Holiday travel draweth nigh, and have I resolved my travel bag quandary? No, reader, I have not.
Have I browsed in stores and online, gazing at the leather and vinyl lives that might be mine? A bit.
On Facebook (that double-edged time-vaccuum), I recently shared this graphic (by Adam Baranello) promoting independent artists. It’s the kind of thing I like to click on, giving me a quick Pavlovian pellet of feel-good even as I acknowledge that mass-produced stuff props up most of my life.
Listening to the snow-turned-rain outside, and the trickle through the just-bled radiator, I wonder: if I’m looking for the travel bag to win my heart, maybe it’s good if it has a soul, too.
A search on etsy.com, that empire of handmade goodness, quickly led me to Interrobang, where bags are named for punctuation. Perhaps only if they named bags for fonts (Garamond messenger, anyone? Helvetica clutch?) could I be more pleased.
Many of the bags are made from seat belts. Some are advertised as recycled or upcycled, but it’s not clear whether all bags are made from reclaimed materials.
I swoon for this red Ampersand bag (pictured above). It’s 20 x 12 x 6, and zips closed at the top. I might feel even better about the less poetically named but roomier Everyday Bag (45 x 25 x 10), shown below.
While these bags don’t exactly qualify as “local” for the inland Northwest, shipping rates from Australia to the U.S. are quite reasonable. Surely I could offset the extra carbon needed to get the bag here? Supporting the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of crafters counts for something, too.