Getting It Together

Today I finished assembling the front panel of the crafter's tote I'm crocheting.  The very same Secret Santa project I've been going on about here since last summer and did not finish in time last week.

What you see there is 44 inches by 12 inches and will wrap around the front of the bag with the nine squares on either end forming the side pockets on the outside of the Mobius strip that serves as bottom/side/carrystrap.

There are five more of those strips of 11 4x4in squares to prep for joining and then join.  They are to form the panel that creates the back of the bag and the top and front flap.  I spent several hours prepping several of those strips today after finishing the front panel.  Tying knots in the tails and tucking them is one of those tasks.  Also the center strip made with the loops stitch requires all those loops to be looped together--12 rows by 9 columns per square.  I decided to take each column all the way through all 11 squares and have completed 8 of them.

The next step after completing that ninth column of loops is to crochet the row of six-chain loops around that loops strip.  The other four strips will have to have a row of single crochet put in before the row of loops.  These rows are done in the Mushroom thread and those strips are woven together by pulling the loops through each other back and forth.  There is probably a good twenty hours of work to get the second panel completed.

Then there is the Mobius strip.  I'm still sitting at 2.5 inches of the 12 I'm shooting for.  I have two more balls of the Twig thread.  Well there is a third but it is assigned to another project.  I finally got my order in to Joanne.com for another six balls but it is not going to arrive here before I leave for Longview which is now slated for this Saturday.  So if I finish the five strip panel and both of the Twig balls on the Mobius while at Mom's this project may have to go on hiatus until I return home.  Unless Joanne or Michael's in Longview have the Twig thread in stock and I can pick up a couple to tide me over.

I attempted to have my order mailed to my Mom's but they were going to add $4 in tax so I backed out and went ahead and had it delivered here.  If I'd been thinking clearer at the time I could have had it delivered to my brother's house in Portland and avoided the tax.

Oh well.  It's not like I'll be short of things to do while at Mom's.  Aside form all the family doings and helping my sister out which are the main purposes of my visit, I'll have at least a dozen unfinished fiber art projects with me.  I'm seriously considering make 2013 all about finishing WIP--fiber art, fiction, file organizing and backup, family photo scan and various others difficult to label.

I also have several ARCs to read and a number of reviews, author interviews and author guest posts scheduled for the next couple of months.