Today I got around to completing an errand that had been on my mind ever since I received this postcard in the mail:

As can be seen, this is (was) my ticket to claiming a paper copy of this year’s North Carolina Premium Book.

When I read it, I noticed a new addition to the usual text:

Pick up your book at the
NC State Fair Administrative Office
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM Seven days a week.
Please bring this postcard with you.

I added the italics, but what the last sentence made clear was that the paper version of the premium book is soon to be a relic of the past, and that in the next year or two, the only option will be an online version.

From a purely pragmatic view, I understand why.

The paper version squanders natural resources and is easily replaced with a digital version which the state already provides, but as a part of the last hurrah of the pleasures of a paperbook, while I was on my way from somewhere to somewhere else, I stopped at the state fairgrounds, postcard in hand, and claimed my copy of the premium book:

By the time I got my book, it was mid-afternoon, and the day was beginning to slip away from me without my having completed even one piece needed for my 2012 North Carolina State Fair project, and as one of the promises I made to myself for this state fair season was that beginning August 1, I would not let a day go by without completing at least one piece for the project until it was done.

So, 5.5 mm hook in hand, I rifled through the selection of yarns I had in my purse and worked three of the 22 larger, textured triangles needed for the project:

Tomorrow, when time permits, I will page through my copy of the premium book to see which categories are new, which are deleted, and which have changed, and as I work to bring order to the yarn annex and crochet empire, I will look for completed and nearly completed projects that fit the entry criteria, and get them ready for this year’s competition.