For most of my childhood, I walked to school, and the time and space I traversed as I made my way first from home to school and then from school to home. Sometimes I used the time to daydream — I would think about how I wanted my life to be and imagine what I would need to do to make those daydreams come true, and other times I would live more mindfully, aware of each step I needed to take to get to reach my destination. Now that I am squarely in the middle of my crochet journey toward one thousand squares, I am aware of each stitch I need to make as I march to my destination of a thousand squares.

One motif that makes me acutely aware of each stitch are the television test pattern squares:

Comprised of three rectangles made of six rows of single crochet stitches as well as two two-row rectangles also made of single crochet stitches, the motif has a very simple look for something that is so fussy to assemble.

Stitches must be lined up “just so” in order for the joining to be as neat as it should be, and it is helps to do things in a particular order, so after I finished work on eight of the sixteen “television test pattern” motifs I am working on, I took a break and worked on an assortment of remnants that I found in late October.

I started by finishing work on the nine-patch of granny squares in the upper right hand corner:

then I worked my way down the left most edge and then began to crochet some of what I think of as the “interior” squares. By the time my crochet day was done, I had gotten this far:

I am, at the moment, mired in the middle of my crochet journey. It is not going quickly or slowly, but I am at a point that the progress seems almost imperceptible — stitch here, a joining there, an end woven in and trimmed. But eventually all these bits and pieces will add up and before I know it this journey will be completed as all of them are: one stitch at a time.