(New to Zentangle? Start here.)
I missed posting my response to last week’s challenge. My excuse—I was too busy visiting people in England. My real excuse, I found the tangle Crux difficult to master — and “master” is probably too strong a description for what I eventually accomplished even with the coaching of Margaret Blank—Magibee to Zentangle Diva fans. So, here’s my Crux effort—surrounding some Aloha:
This week’s Zentangle Diva’s challenge was to use Poke Root and Drupe in a duotangle tile. Poke Root is one of my “go to” organic tangles. For some reason, I haven’t used Drupe very much, but now that I’ve been reintroduced to it, I can feel a Drupe phase coming on:
Zentangle tile carrier hand made by English tangler, Margaret Blank.
I admit I was less than enthusiastic when Mr. Excitement invited me to join him in Birmingham, England for a conference he attended there. I always thought of Birmingham as an industrial city with little to recommend it as a tourist destination. However, when I finally took a look at a map, I realized that 3 people I was anxious to visit lived nearby, so while Dr. Excitement conferred with his mesothelioma medical research peeps from 20 different countries, I was busy visiting.
Margaret Blank is one of the Zentangle people with whom I had formed an on-line bond—perhaps because like me, she likes to write. Margaret took the train to Birmingham to spend a day with me. Even though we had never met before IRL (in real life), we managed to spend seven hours conversing non-stop with a tangling interlude in my hotel lobby where she tried to help me get a handle on Crux. Beyond Zentangle Inspired Art, Margaret has other craft talents and she gave me this lovely tile carrier she hand-made. It’s perfect for safely transporting a few tiles and will be accompanying me on my future travels, be they a “hurry up and wait” visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles office or on a long haul airplane flight.
The “new” Birmingham central library. Notice both the building and the tiled plaza in front of it.
Birmingham, which refers to itself as England’s “Second City”, is in the process of reinventing itself. Our hotel in the central core was attached to the shiny relatively new International Conference Center and Symphony Hall. In the midst of many ongoing construction projects, buildings which had tangle inspiration potential caught my camera’s eye.
Another Birmingham, England central core building.
Domed ceiling over the central staircase in the Birmingham, England Town Council Building.