In addition to the Zendala Dare, I pulled out string 144 from TanglePatterns.com and made this tile. I modified the string slightly. I also dithered quite a bit on whether to stick to b’tweed, or alternate patterns. Ultimately I’m very pleased with putting a onomato variation in the one section. I think the result looks like an antique brooch, though that hadn’t been my intention. I kind of expected a seashell like thing when I chose the string. Such is the beauty of Zentangle. You never know where you will end up!
Then on Monday between work and knitting group I sat in a café and did the tile below. It was the exercise for Day 31 of One Zentangle A Day. The pattern was Paizel. I clearly need some work on randomizing. Since at this stage in the book more of the instructions are just written and there are no step-outs I felt the instructions were more directed toward the one example which placed it in a long cylindrical space. I knew I wanted to shade to create irregular undulations so I actually tried bending the flux shapes at the dips a bit, but I quick gave that up. At least for now. I just free formed what I did in the dyon-like flower, tossing in some shattuck and tipple into the stripes.
This was definitely not one of my favorite tiles. It is, however, a really good example of a tile serving a greater purpose than the finished product. The coffee shop I settled into that afternoon was really not relaxing. There was a realtor conducting very loud business with an older couple a few tables away that was causing every other table to raise their voices a notch or two. Then a mom was rolling a stroller in random circles of sorts just on the very edge of my peripheral vision. Something about the particular motion she had going and it being where it was in my field of vision was causing my blood pressure to rise with each pass. Maybe because it kept entering and exiting my vision so often, but not in a rhythm so it wasn’t easily ignored? Whatever it was, I was quickly developing sensory overload. I put my own headphones in (despite liking the music they were playing) and turned more towards the wall trying to get the stroller out of my field of vision and started tangling. Eventually I got absorbed into the tile and my blood pressure dropped and I relaxed. It was a life saver. I was really about to lose it.
Without an Eraser 