Here is a picture of the two bags I have had in the back of my car. I use them mostly for groceries but they come in handy for other things, as well:
Here are the two bags I am replacing them with. The smaller one is really one of my large bags. The other is a huge bag, patterned after the one my daughter, McKenzie, uses in Manhattan to bring her groceries home on the subway:
This give you a better idea of how big the new bag is:
And here is Hunter checking it out:
My mom and dad were born in Blanding, a very small town in southeastern Utah. They went back there for a visit over the 4th of July and came home with an amazing Tad Bag story.
They dropped into a little chocolate shop on Main Street in Blanding. They somehow struck up a conversation with the other three patrons in the shop. They were vacationing from California and were just passing through town.
As they chatted, my parents learned that one of the other three worked in another hospital here in our fair city. They kept connecting dots until they learned that several of her coworkers also worked in our emergency department. She had coveted the Tad Bags they carried to work at her hospital and had wanted, really badly, to get a bag of her own.
I guess she was pretty blown away when my parents pulled out one of their bags and gave it to her. When she gets back home, she will head off to work with a Tad Bag she picked up in a chocolate shop in Blanding, Utah.
Somehow, three people just happened into the same shop at the same time in a little town over a thousand miles from where they lived. They struck up a conversation and learned they both knew of me. Two were my parents. One knew me only as the emergency doctor who sewed bags from trauma straps. My parents just happened to have a bag, which they were glad to share with her.
Here is a picture of Gina with Howard and Corine, my generous parents.
Tina, a nurse I work with on night shift, told me she met Marianne at Burn Camp, where burned kids go for a week to hang out with each other and do campy things. As it turned out, Marianne’s parents live right around the corner from us and she went all the way through school with our son, Philip. She grew up, became a nurse and works in our burn unit. Tina told her about my blog and I soon received a request for a bag. Now, when we run into her mom in Nob Hill, we can ask her how Marianne likes her bag.
Some ambulance came in from somewhere with maroon straps made of the same materiel as seat belts. They have been sitting around here for a long time and I finally had a chance to make a bag out of them. My new “man bag.”
I wish my picture would do this bag justice. It is made of seat belt materiel and the forest green contrasts very nicely with the bright yellow. No matter how I took the picture with any of my cameras, I can’t make the green not look black.
I have had so many people asking for a bag that I did some sewing last weekend.
I have just been too busy to sew lately. This week, I finally got around to sewing up a couple of bags for some nurses who asked for one. Here they are, classic design.
Here is a picture of the latest load of straps I took to RAFT (Resource Area For Teachers.) 1000 more straps that didn’t got into the landfill because of my crazy recycling program.
A couple of weeks ago, I shared bags made, for the first time, with red straps. Since then, I came across short straps of red. One was seat belt materiel, the other just regular straps. I think I am going to adopt the seat belt one for my personal use.
