This project has not come together as I had envisioned.

There have been errors, set backs, things not quite working out as I thought they would.

Lots and lots of frogging.

Lots and lots of recrocheting.

And then yesterday, I set it all aside and joined my mother in her quest for a newer car to drive.

This is a project we have been pursuing whenever time and weather permit, and to that end we have been frequenting a CarMax dealership near my house where we have worked with a salesperson named Aaron who has seemingly infinite patience.

I have been accompanying my mother on these excursions as she has looked over various cars, several of which looked like they might be “the one,” only for my mom to go do additional research and learn that in some critical way the car in question would not work for her.

But yesterday we went with cautiously optimistic high hopes. Aaron had found a car he thought my mom should look at.

My mother has been driving since she was 10.

Her driving lessons began at the behest of her older-by-seventeen-years sister, Bebe, who believed that driving was a skill every woman should possess.

On weekends, when my mother’s family would head out in their black, 1937 four-door Ford sedan to the home of family friend who lived at the end of a very long driveway in an isolated part of the county, my aunt (who was not yet my aunt) would drive most of the way, and then, when they had reached the nearly quarter-mile long driveway of the Malich home, she would trade places with my mother and have her drive the rest of the way.

Once my mother had mastered the Malich’s driveway, my aunt began to take her out on the back roads of Fresno County, California, to get more practice.

The 1937 Ford was eventually replaced by a green 1949 two-door Chevy coupe (which, like the Ford, had a manual transmission) that my aunt had gotten a bargain on, and it was in that car that my mother took her driving test.

After nailing the parallel parking portion of the driving test on her first try, the driving examiner looked at my mother and pointedly asked how long she had been driving; my mother answered that she had only been driving since she had gotten her permit a year earlier, but the driving examiner had been at his job long enough, that he knew she was not telling him the entire truth.

But you can’t flunk someone for knowing how to park, so my mother got her license, and has been driving ever since.

And now she needs a newer car; one that will get her where she needs to go.

After a week of looking at “close, but not quite the one” cars, my mom took a look at the 2013 Toyota Corolla that Aaron had found for her. The mileage was low, there were many nice features, but not too many new technologies, and my mom could get in and out of it with relative ease.

After a few minutes of hesitation (could we really be done with our shopping?), my mom realized that she had finally found the car that would work for her:

With my mom’s car shopping adventure now both figuratively and literally in the rearview mirror, I was able to return to my crochet lunchbox.

When the vision of a crochet lunchbox presented itself to me, I thought it was going to be one of those designs that practically crocheted itself, which has not been the case.

The first thing I did today was to remove the stitching that secured the lining to the crochet, and move it one 3dc to the right to get a better fit:

Pleased with the somewhat tidier look, I finished crocheting the top of the crochet lunchbox:

and not having a clue as to how I will join them, I took this photo of the pieces all in one place, and then put it away:

One thing that has become clear to me as I have worked on this is that a zipper might be a better option for a crochet lunchbox as it would be a secure closure that would also offer some structural support for the project as a whole.

In the meantime, however, I will see this first effort through to the end, because unless I do, I will never learn all of the lessons it has to offer.