Yesterday, I spent much of my time preparing for yet another trip. I knew it would be a long day of travel with plenty to do once I arrived at my destination, and when I have travel like this, I plan my crochet so that my time in transit is productive.

Because it was a task easier to complete while not on a plane, the first thing I did yesterday morning was crochet three pieces to fill this gap:

I had thought that I could make use of some already crocheted pieces I had within reach, but as with many shortcuts, it ended up taking longer than if I had just started from scratch with the added complication that I didn’t like the end result.

So I started over, and before the day’s end not only did I have three new crochet crazy quilt pieces ready, I had time to embroider some abstract corn stalks on one of them:

As much as I wanted to get the three pieces embroidered, seamed, and the resulting seams tricked out, I knew I needed to make the piece more travel ready, and to that end, I slip stitched along the edge of as much of the piece as was finished.

This accomplished two things. First, it eliminated the need to travel with all of the colors I would need in order to do the slip stitching around the edge, and second, it gave me a task (weaving in ends) that was easy to do while on the move, and when my moving around found me in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport for a layover, that is exactly what I did:

I got about two-thirds of the ends woven in while waiting for the second leg of my journey, and I finished the last third while in the air. This picture (taken later) documents the progress I made:

With that crochet mission accomplished, I moved onto the next one and embroidered more abstract corn stalks until no more would fit on that piece, I got to work crocheting new “frames” for two largest crochet pieces of the center panel. At some point in the past week, I had decided that the cherry cola crochet rickrack wasn’t working, and decided that Aruba sea was the way to go, and here is how the center panel looked shortly before sunset:

And because I take the time to prepare when I have travel, I often get more crochet done, even if the order I have to do it in isn’t ideal. In the meantime, I will push forward toward the North Carolina State Fair deadline, one stitch at a time.