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Preview: Patchwork tote bag edition

Finished collage

It looks like I’ve already finished the tote bag doesn’t it?  Then why am I only showing you a preview instead of doing a full post?  Well, partly because I’m short on time and also because this is the craft for tonight.  Yes.  Tonight.  You might wonder about my hesitancy about posting photos of things before the recipient receives the thing in question, but in this case, there isn’t really a recipient.  Most of the girls have already seen the project sample.  I did that to entice them to come.  Muahahahahhaha!

So anyway, you get a preview because I also wanted to show you what the rest of the girls come up with.  And get better pictures of the tote and possibly some of the steps to make it.  I was in a huge hurry when I made this thing.

I will let you know that my finished bag is about 8″x11″x3″ and it took me about six hours to complete.  At least half of that time was trying to figure out which scraps I wanted to use and then cutting them to size and then arranging them to my satisfaction and also lots of ironing.  All that and it still didn’t use up nearly as much scrap cloth as I was hoping it would.  So, now I’m hoping the rest of the girls will make a sizable dent in my scrap pile when they make their bags.

Commuter dogs

The topic of commuting has been on my mind recently.  Probably because I have to do it all the time.  I average probably 15 hours on the road during the work week.  I currently drive and there’s no one to carpool with, so it’s a good chunk of my time taken away from doing other things that need doing.  You really can’t multitask when driving a car.  Well, you can, but it isn’t safe and you shouldn’t do it.  So don’t.  Especially if I have to share the road with you.

ANYWAY.  I’ve looked at taking public transportation so that I could get wrestle some time back from commuting.  It turns out, it wouldn’t work well for me at all.  I’d probably spend twice as much time traveling.  Sugh.  Such is the life in Southern California with our pitiful public transportation system (more on that another time).  But did you know in cities where there is a good mass transit system, the masses might involve more than just humans?  Did you know that they might involve dogs?

In Moscow, the stray dogs commute from the suburbs to the city center and back, as if they were commuting to and from work.  Well, they kind of are.  They live in the suburbs because after the collapse of the USSR, the industrial complexes where the stray dogs lived were moved to the suburbs.  So, the dogs also had to move to the suburbs.  But the food was still in the city center.  So they had to learn how to take the subway to and from the city.  They go to work during the day to get food and then they go back to the suburbs for the night.  This is just…so amusing to me.

There are scientists who study the dogs and say that the dogs will help each other get off at the right stop by judging the amount of time they’ve been on the train.  But sometimes they’ll fall asleep and get off at the wrong stop.  The dogs have also learned how to use traffic lights to cross streets and they have tactics to get food when they’re in the city.  I particularly like the tactic where they sneak up behind someone who is eating and then bark loudly causing the person to start and drop some food.  THIS IS JUST SO AMUSING.

Unfortunately, the only information I have on this is the article I linked to.  The article doesn’t list any sources.  I would really like to read more about these dogs that commute to and from work.  Looks like I’m going to have to do some rooting around to see if I can find some more info on this.

I also wonder if Yaris would be willing to commute like that to and from work.  Of course, she has her driver’s license so she just might opt to drive instead.