making and breaking

Contrary to popular belief January is not named after the two-faced Roman god Janus. However I believe the month invites us to take a glance at the year we've just left behind, as well as the one opening out ahead of us. I don't make New Year resolutions, however in recent years I've written myself a short manifesto – a list of aims and hopes for the months to come. And every January I look back and see how much of what I aimed for a year ago I've actually achieved. It's interesting to see where I've succeeded, where I've failed, and where the aim no longer seems so important. It helps me to chart the things that stay true as well as those that change. I split my manifesto into different sections relating to different areas of importance in my life – and of course I have a section for Zentangle. I might list new techniques I want to try, old techniques I want to revisit, new tangles I want to step-out and share with the community. There were eight things on my Zentangle list last year and I achieved five. There are 10 on my list this year, and I'll have to wait till next January to see how many I managed to do! But it's not about merely ticking off achievements for me – it's about thinking about my practice, engaging with it, developing it and keeping it alive and inspiring.

As part of this reflective patch I thought I would look back over all the tiles I tangled last year. I decided to pick out 12 of my favourites and share them here - as much to remind myself where I'd been as to show you. Favourite sometimes means a tile that I really like the look of, sometimes one that was a delight to tangle, sometimes one that has particular significance or memory attached to it.  Different colours, different shapes of tile, different styles and a fair dose of classic black-and-white Zentangle magic. I wonder what a similar collage of your year would look like?

2018 - a year in 12 tiles
a strange kind of tarot - reading tiles instead of cards - decoding the past not predicting the future -
 examining what did happen rather than what might

Turning my attention from the past to the future, Adele Bruno recently invited us to start our String Thing adventures with a string based on the number 19. I didn't get my tile finished in time to send to her (a theme I'm continuing from last year!) but I thought it would fit well here as I talk about the year to come.  Do have a look at all the tiles that others created using the same string.

IAST #274 - featuring Centipede and Lex

Annette, curator of the wonderful Mosaik Project that I regularly talk about here, recently launched a new endeavour - Zendala Moments. She is not classing it as a challenge so much as an invitation to explore the fun that can be had when working on pre–strung Zendalas. She provides a template and then allows us to post links with our results. She plans to host monthly Moments – a great addition to fill the gap left by the Bright Owl.

Zendala Moments #1 - weighted Printemps and aura

As soon as I saw the string I knew I wanted to use a weighted Printemps technique that I'd seen fellow UK tangler Jo Quincey use a number of times to great effect in recent weeks. I also felt instinctively drawn to a regular sized square tile - which of course Annette's templates were not designed to fit. No problem - I just cut the template in half, flipped the halves, and transferred the design to my tile. Pleasant hours ensued, lost to the calm of repetition, of rounding each and every corner, of dark, of light - of getting sucked out of the morning and all the large and small worries that circled me, and down into each and every spiral. I drifted at times, but the pen always pulled me back. Again and again and again.  The end result is not how we expect a Zendala to look - but if we can't break the rules here then where?