Yesterday I got a good start on my second effort at a Crochet By Numbers training pattern.

I found that if I paid attention to what I was doing and kept a vigilant count of the stitches, it went along pretty well.

I had high hopes of finishing the swatch today, but this morning, as the result of an unexpected turn of events that sent me on a series of errands I had not planned to run (including waiting while a certain choirboy had a rehearsal), I needed a project that did not require my undivided attention:

Enter The Purl Bee’s crocheted stash bag.

I first came across an example of The Purl Bee’s wünder bag last night at Ravelry. I dutifully added it to my queue despite an overwhelming desire to get started right at that moment, and set it aside to make “one day,” and then “one day” arrived sooner than I expected.

Like many fiber enthusiasts, I have what is known in the fiberworld as a “stash” and there is always difficulty in finding a way to organize it such that you know what you have and can get to it easily. I had gone to bed the previous night with visions of a series of stash bags crocheted in the color of the yarn they contained: red yarns in red stash bags, pink yarns in pink stash bags and so on.

So when this morning presented me with the opportunity to begin work on the previous night’s visions, I rummaged through my existing stash and found two skeins of vintage yarn originally purchased (on sale) at the now defunct Person Street Variety Store:

got out my 5.5mm Etimo hook, and set to work.

By the time the choir practice had ended, I had finished the bottom of the bag:

After completing a couple of other nagging errands, I got back to work, and shortly before sunset, I had made substantial progress:

and as this last view clearly shows:

if I just crochet a few dozen more after I finish this one, I might have enough stash bags to organize what remains of my stash.