The past few days as Irma has moved through the Caribbean on her way to Florida, her strength ebbing and then gathering, it seems to me that she has literally sucked the heat and the humidity from the air, and the temperatures where I live have been more reminiscent of mid-fall than late summer, and while the dog days of summer have past my crochet time with dogs has not.

While the people in Irma’s path were busy figuring out how they would stay safe and get out of her way, I was able to use the exquisite light of the late summer to work on the three squares I have taken on for the Love Across the USA crochet installation in Raleigh, North Carolina.

One of the challenges of the project for me has been keeping my gauge on track, and as a result of having had to frog and begin reworking Square 121, I decided to make a 2′ x 2′ template from brown paper bags to use as a guide.

So Friday, I got out brown paper bags, packing tape, scissors, and various measuring devices and made this:

With that done, I continued to work on the three squares. Here is where I was with them as of this morning:

While I had made progress, there was still a lot of work to be done, so I spent the morning crocheting in the unseasonably chilled air of an early mid-September day, then, in the afternoon, I gathered up my things and went over to my neighbor’s house.

I like crochet so much it’s hard for me to imagine that there are people who don’t, and when anyone expresses even the remotest interest in learning, I am more than happy to teach them which is how my neighbor came to be a crocheter. She has been such a good sport about it, she even agreed to crochet one of the panels for the Love Across the USA installation.

So I headed to her house, crochet gear in hand, and I found myself under the direct supervision of her dogs, Syd:

and Trixie:

Together, the two of them made sure that I did not get distracted and kept me to my mission of finishing my assigned panels, and these watch dogs’ efforts were a resounding success.

I not only finished Square 32:

I made substantive progress on both Square 31:

and Square 121:

I am close to having these squares done, and am looking forward to getting them finished so that I can resume work on my much neglected State Fair piece, and while taking this on has made my schedule tighter than I would like, I am enjoying what I am learning and I can hardly wait to see what crochet adventures await.