Amandamandala'aladnamadnamA



Crazy post title, huh?! Let me explain.

I was talking to my youngest nephew earlier this week, and he had just learned about the Panama Canal. Which made me think of the best palindrome of all time: A man, a plan, a canal: Panama! I always wished I could come up with a palindrome as cool as that.

Friday afternoon I had a small group of 5th graders working on a special collaborative project in the art room during a smidgon of free time that they had. One of them was wearing a cool screen printed shirt from Hawai'i. Pictured and named on the shirt was the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a fish, the state fish of Hawai'i. I just love the name of that fish! Yes, I can say it! I hadn't thought of that fish in a long, long time, and it made me smile. And made me wish I could name something with a long, unexpected awesome-sounding name like that. (I am familiar with this fish from a unit I taught many years ago about Hawai'i.) Speaking of Hawai'i, I need to shout out a friendly "aloha" to Lois And Earl Stokes, two CZTs who live on the Big Island.

Stay with me, now! The title will soon make as much sense as it ever will.
This week's Diva challenge, to use the Earth as our prompt, introduced us to a new name for Earth, brought to us by the Diva's oldest son, Chewie. Chewie has renamed our planet Amanda. So in their household, they celebrated Amanda Day last Sunday. Sweet!

So I figured if Chewie could rename Earth, I could come up with a palindomic (is that a word? or did I just invent it?), unexpected, awesome long name for my belated Earth Day (aka Amanda Day) post. I love the way Amandamandala runs together and sounds so neat. I almost went even longer by adding the word "day," which coincidently also adds "Amy," to the arrangement of letters
(Amandadaymandala'aladnamyadadnama), but it didn't all fit on one line in my post title bar. And it was just too ridiculous.

This design is a first for me: it is my first Zendala design! A bif thank you to Sandy Hunter, a CZT from Texas. Click here to visit Sandy's latest entry in her tanglebucket blog! And click here to see her beautiful Earth Day/Amanda Day tile. Sandy sent me a blank Zendala tile earlier this spring, and I've been waiting for inspiration to hit. It seemed to me that Amanda Day deserved something special, like a Zendala design. So I took my beautiful round Zendala tile out to my front yard this afternoon, sat on a dilapidated bench that we will be soon getting rid of--thank goodness it didn't collapse!--and took in the fresh air, glorious beauty, and joyful sounds (birds, dogs) of a gorgeous spring day in East Tennessee. And I tangled. In color, for a change--I thought that Earth/Amanda deserved it. I was trying to stick with Earthy-colors, but one of my green Microns is a bit bright! I tried to make it work.
I strove to use tangles that are reminiscent of land and water, plant life and sea life.
I wasn't sure which background to use. So here you see some of my other options...which do you prefer?

This post is now officially too long to write on a completely different subject that I am extremely excited to tell you about... that will have to wait until my next post. So visit me again soon! I have more to tell!
Happy Tangling,
Amy