Traveling tangles with Storm Van de Werken

Traveling tangles is a fun project that began on Facebook. One person begins a tile and then mails it to another tangler who then completes the tile. It's really interesting to see what happens to the tiles you begin and challenging to get a partially completed tile and to work with it.

This tile was begun by Storm Van de Werken. I ended up going with a group of stacked tangles. Fun and relaxing! The picture of the tile as I received it from Storm is below. Thank you Storm!

Relax

Last week the Diva issued her weekly challenge and it was to 'Relax!' With the stress I'm under right now with my husband's illness I thought that this challenge was perfect for me.

I'm lucky that I have a support system of friends. We get together at my house once a week (most of the time) and we work on our crafts while we talk about what is going on in our lives. We started out doing decorative painting together but now we have branched out to beading, quilting, and of course, Zentangle. Since we were together again after a few weeks off, I had the incentive to tangle again.

I decided to start with a large sheet of tan paper. I wanted to have lots of room to play. I first thought I would just start drawing but as I sat down I saw a round, cork, hot pad and used it to lightly draw a small circle in pencil. A Tupperware lid provided the inner circle. One of my comfort tangles - a tangle that just flows from my pen, is the Flux shape. So I went back and forth with it along the circle strings.

As I worked I consciously told myself to relax, to take my time. When I needed to stop, I stopped. When I didn't know what to do next I just set it aside and didn't worry about it. So I didn't get this piece finished till today. 

Wonky fife - down the rabbit hole

I haven't posted anything in the last couple of weeks and I suppose it's time to tell you why. My life has been turned upside down. My husband of 42 years is fighting the biggest battle of his life. Lung cancer. He was diagnosed in February. We've done the chemo, we've done immunotherapy, but the cancer has progressed and we are now in the hospice phase. My husband is still strong mentally and is still positive even though we know what we are facing. He has gone from 155 lbs to 115 lbs and my once athletic husband has lost all his muscle mass. And no, he has never been a smoker. 

I am his caregiver and dealing with the cough, pain, nausea, lack of appetite, and myriad medications is a whole new world for me. It feels like we have fallen down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. We continue to put one foot in front of the other and try to look at each day as a gift. We feel blessed to have a wonderful support system in family and friends. 

I've been having trouble focusing enough to sit down to tangle. I don't know why, I enjoy looking at everyone else's work on Facebook and their blogs. I'm overdue on challenges and swaps. I appreciate everyone's patience with me right now.

Fife is almost a mac and cheese - comfort tangle for me. So when the Square One facebook group suggested it, I finally sat down to tangle again. I knew I had to do it in a wonky style to represent how strange my life is these days.