Weekly Challenge #294

Happy Monday all!

I don't have much to share this week - Artoo ended up with croup and that warranted a trip to the Emergency Room for some respiratory meds.  I kept him home from school all week and monitored his breathing and kept on top of his asthma, so i didn't do much all week long.  

Thursday night i did get some me-time when i went out with some friends for a few drinks and some surprise Karaoke

Here we go!

On occasion I have been known to sing #karaoke once or twice. Thanks for taking the vid @tara.jo #blackvelvet #allanamyles #iamthedivaczt @amigossk #amigos #yxe #amigoscantina

A video posted by Laura Harms (@iamthediva) on Nov 17, 2016 at 8:32pm PST

I was sad that i didn't make it down to the States this week for ZenAgain - an amazing CZT Reunion, but my sistah-from-another-mistah, Elisa Murphy, face timed me into the bar one night, and someone took a snap shot of Rick holding Elisa's phone, with my face on it! If you have pics of me on Elisa's phone, i'd love to post it here. It was really great to "see" everyone's face as i got toured around.  It made me feel pretty cool.  like i was there for a few minutes. ;)

Artoo is feeling much better now, and was able to attend a friend's birthday party this Saturday.  Chewie got himself 2 strikes in bowling and was very proud of himself, rightly so.  I'm looking forward to a little bit more of an energetic week, going forward.

Weekly Challenge #294: Reticula/Fragment Beginning
If you've been following the zentangle blog, or have the Mosaic app, you may have heard about Reticula and Fragments.   Rick and Maria introduced these two terms into the zentangle vernacular in their book Zentangle Primer vol. I.  Let me break it down simply for you.

Reticula is the term for a grid, but not just the square grid like the checkerboard, but an encompassing term for all the zentangle grids.  Or from their book:

In our quest for the most descriptive word, we found "reticulum" (pl. reticula).  We liked the sound of it, and its definition was a perfect fit: "a fine network or netlike structure. Zentangle Primer, Vol. I, page 112 

So with Reticula being the term for grids, fragments, then, are the pattern drawn inside each square or facet of the grid.

There really is endless possibilities when working with this concept.  But for this week - we will start small.

This week's challenge is to draw a reticulum.  I drew a basic grid pattern.  Choose one fragment or fill for your grid, and fill in the blanks.  That's it.  Simple. Easy.  But beautiful.


**EDIT:  Thanks to Deanne Biron, who provided a bit more information for those of you who'd like some more information you can check out this zetangle.com newsletter

Basically: Draw a grid (reticula) and fill each space with a design (fragment) and then repeat that design throughout the grid.  The link above also has some great examples of different design ideas.

i drew my fragment on the back of my tile in the red zentangle square - for reference

 So here is my reticula and my fragment.

I worked onto a tile that was coloured using the Hefty Hack technique

There are ANY number of different fragments.  If you have a copy of their book and want some inspiration - you can find a variety of fragment options on pages 114-115.  If you don't have their book, just draw something in the first square and repeat throughout all squares and see what happens!

Oh, and a very happy Thanksgiving weekend to my American Friends.  I'm thankful for you!
 
Have a great week!

And if you're on the Zentangle Mosaic App or Instagram - i'm @iamthediva - come on by and follow me, and i'm going to be using hashtags on the app for each of my weekly challenges.  So if you're game - use the hashtag #DC294(Diva Challenge #294) for your tile this week!  You can also search in the app for people's contributions to the challenge by clicking on the hashtag from inside the app, or using the search function.  

If you have a blog or host your images on line (like on Flickr or Picassa or Pinterest), add the site-specific URL where your tile is posted to the linkey machine below! Don't forget to link back here so that others can join in the fun! (if you don't know how to find this, you can see my half assed tutorial here) Also, please feel free to come back often and visit the links of those people on the linkey machine - don't forget to leave a comment or feedback, everyone loves feedback. ;)