With an immediate goal of “finishing a purple crochet Viking helmet as soon as possible,” I found that life, as it sometimes does, tripped me up here and there. Be that as it may, I persisted, and as the sun prepared to set on this Tuesday, the future (and purple) Viking helmet began to come into sharper focus.

I started my efforts by working on the base of the hat.

This is the foundation on which all of the other pieces depend, so when I made mistakes I had to frog them and recrochet before moving forward. I was particularly confounded by the textured band at the bottom, but after a few missteps, I had everything in order and the helmet was ready to move forward:

Next, I resumed work on the textured crochet strips that are one of several textured crochet elements that are attached to the base to add some overall Viking pizzaz to the finished helmet.

I had thought I would finish all four of the strips, but I ended up completing work on just one more, so when my crochet day was done, I had three:

With that work done, I took a moment to document my overall progress.

I do this for two reasons: one, sometimes when I take a photo, I catch mistakes that my brain otherwise glosses over, and two, it allows me to see how far I’ve come (here is how it all looked on Sunday), and that in turn helps propel me to the finish, but as is clear from the overview photo, I am not yet near the finish:

But to keep myself moving forward on this purple Viking helmet, I can simply look at this photo and my Crochet Affirmation No. 1 to help keep me on track as I move forward, one stitch at a time.