Yesterday when I went to work on the crazy quilt center panel of my 2018 North Carolina State Fair project I knew exactly what piece I needed to crochet, and I knew what color it needed to be so that it would bring everything together. The only problem? I couldn’t find the teal yarn I needed to make this much needed crochet linchpin.

So I didn’t get a lot of crochet done.

Instead, I sorted through dozens of yards of formerly worsted weight yarn that I have split into two strands of two ply yarn and an equally large number of short but useful lengths of worsted weight yarn.

I wound these bits of yarn into small balls organized by color family: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and a small ball of neutrals.

Once the random lengths of yarn were attended to, I put the crochet remnants I had come across into a box so that they can become part of my journey of a thousand rehabbed crochet squares, and as I did that, I came across a remnant that was the exact shade of teal I had been looking for.

Today, with all of that sorting and organizing done, the first thing I did was generate some crochet project mojo by embroidering a bunch of flowers on this light fuchsia crochet crazy quilt piece:

Then, I frogged the teal remnant I found yesterday and got to work on making the crochet the piece I had identified as essential to moving forward:

I wasn’t exactly sure what approach I would take. I could do a few long rows, or I could do a number of short rows.

I decided that I would try the short rows approach first, and was rewarded with a piece that fit on the first try.

Buoyed by my success with the crochet linchpin piece, I used the “crochet pieces that fit mojo” it had generated and crocheted a second border piece. By the time late afternoon had arrived I had two new crazy quilt pieces:

Pleased with my success, I took a moment to get this overview of my progress:

With the crochet linchpin made, I can now move forward with several seams that were on hold, and when the sun rises on the new day, I will be ready to move forward, one stitch at a time.