Back in the saddle

It has been, to say the least, a very hectic week, and I wasn’t sure that I would be able to get back in the saddle with the work to be done on my state fair project.

Tuesday I found myself crocheting in the Denver airport while waiting for a flight, and yesterday, just five days later, I was outside the Raleigh Convention Center surveying the unveiling of the finished piece of which my recent efforts were a part:

crochetbug, Olek, Love Across the USA, double crochet, crochet panel, Nina Simone
Nina Simone rendered in crochet

When I had been working on the individual pieces I crocheted, I had been transfixed by just how large the crochet pieces were and wondered how they would all fit together. While I had seen photos and video of Olek’s other installations, I was not able to fully understand how these large crochet tiles would all fit together.

I knew that some of the particulars about how to crochet the piece probably figured into how the pieces would be put together, but until the assembly began, I didn’t really know how. I also wondered how pieces that weren’t an exact fit would be dealt with.

As a pretty much “solo” crocheter, I don’t have to manage the vagaries of other people’s gauges. If I don’t like the way something fits, I frog it and redo it, but I knew that there would be little time for that kind of detail, so I wanted to see how the artist worked around the differences that would inevitably arise.

This past Thursday and Friday I got to see first hand how those situations are navigated, and suffice it to say, there is a strategy for everything, and as Olek and her assistant, Tina, have done this a number of times, there really isn’t anything they haven’t seen when it comes to crochet.

So with the Olek piece now in my crochet review mirror, this is what I found on the road ahead of me when I finally awoke from my post installation exhaustion stupor:

crochetbug, crazy quilt crochet, embroidery on crochet, narrative crochet, crochet panels, crochet rectangles, crochet squares, crochet blanket, crochet afghan, crochet throw
My crochet table before

In the hurry of the past week, my crochet table once again looked like a mini-tornado had barreled through.

The things I needed were not in place, and the things that were there, outside of the template, were not the things I needed, so I set a timer for ten minute sprints during which time I would do a specific task, like “put away clothes and shoes that ended up in my crochet office,” or “wind smaller lengths of yarn I will not be using into a ball,” and “take all recently would balls of yarn I won’t be using upstairs.”

I don’t know how many ten minute alarms I had to set, but eventually, the table was cleared, and the Now 2018 State Fair piece was in place:

Back in the saddle with my crochet table cleared and ready for work
Back in the saddle with my crochet table cleared and ready for work

Obviously, I have a way to go before I am done, but I an ready to proceed resume my own crochet journey the only way I can: one stitch at a time.

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