Sliced Moments

My Christmas/Sinterklaas show, a couple of weeks ago, was a success. The venue was perfect (thanks Sander!), there were enough visitors and it was profitable! It was fairly quiet in the beginning but more people arrived and at one point there was even a queue for the cash register! Thanks to all who came along, and sorry if I didn’t get a chance to talk to you properly.

Early visitors to the Christmas/Sinterklaas Show

Okay, I feel a little weird about this, but I have discovered a new addiction, called Zentangle. When you look at it you think, “Ha, just a fancy name for doodling.” Which it sortof is, but a term that I like is “structured doodling”. To me the difference is that doodling is something that you do while your mind is occupied by something else, a telephone call, a lecture, etc. But Zentangle is doodling with a purpose; for the sake of doodling. Anyway, here’s an example:

The idea is to start off with a small-ish (9 cm x 9 cm) square, then draw a pencil line to divide the square into sections. The pencilled line is officially called a “string”.

The next step is to fill in each section with different patterns (called “tangles”). It turns out that there are lots of patterns created by lots of different people. After a while I’ve found it easier to use those rather than trying to make up my own tangles (but leaving me with a vague feeling of “cheating”).

As my title implies, I find it a strangely addictive process. One of those things where I feel like I’m “wasting” my time, but it’s very soothing (I suppose that that’s the “zen” part), and I tell myself that it’s good for my creativity, which is maybe just an excuse. Anyway if you’re interested in finding out more, this is the official site (yes, Zentangle is trademarked, copyrighted and marketed enthusiastically): http://www.zentangle.com/. And here is a site that has lots of interesting patterns: http://tanglepatterns.com/

For the third year in a row we have a mother duck sitting on her nest in a plant box on our roof terrace. It seems to me to be a strange place to breed ducks as it is 5 stories high. Each time the ducklings hatch they are in danger of falling off the roof.

But as I say this is the third year that she has come back. She probably thinks that it is a safe haven because there is always a crew of humans anxiously waiting for the ducklings to hatch. When they do hatch we dutifully ring Animal Welfare (dierenambulance). They come and catch mother and the babies and then take them all to a park. So Mother Duck seems to think that she is well looked after because she keeps coming back.

The only problem is that Father Duck never knows where the family is taken to (apparently ducks mate for life). After all, they go by ambulance and he has to fly. So after the family has left he returns each morning and evening and honks mournfully for them. But somehow he manages to successfully hook up with her by the time the next Spring rolls around.

Last year's crop of ducklings