As I move forward on what is now destined to be my 2016 North Carolina State Fair piece, it is becoming clearer to me that the project never was something that could be completed in under twelve weeks, this became clearer to me as I focused my efforts on what I have come to think of as “the clock panel.”

There was a confluence of factors that prevented me from finishing the piece on time, and one of those factors was the decision to make extensive use of one-round granny squares in two of the panels.

Made with worsted weight yarn and a 5.0 mm hook, the side of each square measures about 1.5″. In order to create the panels as came to I envision them, I needed 320 squares which would generate 640 ends to be woven in, never mind the time to join them all.

The genesis of the idea for one-round granny squares stemmed from the piano keyboard I had crocheted:

Made to honor and commemorate my grandmother’s piano playing, when I set out to make the keyboard, I had no idea how I would include it in the overall design, then, one night as I was drifting off to sleep, I got the idea to somehow crochet notes of some of the music she was known to have played, and that idea as I fell asleep led me to this:

and while it was (to my mind) the perfect vehicle for the keyboard, it was also time-consuming. But it was (I thought) just one panel, and it was (I thought) exactly perfect, and it was (I thought) the only panel that would require one-round granny squares.

And after finishing the piano panel, I moved on to other panels, and things were going along relatively swimmingly when I got to the point that I needed to make a decision about the clock panel, and one afternoon, as I was moving things around on my dining table, which is really my crochet table, the clock ended up on top of piano panel, and at that very moment I knew what I needed to do.

I needed to crochet another 176 one-round granny squares.

And I needed to join them.

And I needed to weave in the ends.

And today, I am very nearly done. All but five of the squares are crocheted and the 171 squares that I have completed are mostly joined, and a good number of the ends are woven in:

and it is, to my mind, as perfect a backdrop for the clock as I had thought it would be:

Clearly, I have at least three or four weeks before this project completely reveals itself, and now that I am in less of a hurry, I can enjoy the process as well as the project.