It seems like just yesterday that August ended and September was fresh and new, but looking at the calendar I see that that particular yesterday was a fortnight ago, and instead of today being September 1, it is, instead, September 15 and the ides are upon us.

I don’t know where the first half of this month has gone, but I do know that this morning an hour of it went to my attempts to register to enter my project in the 2016 North Carolina State Fair.

The company that makes the software used for the state fair competitions online entry system made some improvements to their software that they no doubt felt were “features,” but for the end user (in this case, me) felt more like “bugs.”

Thankfully, through my own persistence/pigheadedness and the help of Denise Walker who oversees the online registration process, I was able to get it sorted out, and I did get my project registered for the fair.

With that bit of administrative work done, I was able to turn my attention back to the project itself.

Yesterday I met up with a crafting peep from Houston who was in town on business, and I spent our time together weaving in the myriad ends the embroidery had generated on the crochet crazy quilt pieces for the center panel:

With all the ends that needed to be woven in and trimmed, woven in and trimmed, today, I resumed embroidering the unadorned and under-adorned pieces that remained.

As I took needle and yarn, I reflected on the things I have learned over the past 14 days not the least of which is this: embroidery takes time.

Embroidering while distracted is inherently dangerous. Threads will tangle, knots will appear in places you don’t intend; you can try to rush it, but you will be defeated.

With these lessons learned firmly in mind, I finished (possibly) tricking out this motif:

Got a good start on this one:

and made the first few French knot baby steps on a third:

When the sun rises on tomorrow, there will be just 23 full working days between me and my deadline, and I will need to use that time judiciously because I can truly only ever work on stitch at a time.