so interesting to watch. Thanks, 3BB.

IAST

Welcome back, Adele. I am glad you had a great holiday in Italy. I am one of Lily's many avid followers and huge admirers of her little Zentangle masterpieces and, as everybody else, was deeply moved when her last newsletter revealed why we hadn't heard from her as of late. So, your idea to dedicate IAST challenge #193 to Lily Moon and to use her mark as a string and her patterns to fill the string is fantastic.

I drew two tiles. In the first one I embedded all four of her patterns you listed: Drogon, Reel, Lily's Valentine, and Andante...modified a bit maybe.

Patterns: Drogon, Lily's Valentine, Reel, Andante

...and my second Lily Moon tile with just two of her tangles: Andante and Reel. Reel is filled with Rundl.

Patterns: Andante, Reel, Rundl, Printemps, Tipple

Animal Happy Day

If first you don't succeed...

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Alphabet Challenge Letter R

Arrrrrg....almost another week has gone by and I am still doing the finishing touches for Joey's alphabet challenge #163: the letter R and the tangle Rysa. Will I ever be among the first again to upload my contribution? Hell, no. Not the way I am going right now. Have lots to do in the garden and it is bloody hot (hottest season of the year in Thailand!!!!). Yesterday I rescued a 3m (10ft) tall scrub from its mistletoe parasite growing at the top, all the while praying that I am not falling off the ladder. I read somewhere that from all falls 43% are falls from ladders and a statistic shows that most of those falls are from 6-10ft heights. Great! If only my chances in winning the lottery...

Anyway, I finished the deed without falling and was able to draw my R and r tiles. First the capital R with but one Rysa segment and a Roids in Roel combination.

Patterns: Rysa, with Roids in Roel

My lowercase r is backed by more Rysa segments and the only other tangle I added was Ringz.

Patterns: Rysa and Ringz

This is what I cut off from the scrub...

Parasite (big leaves); small leaves real.

...and now I have a much happier garden resident.

My happy tree

Stats showing % of fall accidents/heights

Animal Happy Day

Hurray!!!!!! Los Angeles will no longer allow wild or exotic animals to be used for entertainment purposes — this means that animals will no longer be exploited in circuses, exotic animal shows or even rentals for parties. More...

Homeless Pit Bull gives birth in a den during a massive rainstorm. So many puppies!!! Well, this video has almost 1.9 million views, you might well be among them. If not, click the video. This is so cute.

Human Happy Day

Last week I showed you the amazing photo illusions to promote adoptions for homeless animals in India. This week the art is body painting of animals. No, no animals have been hurt creating the art. If you are as much flabbergasted as I was when I saw this video first and you want to see more, please visit Johannes Stotter's website.



If you like what you see....there is more from this artist here.



Link to next Alphabet Letter Challenge: S
Link to previous Alphabet Letter Challenge: Q

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DIVA Challenge 314

Sometimes you take to a tangle instantly, sometimes it takes a few tries and sometimes you never take to a tangle. Well, this week's DIVA challenge (#314) introduced me to a new tangle called Scallamp, an absolutely gorgeous organic pattern I fell in love with on first sight. Alas, that love turned out to be one-sided. Somehow Scallamp will not flow from my pen exactly the way it wants to be drawn and our relationship definitely still needs some work.

After a few tries of drawing some big and some even bigger Scallamps, keeping it on the middle string as it should be and as standalone, I finally put my foot down. There you are, Scallamp, and don't you go complaining about the way I drew you to the tangle world or I will draw you in a third tile. (Believe me, you don't want that to happen.)

Thus here, my official DIVA #314 Scallamp tile. I added some translucent leaves that are actually no tangle...yet...but could be. Yeah, cud be.

Pattern: Scallamp with some translucent leaves 

Here a huge version of Scallamp and my white gel pen is drying out.

Pattern: Scallamp

Animal Happy Day

This is a charmingly crazy kitten video. It reminded me of a factory worker standing at a fast driving conveyor belt trying to sort apples by size. So, if you love cats, or if you just don't hate cats, this will put a smile on your face. Wanna bet?

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