Today I looked and the calendar and saw that I am eighteen days into the sixty-nine days of this year’s state fair season, and just nine days away from the start of my son’s school year and the first of 180 days of getting up before sunrise.

This is a busy time of year, and the days seem to fly by, and today was no exception. It seemed that no sooner had I gotten the breakfast dishes attended to, than it was time to get lunch ready, and while the expanse of time between lunch and dinner seemed more spacious, it too flew by, and before I knew it the sun was setting while I sat outside and tried to soak in what remains of the increasingly shorter summer days and to work on some of the many multi-color motifs needed for the project.

But in between breakfast sunset, I did manage to make substantive progress on my 2012 North Carolina State Fair project.

Eight days ago when I last attempted to quantify my progress, I had completed 7 of the 30 large single-color textured squares needed for the project. As of today, I had reached the halfway point with 15 of the squares now done:

The single-color square are easy because there are only two ends to weave in, and making them is more meditative than challenging. In contrast, the mutli-color square is more complicated and requires vigilance on my part. As a refresher, here is the one (of forty-two needed) multi-color motif I have completed:

Each multi-color motif represents 26 ends to be woven in, and the center square of this motif requires the crocheter’s constant attention. Over the past few days, I have finally started to gain some mastery of the process required to make this center square, and I have completed six of them:

There is still a lot to be done in the 51 days that remain, but every day, I move at least a few stitches closer to my goal, and today’s motif madness will help me reach the end.