Bags

I collect cloth bags.  I have since the late 1980s, when I received my first canvas bag as part of the accoutrement of doing a research survey.  We had lots of different instruments, and the canvas bags were to help us carry a variety of each instrument when we went into a home to do the interviews.  Because, as you followed the instructions, you may be directed to any one of several variety of instruments (really booklets) that you wanted to be able to pull out of the bag and complete right then and there.  These were sometimes lengthy interviews, and you did not want to risk losing the cooperation of your subject by having to go out to the vehicle to get another booklet.

I had taken a part time job doing survey research, and got in on the ground floor of a long term medical research survey.  It was a good job. It paid travel and mileage time, and my territory overlapped with my full-time job territory.  I am ethical, and did not double dip mileage or time:  I drove to the territory for my full time job.  When I went off the clock for my full time job, I did time and mileage, including driving home from the survey job for the survey job.

My full time employer knew how I was handling the time and mileage.  Nothing was ever said.  At a training conference, my immediate supervisor told me it made me look I was doing really well with reduced expenses, and I told her that was not my intent, I thought it was unethical to "double dip."  She agreed, but told me other interviewers do double dip. 

Later at the same training, one of my survey co-workers made the comment about me "double dipping."  I set her straight.  I was married to Lisenby at the time, and he agreed with me that I should not "double dip."

Well, I digress.  That was my first cloth or canvas bag. Since then, I have received various complimentary cloth, canvas, or nylon bags.  I have scads of them.  So, when using recyclable cloth bags for shopping became acceptable in this country (long after it was acceptable in Europe), I bought commercial bags.  Why I thought I needed them, I do not know. But a did buy them.  Including the one insulated cloth bag I have.  Which made sense to purchase, because I have never been given a large insulated bag, although I have been given many small insulated lunch bags.

Well it got so bad, that for a while, I would sometimes avoid collecting yet another cloth bag.  But a few years ago, an acquaintance of mine told me she used them for her "filing system."  If she had various projects going, each bag had a project.  This was an epiphany for me.  I frequently have several knitting projects going at once, for various reasons:

If I have a big project, that is going slowly, I sometimes get discouraged and need to finish something.  Also, very often on a week night, I want to knit to relax, but I am so tired, I can easily make errors on a project involving large amount of stitches (hundreds) going across.   This can be problematic, because if this happens, and I do not recognize it for a row or two, it takes twice as long to undo those rows than it does to knit them, and then, of course I have to re-knit them.  Badger used to tell me I could finish my projects in half the time if I did not keep taking them apart and redoing them.  He was right.

So, if I am working on a project that is 30 or 40 stitches across, and I get tired and confused, it is not so hard to take a row or two apart if I make a mistake. 

So, now I have several projects  hanging in cloth bags.  This morning, I discovered one of my cloth bags, with a large project, lining one of several baskets where my cats sometimes lay.  The last I had seen it, it was in the computer room with me, last Sunday night, where I was watching TV and knitting.  I remembered leaning it against the closet door.  I had realized later in the week, I did not see it at the closet door, and I thought I might have hung it on a door knob in the living room, my "filing cabinets" for my project bags.  But, I was preoccupied with other things this week, including trying to finish a book for book club, getting ready for the NASW meeting, doing some extra cooking ahead. So, I did not go looking for that bag.

It used to be I would work on projects until 10 or 11, or, when I was married to Lisenby, even midnight.  Now I am lucky if I can work on a project until 10 or so, although I can still function on the computer after that, because that seems  to take a set of skills I can do when I am half asleep.

So, I now have a different outlook regarding collecting bags.  I say "yes" if I am given the opportunity.  I still have scads of unused bags hanging in a closet, but I have lots and lots of bags with various projects hanging around the house.