After the excitement of finding the elusive and (as it happens) perfect pink for the pigs in my “If pigs (and dogs and birds and bears and frogs and lions and turtles) could fly” project, late this morning I hit a crochet wall in my quest to complete this particular UFO, despite what could only be described as a generally excellent day.

I had gotten to the point that in order to proceed, I needed the perfect brown for the bear faces, and I while I was certain that somewhere in my stash I possessed such a brown (which I had determined was Red Heart Super Saver warm brown), my efforts to locate a skein, part of a skein, or a ball left over from another project had not met with success.

I checked all of the usual places to no avail; I was about ready to settle on what I considered a lesser brown, when I decided to do what I always do when I can’t find something: I started to clean.

Over time, I have learned that when I have misplaced something that I absolutely, positively have to find, the easiest way to find it is to stop looking and start cleaning.

I decided to focus my clean up efforts on a mass of yarn that in the yarn annex.

It ended up being a fortuitous decision. Not only did I free several balls of yarn that had been entangled in this fiber entity known as “the yarn slug,” I found the start of six of the cluster hexagons with ends in need of weaving in:

With a bit of time and my Clover bent-tipped yarn needle, the six messy circles were transformed:

Also in the vicinity of the six centers were these four future five-round hexagons with more ends in need of weaving in:

Using the same yarn needle I had used for the previous six hexagon centers, I wove in the ends of these hexagons, and they too were transformed:

Reducing the size of the yarn slug cleared a navigable path to a bin of yarn that I had not yet looked through, and there, in what can best be described as a “middle layer” of yarn was the shade of brown I had been seeking.

I grabbed the yarn and a 5.5 mm hook and got to work on making a bear face. In just over and hour, I had completed my first bear face.

Here is the front:

and here is the back:

My quest to finish the UFOs is having a rather large side benefit of bringing greater order to my house. I have struggled with the yarn slug for years now, moving it from one room to the another as company arrives, and although I have, over time, reduced its size, I had come to think that I would only ever be rid of it if I threw it out.

But as I continue in my quest to finish the unfinished, it seems to me that if I persist, I might finally vanquish the yarn slug.

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