Strung Out

I finished the last of the eight strips at 6am. The one with the brown stripes using the loops stitch.  I stopped to get some breakfast and then get the craft kit organized for the joining process before beginning the joining rounds on the fillet strip--seen here third from the bottom.  Those bottom three strips will form the panel that wraps around the front of the tote with three squares forming the pockets on each end five squares forming the front of the bag.

The other five strips will form the back/top/front flap of the bag with the ends on the far left here joined to the bottom of the bag.  The bottom being formed by the dark brown Mobius strip that I was unable to get the Twig thread to finish having waited too long to resupply and finding the stores out of stock too late to order online.  By then it was also too late to finish the Mobius by Christmas even if I could have magicked the thread into my project kit.

At that point, nearly two weeks ago I transferred all my hope and effort to finishing the strips and getting the two panels made and joined into the shape of a bag without a bottom.

It took two hours to go around the 44 inch fillet stitch strip with single crochet and nearly another two hours to go around again with the six-chain loops that will be used to join the strips.  Then it took over half an hour to weave the loops on the edge that will be the top edge of the front panel.

It was after noon by the time I got this far.  And about the same time I realized there weren't enough hours left to get all eight strips prepped and joined into the two panels by noon Tuesday, I also began to realize that the subtle hints of an oncoming virus I'd been feeling over the past 24 hours were no longer subtle.

I decided to get some chores done and something to eat before starting another strip but by the time I'd had my snack and cleaned up two days worth of kitchen messes and got the dishwasher running, I was feeling worse.  I fiddled around with email for a bit and contemplated getting this post put up but I couldn't keep my eyes focused.  So I lay down for a nap about 5pm.  When Ed came to bed at 9 my throat was raging.  I fell back to sleep and didn't wake again until nearly midnight.  Still did not get up until after 1am and then only because I'd been awake over an hour and even feeling cruddy I can't stand laying in bed in the dark with nothing but my chaotic thoughts to occupy me.

So I got up and took an Alka-Seltzer Plus and coffee and did my freewrite and then took the pictures of the fillet strip with the edging on and then started this post.  But I don't know when I'm going to get it posted now as we seem to have lost Internet.

This close up of the edges shows the six chain loops on the ends that will be braided to similar loops on the other panel and the Mobius strip and the already woven in loops on the one edge that will form the top of the front panel.  The blue twist tie is holding the last loop of the woven edge until it can start the weaving of the end of this panel to the other panel.  I juxtaposed the two ends of that edging to show how it has bunched up the fabric on the one end.  This was likely due to my having gotten careless about the spacing of the loops and leaving too big a gap between them.  I decided this will be OK for this strip and possibly for the whole of the front panel but I'm going to have to take better care when doing up the other panel.

Note Lost Internet just as I was about to post this in the wee hours of the 25th and it had not come back by the time we had to leave for the family dinner at my brother-in-law's.  I brought my netbook on the chance I could get online there which I've done.