This year’s state fair project is proving to be more of a design challenge than most years. Sometimes I feel up to the challenge, and sometimes I feels like I am on what my son’s math teacher calls “the struggle bus.”

Today was a bit of both.

After having both nightmares and dreams about how I would crochet the six long-stemmed tumblers that belonged to my great-great grandmother Hill, I finally got a prototype finished:

While I don’t consider this version perfect, it contains (I hope) the seed of a completed tumbler that will more closely capture the simple beauty of the six-long stemmed tumblers that sit on a shelf in my kitchen.

With that in mind, I got started on tumbler 2.0 and got this far before sunset:

These long-stemmed tumblers which were given as a wedding gift over 156 years ago now, figure into who I am in ways that I will never be able to ascertain.

In the mean time, I will move forward as I always do: one stitch at a time.