As I pick up the pieces of what was supposed to have been last year’s state fair entry, each day I am a bit more grateful that I did not stay up all night working on a piece that had many more than 24-hours of work left to it.

Having realized that my initial efforts at crocheting crazy quilt pieces were not exactly the scale they needed to be:

I decided to make pieces that were, to my eye, about one-and-a-half times larger. After frogging and recrocheting and fiddling with the edges until they were done to my satisfaction, I felt that I was onto something:

And today, I picked up where I had left off, and got even more pieces done:

I was so pleased with my progress, I decided it was time to get out some paper bags and make a large rectangular template that would guide me in my placement of the pieces as I crocheted them.

So I looked up the dimensions I had originally planned for, measured the panels I had previously deemed ready, and discovered that if I made no modifications, they weren’t going to fit together as neatly as I like things to fit together.

I measured all of the pieces several times before I accepted the truth of what the tape measure was telling me, but after another 10 minutes of measuring, I acknowledged what the tape measure was telling me, got out my 5.0 mmm hook, and started making more one-round granny squares:

So many of life’s adventures (crochet and otherwise) don’t conform to our preconceived notions and plans that our only choices are to adapt to the circumstances we face or quit, and with my crochet hook in hand, I am choosing to adapt: one stitch and one-round granny square at a time.