more turkey talk and a little zen . . .

Do you see this . . . ?

It's boring, isn't it? Especially after my pretty red cast that I had last time, with the Alabama "A" on it. This is just ... dull. A pretty color, but dull nonetheless.

So I had an idea. It involved turkeys. It would have involved pumpkins, but we're so close to Thanksgiving, I figured I should stick to turkeys. So I pulled out my fabrics, some fusible webbing, my (new!!!) iron and some felt and here's what I came up with . . .

Kinda cute, right?!

A little tacky glue and voila!! No more boring cast for me!

I also bought a pineapple yesterday, for my darling little turkey head.

Isn't this just AWESOME?!!?

Mr. Turkey Head agrees ... a pineapple is so much better than borrowing Mr. Cardinal's body!

Mr. Cardinal agrees too.

So a turkey day and a zentangle evening! Here's a little look into our introduction to zentangle at last night's guild meeting. This is the little kit that was handed out to us:

The 8.5X11 sheet of paper had examples of different modes of zentangle. Pretty cool. Plus a micron fine point pen, a soft charcoal pencil, four drawing tiles, and a tortillon (which is the long, skinny white thing that looks sort of like a homemade cigarette). Oh, and that piece of paper that had all the different zentangle doodles on it? Cut it out and fold it on the lines and it made an icosahedron, which looks like this:

Source.

Here's a closeup of the tortillon. It's a smudger. Seriously.

No really, it smudges. You'll see.

Our first step was to put a dot in each of the four corners and then connect them with a line. This was our 'border'.

Then she had us draw a big loop. There was no right or wrong way, though she did give us guidelines. Once we'd drawn that, we set down our pencils and picked up the pen.

This design was called 'pepper'.

Then she had us do this little criss-crossing opposing lines thing.

Next we did a 'mooka' design (the one that looks like hearts, sort of) and then 'printemps' which was a bunch of closed spirals.

After that we took our tortillon and smudged the lines. See how it gave it dimension? It's pretty cool.

This is Jocelyn's . . .

Hers looked GREAT! She was a natural, that's for sure. I was so glad that not only she picked me up and brought me, but that she stayed and enjoyed herself! We were sitting at a table with a pretty rowdy group of older quilters. At one point we were laughing so hard (and loud) that people were looking at us!! Joc leaned over to me and said, "Quilters have big personalities, don't they?!" LOL!

So the two of us followed the same directions, but look how different they turned out!

So here's our two and two from the ladies sitting opposite us . . .

Isn't that wild?!? We really did have a blast!! The card on the top right belongs to my dear friend Jane, of Grandmama's Stories. She joined Joc and I (and the Stitcher's Group) for dinner last night and then joined the guild, too! I am so excited to have a quilty *and* bloggy friend in the guild with me! And I was so blessed to have my beautiful girl with me too (especially since I wouldn't have been there if she hadn't come and gotten me)!

And . . . that's zentangling! I've got a couple more blank tiles I'm going to play with. The 'mooka' was pretty cool -- it was a lot like stippling -- as is the 'amaze' and the 'echoism'. I can see where quilters could tie zentangling into the quilting and even into an embroidery methodology. It was fascinating *and* fun!!

So that's that . . . and this is Friday -- have a GREAT one!!

:)

zentangle, grandson, and pumpkins . . .

Okay, I want you to know up front that my text and photos won't match, most of the time. That's because I had a surprise visit from my darling Sawyer yesterday, and I captured as many photos of him as I could and I love sharing them here. Really, I like posting them on my blog so that I can easily go back and re-live his visit. And so that when he's here, he and I can go through my pictures of him together. When I scrolled through my blog with him yesterday, he saw a picture of Todd bending over giving him a kiss -- Sawyer said, "Paw-paw!" How great is that?!?

Yesterday morning started with a treat . . . my darling husband brought me breakfast in bed! The whole works -- eggs, bacon, toast, and fruit, as well as coffee! Of course, I promptly (and completely unintentionally) upended my coffee ALL over the bed. Bless his heart. He was not intending on having to strip the bed and put sheets in the wash before he left yesterday morning. I can't share enough how caring this man is -- he really takes such terrific care of me. And never a cross word about it. I know how very blessed I am.

I've been scoping out some blogs that deal with zentangle. Is that a new phrase to you? It was to me, when I first heard it a couple of months ago at our guild board meeting. Our programs director shared she had made arrangements for a certified zentangle instructor to speak at our November meeting. It's a process that's making headway into the quilting arena, and if you're a doodler, you'll fall in love with it immediately!

One blog in particular that I've found interesting is I am the Diva - Certified Zentangle Teacher. This is strictly zentangle, no quilting, but I'm enjoying understanding the process before trying to figure how it applies to quilting.

Suzanne McNeill took zentangle to fabric and she talks about it HERE in this youtube video she shot at the Houston show in 2010. It's worth a look to see how doodling transfers to not just quilting, but quilt design.

This Thursday is our regular guild meeting. I'm hoping I can talk Todd into dropping me off. Our guest speaker this month is Sue Reich, and her lecture will be Quiltmaking That Saw Us through WWII. This coincides with a wonderful quilt exhibit at our local Huntsville Museum of Art, Blood, Thread & Tears: World War II Quilts. I hope I get an opportunity to see it! One of the benefits of having Sue come in is that she's also speaking at the Museum of Art. Because the guild's paid for her travel and the shipping of her quilts for the museum exhibit, the museum has discounted entrance fees for all Huntsville guild members -- for the year! Pretty cool stuff; they get some pretty decent exhibits.

Joc wants to see the zentangle program in November, so she's already agreed to go with me to that one. Whew! Ride secured. That's one of the most frustrating aspects of being laid up like this . . . not being able to drive. But I really do feel like I'm healing and that I'll be better when this ordeal is over. My pain level is nearly non-existent (which is AWESOME just eighteen days after surgery), and I think the daily ultra sound is helping a lot, too.

My Sawyer is such a little darling. He was enthralled by all the pumpkins and gourds I had around!! He carried a little ceramic pumpkin and this striped pumpkin I'd painted *all* over the place! When I brought out a big one, he said, "Whoa!" I love the timber of his voice when he says that word, truly in awe of what he's seeing! He enjoyed the hollow sound he made when he knocked on the big pumpkin -- he laughed and giggled and knocked some more!!

I'll leave you with this last glimpse into my visit with SGP . . . I was finally able to capture his Roll Tide, which is quite darling . . .

And today is a pumpkin day, part two, with my Jocelyn!

:)