A Feast for the Eyes!

Oh how I enjoyed this post! Thank you so very much. I have been cooking for decades. By the time I was 10, I could prepare a full meal and it was tasty; not just food but a delightful experience. I’ve watched many people forget the diets they were following because I had brought in a cake or a special dish to share. And the holidays are not complete without homemade candy/fudge! Imagine if you will the pride I felt inside when my son started telling strangers of my wonderful spaghetti. I don’t use many spices but flavor my dishes by combining different foods to accent and complement their individual flavors. I am delighted when I find a restaurant that follows this discipline; certainly a rare find.

Now the years have passed, injuries taken their hold on my life, and I can no longer stand in the kitchen to prepare my favorite dishes. Enter Zentangle. Oh how I love to tangle! I can’t do it for very long; the pens become so heavy much too quickly but I persevere. It takes me days of tangling, spread over weeks (need those rest days before I can take pen in hand again) to finish my creations. My drawings bring me as much joy as my cooking used to bring.

I used to play piano too which I can no longer do. Tangling also brings the same joy as that well-played piece I’d been practicing. Just like my piano pieces, tangling also takes practice and patience. It is easy but takes time to achieve the fluidity of motion to bring out the beauty.

Thank you so much for giving Zentangle to me-to all of us! Thank you for bringing the joy of creativity back to my life. I don’t know anyone else in my area who tangles (but I’d like to meet them!) which I find strange since it is so vast and diverse. I dismiss those ideas chalking it up to my limited mobility. Now if only I could create my best chop repeatedly! But that’s a different story. LOL

I apologize, my last sentences didn’t post…"After my tea then I dive into cooking dinner, which like tangles; I like to be creative, start out with the basics, add embellishments then move towards advanced creations. This way I have warmed up, and sparked my creative juices to flow freely. I apply this same technique to my cooking like I do when I work on creating beautiful tangles.

Sincerely Cheryl.

I apologize, my last sentences didn’t post…"After my tea then I dive into cooking dinner, which like tangles; I like to be creative, start out with the basics, add embellishments then move towards advancements. This way I have warmed up, and sparked my creative juices to flow freely. I apply this same technique to my cooking as I work on creating beautiful tangles.

Sincerely Cheryl.

Bon Appetangle! My most favorite tangles are: lol Well…“Bijou” is first and foremost; then “Cadent” and the “Tangleations”, “Bronx Cheer” because they remind of blackberries which are my favorite fruit, “Flux”, “Huggins”, “Mooka”, and “Fragment D4 in Reticula R-A1”, and to finish off with “Zinger”; to fill in little places.

All of these are always followed with a cup of my favorite tea before cooking dinner.
sincerely, Cheryl.

Bon Appetangle! My most favorite tangles are: lol Well…“Bijou” is first and foremost; then “Cadent” and the “Tangleations”, “Bronx Cheer” because they remind of blackberries which are my favorite fruit, “Flux”, “Huggins”, “Mooka”, and “Fragment D4 in Reticula R-A1”, and to finish off with “Zinger”; to fill in little places.

All of these are always followed with a cup of my favorite tea.
sincerely, Cheryl.

I have never been a cook but sure appreciate good cooking!! I enjoyed the extended analogies / metaphors here. And while I enjoy a gourmet meal, I do like getting back to simplicity. That certainly applies to my Zentangle practice too; after a complex, convoluted good time on an Opus tile, I take a deep breath and retreat to my black Micron 01 and a small white tile. It’s all good.

I think it is really such a tribute to Zentangle as to how it relates to “all” aspects of our lives.

LOVE this! I’m a tangler, and the cook in our house is my husband. I have so often noticed the similarities between us going about our creative tasks, using our basic knowledge and familiar tools to tweak and embellish, as we get lost in our work. Apart from our walks with the dogs, these are probably our favorite parts of our days. So happy to have the the gift of time – now that we’re retired – to enjoy these gifts.

I learned so much about cooking from you and eventually from Molly, too. I was originally a practical cook, having to work within a small budget, healthy but not so much creative. I learned from you: the meditation of chopping and prep, choosing interesting recipes, and lobbing with cooking as I do with my art. I became more daring and excited about meals. Thank you, my beautiful daughters, for teaching me with such patience and passion. Mum

I loved this blog post. It resonates with me because I can identify with it. I teach Indian cooking and refer to it as a feast of the senses to my guests. Cooking is an art where one plays with vegetables and spices….where no 2 dishes are the same, even when they have followed the same exact recipe. Because the most important ingredient is the personal touch, the love that one adds to it. Just like the mono-tangles that looks so exquisite that comes from different tanglers perspective or the project pack interpretations- each one unique, yet the same as lovingly taught by Maria, Rick, Molly, Martha and the team.

Old information is NOT stale, but rather precious stories that need to be shared over and over again to the next generations, to understand the connections of art and life. Just like traditional recipes handed down from Grandmoms are the most delicious and given a new twist with current trends.

I am fairly new (just a few years old) to Zentangle, and enjoy being in zen every moment I can tangle!

Wonderful appetangle blog Martha. I also love to cook and, of course, tangle . But I never considered the correlation before .

Great blog . Thank you Martha.

Thanks Martha for your wonderful analogy and things I have never really thought about. My Zentangled recipe at the moment seems to be Mooka (I’m known as the Mooka Queen lol), Flux, Bunzo, Hollibaugh with a little bit of Tipple thrown in here and there with gratitude.

Wonderful! I often equate Zentangling to music; same notes, different melodies, use only the best ingredients, etc. Zentangling is much more than the sum of its parts.

Zentangle, over the years, not only kept me calm after the passing of my husband, it also got me through caring for my parents for the past 5 years. They loved looking at the latest tangles every morning. I created an entire wall of glowing neon tangles (complete with a black light) at the hospice facility for them to feast their eyes on. They passed away peacefully in February. Tangling was a huge help during those trying times and since.

I can honestly say that the Zentangle Method has changed my life.

My hands seem to have a mind of their own whether I’m cooking, or tangling. Love both. And hope I will continue to do both for many many more years.

I am not much of a cook. I luckily have a husband for that but where I do find myself replicating the Zentangle method is in clay. In September, I became a new potter and quickly fell in love with how you can take a simple block of clay and render a masterpiece….not quite yet for me but you get the point, lol. I start by appreciating the smell of the clay and how pliable it is. It is earthy and grounding. I then begin to work the clay either on a wheel or by slab, and the piece begins to take form. Once formed, I begin to add the flourishes that give it the final flair. It is repetitive and meditative. I have taken to figuring out how to carve Zentangle patterns to give the shadowing and depth we appreciate in the paper tiles. So you see I do not cook, but will gladly make a vessel for you to do so in!

Oh, I loved it! Myself I am a passionate cook! All the possibilities with the same ingredients never makes me tired. How ever a recent injury in my elbow made my cooking and drawing going slow… which is good too. Apreciating the slow time, the simpliest meals but made with love and adding small changes. At the same pace I have returned to basic tangles and repiting them and discovering new ways of drawing them with my left hand as well. It is not the amount of tangles/ingredients… but the right amount of them.

Thanks again, Claudia Caro CZTEU04 (March 2021)

I loved this post that speaks to creativity in so many forms I do practice other creative forms, but, Zentangle is by far my favorite, and I practice it daily!

Ahhh, the recipe! I’ve used this metaphor for years with the tangle steps being the ingredients. I also use some early tangles as my mac-n-cheese go-to’s. But now and then, I like to ‘spice it up’ with a new tangle or two and therefore some unexpectedly lovely outcomes! Thanks for reminding us about the recipe!

I would have to say that mooka is my “mac and cheese” tangle. I learned it sometime somewhere during my adolescent years. It wasn’t till some 60 plus years later when I happened upon Zentangle that my little mookah Doodle found an entire world in which to exist and grow and grow and flourish in so many unexpected ways. But it wasn’t until the pandemic that I began to tiptoe through Google and found zentangle.com and YouTube and Facebook groups that I began tangling on a daily basis. There are so many new patterns that I see every day and want to learn all of them but oftentimes I need to let my pen do what it is most comfortable doing and that usually includes Mooka with variation, flux, cadent, crescent Moon, and probably fescue.

Willing to take risks & always love trying new ingredients and recipes!

Great analogy Martha!

Ah – baby steps…i keep needing those baby steps in everything I do! With Gratitude, Mary Ellen

I find it exciting to see the beautiful new tangles that are emerging, and I want to try them all! But I also find that I begin to feel overwhelmed with all the “newness” and I have to go back to my black ink favorites and mix them in with the newbies. The original tangles just seem to bring the tile back to a comfort zone that I need!

Every time I’m at the cutting board, I think of you and your Zen chopping!

glad I saw this this morning – neede a boost in creation! Great timing and wonderful thoughts. My love to you all. Florence