The last two days, I have been in a the grip of a project that would not let go, but today, the “cookie project” as I think of it, finally released its hold long enough for me to do some crochet housekeeping that has been weighing on me.

As part of my effort to transform what amounts to a crochet dumping ground into a crochet empire/guestroom, I have been crocheting stash bags. The purpose of these is two-fold:

The stash bags provide a way to house the yarn that I have, while at the same time reducing the stash in question.

So one of the first things I worked on today was stash bag 11.

Begun with one of two partial skeins I had of Red Heart Super Saver hunter green, Stash Bag 11 began swiftly but then my progress stalled. However, this morning, with time and my J hook, stash bag 11 progressed from this:

to this:

Having come to the end of one of the partial skeins of yarn I am using for the stash bag, I then resumed the work of sorting through yarn, tools, books, and projects that have been languishing, and I made a decision about one project that would, if it were a child, be finishing up the fifth grade.

Begun as a lap afghan made from a felted merino roving from Classic Elite, my crochet goals when I began this project were much different than they are now:

After careful consideration, I decided I would not finish this project but would frog (unravel) it and reclaim the yarn. Having made the decision to frog the project and move forward, I then acted on that decision and gathered the pieces to be frogged and any other roving that needed to be tidied up:

Once I had all of the pieces in one place, I set to work to bring some order to a chaotic and potentially tangled mess:

Finally, using a 4.0 mm hook and the newly reclaimed wool roving, I made an African Flower hexagon:

It can be difficult to know just when to abandon a project and when to persist, but if I have learned anything at all this week, it is this: sometimes you have to surrender, sometimes you have to persist, and sometimes you have to do both.