Every year, my state fair project expands to fill the time allotted.

No matter my intentions or efforts, I seem unable to finish even one day before the deadline, and this year is no exception.

I started my crochet day after I had dropped my youngest son off at school for a before school band rehearsal. Wanting to make progress on the west panel, I joined two rows of nine squares each, and then joined those two nine-square rows to each other:

And my day continued like that as I moved from one crochet task to the other — joining squares into rows, weaving in ends, and thoroughly washing/blocking the panels in which I used lots of vintage yarn, which, it turns out, housed a lot of vintage dirt.

Shortly before sunset, I laid out everything I had pieced together so far to get some idea of what was left to be done:

As can be seen from the above photo I have both made tremendous progress and have a long way to go before I am done, and with that latter though in mind, I am going to enjoy a cup of coffee and hope that it is able to fuel the completion of a few more rows before I fall asleep.

And for anyone interested in following the progress of the piece over the next three days, I will be posting photos at my Twitter account as I reach important piecing milestones.

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