When my son went back to school this year, I found myself attending a two-hour meeting for the parents of students new to the school’s symphonic band which is also the school’s marching band.

There are very particular duties during what is known as “marching season” not the least of which is making sure that the marching uniform is clean for all performances.

Usually, there is plenty of time to make sure the uniform is clean and in good repair, but this past Friday the band had a football game to perform at which included a half-time show that required marching on a field that had gotten two full days of rain earlier in the week.

Just fifteen hours after being dismissed from that performance, the band was scheduled to meet up to prepare for and then go to a marching band competition.

That left me not as much time as I would have liked to get the mud off the white pants that my son had worn for marching, but as I stood at the kitchen sink scrubbing the offending stains with a toothbrush and the recommended cleaners, I realized I was doing something that my grandmother would have valued a great deal, and I while I doubt that I did as good a job as she would have (no one could wield a washboard the way my grandmother could), she would have at least approved of my efforts.

When I had gotten the pants were as clean as I could get them, I put them in the washer. It was at this point, I was finally able to get to my crochet.

The first thing I wanted to get done was all of the crochet “tiles” for the corner panel that depicts my grandmother’s stove.

The work did not go quickly, but eventually, I did get it done. Here are the seven squares I needed to complete the panel:

With those squares done, I began to move forward on joining the pieces of the corner panels, and had gotten this far by the time the sun began to set on my weekend:

The one consistent thing about state fair season (and life) is that there is never enough time for me to do everything I want to do, but I persist and continue to move forward, one stitch at a time.