Crocheted Crafter's Tote Progress Report

Two of the three 44 inch strips for the front panel now joined
The middle five squares form the front of the bag
while the three squares on each end wrap around to form pockets
in front of the Mobius strip that will form the
bottom/sides/carrystrap

Yes this is still the Secret Santa project.  I obviously massively miscalculated what was doable in under six months.  It didn't help that I waited too long to go after the thread I needed to finish the Mobius strip that is to form the bottom/sides/carry strap.

My sister-in-law who was my giftee was gracious about it but I was still mortified to wrap a shoe box full of the 11 strips of squares with two strips partially joined.  It would have been worse to wrap nothing at all tho.

So yesterday I finally finished braiding the loops to join these two strips for the panel that wraps around the front of the bag.  Turns out this is  going to take more than an hour for each one.  There will be one more joined to this panel. Then once the Mobius is done the bottom strip of this panel will be joined to that.  Then there will be four joinings for the five strip panel and then the outer edges of that panel will join to the Mobius and to the ends of the panel shown above--three squares deep.  Then the remaining loops on that panel and the Mobius strip will be woven along the edges.

Before all of that joining can take place the six remaining strips have to have round of six chain loops applied and in several cases preceding that a round of single crochet to firm up the edge and establish the number of loops.  Each of those rounds takes over an hour.  So that is looking like 20 some hours just to get the panels created.

I don't want to think about the Mobius strip right now.  I messed up my calculations the last time I timed myself around the full 8 feet and also messed up when calculating how many rounds it would take to make the twelve inches as well as how many balls of thread.  I will have to redo all of that as soon as I start working it again but I could be looking at close to 100 hours to get the 12 inches.