I only went for dinner, but I need up encountering the sublime.

It was late, I was hungry, and, to be honest, more than a little bit crabby.

I needed to work on my crochet, so I had brought it with me, just in case somewhere between dinner and the trek home an opportunity presented itself. There are certain travails in life for which I like to be prepared. To that end, I carry with me the following at all times: nail clippers, dental floss, and a crochet project.

To get to the dinner, however, I had to wait in the gift shop of the Museum of Appalachia. Along the way, I stood next to the display of Jacob’s Ladders, leather bracelets with flowers painted on and a single letter tooled into the middle, nail puzzles, decorations for Halloween, and a variety of small quilted items.

It was the quilted items that kept me from working on my state fair afghan today. One, in particular caught my attention well enough that after I had eaten and was no longer as crabby as I had been, I went back to examine it. I reached into my purse for a pen and notebook, but they had not made the cut of necessary items. As glad as I was to have the dental floss and nail clippers handy, neither would suffice.

I did, however, have my crochet bag handy, so I reached into it and began crocheting the elements I would need to recreate the quilt block I had seen.

While I did not manage to finish it before going to sleep, the act of crocheting some of the pieces cemented the design in my head, and I was able to finish it from memory this morning. Here is what I came up with:

Had the quilted block been the only thing that caught my eye at that gift shop, I would have had all afternoon to work on my state fair afghan, but in addition to the quilt block, I came across a crocheted afghan near the t-shirts I was looking over. The afghan was folded in half and placed on a table as the base of a display. It was composed of four-round granny squares with the first two rounds done in a bright color, and the third and fourth rounds done in black. The border was one round of 3dc clusters followed by a round of sc, except for the picot stitch that was placed over the middle dc of each 3dc cluster.

So, this afternoon, I decided I had to try my hand at that. I had really liked the way the black showcased the colors, and I wanted to make a small something to remind me that this is a project I wanted to try. Using a 4.5 mm hook and Red Heart Super Saver yarn, I got to work, and before dinner tonight, I managed to finish four squares and use a sc, ch1, sc to join them. This particular joining works ups quickly, is durable, and the pieces lay flat. Here is how it looks:

By the time the evening had ended, I had gotten dinner, worked on a new motif, had another idea for a granny square project, and had gotten to watch a blacksmith (who works days as a network administrator) ply his smithing trade.

As for the Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee, it is well worth the time it takes to visit, and at least in my case, it is a tremendous source of inspiration for my crochet.