When I first conceived this project, I had hoped to recreate not only my grandmother’s house as it was in the summer when I would come to visit, but also the feel of the long, languid days that seemed to stretch on forever.

I remembers with much affection those carefree days where my only responsibilities were to stay out from underfoot and keep myself amused.

I had hoped I would have time to crochet, to think, and to then write about what I had crocheted and thought about.

Instead the hurly burly that is my life now does not invite reflection, and the time to crochet and reflect seems to require an impossibly large swath of time that I never seem to be able to carve out of my day.

But I persist — one square at at time — and as this Labor Day break has drawn to a close, I began piecing together the “east” and “west” panels of my 2014 North Carolina State Fair project:

and even got a start on making pieces for the “south” panel, a representation of the covered porch in the front of my grandmother’s house when I spent many hot summer afternoons cooling myself on the shaded concrete which was (relative to the ambient temperature in the sun) rather chilled for a summer afternoon in Fresno:

I still do not have all the details of this project worked out, but I trust that they will reveal themselves to me in due time, until then, I will continue my work, one stitch at a time.

Here is how the three panels-to-be looked when massed together for a group photo: