After a number of days where it seemed I was making no progress of note, I finally hit table top on what I think of as my crochet command center, a sort of “ground control” for my crochet projects.

Just last night, here is how the table top looked:

I had two bags of crochet pieces into which I had sorted like with like which means that the Swatch bag is filled with pieces of designs I have created and for which I have yet to write the pattern, and the clear bag contains crocheted pieces of projects I have yet to complete, but which are not my own design.

There is (or should I say, were) a lot of yarn scraps. At the time it didn’t seem to me that I would ever get to the bottom of it, but today, at some point shortly after lunch, I finally had most of the table top cleared, and the only things still on it were things that belonged there, not the least of which was the template for the center panel and some of the crochet pieces that will fill it:

I even got the dresser that houses my most precious and important crochet tools (along with a secret stash of cookies for those times that nothing but a cookie will do):

One of the things I found along the way was this not quite finished piece that was supposed to be a sheep:

I had been inspired by an embroidered sheep I had come across last year while I was looking for ideas to decorate my crochet crazy pieces, and today, in an effort to generate some finishing mojo and turn my cleaning energy into crafting energy, and to some degree, I succeeded, finishing the sheep:

With the sheep done, I moved onto crocheting more pieces for the center panel.

When I had had the pieces laid out on my deck the other day, I saw that the pieces I had been making were getting progressively smaller. It looked good up close, but from a distance, it looked visually incoherent, so I decided I needed to make a concerted effort to make larger pieces.

Using an index card, I made a template for the projected crochet piece:

and then to my delight and surprise, after just one episode of frogging, I had a piece that both fit and was about the size of three pieces of my previous efforts:

Getting myself back on track has not been straight forward or easy, but it finally feels like I am, and as I am down to the last seventeen full days it’s not a moment too soon.