#194 - Embracing The Yuck - Feel Like a Kid Again

Elisa Murphy, a "newly minted" CZT,  is the guest blogger on our Diva's website.  She has challenged us to embrace our imperfections by using our non-dominant hand to create our tangles this week.   For anyone with obsessive tendencies (and who doesn't have a few of those?), this is a truly humbling experience.

Lately, however, that going-back-to-kindergarten feeling is very familiar to me.  I have always loved the beautiful lettering done over the centuries by monks and scribes, lovely handwritten notes by proper ladies in the Edwardian age, and even fanciful lettering in advertising. 

 

I enrolled in a beginning calligraphy class, and am just loving it.  I was not prepared, however, to feel like a five-year-old with a fat pencil on that blue-lined paper.  But that is exactly what happened.  Each week, I dutifully produced my homework pages for review by my instructor, who critiqued the shape of my "bowls", the straightness of my ascenders, the curve of my descenders, and ALWAYS the angle of my pen.  I'm shaky, crooked, uneven, and need to keep practicing.  But I will!

 

 

For my "Yucky" tile, I chose a string that resembles a calligraphic A (my initial, after all) to remind me of the parallel between these two learning experiences.  My left-handed version of this string was not so flowing and smooth.

 

 

 

In true kindergarten fashion, I used my fat tipped 05 pen.  I chose some tried and true, simple patterns.  N'zepple should have been pretty easy, but turned out REALLY shaky looking.  Oh well, I chalk that up the same way I did when I painted the columns at Pompeii leaning over.  In reality, they are straight and tall, but in my painting, not so much.  But, hey, who will know - they are ruins, after all.  Kinda like crookedy N'zepple.

 

I added Purk in the center, which turned out not so bad.  I added easy peasy Pillows, and figured good old Knightsbridge and Hollibaugh should be a snap.  Not so fast. The line part was good, but the coloring in part was unexpectedly difficult.  On the Knightsbridge, I even colored in a wrong square, probably because I felt so off-kilter with my lighting, hand position, and trying to think "backwards". 

 

I fancied up with Queen's Crown, which I left blank because I was just too tired from all that coloring in.  Remember when you were five, and you got really tired from all that coloring and printing?  That's how I felt. 

 

Finally, the shading was blessedly healing to this effort.  Somehow, it all smoothed out in the end.

 

But, here it is in all its no-so-much glory:

 

 

 

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In other news...

 

The Square One focus posted on Friday was hurry.  I haven't used it before, but found it pretty fun.  The challenge is to make it play well with others, I think.  Kind of like a hyperactive kid, I guess (back to that theme).  Here is what I came up with.  The first is not exactly executed correctly, but I like how it turned out anyway.  I combined with Mi2.  The second one struck me as a play on words first, which I then executed on the tile.  Backwards from the usual flow, I guess.  I call it "Hurry, Mary, We're Leafing" 

 



 

 

And, last but not least, I am including one final tile using Swarm and Whirlee from the previous focus.  I have no idea how my mind was working when I did this.  One person commented "Mind blown!".  Yeah, mine too!