Tonight I am writing my blog during what is, to my mind, an impressive thunderstorm.

It came up quickly, so perhaps it will blow over with the same haste, but in the meantime, I can hear the thunder, see the lightning, and all things electrical in my house flickered on and off a half dozen times when the storm first started up.

The weather serves to remind me that I am not as much in charge of my universe as I sometimes imagine I am, and today, so did my attempts to design a triangle that meets the needs of my 2012 North Carolina State Fair project.

There are a number of elements that go into designing my annual state fair project, not the least of which is figuring out what motifs I will make, and how I will make them.

For last year’s state fair project, I stuck with what has become my now trusty Bauhaus block technique:

I like working with the Bauhaus blocks because while time consuming, they are relatively simple to make, and the pieces fit together well and are easy to join.

But since I made last year’s piece, I also made this Textured Squares afghan that is based (with a few alterations) on a pattern in Maggy Ramsay’s Magic Motif Crochet:

I loved the texture that this stitch pattern created, and when I was settling on a design for the square for this year’s Amish quilt inspired entry, this construction method seemed as though it would be perfect

But using this technique to make a right isosceles triangle has proved to be a challenge. Having frogged every other one of my efforts, this is what I was left with at the end of the day:

Clearly, I have some work left to do on the design of this triangle, but my hope is that all of the mistakes I make along the way will eventually lead me to well constructed, perfectly fitted solution.