In the movie “What about Bob?” the title character, Bob, has a phobia for every occasion and is undergoing therapy with Dr. Leo Marvin, a psychiatrist renowned for developing a therapy called “Baby Steps.”

The premise of the fictional Dr. Martin’s therapeutic treatment is that to move forward we must begin with a “baby step” which is defined at Oxford Dictionaries as:

a tentative act or measure which is the first stage in a long or challenging process.

and today, I found myself having to measure my own progress in the equivalent of crochet baby steps.

The first item on my crochet agenda was to weave in the ends on these four multi-color motifs for my 2012 North Carolina State Fair project:

I had thought that I would have enough time to finish them while I waited for my mother to see the doctor who oversees the care of my mother’s back, but the doctor was running on time and I barely had time to weave in ends on two of the motifs. It wasn’t for another hour or so after I had gotten home and walked the dog that I was able to resume work on the motifs.

Eventually, however, weaving in one end at a time, I finished all four:

With the motifs completed, I could focus my attention on the future felted fat bag.

This past Tuesday, I realized that I did not have enough of either the orange or the brown I was using to crochet the bag. After calling the local yarn shops within a 15 mile radius of my home, I came up empty, so I looked online and found that Flying Fingers Yarn Shop in Tarrytown, New York, seemed to have the yarn I wanted in the colors I needed.

I called to confirm and make my purchase, and yesterday, a package arrived on my doorstep that contained the much needed Lamb’s Pride Worsted in Chocolate Souffle and Orange You Glad:

I started work on this project by finishing the last 30 or so stitches of the 15th round:

so I could then move on to the 16th and 17th rounds (crocheted using Lamb’s Pride Worsted Lemon Drop):

which I must (of necessity) complete on my way to rounds 18 and 19 where I will use the color “Orange You Glad.”

It is a lot of fun to have an incredibly productive crochet day in which much gets done and there is a great photo op at the end of it, but most days the progress is more like today, where seemingly small, not terribly flashy, steps move us forward toward our larger goals.