According to my projects page on Ravelry, I started work on this bag on May 25th of last year.

By the time I wrote my first blog post about the project, it was May 26, 2015, and this was how far I had gotten:

For some reason, I didn’t finish it in June or July, and then August 1 arrived, and as that is generally the “opening day” of my state fair crochet season, everything that was not my state fair project got set aside, and so the pieces of this bag had been languishing in yet another bag for quite some time.

I had hoped to finish the bag on Sunday, but I didn’t.

Then I thought I would finish it yesterday, and again, I didn’t.

Today I began with high hopes tempered by reality.

I made a mistake joining a string of four squares where I did not intend to join them, and that would have (had I left it “as is”) created a couple of unfortunate color situations, so I dutifully undid the mistake and then put it together as I intended.

Then, in the early part of the later afternoon, I found myself so close to done, I could taste it:

With my bent-tipped Clover yarn needle, I resumed my work, whipstitching here, weaving in there, and then finally trimming any errant ends.

And then, after ten-and-a-half months of working here and setting aside there, the project was finished, and here it can be seen in all of it’s wondrous crochet glory:

When I set out to make this bag, I had no idea it would be six weeks and one day shy of a year long project, but it was, and while it took me longer than I expected, it now ta-done, and when the sun rises on tomorrow, I will choose from among my many worthy works in progress, and continue to move forward, one stitch at a time.