How we mark the passage of time is a function of how we think about time and, more to the point, how we mark our calendars.  Most people dance along the path of time from marker to marker, from important date to the next important date.  For most people the primary markers are holidays. Conveniently most calendars come factory-loaded with the generally recognized, politically correct holidays on-board.  Isn’t it grand how practically every month of a new calendar already has at least one red-circle day already on it.

The exception is August.  Poor August has nothing to commend it.  (I think that’s why most people including the entire population of Europe take the entire month of August off for vacation since nothing else is going on.) Granted, not every date so noted is a true holiday or cause for reverence or celebration.  Those official temporal high-points are strictly for the unimaginative and for the purveyors of greeting cards.

We tend to red-circle our own personal important dates.  Birthdays.  Anniversaries.  These markers serve merely as reminders, and do not necessarily indicate any joy or anticipation for the dates. I stand in awe of those busy people who are compelled to micro-manage their time dances; those for whom a monthly calendar does not provide sufficient space for the noting of stuff, meetings, calls, reminders and admonitions and they have to keep an hourly appointment book or journal.  Me, I’m good with the twelve pages a year.

You’d think that as a free-lance crochet designer I would dance to the tune of design deadlines, an endless progression of due dates.  You’d be mostly correct.  When, like me, you’re massively disorganized, flying solo and blind and work at home in your pajamas, you must have blatant, harsh, hard copy reminders of what’s owed to whom and when they expect it.  Certain times of the year all I can see are angry, inflamed due dates to the point where actual holidays are obscured by the red ink.  But since I have little respect for deadlines (ask any of my employers!) there are no longer any red due date circles on my calendar because, as peripatetic as they tend to be, the circles keep getting crossed out and moved.  Trust me, it becomes a mess.  Shouldn’t there be split rings for calendars?

What then, you might ask, are my current markers?  Non-due dates, naturally.  Happy dates.  I gleefully red-circle the season premiers of my favorite TV shows as well as the few cherished times when I am allowed, even required to run away from my work at home.  In other words, crochet road trips.

So it is with giddy guilty pleasure that I approach the next red circle, the Crochet Guild of America conference in Greensboro, NC.  WOWSERS, only a few days to go and I’m not even packed.  This conference, 21-25 September, hosts the CGOA 2011 Crochet Design Competition, which I am producing.    I will be arriving with a sleigh… uh, station wagon… full of 115 wildly creative, potentially award-wining design entries as well as my own seriously over-packed luggage.  Keep watching here and at the CGOA Now blog for the announcement of the winners following the Awards Ceremony on Thursday evening.

My goal is to load the car in such an efficient manner that I’ll be able to see out the rear hatch.  Yeah, right. That’ll be me waving fond farewell to my drudgery and my dog as I tool down the interstate and head for the bustle and camaraderie (and yarn and wine and chocolate cake) that never fails to accompany every CGOA conference.  If you’ve got a red circle around the date, too, then I guess I’ll see you there.