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!