A second pin joins the first on June’s archive map, and a length of red string stretches between them for the first time. Week 02 is the program’s first colorwork square: bold, simple, forgiving.
This is week two of the 2026 Clutch Blanket Mystery: a free 8 inch pushpin square worked from a pixel chart, and chapter two of The Harlow County File. The pushpin is the program’s first colorwork square, chosen deliberately for its size and simplicity: one round magenta head with a white highlight, one tapering brass shaft, on a navy background. All 1,152 stitches across the chart are accounted for by color, and the square finishes with the same 140 stitch joining round as every other week.
This is the program’s first colorwork square. The chart was chosen for its size: one large round head, one simple tapered shaft, nothing smaller than a few stitches to manage.
Read the chart bottom to top, matching your actual rows: odd rows left to right, even rows right to left, the same direction your turned single crochet already faces.
Carry the unused color loosely behind your work rather than cutting and rejoining; both color blocks in this chart are compact enough that carrying is faster and neater than managing extra yarn ends.
Same 140 stitch joining round as Week 01. Whatever construction method a square uses, the edge it hands off to the blanket never changes.
Week 01: The Magnifying Glass Square. Week 02: The Pushpin Square (you are here). Weeks 03 through 20 publish Saturdays through December 12, 2026.
The property log request went through Denk’s office on a Tuesday, and she stamped it routine without looking up from her monitor. June had expected a conversation. She got a signature.
The 1993 log lived in a different building entirely, the old records annex on Cross Street, a converted feed store the county had never quite finished converting. June drove over on her lunch break rather than wait for interoffice transfer, because interoffice transfer had already cost her thirteen months once this year and she was not interested in donating more.
The annex clerk, a retiree named Walt Brey who came in three days a week for reasons nobody had explained to June and she had not asked, pulled the 1993 ledger without needing the shelf number. He had it memorized. Tag 1147 was right where the digital record said it would be: brass magnifying glass, released to the Kessler family, December 1993, signature illegible, countersigned Carol Voss.
June photographed the page and thanked him. Brey did not move to take the ledger back. “You’re the one asking about the Marsh box,” he said. It was not a question.
She said she was.
“There was a weekend in ninety-six,” he said, and then seemed to reconsider how much a stranger deserved before he’d decided what kind of stranger she was. He settled on: “Ask about the shelf collapse. Ask them to show you the transfer log for it.” He slid the ledger back into its place on the shelf, which struck June as a very specific kind of answer.
Back at her own desk, she pinned the shelf location of Box 47 to the archive map, the way she had the week before. Now a second pin joined it, marking the annex on Cross Street, a mile and a half away by the map’s scale. Two pins. One question stretched between them, and it would not lie flat on a corkboard as an idea; it wanted to be a line.
She opened her desk drawer, the one she used for rubber bands and paper clips and the emergency granola bar she never ate, and found a spool of red string left over from wrapping a retirement gift two years ago. She measured off enough to reach between the two pins. It was not standard procedure. It was, she thought, tying the first knot, the only procedure that had ever actually worked.
This Week’s Evidence: The Pushpin Square
Chapter Two turns on a second pin joining the first, so week two’s square is exactly that: a pushpin, rendered as this program’s first colorwork chart. A round magenta head with a small white highlight sits above a tapering brass shaft, both worked directly into the navy background rather than appliqued on top of it.
Materials and Gauge
| Item | Specification |
|---|---|
| Yarn | Worsted weight (#4 medium). Navy (MC), approximately 45 yards including the joining round. Magenta (CC1), approximately 4 yards. Brass gold (CC2), approximately 2 yards. A scrap of white (CC3) for the highlight, under 1 yard. |
| Hook | 4.0 mm (US G/6), the program gauge hook for all twenty squares. |
| Notions | Tapestry needle, stitch markers, bobbins or small yarn butterflies if you prefer them for the color changes, though this chart is simple enough to carry without them. |
| Gauge | 16 sc and 18 rows = 4 inches (10 cm). Same as Week 01; the chart is built on the identical 32 by 36 grid. |
| Finished size | 8 by 8 inches before the joining round. |
| Skill level | Beginner friendly. First colorwork square in the program; the shapes were chosen to be forgiving. |
The Magnifying Glass Square and Chapter One are both live now, free, no signup required to read, though joining the Detective Club gets every future week delivered before it’s posted anywhere else.
Join the Detective ClubThe Pattern
| Row | Stitch counts, worked in order (32 sc per row) |
|---|---|
| 1 | 32 navy |
| 2 | 32 navy |
| 3 | 32 navy |
| 4 | 32 navy |
| 5 | 32 navy |
| 6 | 32 navy |
| 7 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 8 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 9 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 10 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 11 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 12 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 13 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 14 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 15 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 16 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 17 | 15 navy, 2 brass, 15 navy |
| 18 | 14 navy, 4 brass, 14 navy |
| 19 | 14 navy, 4 brass, 14 navy |
| 20 | 14 navy, 4 brass, 14 navy |
| 21 | 14 navy, 4 brass, 14 navy |
| 22 | 14 navy, 4 brass, 14 navy |
| 23 | 13 navy, 7 magenta, 12 navy |
| 24 | 11 navy, 9 magenta, 12 navy |
| 25 | 11 navy, 11 magenta, 10 navy |
| 26 | 9 navy, 13 magenta, 10 navy |
| 27 | 10 navy, 13 magenta, 9 navy |
| 28 | 9 navy, 13 magenta, 10 navy |
| 29 | 11 navy, 2 magenta, 2 white, 7 magenta, 10 navy |
| 30 | 11 navy, 6 magenta, 2 white, 1 magenta, 12 navy |
| 31 | 13 navy, 7 magenta, 12 navy |
| 32 | 14 navy, 3 magenta, 15 navy |
| 33 | 32 navy |
| 34 | 32 navy |
| 35 | 32 navy |
| 36 | 32 navy |
Pushpin Chart
Square Notes
If your magenta head comes out lopsided, check your carried navy strand: pulling it too tight across the back of the colorwork will distort the stitches in front of it. Carry loosely, checking the flat lay of the fabric every few rows rather than only at the end. And if this is your first time working from a chart at all: welcome. It gets easier by Week 06, and considerably easier by Week 13. The shapes get more ambitious as the case does.
Bluebook: Williams, Rita. The 2026 Clutch Blanket Mystery, Week 02: The Pushpin Square, Clutch Justice (Aug. 8, 2026), https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/08/clutch-blanket-mystery-week-02-pushpin-square/.
APA 7: Williams, R. (2026, August 8). The 2026 Clutch Blanket Mystery, week 02: The pushpin square. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/08/clutch-blanket-mystery-week-02-pushpin-square/
MLA 9: Williams, Rita. “The 2026 Clutch Blanket Mystery, Week 02: The Pushpin Square.” Clutch Justice, 8 Aug. 2026, clutchjustice.com/2026/08/08/clutch-blanket-mystery-week-02-pushpin-square/.
Chicago: Williams, Rita. “The 2026 Clutch Blanket Mystery, Week 02: The Pushpin Square.” Clutch Justice, August 8, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/08/clutch-blanket-mystery-week-02-pushpin-square/.
Continue Your Investigation
If this pattern raised more questions, use the Clutch Justice ecosystem to keep going.
