something frosted this way comes

Strolling back through my blog archives shows significant differences in my tangling practice through the years.  In my second year of tangling, 2014, I blogged 66 times in a year - that's more than once a week!  In my two quietest years I posted only 19 times in each.  This year looks set to be somewhere in the middle.  But when I look more closely at the posts I realise they have changed a lot.  Back then I often posted a single tile, with just a paragraph of text to accompany it.  Now I tend to write longer posts, I give greater thought to what I'm trying to say through this blog, and I include multiple images.  And that's just the blogging.

Old news - three tiles from the archives - Diva Challenge responses from 2014

My tiles have changed too.  They are far more complex these days, even the minimal ones, and they take much longer to tangle.  Which is not to say they are necessarily better, nor is blogging less inherently worse.  It's just different.  This is where I am right now, in my tangling and my blogging.  But comparisons are interesting and useful as we can see where we were, how far we've come, and know that even when we feel like we are stuck in one place, we're actually always moving.

Finding our own way on and through sometimes involves finding new ways to work with old tangles.  Sometimes to be inventive, sometimes just to get on better with a tangle we struggle with.  Laura notes this in her Diva Challenge posting for this week - she says she feels better about Pokeroot when she draws it larger.  I used to feel the same way, and then I preferred it with lots of rounding, but lately I've liked drawing a stripped back version, with lots of tiny Pokeroots along simple black-line branches.  Which is what I did this week, weaving in and around a slender shiny Fengle, with more Pokeroot in the border.

Winter approaches - first frost on Pokeroot

One more tile to share today - I started this last Friday afternoon, and finishes shading it today.  I tangled as the light steadily left the room, the day and the working week.  Minute after minute it became harder and harder to see what I was tangling.  My tangles pulled closer and closer to each other, leaving just that space of brightness in the middle.  I need to accept that it gets dark early.  I need to move my tangle time to earlier in the day.  I need to embrace the way the year changes everything, the trees, the light, my tangling and me. 

My kind of twilight - a tight cluster of lots of different tangles