Fiber Monday

 

In Which Seeeeeecret Project is finally updated!

I'm sure you're tired by now of all my excuses so behold:

One Very Annoying Strap.

The strap above is made entirely with slip stitches and that is why it took for-freaking-ever. But now it's... done? Maybe? We'll see when I start to attach things. I also started a similarly slip-stitched loop for the top of the mushroom cap! I've been working on this bag for so long that I keep losing track of how to do things, but if you look up the "secret project" tag, you can find the whole pattern up to this point!

I've also been struggling a lot to try to structure this project. You see, crochet thread? it's super duper floppy. It won't look good in glamor shots if it's super floppy, so how do I hold the mouth of the bag open? I tried so many ways to do things - wires, strengthening things with plastic, and even zip ties! And yet none of them worked well.

Today I just went ahead and did it - I added wire.

Fortunately I had some cheap $1 jewelry wire that I used on the mouths of the lower part of the bag, and then I used thin copper wire around the bottom of the cap. The thin wire is purely aesthetic - I'll be stiffening the base of the cap with thin plastic of some sort (or possibly craft foam if I find some), and that will hold it against various things being stored in the cap!

The plastic tie failure - they were only top-closure, I'd need side-closure

The jewelry wire is still quite pliable so I doubled it up!

And I attached the wire using single crochet through each dc from either mouth

I think it came out pretty well!

The copper wire was harder because it's thinner, softer, and I measured wrong!
Measure twice! Cut once! Then you don't poke yourself with twisted wire lol

The bag assembled & reinforced!

Hopefully today's blog has helped someone trying to figure out how to create structure in a project. Here's some additional advice: grab sandpaper to round off the cut ends of your wire so it hurts less when it pokes you.

So now we just have a few more things to do!

• Finish/attach straps
• Make and attach spots for the cap!
• Add the final structure elements
• Make a closure for the stem (maybe a braided cord?)

That doesn't seem like so much when you look at it that way!

And that's gonna do it from me for tonight. I'm pooped!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC