I was not at my most alert and energetic today, but as with the previous four days, I managed (by the skin of my teeth) to meet my crochet quota for the day.

The last few days have been overrun with the start of things in much the same way spring is overrun with endings. There are rehearsals, lessons, kick-off dinners, and (happily for me) inaugural crochet guild meetings. But the events, however wonderful, all take something I don’t feel I have a whole lot of right now: time.

We have many man-made constructs to help us manage time: watches, clocks, calendars, timers. What all of these constructs have in common is that they in some fashion measure time; none of them can create more for us, and we must decide from moment to moment how we will spend the time that we having, knowing that for everyone, the supply of time is limited to 24 hours in any given day.

So today, after the morning’s errands were completed and lunch was eaten, I situated myself outside with all of the pieces of my 2010 North Carolina State Fair project surrounding me, and set myself to the task of finishing the joining of rows 13 & 14 to rows 11 & 12.

Here is how it looked laid out under the first 10 rows:

Here is a detail:

Once I had surveyed my progress on the project as a whole, I laid out the squares I have finished but not yet used so that I could get a sense of what I needed to make more of:

When the sun rises tomorrow, I will be down to my last 26 days to finish this in time for the deadline. I need to make sure that I do not allow myself to be distracted by things that can wait, because this project can’t.