state of flux

Poor little Artoo is sick again this week, but Laura has issued a challenge to tangle with Flux. Flux was featured in the latest Zentangle newsletter and I was surprised to see that the step-outs have never been published online before! I was even more surprised to see that the original version of Flux, Maria’s version, is not the same as the Flux I learnt, which is Rick’s version. I like Rick’s version better though, so that’s what I tangled with today.

Flux, Puf

I knew I wanted to put Flux in a ring. The rest of it just emerged on its own. The middle was initially more Puf, but I like some solid black areas in my tiles, so I coloured it in.

I’m starting to get busier, and while I will still try to join in the Diva’s challenge and the String Thing challenge every week, there may be weeks when my tangling will be more sporadic. I’ll try my best, but if finding time to tangle gets too stressful, please forgive my absence.

heart cubed

There’s yet another Valentine’s challenge, this time from Laura Harms’ I am the Diva Challenge #204. There aren’t any fixed guidelines for this one other than that it has to be a Valentangle, so I went with a heart-shaped string, two tangles with an organic Valentine’s mood, and two tangles that are decidedly non-Valentine-like.

Cubine, Flux, Hollibaugh, Trentwith

I enjoyed varying the sizes of the black spaces in Cubine. This does a feel too starkly black-and-white to me though.

moebius syndrome awareness day

This Friday is Moebius Syndrome Awareness Day (MSAD). For her 201st challenge, Laura Harms invited us to tangle either using the symbol of the Moebius Syndrome Foundation’s logo, or tangle a moebius strip out of paper, and, if we want, to include the colour purple, the colour for MSAD.

Before knowing about Artoo, I’d never heard of Moebius Syndrome. It’s a syndrome affecting primarily cranial nerves 6 and 7. For those of you who don’t know, cranial nerve 6 controls movement of the eyes to the sides, while cranial nerve 7 controls the muscles for facial movement (e.g. smiling, grimacing, closing the eyes, closing the mouth). Cranial nerve 7 has other more minor functions as well, including toleration of loud or high-pitched noises, taste to the front 2/3 of the tongue, production of tears and saliva, and sensation to a small area around the ear.

Moebius Syndrome is a spectrum with varying degrees of severity. These are other features, taken from the Moebius Syndrome Foundation’s website:

Other cranial nerves may be affected, especially the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, 10th and 12th.  There may be skeletal involvement causing hand/feet anomalies and/or club feet. Respiratory problems, speech and swallowing disorders, visual impairments, sensory integration dysfunction, sleep disorders, and weak upper body strength may also be present.  Approximately 30% of children with Moebius syndrome are on the autism spectrum.

For this challenge, I did two tiles. My first tile was done at 1am last night. When I woke up, I clearly didn’t like it, because I promptly sat down and tangled another tile.

This is the second tile.

Beelight, Snail

Snail gives a nice gilded look, an effect I didn’t expect from a tangle called Snail! The three petal shapes started off as Flux, but I modified them into something entirely different, and added little purple hearts to show love and support for people with Moebius Syndrome.

Does the logo remind anybody else of the recycling symbol?

This is the first tile I did last night.

Flux, Keenees, Knase, Reticulated

Tangling at 1am is not good. You make odd decisions, like aura-ing in the spaces in the logo because you’re too tired to think of better ways to fill them in, and then shading them dark in a failed attempt to make them less conspicuous.  Which is a pity, because I liked the two strips going over the bars of the logo.

celebrate!

This is my first time participating in the Diva’s Weekly Challenge, and it’s a good time to start, since this is her 200th challenge! Congratulations, Laura!

Laura challenged us to a create a monotangle of our go-to tangle, to go end to end of the tile, and to stick the number 200 in somewhere. Since I’m a new tangler, I don’t have any go-to tangle. Instead I used Flux, which I love the look of, but I’ve never tried.

Flux

Try as I could, I couldn’t get the look that I’ve seen in other people’s Flux. My tile looks cluttered, and I don’t really like the big black dots at the top left. I tried to tone down the messiness by greying out the circles in the background with shading, and it does look better now :)