So early this morning, I woke up to this:

A veritable winter wonderland. It even made the junkyard look kind of pretty. And it seemed like a perfect day to get started on the list of 101 things in earnest.

Which, of course, it was.

I was able to cross two things off my list entirely:

I submitted some handspun sock yarn to the Yarn Museum (having to bite my lip the entire time, because I’m completely freaked out by anything that has a judge. The Yarn Museum isn’t judged, per se, but I was all afraid that they’d send me an email back that told me not to bother. See how my lizard-brain works?), which means I crossed #5 off my list. Done.

This bolstered me and I moved on to #32. I proudly introduce Letterblog , which isn’t really all that exciting yet for you visitor-types. I have it in my calendar to update it weekly. And at first, I’ll be doing two changes a week instead of one — I’ll be adding background content and links to boxes I’ve placed, that kind of thing, along with a regular entry. Eventually, it’ll just chronicle what it is that I’ve done that week or what I’m thinking about on the trail, that kind of thing. It just needs more building before it’s really a fun thing to go look at, and I’m all about the fun things.

But it’s there, and I’m perfectly happy with that. It’s crossed off, even though the updates are an ongoing thing.

Lastly, I dug through my cookbooks. I have, like, eight of them, and I think I’ve used precisely two. For anything. Ever. I like to look at them, but looking and doing are two entirely different things. (Much like how I look at a whole lot of patterns on ravelry.com when I’m procrastinating with the actual knitting, I think. Looking makes me feel busy.)

I tried a crock-pot recipe from one of the Gooseberry Patch cookbooks for a chese and potato soup that Carin heartily recommended. (We have the same cookbook. I made her look at it after trying a few things from it before, and liking both of them. She, apparently, liked it, too…)

So after an afternoon of peeling and chopping and dicing…

We can haz s00p!

Ahem. Sorry. You know I had to.

Which brings my grand total for list item #26 to….*drumroll*….

One.

But it’s a start. Only 49 more to go, and I can cross that one off, too. This, my friends, is called Thinking Positively.

The last thing I’m about to work on before falling over into a fully productive-but-unconscious heap of girlflesh for the night is #7. I picked Traci Bautista’s book, “Collage Unleashed” for the art book I’m going to work straight through. And the first three exercises are all related and easy. Of course, now that I’m sitting here typing, I kind of want to go to bed, so I may leave those for tomorrow morning.

Either way, I’ll definitely post scans of the first three exercises tomorrow. It’s going to be strange, working in someone else’s style. I’m used to just standing at the canvas or page and deciding in the spur of the moment what to do. They all come out looking similar. Not repetitive, but with a kind of “voice”, so to speak. They always have. So I’m interested to see whether working from a book with this many step-by-step How To’s is going to end up looking more like Traci or like me, only with a new set of crayons.

I’m kind of hoping for the latter, but I suppose, like learning a new language by immersion, you’ll kind of sound like the person you’re mimicking for a while. And I’m okay with that, too.

* * *

So, to recap, #5 and #32 are done. #26 is 1/50th done. #7 will be well on its way by tomorrow morning. And #38, which I didn’t mention above, but should have, is getting there day by day. (I sort of cheated and started on it early, though I still can only do one a day, so I don’t feel guilty in the slightest. I still have to cull down the culled-down imps, even, so really, I needed the head start.)

I’m chuffed. There’s just something about lists that makes me all squishy.

Thank you, too, to all the people who volunteered, either here, on livejournal, or in email, to help me with your expertise. I’m going to be away from email all weekend, but I’ll definitely be writing back on Monday to take you up on some of those offers. It’s a big honkin’ list. :)

Squee!