Poor mans Ott Light

I've been totally stalled on my eyelet brick stitch project, partly because other things keep getting in the way, but mainly because the light in my living room is pretty bad and it's hard to see the grey/silver lines I'm trying to work the eyelets in between.  I do ok in bright daylight, but there's only a couple of hours of good light a day so progress is limited my those hours being otherwise unoccupied.  Yesterday the hubs and I were at Michaels and he found Ott Light bulbs!  Who knew?  They also had inexpessive clip-on swing arm task lamps, so with my happy 40% coupon for about $35 I have a brand new, perfect for my work space, Ott light!  Yay!  It's a perfect solution, most of the lamps they make, aside from being hideously expensive, are ugly as sin and would not work well in the space we have (basically none).  With this, I can move the lamp or the little table it clipped to to whichever side of the sofa I'm sitting on and I'm good.  It's even reduced glare on the tv so we're all happier.  Working on the embroidery this morning, I seem to be making better progress with less annoyance and eye strain so I think this will help a lot. 

So that plan for today is to plug away on the lattice bag.  I've managed to make pretty good progress so far, chipping away at it bit by bit.  I figure at this point I have another 15 hours or solid work to go before the actual embroidery is done, then I have to do the finishing.  The original plan was to tablet weave the edging, but I'm leaning towards the braided edging I did on the first bad, as I already know how to do that and I know it will look well.  The only major issue I need to resolve is how to do finish the top edge.  The original bag seems to have a narrowish band of either tablet weaving or cloth at the top edge, through which the purse strings are threaded.  It could be more brick stitch, but the texture looks more like tablet weaving or something else to me.  So, do I weave a band and attach it?  Use fabric?  Or lace through the bag itself?  I think a band of red would look really pretty and bring out the red eyelets nicely, and I have a bit of red velvet that would work if I decide to use fabric.  Plus there is plenty of silk for the purse strings and trimming to weave a bit of an edging if I decide to go that route. 

Either way, I be very glad when this project is done.  I'm heartily sick of stitching eylets.