Tonight, after I had taken my photos, and eaten dinner, Clooney and I went for our nightly perambulation, and on our return, I was reminded of just how close summer is when I saw my first fireflies of the season.

At first, I thought I might have been seeing what I wanted to see, but as we wended our way home, I saw more fireflies in each yard we passed.

Summer it seems is well on its way.

And so is the 2014 World Cup.

With the first matches slated to begin on June 12, there is not that much time between now and the first kick-off, so over the past couple of days, I have spent a lot of my crochet time working to finish the pieces I will need for my 2014 World Cup soccer ball.

Using the flags of Honduras and Chile as my guides, after some missteps along the way, I made these two pentagons:

Likewise, the hexagon meant to evoke the flag of Columbia did not come easily, but eventually I worked out the details. While the first effort (pictured on the left) has an odd charm, the second effort (on the right) does (to my mind) a better job evoking the flag that inspired it:

Want to have at least 10 hexagons done by today, I turned my attention to the flag of Spain and came up with this simplified version of that flag:

While I may embroider more details onto this hexagon, for the time being, I am going to call it done and move forward.

Here is one possible arrangement of the pieces for the soccer ball to be:

When I unearthed the soccer ball, I also unearthed two cookie motifs I had assembled in the hopes of making myself a cookie bag.

The pieces had been languishing for too long, and while I had no idea how I would go about finishing the bag, I knew that I needed to do something.

Not sure what I would do, I eventually found these bags for sale at Windy Farms Alpaca, and decided this was an option worth pursuing, so I did.

Here is how far I got with my effort:

There is, as always, more work to be done, but I made progress on two of my Unfinished Objects, and if I can just stop myself from starting any new projects, I should, come August 1, have the decks cleared and be ready to start work on my 2014 North Carolina State Fair Project.