Here's picture of the embroidery I did with 75 stitches. The difficulty with this project was to make something small enough! Thanks to Maureen Battistella for this intriguing challenge.

      I did a one-month check-up to see how well I was doing with the 75 x 75 project. (Mike Kohn did the math for me.) The results were encouraging. I've finished 12 items: I ate 75 blueberries for breakfast, jumped rope 75 times, ran 75 yards, wrote a poem with 75 words, wrote another poem about being 75 (with 75 words), listed my 75 favorite books, gave 75 cookies to strangers, donated $75 to the Applegater (our fabulous neighborhood newsmagazine), counted 75 sheep before going to bed (it was hard to keep from falling asleep before I got to 75!), made a quilt with 75 panels, listed 75 favorite things, and listed 75 memories of my dear late friend Maren, each associated with a place. I am more than 50% there with making 75 cards and with writing down 75 prayers for the environment or humanity. Twelve more items made the list with some percentage done. Looked at from this point of view, the list is 23.4% completed. Not bad for the first month.
      That's a little deceiving, though, since some items take a great deal more time than others. "Take 75 hikes or skis" and "take 75 swims" will take more doing than "list your 75 favorite books." And the smoke in southern Oregon has curtailed hiking and swimming for more than a month. Yesterday was the first long hike I've done since July 14, when the lightning storm hit. But with that hike, I also checked off the third of the 75 swims.

It was so beautiful! I love swimming in Towhead Lake.

      On the hike the day before, on the East ART (East Applegate Ridge Trail), I hugged a wonderful white oak tree.

      One of the things I like most about doing 75 x 75 is the awareness it is bringing – how big a number 75 is, how few good deeds I do, how many more birds and animals I see when I start consciously looking for them. I love doing this!

75 Cookies to Strangers

      It was Russ Mitchell who suggested I bake 75 cookies and give them to strangers. What? Walk up to someone on the street and say, "Would you like a cookie?" That would never work. I almost rejected the idea.

      But I liked it, so I figured out how to make it work. I would bake cookies and take them, say, to my car mechanic or my dentist or some such workplace with people who would have no reason not to trust me. So I baked fifteen date bars and took them to an appointment with my insurance agent. 

      Great reception.

      Encouraged, I baked some butter tarts and gave them to a friend to give to his employees, with strict directions to keep them cold, since I had substituted jam for the raisins or nuts called for in the recipe and the cookies were so gooey I couldn't pick them up. Refrigeration worked. 

      They were a great hit.

      Last week– perfect opportunity – I was invited to a party where I figured there would be a bunch of people I didn't know. I found, online, a recipe for Amish sugar cookies that made five dozen cookies and took ten minutes to make (plus baking time). They turned out beautifully, so I put two dozen cookies in four containers each and took them to the party. 

      It took a bit of nerve (talking to strangers was an item my sister suggested because, she said, she knew it would be a challenge for me), but I managed three times to say to the stranger sitting across the table from me, "Would you like some cookies?" The person was invariably amused by the 75 x 75 explanation and, just as invariably, proclaimed the cookies delicious. After doing this three times, I was out of nerve though not out of cookies, so I left the last carton with the hosts, who were not strangers but deserved cookies. 

      In the end I gave away 15 + 15 + (2doz. x 3) = 102 cookies. Thanks to Russ for the idea. It was so much fun I might just keep on doing it. After all, the strangers in my auto mechanic's shop and dentist's office shouldn't miss out just because I've checked the item off my list, don't you agree?

      Here's the recipe for Amish sugar cookies, which are really good. The recipe is a keeper. If you can't eat them all, give them to strangers!

Amish Sugar Cookies

Makes 5 dozen (or more)

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

1 cup confectioners' sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Directions

In a large bowl, beat the butter, oil and sugars. Beat in eggs until well blended. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and cream of tartar; gradually add to creamed mixture.

Drop by small teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 375° until lightly browned, 8-10 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.

Crafts for 75 x 75

      The smoke in the Rogue Valley and even here on my mountain has kept me indoors for weeks. I'm chafing at the inactivity, but, on the other hand, I had a chance to make the quilted piece using 75 squares,  for the 75 x 75 project. Two people, both dear friends, suggested this item – Mariposa, in Santa Cruz, and Jen, in Eugene. It's a table runner with 75 pattern squares. (The background, fill-in squares don't count.) I hope Mariposa and Jen like it as much as I do. It was fun to make.

     My sister Laura gave me another idea. She turned me on to WordArt.com. Here's my first piece.

There's still time to join the fun if you haven't sent me your ideas. I'm open to all suggestions! And it really is lots of fun.

(P.S. Do you know about my other blog? dianacoogle.blogspot.com. Check it out. I post regularly on Thursday mornings (unless something interferes, as for instance, not having access to my computer until late this afternoon).

Visiting friends, hugging trees, and running on the University of Oregon campus

      Last week I went to Eugene, 160 miles north, to visit friends, especially the one who is leaving for Idaho soon for her sophomore year in college. Thanks, John Salinas, for suggesting I visit 75 friends for my 75 x 75 project. I'm not sure I would have done this if it weren't for your push.

     So I had lunch with my dear friend Vera, who just turned 89, and then, with a couple of hours before dinner at the Thoenesses, I walked through the University of Oregon campus to hug some of its beautiful trees. I went straight to my favorite tree, an enormous beech.

My favorite tree on campus

I loitered there till someone walked by, whom I approached with a smile, saying, "Excuse me. Would you have a minute to take a picture of me hugging this tree?" Yes, yes, yes, and isn't it a gorgeous tree and are you a visitor to campus? I told him I got my Ph.D. there in 2012 and explained why I was hugging trees, and he said, "Oh, what a great idea; I love the trees on campus and you should hug the Octopus Tree just over there and did you know there is gingko tree by the theater?" 

      After a still more extensive chat, I decided to put back on the 75 x 75 list the deleted suggestion that I have a conversation with 75 strangers. Maybe I can do that, after all.

      Next to the large, many-limbed cedar that is called the Octopus Tree, I snagged a young student walking by and had a similarly good conversation with her. (That's two conversations. Seventy-three to go.) 

Hugging the Octopus Tree

      Now, after hugging eight more trees on campus, I have hugged twenty-four trees, though not the gingko, which I couldn't find.

      I had dinner with the Thoeness family, Jen and Steve and their three children, and spent the night there, thanks to the youngest son, who offered to sleep in the rec room so I could have his bed. When I thanked him, he said, "It was worth it to have you here." So sweet!

      Early the next morning Jen, who suggested I run 75 yards, walked with me to the soccer field on the UO campus to run with me. While I was taking off my sandals to run barefooted on the turf, I looked at the length of the field and thought, "Yes, I think I can run that far," Meanwhile, Jen was asking Siri the dimensions of a soccer field. "Just as I thought," she said: "75 feet" – width, not length. I looked at the width. Why, that was nothing! I could do that.

      One, two, three, and off we set, at what I'll admit was a slow run. ("It's not a race," Jen said.) The end point came quickly, and because I wasn't ready to stop, we turned around and ran the 75 feet back to the starting point. I wasn't even winded. Seventy-five yards twice. Thanks, Jen!

Me with Jen, before our run

Jumping rope

      I did the jumprope! 75 times.
      While I was visiting the Thoeness family (five people among the 75 people to visit this year) in Eugene a few days ago, I mentioned that the jumprope I had bought for my 75 times of jumping rope was too long and I didn't know how to fix it so I could use it. Steve brought out their jumprope to show me how to shorten the rope through the handles. I stood up to measure their rope against my height and thought maybe, since the jumprope was in my hands, I could see if I still remembered how to jump a rope. So I took a trial jump. "One!" Jen said, so of course, if she was counting, I couldn't stop, so on I jumped.

I don't think the video will work, but here's pictorial proof, anyway.

At about 60 I began to wonder if I could actually do 75 jumps, right then, right there. On I went, Jen counting higher and higher. At 72 I stumbled. Drat. Would I have to start all over again? "Keep going!" Jen called, and so I swung the rope three more times, and I had done it. I was slightly winded, but nothing worse, and I had learned what good cardiovascular exercise jumping rope is.
      It was a blast. Thanks to my sister Sharon for this idea. It just might carry on beyond 75.

Hugging Trees

I've been hugging trees lately, when the smoke has thinned enough for me to be outside.

Redwood, Medford, OR

I've hugged twelve trees so far (sixty-three to go). My sister Laura, who suggested this item, said it would remind me of how much I love trees. And so it does.

I've also added two poems to the goal of 75, and fourteen prayers for the earth or humanity. Here are four prayers, a poem of 75 words about the 75 x 75 project, and some pictures of the trees I've been hugging.

#14-17 of 75 prayers
May the songbirds fill the woods and meadows as of old.
May the owls meet in parliaments outside my bedroom window for years to come.
May the smoke clear and the skies be blue again (soon).
May the voice of reason and the aura of compassion prevail.



How Big Is 75?

75 is a big number
if I'm hiking 75 miles
or planting 75 daffodil bulbs
or hugging 75 trees.
It's a little number
for 75 minutes of massage
or giving 75 compliments.
If I'm eating 75 blueberries for breakfast,
it's an adequate number,
but it's an inadequate number
if I'm picking up 75 pieces of trash
or listing family memories.
75 is just a beginning
for making 75 prayers for the earth
or doing
75
good deeds.

Redwood tree, Medford, OR

Walnut tree, Ashland, OR

Cottonwood, near my home

Broad-leaf maple, at my house