June 10, 2018

Two ways to combat sore finger joints from having to tug on the raffia to pull it through the tight stitches (the stitches need to be tight to get the right look):

1. Before starting the next row, shove the empty crochet hook through the loops of each working stitch of the previous row to pre-compress the raffia, and to make it obvious which hole is the working hole.
2. Discovered after pulling out a few rows: it doesn’t matter if the raffia is already crinkled from having been stitched up. It looks the same as “fresh” raffia, and doesn’t seem to be appreciably weaker. So, to make the raffia easier to pull through, you can pre-scrunch it by making a bunch of chain stitches, then pulling them out. Just don’t make too big a pre-scrunched section or it could get tangled.

June 24, 2018

Sort-of finished it over a week ago, but I haven’t yet put the clasp on, and I’m planning to add a strap that can easily be tucked to the inside when using it as a clutch.

September 8, 2019

So, it’s over a year later, and I still haven’t added a strap or the closure, so I’m just going to call it a flap-closure clutch and change it from Work In Progress to Finished, back-dated to last June.