In my battle to finish the beach blanket-to-be, something finally seemed to have budged loose today, and while I did not finish, I did make what felt like measurable progress.

When the day began, I had no clue it would be as productive as it was. Morning obligations and household chores claimed my time for over three hours. When, I wondered as I walked the dog, would I ever get to my crochet?

But eventually, I plowed through all of my must-do chores and was able to sit down and get to work.

The first problem I encountered was my chosen color for the seventh round of Square E-1:

While I often think of Red Heart Super Saver shocking pink as the kind of color that goes with almost anything (a kind of vibrant neutral), I found that when paired with dark sage, as it was in the above photo, it did not play nicely with other colors.

After running through at least half-a-dozen potential color candidates for round eight, I decided that I would need to change round seven before I could move forward, and on my third try after frogging the pink, I ended up using Red Heart Super Saver delft:

With Square E-1 finally ready for joining, I then got to work on Square C-1 which needed to be joined to to the body of the beach blanket-to-be before I could join Square E-1.

With my munificent stash of Red Heart Super Saver and a few options from the Red Heart With Love line within easy reach, I was able to get Square C-1 done in what seemed like record time:

Then, in short order and with hardly any miscounts or color crises, I joined Square C-1 and E-1 to the body of the beach blanket-to-be:

Which left me just enough time before sunset to get started on Square B-3: