This week’s challenge from the Diva was to create a tile or ZIA using my “home” as inspiration.  It could be my country, my state, my home town, or even my  own backyard; I got to choose.  I chose Washington State where I live.  I live in Maple Valley, a fairly smallish town in the same county as Seattle, but to the east, in the foothills of the Cascade mountains.  My state has almost every kind of environment you could look for.  We have mountains, coast line on the Pacific Ocean, desert, islands, farm lands. orchards….except for arctic weather, we have most everything.  In my first ZIA, I tried to show most of that.  Here it is.

This ZIA was built on four tiles, traced in an overlapping fashion, and it has 15 different tangles on it, in an attempt to describe the beautiful state in which I live.  The only thing I think I left out is the mountains, because I couldn’t find a tangle to represent them.  Starting on the left, there is Verdigogh and Oke, representing all the gorgeous greenery in this state.  We are known as the “Evergreen State”, for very good reason: We have hundreds of thousands of acres of evergreen trees, both virgin forest and second and third generation replanting.  Also, Seattle, our largest city is known as the Emerald City.  Below  these two tangles is Msst morphing into Raindotty.  No description of Washington would be complete without tangles representing rain.  It rains a lot here; especially in Western Washington where I live; but as my Dad used to tell me: “most of the time it’s dry rain…you don’t get wet!”.  In the middle two tiles there is Squid, Cockles “n’ Mussels, River, Riverstones, and Nzeppel (the unstructured one).  These represent the water, fresh and ocean and sea life we have in our state, and the rocky terrain of the desert.  Also, there’s Shiraz, which signifies the wine country in eastern Washington, but also resembles clams, and Poke leaf and Inapod, beginning description of the agricultural center this state is.  On the right, it’s all about wine and flowers,  More Nzeppel, now structured, Rose (more wine, but also flowery, and they are both surrounded by Buttercup, a lovely tangle that represents gorgeous flowers.  Our state flower is Rhododendron, but since I don’t know how to “tangle” that, I used Buttercup.  This ZIA took some time to do, but I enjoyed every Zen moment of it.

Not only that, but while I was doing it, ideas started to flow….I had to jot them down so I didn’t forget.  I finally settled on a “map” of Washington for my second tile.  Here it is:

First I traced the map, then I used a 2.5″ square template to add some “strings”.  I decided not to try to tangle the whole state, because the challenge would have been long over before I finished it!  The finished size of this ZIA is approximately 7″ x 9″.  The tangles that appear in this are (in no apparent order) Blooming Butter, Chugh, Tipples, Auras, Pokeleaf, Pokeroot, Verdigogh, Geers #one and #3, Chard, Zin, Gewurtz, Rose’, Cockles ‘n’ Mussels, River, Riverstones, Msst, Raindotty, Rain, Crescent Moon, and Cat-Kin.  Oh, yeah, there’s also a variation of Night Bridge, which is in here for no other reason than I oopsed on part of Chard, and had to “fix” it.  Actually, there are several oopses, not to be confused with  “mistakes”, lol.

A few more facts about Washington.  We have industry, and are famous for Boeing Airplanes, Starbucks Coffee, Microsoft, and Weyerhouser Lumber Company.  We also have a large tourist industry, including hunting, fishing, skiing, and water sports. Industry is represented on the map by use of some of Sandra Strait’s “geers”.  The heavy white line running east and west through the state represents Interstate 90, the longest interstate in the United States, which begins in Seattle on the west coast and runs straight through to Boston, Massachusetts, going through about 13 states.  We have two beautiful mountain ranges, the Olympics on the western peninsula, and the Cascade Mountain range which runs west to east and then north.  Our three most famous mountains are Mt. Rainier, Mount Baker (both of which have lots of skiing in the winter, and Mt. St. Helen, which you may have heard “blew her top” some years ago.  We have hundreds of lakes, rivers and streams, and a large number of fishermen.  There is no place on earth I would rather live than right where I am.  I count it a blessing that my parents moved us here when I was an adolescent from southern California, a nice place to visit.

One last fact:  Washington is bordered to the north by British Columbia, Canada, to the east by Idaho, and to the south by Oregon, separated in part by the Columbia River.

I hope you are enjoying this challenge as much as I did.  It’s so nice to find out where some of my cyber friends call home.  I surely welcome your comments, and until next time, Happy Tangling!