If the importance of any lesson I have ever learned was reinforced today, it was this:

When all else fails, read the directions.

While I did manage to make extremely modest progress on the granny square sampler, an inordinate amount of the day’s crochet effort went into Square 29 of Jean Leinhauser’s 101 Crochet Squares.

It was not supposed to be that way.

It was supposed to be quick, it was supposed to be easy, it was supposed to keep me treading water in the crochet-a-long while at the same time generating some finishing mojo, and it didn’t really work out that way.

It started off well enough. Having decided that I would work the square in multiple colors instead of one as was shown in the exemplar, I got off to a good start with the first round:

I made no mistakes, there were no errors in the written directions. I thought sure I would finish this square in well under an hour.

I moved on and made similarly spectacular (to my mind) progress up until I reached the fourth round, seen here:

From that point, in my fervor to continue at the same breathtaking pace, I failed to read the directions completely or look at the accompanying photo.

As a result of not reading the directions, I failed to notice that in round 5, there was a departure in how the sides were worked from the pattern that had been established in the first four rounds.

After I completed the necessary frogging and reworked round 5, only to find that the directions for round 6 told me to work a double crochet stitch in a ch-1 space where I had, in fact, made a chain-2 as directed in in round 5.

A close examination of the picture led me to once again frog back to round four, but this time I was able to move forward and finish the more-challenging-than-I-expected Square 29:

I’m not entirely certain what lesson (or lessons) I should draw from this crochet adventure. Is is the importance of writing clear directions? The necessity of time consuming pattern testing and editing? The value of a good photograph when words are insufficient?

I don’t really know what I was supposed to learn, but tomorrow is going to be an errand-free rainy day, so maybe, just maybe, I will be able to sort out the lessons learned from Square 29.