As I work my way toward the final stretch of the journey of a thousand crochet squares, I have learned that it is not a quick journey, and when my mind wanders to fantastical ideas that could potentially shorten the trek, I am reminded of the Donner Party who learned the hard way that short cuts aren’t always shorter. I suppose I am lucky in that there aren’t really any crochet shortcuts to be taken.

I grew up in California just 114 miles south and west of where the Donner Party met their fate, so the difficult and fatal lessons that they learned were a part of the local lore. My father taught high school, and California history was one of the courses he was often assigned. At an early age, I learned that shortcuts could be very, very dangerous.

In addition to the story of the ill-fated Donner Party, I have a somewhat suspicious nature. I think I get it from my maternal grandmother. Widowed three times, she often found herself a single woman with children to care for. She had come to this country at the age of twelve, and never got to enjoy the level of schooling that I did, so while she was clever, thrifty, and hard working, she needed to be on the lookout for anyone trying to take unfair advantage of her because if she lost what she had, it was unlikely she would ever be able to replace it.

So these are some of the thoughts dancing in my head as I contemplate how close I am to finishing this project while I have still not crossed the finish line.

I spent Monday finishing up work on the first round of rehab of these nine remnants:

Which led me to weaving in the ends and trimming them:

With the nine remnant group looking better, I then focused my time and energy on the twenty-seven granny square remnants that were gifted to me. I didn’t get them all through the second round of rehab, but I did make substantive progress:

I haven’t had time yet to look back and reflect on what I have learned from this particular crochet journey, but for now I will move forward, one stitch at a time.