Some aspects of crafting lend themselves to being done quickly; others do not, and this morning, when I got to work on my current front-burner crochet project, I found that I needed to channel some inner calm so that I could begin the Zen crochet part of the two crochet Viking helmets I am working on.

I think of them as the “dueling” crochet Viking helmets, because although I am using the same colors (red and gray) in each helmet, I have worked one with red as the base color and gray as the accent, the other other with gray as the base color and red as the accent.

When I got to my work this morning the task that awaited me was that of appliquéing to contrasting pieces to the base of each helmet. There were two helmets to choose from, but I could still only work one at a time. I had to choose one or the other so that I could get started, and I decided on the gray with red:

While enthusiasm can get you through just about any crochet stitch, appliqué is a creature of another sort.

Any kind of appliqué requires an attention to detail, and in addition to attention, it also helps to be calm.

When you are calm, it is easier to make good decisions–like where to put the next stitch as you tack down the piece of crochet to be appliquéd.

Staying calm also helps you see things as they are, so that you notice when the piece you are appliquéing is in the wrong place before you have a gazillion stitches to be undone in order to rework it.

But despite the fact that I am a little bit “zen” challenged, I did make progress, and eventually, I had the gray and red Viking hat almost all done:

and since I had decided to work the hats in tandem–using lessons learned on the first helmet and immediately applying them to the second–I had made substantive progress on the red and gray Viking hat:

By the time I sit down to lunch tomorrow, I fully expect that both crochet Viking helmets will be done, and my hope is that I find my well of Zen crochet knowledge has deepened–just a bit–one stitch at a time.