Catching up on writing, creativity, Buddhism and life in general

Well hasn’t it been an interesting time over the past two or three years! 

It feels like a period of time has been lost, because of the pandemic – and yet it has also been a very busy time. There have been some quite radical changes in our life through this period, which is probably true for many people. In this post—my first since 2020—I offer a sketch of these changes.

My husband, Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, retired from full-time employment in May 2019. It is quite an adjustment to move from being at home alone all day, five days a week, to almost never being at home alone. The transition has been gradual and creative and we are both enjoying having so much time together.

Because of the pandemic, physical attendance at Aro Ling Cardiff had to cease. We changed our weekly meditation group to a virtual meeting on Zoom. This has been most successful. For two years we included a short teaching as part of the meeting and these have been posted to YouTube. No longer needing premises for Aro Ling Cardiff created the unexpected benefit of being able to offer this space to our son to live when life became difficult for him during the pandemic. 

Battlecry of Freedom—my book about Mind Training (bLo sByong – Lojong—was published in 2019, and has been well received. It is published as a paperback and an e-book at Lulu, and available in all the usual channels, such as Amazon, Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and so on. I also created slogan cards, which can be purchased at makeplayingcards.com.

My next book, Travelling at the Speed of Mind, will hopefully be published by the end of the year.

 

 

 

As ever, I have continued with craft work, making items for myself, the home, and also for our grandchildren. The pictures are of the blankets I made for them last Christmas.

I have bought a knitting machine and a peg loom, and recently learned a new technique: fingerloop braiding. I’ll leave that for another post.

I did not continue with the Art Journalling for several years, having rather lost my inspiration. I also stopped tangling. However I have recently revived this interest and am enjoying drawing again.

 

Another new venture is the creation of my store at RedBubble. I’m not expecting to earn anything from it, but it is such fun to see my artwork on all sorts of items, such as mugs, T-shirts, scarves, bags, and so on. They will make nice presents if nothing else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll stop here because this is getting quite long. I hope you have safely come through the pandemic and any other crises – such as Brexit in the UK. To finish, here are the details of our weekly meditation group which will start again on September 12th, marking the end of our summer break.

Monday Meditations.
7 - 8:30 pm on Zoom (UK time) every Monday.
Zoom meeting ID: 85249620913; Passcode: 640389.
Do join us for silent sitting and yogic song, with a short teaching in the middle.

The meetings are hosted by Ngakma Nor’dzin and Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin, an ordained teaching couple of the Aro gTér Lineage. They dedicate their time to practice, teaching, the Aro gTér Lineage, and working with their students. Ngakma Nor’dzin is an award winning author. Her books are: Spacious Passion, Relaxing into Meditation, Battlecry of Freedom, and Illusory Advice (co-authored with Ngakpa ’ö-Dzin).

Tangle mosaic #19

I have taken part in one of Annette’s tangle mosaic projects for the first time. This is a wonderful gathering of individuals’ tiles using a single template, and brought together by Annette into mosaics.

Here is my contribution.

And here are the marvellous mosaics.

Final four pages of my tangling encyclopaedia - mostly Zentangle tangles toward the end

Here are the last four pages of my tangling reference project.

This one is a little sneaky, because the centre square was my contribution to Adele Bruno’s It’s a String Thing challenge #297. I did not want to stop working on my tangling encyclopaedia, but also wanted to join in this challenge -- so I combined the two.

Creating these pages has been an interesting journey. I have noticed my confidence growing, the quality of my drawing improving, and I have been more creatively relaxed. It has also revitalised my respect for the Zentangle folk -- Rick and Maria, and Maria’s daughters Molly and Martha. I had lost faith a little during their dispute over whether other groups were stealing their method, but I now feel that there is a quality of the Zentangle approach that is special.  I believe that Zen- (meditation) -tangle (drawing) is a genuine attempt to offer meditative creativity to others.

So over the last several weeks I have succeeded in being more completely present with the line I am drawing, and giving that line my full attention. Through my own meditation practice and through my drawing I have deepened my relationship with each.

Now that this project is finished, what next? I’m not sure yet, but something will arise.

Tangling Encycoplaedia including all Zentangle official tangles

I have plodded on with my tangling encyclopaedia and it is now finished. There are eighteen  reference pages in all. Toward the end of this project I decided to find and include every ‘official’ tangle of the Zentangle Inc organisation. I used the list of official tangles on Linda Farmer’s blog. Tracking some of them down was quite a task, and several do not have published step-outs. Hopefully everything I found is accurate.

I seem to have blogged up to page 10, so here are pages 11, 12, 13, and 14.

I’ll post the last four pages tomorrow.

Zendala - circular mandala-like tangleations

I have just tried out tangling mandala-like shapes for the first time. They have been in my ‘want to do’ list for a while, and finally I found time.

Zendala-Moments Template #1
Petals/Heartband/Well well who/Hut plant/Coil/Petals

 Many thanks to Annette for her Zendala Moments templates which can be found on her blog.

Zendala-Moments Template #2
Incantoo/Knase/Q-belle

Visual tangling encyclopædia – pages 9 and 10

When I started the tangling exercises for my encyclopædia I grouped the tangles in types – ribbons, grids, motifs. I started with favourite tangles, but then decided to include every tangle I had ever learned in one or more exercise. These two pages—9 and 10—are the last two that have a theme to them. It is interesting how the majority of tangles I know can be categorised as ribbon or border tangles. They far outnumber the others. There are also quite a lot of grid patterns.
I think these two pages illustrate a change in the quality of my line. This was where I started to slow down and become more meditative in my execution. I think the evolving ribbon of exercise 9 is fun. They flow into one another quite nicely. I enjoyed trying to draw the spiral patterns in a spiral shape from the classic printemps centre in exercise 10 – though it did lose its structure a little part way through.

Exercise 10  –  spirals

Exercise 9 – ribbons

Tangle exercises – creating a visual encyclopædia

I realised—belatedly—that what I was in fact doing with my tangle exercises, was creating my own visual encyclopædia. I already have my sketchbook with drawings of step-outs, and my spreadsheet of tangle names with their location in my sketchbook and some hints at what they are, but these exercises seem to be a more immediately accessible means of viewing the tangles. Realising this, I then had to go back through the exercises and name all the tangles. They are a bit like the zentangle spinner—which I still intend to make one day—in offering a method of choosing what to play with in a tangling session.

Exercise 6 – ribbons

Exercise 7 – ribbons

I now have 13 exercises which include a visual reference to all 470 of the tangles that I have learned so far. It has been an interesting journey. I have discovered forgotten tangles. I have developed an appreciation for tangles that made no impression on me when I first encountered them, or did not appeal to me. I have recognised that some tangles I will possibly never draw again because they do not draw me in (if you’ll excuse the pun).

Exercise 8 – grid tangle fragments

Exercise 8 will be ongoing as I learn new grid patterns. Currently it is 2½ pages, two of which are shown above.
Creating the encyclopædic pages has changed my relationship with tangling. My drawing has become slower and more meditative. Through drawing so many tangles one after another, I have noticed patterns of similarity, clever techniques used in different ways, and many other insights. I have developed a confidence that allows me to be more playful in combining tangles, or developing them through experimentation. I am grateful to the many tanglers who have taught me so much.

Birthday celebrations and a garden quiz

On Saturday we are having a party. The main purpose is to celebrate ’ö-Dzin turning 60, but it is also quite close to my birthday, and we are also delighted that ’ö-Dzin will be finishing at work by the end of May.

Quite a few people are expected, so we have been working hard on the garden to get it looking nice, with plenty of areas for people to sit and enjoy each other’s company. The paths have been cleared; there are twinkling lights in various places; the old log store is now the ‘Cwtch’ with seating inside; and we have bought new benches.

The event is an afternoon-into-the-evening sort of party, so I have devised a garden quiz for the children. I imagine a few of the adults will wish to join in as well. Here is my garden map.

It was fun to draw and I hope everyone will enjoy the quiz that goes with it.

Happy May Day to you all. I hope you remembered to wash your face in the morning dew to ensure a beautiful countenance for the rest of the year!

Tangling Exercises

I am in the final week of Couch-to-5K but the weather has been so awful that I have only managed one park run. I did the second run of the week on the trampoline, but really want to finish the programme with a proper run in the park. Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow. At least we haven’t had the heavy snow they have had in some parts of Wales.

Over the last month I have been working on a few more tangling exercises.

This one I created on graph paper because I wanted to draw a few grid patterns. It was good to have an accurate grid to work with for these tangles that require some precision, but it had drawbacks. The paper itself was poor quality and not really suitable for ink pens and colour. Also I feel that the patterns have lost some quality of liveliness and spontaneity through being more precise. I do like it better than when I first drew it.

The tangles in this exercise are also grid tangles, but use a grid of dots. I didn’t use graph paper and I think makes the page a bit more lively. A few of the tangles got away from me a little!

This one has turned out a bit wild! Motifs and ribbons and probably too much colour. 

Two more exercises to come soon.

Tangle paintings

As well as creating tangle exercises this year (see last week’s post), I am going back to tangle paintings. These are created from my photographs. I made a few of these in 2016, but have not really continued exploring this since then. I have been influenced by the ‘purists’ in the world of tangling, and those who regard it as a meditative practice. Some say that tangle art should only be in pen and ink, with pencil for shading. Some say it should not have an upside or a downside or look like something when finished. Some insist on beginning with a string that arises in the moment as part of a meditative process. This is all good. I have no problem with any of this – but I can be whatever sort of artist I wish to be, and I enjoy my tangle paintings.

Goscar Rock, North Beach, Tenby, 2016

Here are the two I have created so far this year from photographs taken in 2015.

Whitchurch Chimneys, tangle painting 2019

Castell Coch, tangle painting 2019

Tangling in 2019

Last year I joined the Its’s a String Thing community and created a tile for most of Adele Bruno’s weekly challenges hosted on her site Tickled to Tangle. It was fun. here is one of my favourites for that year. They are posted on Instagram.

I enjoyed learning new tangles and being stretched by working within the parameters of the challenge. I am grateful to Adele for her commitment to posting weekly challenges, and impressed with her skill in combining tangles and a string that can evoke such beautiful and inspiring tiles from the contributors.
This year I am not going to contribute to the challenge every week. I’ll continue to check in and see which tangles are included, and also to view everyone’s contributions for ongoing inspiration, but I am going to play with tangling in a different way this year.
I started by making an analysis of all the tangles I have learned, from multiple sources, for which I have noted the step-outs – 433 so far. I do not record the step-outs for every new tangle that I come across because some are so similar to ones I already know – perhaps with just an extra line, a spiral detail, or an aura, or so on. It was noticing this that made me understand that new tangles arise from playing with known tangles. I can do that!
From my analysis I have identified some personal categories:

• tangles that grow and/or are random
• tangles with a spiral element
• ribbons and borders
• motifs
• grid tangles
• striping
• radiating
• overlapping
• optical illusions 

There are many tangles that fall into two or more categories. For example, border tangles often work just as well in a grid, and vice versa; radiating, overlapping and motif tangles can be combined or changed by putting them in a grid or a border structure, or letting them grow. The point of doing this analysis was to develop my artwork and move beyond the domination of step-outs. I had needed that guidance and stage in my process, but now I am ready to stretch in another way.

This is my analysis of the elements of border patterns:

I was surprised at how few basic elements there were. I may not create this type of analysis for each category, but I hope to create an exercise for each. I have completed the first one so far, a border tangles exercise:

It was great fun to create. I’m working on a second exercise based on motifs at the moment. It will take a while, but I’ll post it when I’m finished. Bye for now!