Today, my first order of business was to get some shopping done.

I had managed to put it off for so long that we were out of many groceries that are for us, staples. So before I allowed myself to crochet, I forced myself to shop so that my family would have food choices that extended beyond the chocolate received at Christmas.

When I finally had finished with the shopping and other things that needed to be done, it was early afternoon. Not at all certain what I wanted to work on next, I consulted my Ravelry projects page which I use to document most of my projects.

Among the WIPs (aka Works In Progress) was the long forgotten, and until this afternoon, long lost bag to be felted:

as well as this cat runner I began work on over three years ago in June of 2009:

I had no idea where the bag was, but I had recently come across the cat runner when I had been attempting to disentangle the yarn slug (a mass of formerly individual projects), and knew exactly what basket the cat runner and it’s pieces were in.

I ventured into the yarn annex, retrieved the basket in question, then settled into my workspace in the living room. As I laid out the in rows I had already completed, I was reminded of the most recent reason I had set it aside: while it is not readiy visible in the above photos, the last time I worked on the piece, I had changed joining techniques mid-stream.

Most of the joins had been done by working a slip stitch through the back loops only of the squares being joined, but the last time I worked on the piece, I used what was then (and is at this moment) my favorite joining technique: a single crochet through both loops of both squares being joined.

I did not notice the discrepancy until I had joined an entire row, and that day, I was not of a mind to remove the offending seams and start over.

Today, however, with the new year thrust upon me and a commitment to finishing the unfinished, I was of a mind to go back and redo the seams that needed redoing so that I could then move forward.

Two lucky things happened along the way:

One, I found the previously missing currant purse tossed in with the cat runner and the pieces remaining to be assembled.

Second, not only did I correct the problematic seams, I managed to join two more rows of squares:

The two new rows need to be joined to the body of the piece, and, as can be seen here, there are quite a few ends that need weaving in:

I know that this work will not go quickly, but I also know now that the end is in sight, and one day soon, my cat will be able to bask in the sun, perched on her very own cat runner.