The past few days I have been working to bring order to the area that serves as my crochet office, and as I have sorted through my myriad projects (both done and not yet done), I have had ample time to reflect on what I have accomplished and what I have yet to do.

I spent most of January working on a project I came to call “Rhapsody in Gray.” I had meant for it to be a Christmas present for the previous year, but as often happens during the holidays, I got behind on my projects, and I packed up the few squares I had finished, wrapped them up, and gave those as a sort of Christmas present promise.

Then, during what ended up being a long alternately snowy and icy January, I worked the squares, stitch by stitch, and just three days into February, it was officially, “ta-done”:

All that working in one color (and a neutral at that!), left me wanting to crochet in every color of the rainbow, and there were two as yet unfinished projects that presented themselves to me.

The first was inspired by a delightful crochet elephant pattern that prompted me to work toward crocheting 101 elephants in honor of my fourth grade self’s favorite joke book. I have yet to finish the elephants, but I do have all of the pieces in one shoebox waiting for me to return and finish it:

The other motif that captured my imagination and hooks was a boho crochet heart. I had no particular plan in mind, and the project morphed from these two hearts:

to this not-quite-completed boho heart mandala:

Somewhere in there, I decided I needed a granny square bag, and I began by making the first round of the granny squares:

At the time I had no idea where I was going with these bits, but eventually, I finished not one bag, but three:

The next big thing to come along was a crochet tension regulator. I had seen one on Facebook and decided it was just what I needed to keep my tension more regular. So I made one for myself:

and documented it with this tutorial.

The crochet tension regulator was a tremendous help (and saved my left index finger) as I worked on two granny square baskets to help me organize stuff. I finished the first one sometime in May:

and began work on the second while I was on the road to Huntsville to take my youngest son to Space Camp:

By late June I began to wrestle with entropy, and in my efforts to organize myself, I made a “good enough” corner-to-corner shelf liner:

and then, with my fourth practically perfect bag still not completed, I began work on a fifth inspired by my cousin Lois’s interest in flamingos:

Then I set everything aside and worked to finish a shawl for my mother’s long-lost cousin:

and then, in celebration of Shark Week, I devised this (to my mind) delightfully impudent shark flower:

By now, it was time to start on my state fair project, an afghan dedicated to my paternal grandmother’s voice, and despite working on it as much as time would permit, I only got this far by the state fair deadline:

I continued work on my state fair project after the deadline past, but eventually, I set it aside and worked on writing the pattern for a baby cookie blanket. Here is how the blanket came out:

Next, I made myself a Josef Alber’s inspired poncho, because I could:

The year has gone by so fast, and I have gotten a lot of things done, but as with every year, there is still so much left to be done.