I woke up early enough to make sure my son was fed, had lunch money, and got to the bus stop in plenty of time to catch the bus.

I put away some of the laundry that had accumulated over the past couple of weeks. I cleaned out the refrigerator a bit and got the trash can up to the street in time for trash collection. started to straighten up the livingroom where I had spent a large fraction of the previous 48 hours working on my state fair piece

Completely drained of any finishing energy, everything I did, I did part way.

Then, at some time around noon, a friend sent a text that posed the following question:

Feeling empty without the SF2011?

with SF2001 being a reference to the 2011 North Carolina State Fair project I completed yesterday.

And the fact is, I wasn’t feeling empty.

Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum, and finishing a project as large and consuming as the one I just finished leaves a large vortex vacuum in its wake that sucks in so many things to do it is hard to decide which to tackle first, but after a day spent flitting from one household project to the next, I finally turned my attention to crochet.

I settled on taking the first step toward getting caught up with a crochet-along I am involved with and sat down with my copy of Jean Leinhauser’s 101 Crochet Squares in hand and decided to make square 35. Having used all of my available decision making resources figuring out which square to make I used this cup from Cinnabon to guide me in my color choices:

I made the center with Red Heart Super Saver coffee:

the petals with Red Heart Super Saver turqua (although in retrospect, Aruba sea would have been a closer match):

and the final rounds that frame the flower with Red Heart Super Saver royal:

Here is how Square 35 looked with the cup that was the source of my color inspiration:

After yesterday, today was pretty anticlimactic.

I love making a special project for the state fair each year, but I also enjoy the days in the immediate aftermath when, at least for a few day, time seems to move just a little bit more slowly.