This past week, Christians marked the first day of the Lenten season known as Ash Wednesday. For many, it begins 40 days of fasting, prayer or other spiritual practices. In his meditation for that first day in Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, Richard Rohr writes, “It seems that we need beginnings, or everything eventually devolves and declines into unnecessary and sad endings” (p. 13). Lent is the new moon of the Christian calendar: a chance to reconsider, reflect and reset.

Today, just a few days later, marks the start of The 100 Day Project, a global online art project that encourages participants to commit to a daily creative pursuit of their own choosing. The project began in 2008 as part of a graphic design workshop for graduate students taught by Michael Beirut.

I have been considering participating in a formal (public) way, going as far as subscribing to the newsletter and making a small donation, but I haven’t been able to decide what I want to commit to doing every day. Part of me wants to focus on professional work including writing a textbook/workbook for my graduate class and diving deeper into AI. But the project is more about making art so I have focused on that area.

Here’s part of the problem: One of the joys of semi-retirement is already being able to do pursue daily practices that would be perfect for the project including meditation, writing and paper crafting. I would like to spend more time on the latter as it tends to get put aside first in the face of perceived priorities. In particular, I want to just give myself space to try stuff out: watercolor works nicely with books, and I want to experiment more with integrating crochet and book making. I may find a watercolor tutorial to help with some guidance but did not hate what I created yesterday by just fooling around.

As for crochet, I have these lovely mini balls of thread crochet in beautiful colors. Just enough to make a few squares. I used two of them as book covers and think they could also make interesting additions to the book pages including as pockets. I have a guide with lots of different designs for crochet squares, and it would be fun to make an album of them. I could easily crochet one square a day, working my way through the book.

I am also wondering how I could use crocheted pieces with paint to create designs for book covers either as stencils or stamps. My homework for the Handmade Book Club group is to create two large pieces of art on paper. Another member will add their design to the other side and then we will cut it up to make books. I will admit to being out of my comfort zone but I have a few weeks to experiment.

So…what I really want to do for the next 100 days is just explore: crochet a little, paint a little, combine the two, do projects for the Handmade Book Club, and have fun.

The challenge is free and very flexible. There are no prizes, awards or medals. The challenge organizers suggest starting small, something you can do in 5 or 10 minutes as day and mostly from anywhere depending on your travel plans. In the end, however, they openly admit that the rules are made up. This is my kind of of challenge!