Hilary came up with the idea of the flower. Of course, I stole it. Now, lots of people who already have bags have been asking for a flower bag. When I got to work the other night, two PM shift clerks were talking about flower bags and asking for one. Another person who asked for one was my mother-in-law. How could I say “no”?

Sue, a nurse in our ED, asked me for a black bag with an orange flower. I told her, “No way,” as there are no more black straps coming in. Well, I got some black together and made if for her. Turned out pretty nice, don’t you think?

Again, inspiration from Montreal. When we were poking around in shops there, we were looking at various bags. One inspired me this week to come up with this one.

Uncle Boyd and Aunt Betty

Uncle Leonard

Bruce and Sandy

Chip and Debbie

Christy. Where is Keoki?

Sandy asked for a vertical bag with a pocket on the back. I made it like the bag I take cookies to work in every Thursday but bigger. After hers turned out so well, I was inspired to make another.

Here is the cookie bag.

I took a couple of nights off last week. I went mountain biking in the Sierras with my friend, Rick. In the five nights I was not there to take care of the straps, this is how many came in:

After I rolled and separated them, this is how many I had to return to the medics to reuse:

This is how many were cut and unable to be reused. I use these for my bags:

These are the buckles cut from the pile seen above:

This gives you an idea of how many of these dumb things I am keeping out of the landfill.

When we were in Montreal this summer, we were standing in line at the Dairy Queen waiting to order our Blizzards. In front of us was a young man with a back pack that had a HUGE zipper. I came home and went looking for one. On etsy.com, I found http://gear.orgxiii.org/ which sells these giant zippers. Once I had one, I had to create something with it. Here is there result.