Tangles and Tangents

As I've done in the past, I participated in Inktober this year using the tangles list provided by Stephanie of 7F5R and the template for this year's Stellar Challenge provided by Pilar Pulido @Zentrarte and Sara Ponce @Manosaltangle.  The previous two years involved the Lunar and Solar templates and this one is supposed to be the constellation Zentangle.  However, I went ahead and connected all the stars instead of only having the connections form a "Z".  But that's that, and no one would know unless I spilled the tea.  

I didn't have 9 plain tiles to work with and luckily found the 4 tiles that I had watercolored in preparation for a previous project.  I thought they would be okay in the corners and I immediately, on the first day, second-guessed my judgment of using blue ink, but I went ahead with it anyway.  

Here are some close-ups.

There were a few  "celebrations" during the month of October - you know I like to celebrate the wacky holidays.  

October 10 - Angel Food Day and I made this two ingredient cake that I had been meaning to make all summer.  It's just an angel food box mix (the kind you only add water to, but you don't add water to this cake), and a 21 oz. can of lemon pie filling.  You mix that together and bake in a 13 x 9 pan for between 35-40 mins.  It turned out great but I didn't take any pictures.  We put a dollop of Cool Whip on it.  I've also seen this done with pineapple instead of lemon. 

October 11th was Sausage pizza day so we ordered that for lunch.  I like the sausage that's ground up so I relied on my in-house pizza afficionado to pick the pizza joint that made it that way.  This wasn't sliced sausage, but it was a little clumpy for  ground sausage.  It was good though.

October 18th was Chocolate Cupcake Day - we were at the condo to take care of something and made a quick stop at Anna Banana's Bakery where I got this chocolate nutella filled cupcake.  It was a real treat.

October 21st was National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day and HWNSNBP surprised me with a slice of pumpkin cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory that we split for dessert.

October 25th was International Artist Day - I worked on my tangles.

October 26th was Pumpkin Day and I thought these tangles were very pumpkin-like.

I've looked ahead at the holidays for the months of November and December and have picked out the ones that I'll be celebrating.  That will be my challenge(s) for November/December as we get closer to turning the page on 2022.

I checked back on my posts and realized that I didn't post my Zebra pen, marker, and pencil finds at the Dollar Tree earlier in October.  I like the Zebra line of gel pens and had found the black ones at Dollar Tree a couple of years ago which I used at the sign-in counter at school.  I got a lot of good feedback on those pens and always kept a few extra in my desk drawer because they had a tendency to disappear from the counter.  They came 3 in a package so it only cost me a couple of bucks to supply them on my own.  I've always kept my eye out for more of them and they had a special display of them with the school supplies this fall.  Not only did they have the gel pens in different colors, they also had fineline markers and mechanical colored pencils.  You know I had to try them all. Plus, there was a cool partial zebra graphic on the packaging which I fussy cut.

I used those zebras for this in one of my art jourals.

And I took some pineapple rub-ons (also from Dollar Tree) to make this pineapple mandala.

That's probably enough tangents for now.  There's another Hallmark Christmas movie coming on soon, or is it on Lifetime.  I'll have my pick for sure from now until Christmas.