Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
For the 2020 LJ Beer Swab, I was given Keeble1's name. I looked around for some inspiration without success until my wife asked if I was planning on saving some scrap 2×4's I was pulling out from a small remodel. She said they just looked nicer than usual and assumed that was why I was pulling all the nails. In fact, there just wasn't enough room in the trash so they needed to be stacked a little nicer until the kids could haul them out. She was right, they were unusually straight grained. I ended saving 3 full-length cedar 2×4, and several shorts. After cleaving off the split bits, I used a couple of the shorts to make some thin strips to make the most of the grain.
Next, I tried soaking them for a few hours. The strips showed a lot of splotchy staining, almost like an iron acetate ebonizing solution and they didn't really get more flexible, same issue with splitting. I did let the panel dry and then sanded the splotches off, but it wasn't great looking. I then applied a sanding coat of shellac and realized I would need to disassemble to properly sand it. I also tried ebonizing a whole set of strips, but I didn't really like it.I started playing around with the strips and got to making a woven pattern. Once I had that idea, I figured I wouldn't be making a tankard out of it, so I settled on a tote.The weaving was about as simple as you can imagine. The strips were around 1/16in thick and 5/8in wide. I had enough for a few practice attempts and I first tried a dry assembly from the middle out, just to see if they were flexible enough. It worked, but I split a few ends if I wasn't careful to hold the entire width of the strip. I thought about a dab of glue at each cross, but never did since the panel was fairly rigid and I planned to put a frame around it anyway. I'm guessing it would have been a mess
I ended up making another batch of longer strips and pre-sanded and pre-finished those, just regular shellac. Some of the strips are not quite as pretty as the originals, so that is something to think about next time as well. Assembly was dry and I started from one corner so that I was only manipulating the edge with long tails which helped with the cracking. After the panel was assembled, I cut the strips to length with a sharp chisel. Spacing was done by eye.
I cut a thin dado, 1/8in, in the surrounding frame and inserted the edges. The fit was snug since it was two layers of the weaving, but not tight. I did add a little wood glue to the dado to add rigidity to the panel. I don't think expansion will be an issue at that small scale.
The sides and rails of the caddy are walnut milled to about 3/8in thick. I wanted to keep it as light as possible. The bottom is a panel I glued up from the remaining cedar strips that were getting too small to run through the table saw safely and a little walnut to accentuate the straight grain of the cedar.
There is also a cedar accent strip set in the top of the walnut handle. Once that had dried, the handle blank was cove milled on the table saw, then the finger holes were drilled and the ends were shaped with the drill press, pull saw, and lots of sanding. 
The overall design reminded me of one of those beer adds from the late 60's early 70's. Once assembled, everything got a coat of Howard's Feed'n'wax and buffed.
As an extra gift, I took a cutoff of the bottom panel and epoxy'd it to a bottle opener blank to make a matching bottle opener. Thanks to Keebler for sending me the finished pics, since I managed to box it up before remembering to get some for this post. I had a great time with the group and I hope more of you can join us in the next one.