For the second day in a row, my to-do list got upended by unforeseen events, but as happened yesterday (and to my own surprise), I was still able to get a lot of crafting done.

Today’s event — the inadvertent sweep of my hand catapulted my cellphone to its doom — required that I make an appointment to stand in line for the privilege of purchasing a new phone, and while I waited my turn to replace the irreparably damaged phone with a phone that had not yet been irreparably damaged, I pulled the Assyrian crochet helmet from my bag, and with the 5.0mm hook from my collection of Etimo hooks, I got to work.

I had finished one of the earflaps of the helmet earlier in the morning, and with no working cellphone to distract me, I made quick work of the second earflap and even had time to make a final round of single crochet and slip stitches around the edges of the helmet and earflaps to give the piece a more finished look.

By the time I left the store (the whole thing ended up taking fewer than 40 minutes), I not only had a new phone that was activated and ready to receive calls and texts, I also had completed the helmet.

Here is the helmet on it’s own as viewed from the side:

Here is the helmet (again as viewed from the side) with the crochet beard:

and here are the helmet with beard as seen from the front:

I still needed to secure the beard to the earflaps, but I also had to make use of what daylight was left to guide my color choices for my African flower hexagon meditation, so I set aside the helmet and beard and pulled out the twelfth and not quite finished African flower hexagon from this series:

After trying several colors, none of which satisfied all of the elements that needed satisfying, I removed the round of dark orchid and replaced it with bright yellow:

I then worked the last round of the hexagon in my new favorite neutral: grape fizz.

The newly minted 12th African flower hexagon is the bottom hexagon in the second row from the left:

Thirteen being a special/lucky number for me, I pulled out all the stops for this hexagon. Rounds two and three (the flower rounds) are from a vintage variegated Red Heart color that I save for very special occasions, and round five is a bright green vintage acrylic I purchased from my son’s trumpet teacher. Here it is with some of the foliage that litters my front porch:

and here it is, part of the ever growing meditation:

Earlier in the morning while I was walking my dog, I had wondered how we had come to this moment where easily breakable objects (like my phone) are considered a necessity to keep on one’s person at almost all times, like a version of that party game where you walk with a raw egg balanced on a teaspoon and try to get to a person across the lawn from you without breaking the egg.

And this evening, while I waxed nostalgic and pined for the first cellphone I ever owned — elegant in it’s durability if not its sleek lines — I came to the awareness that what I love about crafting in general, and crochet in specific is that it is made to both be used and to last.

For better or worse, as many thousands of doilies and afghans and toilet paper roll cozies attest, crochet is endures.