It is said that necessity is the mother of invention.

Every year before I start work on my state fair project, I try to plan every detail before I take hook to yarn. I spend copious amounts of time making swatches and drawing diagrams on graph paper in an attempt to think of every possible problem I might encounter along the way and figure out a solution.

Yet no matter how well I plan, or how thoroughly I explore all options, I know that at some point (when I am well into the project) something that was obvious and there all along will be made clear to me in a way a way that I had been unable to see, or I will devise some innovation that had I thought of it earlier would have saved me many hours of work.

In the meantime, I continue with my work and try not to be distracted by just how quickly time passes. Today, I finished attaching a round of 1 x 1 squares:

and once that was done, I immediately got to work laying out the 1 x 3 rectangles that will comprise the next round:

When I wake up tomorrow, I will be down to the last ten full work days before my project is due, and I know that there is an epiphany lurking around the corner, waiting for me.