Diva Challenge #191: Betweed (And a couple of random ZIAs!)

Just a quick post with this week's Diva entry: Betweed as a monotangle
It's been a rough week around here: my mother in law's visit from across the country managed to coincide exactly with my 3-year-old's sudden fever, headache and respiratory illness that had us into the doctor twice. By the time my MIL was ready to leave, it had also spread to my 18 month old. My 5 year old is also hacking (although thankfully not nearly so sick as the other two got!) and even I am feeling some postnasal drip and congestion.  Thankfully the girls are both much better now, and neither my husband or MIL seem to have caught it!

In any case, I didn't have much opportunity to tangle until last night. I've always liked Betweed, and it crops up fairly regularly in my unplanned tangles. It was a bit of a challenge to use it as a monotangle, however - which, come to think of it, is kind of the point!
To keep it interesting, I used sharp, square edges in the central shape and round, organic edges in the surrounding shapes. I rather like how it turned out! Moreover, in classic Zentangle fashion, it did help me bleed off some of the stress of the day and week.  :)
By the by, before I learned Betweed, I played around with a pattern I found on Pinterest called Plait. I realized later that the end result of Plait is visually indistinguishable from Betweed, although it is drawn quite differently, beginning with the zig-zag.  Interesting how there can be many ways to do things!

I did actually manage to find a few minutes here and there to work on a little seasonal project: this is a pumpkin from the Dollar Tree

I used Shattuck and Flukes, which I think meld together fairly nicely. I experimented with different ways of drawing Shattuck, and managed to get the arcs going completely the wrong direction on one pumpkin rib - I'm just going to keep that one turned away! :)
I'm not sure if the chrysanthemum design on top of the pumpkin has a name - it just seemed a good way to fill in the empty space.

Finally, before the kids were sick we were able to visit our local science museum and it just happened to be the day of the partial solar eclipse. It was a typical rainy, cloudy October day in Oregon, but the clouds rolled away just in time for us to see the eclipse at it's 60% occlusion peak.

It was a very cool experience for all parties. When we got home I was inspired to try this little ZIA

 This is a monotangle of Vano, a newer pattern up on tanglepatterns.com that I quite like.