My cat does not keep a calender, so she is blithely unaware of any deadlines that might be looming, but she does have a keen internal clock, and she is a close observer of household customs and rituals, and keeps a strict daily schedule.

So when she when she began scratching on my bedroom door at quarter of six this morning, she no doubt thought she was saving her incompetent mistress from certain doom; it was, after all, time to get up. Coffee and breakfast needed to be made, my son needed to be awakened, lunch needed to be made and packed. Did I really expect my cat to do all that?

When my cat did finally rout me out of bed, my dog, Clooney, was ready for his first constitutional of the day. The skies were a clear blue, with nary a cloud to be seen. I must, I thought, have misread the weather report.

The icon I had seen showed a dark gray cloud with lines that depicted lightning and rain; the skies looked nothing like the weather icon.

But within an hour, the winds had begun to pick up, and the skies, although still blue, had begun to darken. I decided to set my crochet aside and run any and all errands that needed to be run, so it wasn’t until sometime after lunch, when the errands were completed and the household chores done, that I sat down and got to work.

My first order of crochet business was crocheting a strip of double crochet stitches the length of the right-hand border of the beach-blanket to be. Next after that were two rows of double crochet stitches added to yesterday’s Square A-1 to make it the same height as the neighboring Square D-1.

With that done, I was able to turn my attention to Squares E-4, and D-2.

I began with Square E-4 and using Red Heart Super Saver deflt, blue, and royal, I worked the the first three rounds:

Then getting out some spring green and bright yellow, I squared off the circle and then bordered it with single crochet stitches as seen here:

Then I got a start on Square D-3. The square is worked in single crochet stitches from right to left, with each new row requiring that a new strand of yarn be added. In an effort to eliminate some weaving in of ends, I decided to try my hand at working every other row using my left hand.

It didn’t work as well as I had hoped it would, so I frogged most of my first effort and started over. My second effort was also slow going, and when I got back to my crochet shortly before six o’clock, the storm still lingered, and I found that the light for photographing my day’s work was not the best, but at least I was able to capture this image:

While this photo does not capture the beach-blanket-to be as well as I would like, I do know that this picture is like life and that however imperfect it is, it is better than not having one at all.