Today I awoke, bound and determined to finish squaring off the six long-stemmed tumblers for my 2015 North Carolina State Fair project.

I got off to a reasonably good start, but soon got bogged down in color decisions.

Colors that I thought would look perfect together instead looked perfectly dreadful.

I crocheted, I frogged, I crocheted again.

Then, when I thought that I might have exhausted all of the color combinations available to me, there emerged six squared-off long-stemmed tumblers that I could not only live with, but which I liked:

With determination having finally triumphed over indecision, I rummaged through some drawers in search of more artifacts of my grandmother’s life that might shed some light on this woman I barely know, and came across this wallet with a bright red exterior that had once belonged to her:

Inside was her Social Security Card, and an intriguing device designed to hold change:

and while I was rummaging, I came across this box of Crayola crayons that had belonged to my father, and I wondered how I would have survived a childhood with just eight colors: