If life has taught me nothing else it’s this: meaning to do something is not the same as doing it, and despite using notebooks, index cards, and the back of grocery receipts to keep my life on track with lists, notes to myself, and crochet patterns, I don’t always get done the things I meant to do.

Such is the case today. I got done some of the things on my mental list, and I did, in fact, get those things that were most urgent done, but there are still a number of things that I meant to get done that I didn’t; however, the second round of rehab of the twenty-seven crochet remnants I was gifted was one of the things I did get done:

But because there was an intermittent breeze most of the day, and because I did not feel like weighting the twenty-seven squares with rocks so that they could stay put for a photo, I did not get a picture of them in all of their glory.

There was an upside to it all. Since I didn’t spend as much time taking photos, I had more time to round up the renegade yarn scraps that litter my house:

And the overcast skies and the sometimes stiff breeze turned out to be perfect weather for sitting outside and tying yarn ends together. So I did.

And I tied, and I tied, and I tied, and eventually, I ran out of yarn scraps, wound them altogether onto the larger scrap yarn ball, and I ended up with this:

— a visual record of the bits and pieces of my life all in one convenient magic yarn ball, and when I am done with the journey of a thousand crochet squares and have turned in my entry for this year’s state fair, I will take this yarn ball and resume work on this crochet ripple afghan, moving forward one stitch at a time: