Over the Thanksgiving weekend — when I was not crocheting — I found myself turning the pages of a recently purchased book: Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium, and as I turned the pages, I increasingly felt I was living in a crochet fairy tale.

I first read this collection of five essays in the early 1990s. At the time, my favorite essay in the collection was the second one titled, “Quickness,” and it was there that in my current rereading, I found an observation about folktales that resonated with me as it pertains to my crochet:

There is always a battle against time. against the obstacles that prevent or delay the fulfillment of a desire or the repossession of something cherished but lost.

I suppose this struck a chord in no small part because over the past few days I have been working on the crochet crazy quilt pieces that comprise the center panel of what is now destined to be my 2017 North Carolina State Fair project — a project which began it’s life in the August of 2015 as my 2015 state fair project and also served as my 2016 state fair project-to-be as well.

Neither time did I manage to finish it, and while I have high hopes that 2017 will be the year that it is finally completed, I am much more cautious in my optimism as I know from the past two years that things can interfere with the best laid plans.

So now there is always some trepidation when I resume work on this piece.

I pulled out the largest “piece” of the center panel:

and I focused on decorating some of the as-yet-to be decorated seams where the pieces have been joined.

I resumed my restarted efforts with a simply feather stitch along two seams using two of the four plies of Red Heart Super Saver cornmeal:

Then I turned to another seam:

Three colors later, I settled on chain stitches made with two of the four plies of Caron United fresh green:

Next up was this seam:

which I filled in using two of three plies of Vanna’s Choice honey:

Wanting to generate some finishing mojo that might propel me out of the “folktale” amber in which this project and I seem to be caught, I turned my attention to the French knot sheep I began on Thanksgiving Day, and I came very close to getting it done:

I don’t know if I will manage to release myself and this project from the suspension of time in which we seem to be caught, but I will try to achieve escape velocity, moving forward one stitch at a time.