By the time I finally left what had turned into an exceedingly long meeting where the one item I truly needed completed was tabled for another time, the sun had set. I found myself feeling hungry and tired with a half-an-hour of traffic and driving between me and home. So on that drive, I turned my thoughts to a pattern I had stumbled across one day while I was looking through the varied and numerous projects at ravelry (an online fiber community).

Although I am an avid collector of all patterns hexagon, I have yet to complete a hexagon project. Somehow I always seem to retreat to the safety and right angles of squares.

After what seemed a very long half hour, I got home. However, I needed to do something to transition from meeting mindset back to a sense of being fully human.

To that end, I made my first African flower hexagon:

This elegantly simple design was originally published in June of 2009, in a South African women’s glossy magazine, Sarie. From there, it’s popularity has spread. In fact, there is a dedicated flickr group, Crocheting African Flowers, where crocheters all over the world can post photos of their creations with this motif.

Once I had finished my first motif and then looked at others online, I decided I had to make a second one:

In under an hour, I had been transformed from tired, crabby, and ready to bite nails, to relaxed and happy.

This pattern does have, as it turns out, its own kind of magic.