In this week’s Diva challenge #242 we are given the opportunity to create a tile using the latest official tangle, Gourdgeous. A step out can be found here in the official Zentangle newsletter. Gourdgeous, as the name suggests, is a pattern which resembles a gourd. Very suitable for the autumn holidays!

So, I am later than I had hoped in posting my entry for this challenge. Part of the delay concerned my difficulty in “mastering” (and I’m really using the term loosely here) Gourdgeous. It took a fair amount of trial and error, but I think I more or less have it down now.  My other problem was that I was bothered by pain in my left thumb joint, wrist, and lower arm for a couple of days. I’m left handed and the only thing to do was to rest my hand until the pain subsided. Happily I can report that it is better now.

My tile includes a large, centrally placed Gourdgeous tangle, surrounded by a grid of sparkling Bales. Thanks Laura for another fun and challenging round!

Diva challenge #241 features a guest post by Paula Bramante, CZT 15. The theme for this week is “Stones and Ceremony,” and we have the option to use a cairn template (provided) as a string for the challenge.  Paula’s post includes more details and examples (diva link above), which I encourage readers to check out.

When I went to see what this week’s Diva challenge is I was very happy to see the stack of stones theme. It’s a little funny but my current desktop background happens to be a photo of a pile of stones. I find it very serene and beautiful to look at, and it reminds me to relax. I also picked up an inexpensive Japanese rock garden at our local dollar store. It is in our living room and I’ve noticed how guests always seem to gravitate to it. Most of the time they will use the little rake to make patterns in the sand, and perhaps rearrange the stones. Very Zen!

For this challenge I used the recommended cairn template as the string. I decided to keep it simple and to use tangles that felt natural. Tangles included are Tipple, Sag, Diva Dance, Mod Box, Sand Swirl, Crescent Moon, Hollibaugh, Printemps, Msst, and Nipa. Thank you for the interesting and meditative challenge, Paula!

The diva’s challenge for this week is Munchin Play.  Munchin is an original pattern by Molly Hollibaugh. In Laura’s post she shared a video of Molly Hollibaugh demonstrating how to draw Munchin. As Laura points out, it can be tremendously helpful to see someone demonstrate how to draw a tangle, as well as to provide additional tips. I certainly found this to be the case too. As an additional reference there is a step out available here.

At first I was going to leave some triangles unfilled – white space is nice – but then I decided to try something different. After thinking of some different tangles to try, I decided on Paradox. It seemed to me like it would work very well with Munchin. I am pleased with the result.

Every first Monday of the month is a Use My Tangle (UMT) for the diva’s weekly challenge. The UMT  challenge this week is to draw  a tile with Tri-Bee by Beate Winkler, CZT.  A step out for Tri-Bee is included in the diva’s post, as well as on Beate Winkler’s blog (links above).

I love this new tangle! It is easy to learn and there are many possibilities with it.  Tri-Bee seems like an organic sort of tangle — it just naturally grows in any and all directions. Very cool looking. Since this is my first attempt at Tri-Bee I went for a simple monotangle, with shading. Next time I would like to create a less random looking pattern, but for now I’m happy with my tile.

Thanks to Laura for featuring Beate’s pretty and fun tangle. Also, congratulations on reaching 5000 likes on The Diva’s Weekly Zentangle  Challenge page on Facebook!

This week’s diva challenge is String Theory: Stripes, aka ‘Stripeyness’. In other words, we are to draw stripes as our string and tangle away. Simple!

For my tile, I drew a series of horizontal, diagonal, and vertical stripes, and then tangled away. Tangles include: Meer, Greek, Queen’s Crown, Cloudfall, Trimond, Lealad, Ionic, Heartline, and XYP. Yeah, I wanted to practice a whole bunch of tangles in one go.

This week’s diva challenge is to create a tile using the pattern CanT. This brand new tangle was discovered at a CanTangle workshop by Chris Titus, CZT this past summer.  CanT gets it’s name from CanTangle. A step out is available at the link above.

CanT is a very versatile grid pattern with almost limitless variations. It was fun to give this new tangle a try and I am pleased with the result. Thanks Laura for sharing this new tangle!

Laura Harms, the Diva herself, is back from summer vacation. Welcome back, Laura! This week’s challenge is to draw a tile using the newest official tangle: Zenith.

For this challenge I drew a monotangle so that I could focus on learning the new pattern. It seems like Zenith would be especially nice as a border pattern. Anyhow, I wanted to see how it would look along a squiggly line so that is what I did. I enjoyed this challenge and am pleased with the result.

The guest blogger for this week’s Diva challenge #232 is Holly Atwater, CZT. Holly is providing us with a Duo Challenge where we can choose between doing an audio challenge (available on her blog), or to create a tile featuring the official tangle Betweed, by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas.

Life has been hectic for me the past couple of weeks. I’ve been busy getting my youngest off to college. At some point I want to try one (or maybe all three!) of the audio challenges, but I decided to go with the Betweed challenge. Thank you for a fun and interesting challenge with choices within choices, Holly!