This story will date me.

When I was a child in kindergarten and first grade, we celebrated the first of May at school by making paper flowers and wrapping colorful streamers around a maypole. But then, because of the political climate, the celebrations ceased.

The pageantry of May Day was no more.

I think this is reflected in my crochet and my seemingly unending search for a project that accommodates all 16 million of my favorite colors, and no where is this more apparent than my project known as the big rug.

When I began this project, my first consideration was the durability of the yarn to be used. My next consideration was the number and quality of the colors available. After searching through the yarns available to me at the time, I settled on Lamb’s Pride bulky weight yarn, and today while I was sorting through my assorted projects in an effort to assess my crochet situation to better set my craft intentions for the month, I was confronted with the laundry basket filled with Lamb’s Pride bulky weight yarn seen here:

The “big rug” has been through two iterations since I first bought this yarn.

Here is a photo of my first attempt:

After I had begun piecing it together, I soaked a 5 x 19 square strip in vinegar and water to fix the dye. The soak did fix the dye, but as is apparent from the strip on the left, it also noticeably relaxed the fibers.

Then, an opportunity to participate in the frogging event in the 2010 Ravelympics presented itself, and I unraveled all of the squares and started over, the results of which are seen here:

The second iteration was coming along reasonably well, but when I began to piece it together, it became apparent that there was no really good way make secure smooth seams:

It was with some reluctance that I frogged it yet again which is how I ended up with a messy basket of yarn in the closet of my crochet empire-to-be.

But having frogged it yet again, it was suddenly clear to me what I wanted to do, and after some experimentation, I settled on a making African Flower hexagons with a 4.0 mm hook.

As part of setting my intentions for the month and rekindling the pleasure I found in those long ago May Day celebrations, today, I added to my modest, but growing collection of hexagons:

I am going to focus a lot of my crochet effort this month toward finishing this project.

Completing this project will not only free up space in the closet, it will add more than just a touch of color to my living room.