Note to my readers: This post was first published on February 25, 2011, under the title “Strike me pink!”

Such are the words Mary Poppins is purported to have said whenever she was pleased, and today, having at long last, finished my African flower hexagon Mamy bag, the words seem fitting.

More than seven months ago, on July 13, 2010, I took a 3.5mm Etimo hook in hand and with my vast store of Red Heart Super Saver yarn at my side, I began work on a Mamy bag.

I began the bag as part of a Bastille Day celebration and expected to finish it in two weeks time and enter it in the 2010 North Carolina State Fair.

But the bag had ideas of its own, and not only did I not finish the bag according to my original timetable, the final details eluded me for many months afterward.

After having worked on the bag most of yesterday. I went to sleep with the hope that I would finish the bag today, but if the past seven months have taught me anything, it is that this bag has a time table of its own that cannot be forced

So this morning, when I awoke to the sound of strong gusts of wind and saw the overcast skies, it was as though my life had become the scene in P. L. Travers book, Mary Poppins, where Mary blows into the life of the Banks family at Seventeen Cherry-Tree Lane. I took it as a sign.

Except for the wind howling outside my house, it was a quiet morning. I wove in ends, joined straps, stitched down casings, and shortly before lunch, and just seven months, 12 days, and 48 hexagons after it was begun, my Mamy bag was finished:

And like Mary Poppins carpetbag, it is seemingly limitless in it’s capacity to hold life’s necessities:

as well as some light reading:

a few of my crochet friends, my phone, a few balls of yarn:

and a sense of adventure:

So, Strike me pink!