5 poems in 5 days - Day 1

I am participating in a fun challenge on Facebook, beginning today and will be posting a poem a day for the next 5 days. I thought I would post them here as well. I waited to start today so I could begin and end with dates that are extra special for me. 

Today's poem has been posted on this blog a couple of times before. 

For my Grandma

Katherine Eliza Rachel Mathews (18/7/18 - 14/7/98) 

I remember you waiting for me out the front when I came to visit.
I remember meat pies with their lids off and sauce inside.
I remember you telling me about your trips to the supermarket ,
to buy my favourite cordial and ice-cream.
I remember a White Knight bar at the movies.
I remember two Minties after dinner - no more and no less.
I remember the time I had to write, to sing, to dance,
to invent new games when I stayed with you.
I remember meeting your friend in the city.
I remember, at your urging, reciting the limerick I had written about her.
I remember, it started:
"There was an old lady called Walk,
Boy, did she know how to talk..."
I remember how proud of me you both were.
I remember laying in bed, talking for ages, before calling out the final goodnights.
I remember the stories you told me.
I remember how your eyes lit up when you saw me.
I remember that you were always happy to see me.
I remember that you loved me.



originally written 14/7/09

photograph - my Grandma holding Alysha 4/8/96

Snow is big news in Adelaide

My six words for Six Word Saturday this week -

Snow is big news in Adelaide

 



It's been a colder than usual day here today. There was a little snow in South Australia. It snowed a little at Mt Lofty as well as in the Mid North (Peterborough and Burra). This is big news here in Adelaide as it only occurs every ten years or so and there were lots of photos on Facebook as well as news pages.  

I didn't see any snow but I did see hail twice today. I took a few photos this morning at around 8am when there was quite a lot of heavy hail. The cat ran to the door when I opened it, as she normally does, but stopped short suddenly when she looked outside. Too cold and wet!

As it was quite cold this morning the hail was around for quite a while. Usually it disappears almost as quickly as it appears. Half an hour later though there was still quite a lot around today.

It was quite clear this afternoon when I drove to Flagstaff Hill to pick up Brianna and her friend. On the way back though I drove through hail that started very suddenly and was a little scary to drive through and there was no easy spot to pull over to where I was.

We are in for a windy night. I can hear the wind howling outside. The estimated temperature for tomorrow is 12C which is rather cold for Adelaide. We certainly know it's winter this week!

Tangle with L-Q-D

For Diane and Carolien's Weekly Zentangle Challenge this week I decided to use Limpitz, Quandary and Diva-Dance.

You can join in the fun at http://www.dianeclancy.com/blog/2015/07/weekly-challenge-14-tangle-with-l-q-d/.

Zentangle elephants

Please welcome my guest blogger for this post, Teya - aged 8.

 -----

This is my first zentangle that I have done.

It is only my first but I think it is my best.

It took me forty eight minutes and it went really really well.

I hope you like what I have done......................

Now onto Kylie she used lots of different ways and tries to impress you.

Kylie used her time not just to teach me but to show you what she can do.

 I hope that you like..........

                    

                                              Kylie's    Elephants.

Like it? Well put them together. They make awesome friends.

      

 TEYA

--------------------

 

Thanks Teya, you were fantastic as my first guest blogger. It was a lot of fun doing these with you this morning. They look like they are great friends!

 

 

The template we used for these cute elephants can be found at http://krokotak.com/2013/11/squared-elephants/. 

The Diva's Weekly Zentangle Challenge #225

Quandery, Limpitz, Sooflowers and Ahh. With colour!

This week there is a guest blogger - Jen Crutchfield CZT - over at www.iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com. The challenge is to use colour, perhaps 2 or 3 colours you don't normally use or think go together. I stretched myself a little with this one, choosing orange and green, which I wouldn't normally put together (at least not with other colours as well). Sometimes it's hard to know when to stop and I'm not sure if I went a little too far with the colour on this one. I actually quite like the two colours together though.

Lots of journals on the go...

I've been journaling quite a lot lately. I have always written quite a lot but since beginning to do zentangles I'm doing a lot more visual journaling too. Then there's also the online things like this blog and my other one, www.pausingforsmallstones.blogspot.com. I'm a regular rather than a daily journaller. Some days I write or draw more than once a day, other times it might be days (or longer) between journaling. I began thinking about how I journal this morning as I have signed up for an online course (Lisa Sonora's FLOW: 30 day journal project). I printed out the first three days of prompts this morning. What wonderful and inspiring ideas! I will be dipping in and out of these wonderful ideas and choosing some to explore deeper. I would love to do it all but life is rather busy at the moment and it's not feasible. That doesn't mean I have to miss out altogether though!

I've been journaling (on and off) for quite a long time. At the moment I have 4 journals that I am using regularly (almost daily). I was thinking about all this as well as what my six words would be for Six Word Saturday and came up with

 

Lots of journals on the go...

 

 

 

 

Some of my writing/drawing is for my eyes only and this is really valuable. The green spiral book and the visual journal are more public and I do show others what I have done in them. I use the green one for drawing ideas and practising tangles while I am learning them. The visual diary is mostly zentangle 'tiles'. Here are a couple of my latest ones -

 

 

For Adele Bruno's It's a String Thing #99

 

This was going to be part of a bigger piece but after drawing this I wanted to stop.



 The brown book is mainly used for writing poetry. It's where I scribble down ideas and work on poems. There's lots of repetition and lots of crossing out, rearranging. I feel like I need an A4 size book for this. I bought a smaller one recently as this one is nearly full but gave it away as it felt too small. I also really want it to have the elastic closing. The butterfly book was given to me by my daughter late last year when I needed a new journal. It's my main writing journal and also contains ideas for poems as well as various other things - lines I love in books, things I've done, feelings, etc. It has blank brown pages. I like to change what type of journal I write in. Sometimes lined (although often I don't keep to the lines) and other times blank like this one. I tend to doodle more in the blank ones.

I'm looking forward to receiving the next email prompts for the journaling course and continuing to enjoy all the creativity.

 





Tangle with Y-H-A

You can't hurry Hurry! This week for Diane and Carolien's Weekly Zentangle Challenge the letters are Y, H and A. One of the patterns I chose is Hurry. I found I had to really concentrate to get the lines straight and not bumping into each other. It looks quite effective I think. I try to choose original patterns but now that I've done a reasonable amount of tangling there are some letters that I have to look further afield for. For Y this week I chose Lianne Woods' pattern YNY. A simple but effective one with lots of possibilities. I don't love how it turned out on this tile but it is one I will be playing with more. The other tangle I chose is Ambler. Lots of fun - spirals are great to draw. I can imagine playing with this one more too.

Anyway, here's my tile -

Now to begin L, Q and D!

The Diva's Weekly Zentangle Challenge #224

I use Tipple quite a lot, usually for those little spaces I want to fill. It's not a pattern I am likely to choose for a monotangle so this week's challenge from the Diva was a bit of a challenge for me. I traced around a large hexagonal button a few times then - lots of Tipple.

Laura is away from her blog (www.iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com) for a while, enjoying Summer with her family. I was glad to read that there will be guest posts in her absence and I'm looking forward to next week's challenge already...

Yes, sometimes and other times No.

It's been a busy week for me, with a couple of particularly exciting days. One was a first day working at a new school. I was very nervous beforehand and it was quite a challenging morning but I was very pleased afterwards with how it went. The other was a pamper day held yesterday for which I had been part of the organising group. It's been quite a lead up and there were the usual worries before an event - Will it work? Will anyone come? Will there be enough food? What have we forgotten?

I was again very pleased afterwards and it was a wonderful day. There was heaps of delicious food and pampering experiences available, including hair styling, massage, tea tasting, henna tattoos, meditation, make up, warhammer figure painting, tai chi, and yoga.

My main part in the day was to plan and run a table with a few wordplay activities. There was sand, playdough, a quiz (matching quotes to authors), and writing inspiring words on bookmarks (inspired by Patti Digh's book, Four Word Self Help). Stay tuned for a longer post about this! 

There were lots of inspiring conversations during the day. At one stage there were three of us chatting about various things. One of the other women was playing with pebbles in the sand and making a word. I began making the word Yes on the table with some of the pebbles. When I had done the Y and e she turned hers around and I saw it said No. We had a great laugh at the synchonicity! We talked about how they can both be difficult to use at times and both important.

 

My six words for this week -

Yes, sometimes and other times No.

 

Since, I've been thinking about how for some things the answer is not a clear yes or no but maybe a not yet. I'll be writing some more about that soon...

 

See how other people describe their week or part thereof in six words at www.showmyface.com.

 



Tangle with J-W-O

Back again for Diane and Carolien's Weekly Zentangle Challenge. This week the letters are J, W and O. I decided to choose a pattern for each letter and then put them together. After a bit of experimentation (and a couple of false starts), I found they could fit together quite well.
The tangles I used are Jonqal, W2 and Oof.