Today was a challenge in ways I had not expected.

I went to bed last night with a list of things in my head of what I neededto do in the morning — a morning set to begin as most Mondays do, at 5:30.

But early in the day, the reality of facts on the ground overrode my fantasy mental to-do list. Eventually, however, I got back on track and while I did not complete everything on my original to-do list, I got done a lot of things I wanted to, not the least of which was finishing all but the earflaps on the crochet Assyrian helmet I began last Friday:

As I was using a different yarn than the one called for in the pattern, I ended up with a somewhat different gauge. While I technically crocheted the S/M helmet, it ended up fitting more like the large. Additionally, I had to eliminate rows 36 through 40 so that the helmet did not cover the eyes and reach the nose of the wearer.

Buoyed by my success finishing a major part of the helmet, I turned my attention to the beard, and after a small bit of frogging as a result of having gotten the count wrong on the fifth row, I made good progress and before I knew it, the beard was done:

Here is how the two major pieces look together:

By now, I was running a bit short of time. My son had a trumpet lesson, and we had errands we needed to run before hand, so this was as far as I got with my twelfth African flower hexagon motif before we needed to head out with enough time to complete the errands and navigate traffic:

I don’t know how I will fare with tomorrow’s to-do list, but even if the new day doesn’t go as planned, I will cross my fingers and hope that it is as productive as today was.