The past two days I have worked furiously to finish work on the “put a cookie on it” prayer shawl and cloche.

The intended recipient is undergoing treatment for cancer, and as often happens when one is undergoing medical treatment of any kind, sometimes things proceed without a hitch, and sometimes there are complications.

This past couple of weeks, my friend and and her sister have been navigating events that fall into the latter category, and I very much wanted to get both the prayer shawl and the hat done to provide a small measure of relief from the complications.

So, with the help of Coffivity (my new “at home” coffee shop resource) and Bean Traders (one of my favorite I(n) R(eal) L(ife) coffee shops), as of 4:15 this afternoon, I was able to put this project in the ta-done column — sort of.

Yesterday, working in the comfort of my outdoor office with tab of my computer open to the Coffitivity page, I finished the work of appliquéing the crochet cookies onto the “put a cookie on it” cloche:

Once the cloche was done, I finished work on the remaining cookies needed for the shawl, and this morning I started appliquéing the cookies to the shawl.

By mid-morning, I was able to pack everything up and head to a real coffee shop for a cappuccino to go with my crochet.

Here is how the project appeared late this morning while I was at Bean Traders drinking said cappuccino and appliquéing crochet cookies:

and here is how it looked in the early afternoon just before I packed everything up and headed home:

Once I was home, I continued to applique as efficiently as I could, and eventually when the last cookie was secured, and the last end was woven in and trimmed, I was able to get this photo of the completed shawl:

as well as this photo of the completed “put a cookie on it” accessory ensemble:

Then in the interest of getting it there instead of getting it perfect, I hurried to the post office, stuffed it into a box, and sent it with the hope that it would arrive before the weekend.

There were many other things I had wanted to do.

I had wanted to complete a second coffee cup cozy so that each sister would have one, I had wanted to include a pretty card I bought years ago and found while sorting through things as a result of this past spring’s plumbing event, and I had wanted to write a note in the card telling my friend that Alex, a cashier at a nearby CVS, had remembered me from my last shopping trip when I had been looking for rootbeer barrels for my friend’s sister, and asked me how my friend’s sister was doing.

While grammar with its perfect tenses affords us the illusion of actions that can be completed, life does not offer the same sort of neatly wrapped conclusions that language does, and that is why the present always is and always will be, imperfect.

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