My 2015 North Carolina State Fair project is outside my comfort zone on a number of levels, and trying to crochet a facsimile of a piano is just one of them.

It is not composed primarily of pinks and purples and oranges and reds and blues and greens designed to cause retinal damage or at least keep any would-to-be sleepers awake for at least a couple of hours, instead it is (so far) a much quieter palette than the one I usually favor, and relies heavily on Red Heart Super Saver soft white to duplicate the tea towels and clothes that my paternal grandmother embroidered over the course of her life.

Another problem: I have no idea what all of the pieces will be and when I do figure out what piece or pieces I want to crochet, I have to navigate the myriad obstacles standing between me and the finished piece.

Thankfully, today, I managed to past those obstacles that would prevent me from crocheting a piano keyboard, and came up with this:

There are, obviously, a lot of ends to be woven in and trimmed as well as a border and other elements to be considered and perhaps incorporated into the overall design, but the thing I most needed to accomplish around this piece is done.

It was with that in mind that I turned my attention to how I would handle the four corners of this piece.

After I finished enlarging one of the four squares, I crocheted a granny square within which the circle would just fit so that I could design a better squaring off edge than what I have come up with so far:

I got out an assortment of yarns to be split and then embroidered with.

After carefully looking over the stitches my grandmother had used to decorated her card table tablecloth, I decided that I would have to make some changes in order to make sure that my rendition was faithful to the spirit of her work, if not the exact stitches she used, and shortly before dinner, here is what I had:

Summer is, for my taste, going by too quickly, and while I try to capture and preserve a little of the summer that is whizzing right past me, I will continue my efforts for the 2015 North Carolina State Fair, one stitch at a time.