I am now one fortnight into my 2012 stash down challenge, and I am wondering what, if anything, I will get done in the sixteen days that remain.

So far, my only completed project is this fat bag:

Most of the other things I have been doing with my stash don’t make for riveting blog posts. I have been tying short scraps of yarn end to end by the hundreds, winding partial skeins of yarn into balls which then more easily fit into one of my many stash bags, and collecting notes that were jotted down during the making of some other project and attempting to render them into coherent patterns.

Today, started as many of the others have: with an African flower hexagon:

I discovered the joy of this motif when I was trying to amuse myself at an interminable meeting, and every time I make one, I am transported back to that moment of joy and discovery I found in the midst of an otherwise untenable meeting, and today, I finished the seventh of my series of meditative hexagons, and the hexagon that began this series is now surrounded by six-sided crochet compatriots:

With progress on my African flower meditation made, I resisted the temptation to spend the entire day making African flower hexagons, and instead turned my attention to a bag that has been languishing for a year now.

Using Alice Merlino’s much beloved Starling Handbag pattern, I am making one out of the rug yarn that was in a massive stash purchase I made last year.

Once I was able to wrest my attention away from the hexagons, I was able to make measurable progress on the bag.

Here is how the bag looked on Monday shortly before sunset:

Here is how looked today after I had completed three additional rows:

and here is the progress when viewed from the other side:

The most dramatic change, however, was in the interior. Here is how it appeared last Monday shortly before sunset:

and here is how it looked today after I had woven in many of the ends and was ready to set it aside:

This month seems to be devoid of any kind of crochet rhythm or mojo, but my hope is that by continuing to make one stitch and then another, at the end of the month I will find that I have had yet another interesting and successful crochet adventure.