I woke up this morning to Day 5 of my Project Linus project.
Would I, I wondered, have enough time to finish it before the deadline?
And what, exactly, was the deadline.
After I got my son to the bus and returned home, I reread the information about the blanket challenge and decided that Friday was probably the postmark deadline, and I decided that as soon as it was 10:00 in Bloomington, Illinois, where Project Linus is headquartered, I would call to make sure.
In the meantime, I worked on the center panel which (as can be seen in this photo) is nearly completed:

When I called 10:00 CDT, I was relieved to learn that Friday is the postmark date and not the “must arrive by date.”
With that detail clarified, I was able to breathe a bit easier, and, paradoxically, crochet with both more certainty and celerity.
The relative spaciousness or time (it effectively doubled the number of hours I have to work on the project) put me at ease, and once I had the major portion of the center panel done, I worked on a panel for the top of the blanket:

and one for the bottom:

And now, I plan to fit in just a few more rows on each panel before it is time to go to sleep so I can get up and do it all over again.
Related post: What I did at the 20th Annual Spring Banquet