Mass De-struction

This week was a helluva ride. It started out peaceful enough--the big agenda item was something innocuous like a haircut. I was breaking in a fairly new stylist--Monty at Carefree Salon. (He's also waitstaff at the Chili's in Tramonto). I was quite pleased by the result and in a peaceful frame of mind.
In short order thereafter, my son landed in the hospital (dehydration. I cannot stress enough: fluids, people! Fluids!) and my car was in serious need of tires, struts and a new battery. Veni, Vidi, VISA!
That kept me busy a good part of last week, with a little daughter drama thrown in for good measure.
In between all that is the kitchen reno. When Sleeping Man gets motoring it's go-go-go! We picked up the cabinetry from our friends at Home Depot, which are now cluttering our patio (the cabinets, not the friends!). They need to be finished, so that's a project for another day. Yesterday, the 42-year old stuff came out, but not without a fight. And, more importantly, where to put the stuff that was cramming a running ten-feet of cabinets?
But still, I kept up my little zinchies!

I'm cutting out little squares from whatevers (and drawing with my trusty Sharpie). Last week it was a soda carton, this week mostly from a waffle box. I don't want to deal with the freak-out factor if I don't have the "right" paper or materials. The Alligator was from a beautiful solicitation from Discover Financial, very fancy. The Chambord label has a star pattern that reminds me of Cathedral Window quilting (and a project I've been planning for, well, as long as my kids have been on the planet...). Which brings me to:

The Inchie word of the week is "Night." I really like Van Gogh's "Starry Night," and wanted to do my take on that, but patience is not on the platter this morning. I did some Googling and found a tutorial on creating this star pattern with vectors. I understand vectors, but for the life of me cannot work with them. And this tutorial just made my head hurt.
Thus, my contribution to this week's Every Inchie Monday is this star pattern. I'm sure there's someone out there that has de-constructed this for the Zentangle method, but I wasn't finding it. If you know of it, please let me know. Meanwhile, head over to EIM for the Night inchies! That's where I'm headed for a good dose of creativity from the brilliant minds that like to do teenie little artworks.

I Could Have Been Lost!

This past week I was invited out for a Girl's Day. Some shopping and some vino were the order of the day, plus some errands as I was going into the Really Big City. The first thing I did was check Google Maps to see where I was going as I was the designated driver. I like maps, real maps, to get a feel for directions, rather than relying on GPS. I plugged in the address of where we were headed and zoomed in to get the cross streets. The resulting paper had very little information on it, and the streets illegible, but it was useful to doodle on! (NOTHING is safe anymore!) The highways made a fine string to draw actual highways. HA!

Imagine, if you will, that I live one square over and four square up and my target was nestled in the middle of the Printemps pattern. BTW, I got around town without a hitch, all the errands knocked off the list, some shopping accomplished and the ladies did a fine job of 'lunching.'

Yikes, Stripes!

The Diva Challenge (#182) for the week was to incorporate Stripes into the art. I had already wanted to tackle the It's a String Thing's Challenge that utilized a diagonal line pattern from Linda Farmer (#51, pattern 051) and only tangle patterns starting with "fa-."
But first things first.
I'm amused that everyone is talking about "back to school," soon when the students of the Big City started July 30. I know it's an anomoly, but the lucky students had three weeks in when our little hamlet got thrashed with flooding. Four inches of rain in fewer hours for the second time in a week. The local elementary school was turned into a Red Cross emergency evacuation facility last Tuesday, which was the basis for my first set of stripes. I was lucky that I didn't have to take them up on their services.

I think my neighbors thought I was some uppity yuppy who would be a total wuss under pressure, so I named that one, "Earning Stripes." I had to prove my street cred and boy! There's the stripes, the rain and lightning, the freeway, the waves of water and turbulence from the flooding. And a heart, as I live in the "heart" of Arizona.
The other is my answer, quite belatedly, to the other challenge. There is Fandango by Vicky Bassett and Fassett by Lynn Mead, Fantails by Neil Burley and Facets by Nancy Pinke plus Fafolia with unknown origin. I found that and some other interesting patterns at mentalfluff.com. I'll be humming the Talking Heads all day: "Fafafafafafa..."
Thanks to all those tangly people that helped keep me focused today. Check out the various websites to see what others have done with the tasks at hand.