Okay--I kind of cheated this week with pulling out the flatware one piece at a time.  Laziness overtook me.  Will I be able to keep this up?  The project is feeling a little onerous and somewhat pointless today...

But I do have service for 16...

I realized as I work on this project that there are two distinct moieties--the art and the story.  

The art part is unfolding pretty much as I expected.  I am doing the drawings and getting into it.  I've been experimenting with different media--I picked up a water soluble graphite stick from the clearance table in the bookstore and found I really enjoy working with it.  It becomes almost silky when you add water.  I also tried working with water soluble colored pencils.  Just the forced drawing practice has been a benefit.

The story part is a little surprising.  I wander around the house to pick out things to draw and discard.  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I did some major clean and toss of stuff last year before I thought of this project so a lot of the easy to get rid of stuff is already gone.  This forces me to really look at items and think about how much stuff I have accumulated.  I did not imagine that this would be the difficult part.  Many items that I have around clearly have sentimental value--the photos and memorabilia--but every object has a history.  It was purchased or obtained by someone at a particular place or received as a gift or commemorates an important event. So as I select things, I find myself remembering the history of the everyday objects that hold a tiny bit of my own history.  It reminds me of all the changes I have made in my life and makes the process just a little bittersweet. 

I have surprised myself actually.  Now I am getting into the second month and I am finding that I am kind of enjoying myself.  The hardest part is finding things to include--and letting myself post drawings that sometimes feel pretty crummy. It also feels good to see things being purged. 

Hmmm....always starts with a great idea.  Then comes the actual work.  I have given myself an arbitrary assignment that I now feel bound by. It makes me think of all of the ways that we do that to ourselves--at least that I do to myself. It sometimes feels like everything in life carries equal importance and it is all URGENT!

Okay...so I had this brilliant idea that I could get rid of stuff and work on my drawing skills at the same time with this project.  I really did not consider how time consuming this project might turn out to be.  I had envisioned that I would do beautiful completed drawings all colored and shaded in a variety of media.  Well...as you can see there are some days that I am lucky to find the time and energy to grab a sharpie and make a quick sketch.  But that's okay. I still think it will be a fun project.