This weekend has included plenty of baseball, and on my way to last night’s game, I came across this bracelet/strap:

It was on the ground and seemed to have been dropped in someone’s hurry from one place to another, but it was, for me, a talisman of sorts that brought back memories of summers past.

Made of plastic lacing similar to what I used to make lanyards as a child, but in brighter colors and with a pattern quite different from the tight immutable loops I was taught to make:

I decided to pick it up off the ground because I felt certain that whomever had dropped it would not, under the circumstances, be back to pick it up, and I knew that I would at least appreciate the skill that had gone into making it.

It also confirmed for me the idea that plastic lace is the perfect vehicle for making purse straps that are incredibly durable and do not stretch out with use, and as I am overdue for a new bag, I decided that this bracelet/strap is something I needed to add to my visual reference library.

With a nascent idea for future purse straps safely tucked into my current bag that I made in the spring of 2015:

I continued on my way to the ballpark where my beloved Durham Bulls were playing with my scrap yarn crochet ripple afghan in tow, and over the course of the weekend, I had worked my way through quite a bit of my readily available scrap yarn balls:

and made measurable progress on the scrapghan itself:

I doesn’t look like I will finish the scrap yarn ripple before state fair season begins, but at least my yarn scraps will be in one place, and I will be ready to use what I generate from my final push to finish this year’s project.