I know that one day, all of the home repair and improvement projects that are the result of last April’s “plumbing event” will come to an end, but today was not that day, and neither was yesterday, but despite these seeming unending setbacks, I did manage to do something that has been on my to-do list for awhile: I put a zipper into a crochet project.

While yesterday, I did, for a time, experience a sort of malaise that left me unable to focus on either finishing my current taco purse project or working out the details my upcoming state fair project.

Overcome by a sort of creative inertia, I reached for my 4.0 mm hook and a vintage brown yarn. Using this Norma Lynn Hood’s free pattern for a cake sachet, I got to work, and with a few adaptations here and there, in very short order, I had made a cake.

Here is how it looked from the top down:

and here is how it looked from the side:

This little “sachet” (for which I made a fitted, circular bottom piece to hold in the polyfill with which I stuffed it) seemed to catapult me out of my creative doldrums, and today I worked with renewed energy on what for me is usually the hardest part of a project that requires a zipper: putting the zipper in.

I have read countless “put a zipper in it” tutorials and bought any number of crochet books solely to have a particular group of pictures that accompany a specific set of instructions that explain in detail how to correctly add a zipper, but for many years my efforts to secure a zipper in a crochet project have been difficult and trying with  my fear and inexperience working together to get me a less than satisfactory result almost every time.

But today (or for at least this once) I managed to avoid the usual drama/trauma that usually surrounds these efforts, and after just one try, I had the two zippers secured to both of the flaps I had crocheted just for this purpose:

and it was almost perfect, except that the ends of the tops of the zipper were unsecured and messy:

Using the same invisible thread I had used to do all of the other sewing I had done, I folded the flaps over and out of the way of the zipper’s teeth:

making things much tidier:

I want to get this taco purse completed tomorrow as it is the last day of July, and come Thursday, I will awaken to what is for me, the beginning of the state fair crochet season.

The online registration will be open, and I will have to set aside and forsake all other projects for the next two months. My hope is that between now and the date in October by which I will need to have my project completed, these small project victories that have accumulated over the summer will sustain me when I am forced to confront my doubts.