When the sun rose on Saturday morning, I decided that I absolutely, positively had to do whatever it took to finish the Sunshine and Shadow project before the weekend was over,so I got out my trusty 4.25 mm Boye hook, all of the yarns I would need, and set to work.

The first order of business was to decide how I would crochet the border. I looked at the edge:

and decided that I wanted the border to accomplish two goals:

bring together the gaps where the corners of the squares were joined

be unobtrusive

After some fiddling here and there, I settled on a slip stitch border.

Here is how the first few squares looked with the border:

Satisfied that this effort accomplished my crochet goals, I continued all the way around the blanket.

In much less time than I expected, I had finished crocheting the border, and in the process created 80 ends to weave in:

Armed with one of my Clover bent-tipped needles and blind optimism, I got work, and by the time I went to sleep last night I had all the ends woven in; all that was left for me to do this morning was to trim the ends, block the blanket, and then wait for it to dry:

If the project had aged the way the child it was originally intended for has, it would be ready to start the third grade this fall, and while I don’t recommend waiting as long as I did to finish this project, there is something very satisfying about taking that which isn’t done, and turning it into something that can be used and brings what I hope is some joy into the life of the person using it.