I love crochet, so it is appropriate that I spent a couple of hours this Valentine’s Day working out the details of how I would finish the back of the crochet strap on which all the weight of the purse will rest.

In doing so, I was reminded that one problem that can arise when you design a project on the fly is that while sometimes it comes together effortlessly, other times it does not, and this sangria crochet purse falls squarely into the second camp.

Further complicating matters, my vision of the finished project (a very nebulous “I’ll know it when I see it” sort of thing), has made this crochet journey more circuitous than others, and today that circuitousness was in high gear.

At this point, I don’t have that much left to do, and what is left falls into one of three categories:

• Finish and attach the strap (or straps).
• Crochet any additional pieces to be appliqué or attached by some other means
• Appliqué or attach those pieces.

There simply aren’t that many things to be done, but despite that, I was once again foiled in my efforts to complete the bag.

First, I wrestled with the crochet strap. As I noted earlier, this is a piece on which all the weight of the purse will rest, and while it is, at the moment, empty, presumably once it is in use at the very least it will need to hold a phone, a wallet, and car keys, so while I found the front of the strap quite delightful and the brightly colored five-petal crochet flowers attached to the front do fortify the integrity of the crochet strap a bit:

they aren’t able to do the entire job on their own.

So this morning, I tried several different options, and finally settled on one that I thought worked better than the others, and while I am convinced it is the best option, I have work to do on my executions:

So my efforts with the crochet strap did not completely succeed or fail, but they did (in some fashion) lead me to figure out that I could use these to pieces:

to fashion a zipper pull that would make it easier to use the zipper I installed in this bag, and I even crocheted a pink flower to test one of my ideas for decorating the zipper pull:

and while my pace on this project is slower than I expected, I am hopeful that when all is and done, it will have been time well-spent.