Now that the dust has settled

There hasn't been a lot of work happening lately. I ended up moving to a new residence, which also meant setting up a new workspace, and all of that took up a lot of free time. However, now that I've got my workbench set up just the way I like it I can get back to work. First up is something I actually made at the old place, while I was in the middle of packing. This is a trucker wallet in vegetable-tanned leather that I dyed green and black and texturized. One big open space in the middle, with pockets on either side for cards and cash. One of my chainmaille wallet chains completes the package, and it uses brass and bronze rings in a Full Persian 6-1 variant:

Right after I got settled in my new place it was time to start working on my girlfriend's birthday present. I'd picked up a hide of lavender leather a while back, thinking that it would be perfect to use for something for her, and she's been hinting that she'd like another purse lately. This time she wanted something slouchy, like a floppy hobo bag, so that's what she got:

A lot of edge paring went into this purse, though I left the strap edges and decorative elements plain and raw. It's not lined, as I wanted to keep the weight down and also so it would stay floppy. The solid brass rings came from some old saddle tack.

Finally, there's been more work completed on my neverending quest to perfect my commuter bike setup. When I moved to another part of town, it effectively doubled my bike commute to work. Now that I'm riding further and through hillier terrain, it made me realize that my most recent bike bag was, well, just too damn huge. It's great and it's holding up fine, but it's way too big for my day to day riding, and it ends up putting a lot of weight pretty far forward. Plus I can't resist the urge to tinker and fine-tune designs. So here it is, Bike Bag version 2.0:

It's about half as deep as the previous version, and when it's mounted on the rack there is still room to carry other things. The interior is a floating liner of vinyl coated polyester, so the main compartment is waterproof. This time, though, I didn't line the pockets, as it turns out it's not very effective at keeping the outside pockets dry. I figure if I ever get caught in a shower (like this morning) I'll just transfer electronics to the main compartment and keep going. There are open pockets on the sides for a water bottle, which is now a necessity, the back is padded, and there's even some interior organization, with lots of pen slots and some smaller pockets in a divider. And, because it was satisfying to me, I even added some PALS webbing to the front and back, so I can attach more pouches to it if needed. The first ride with it was great, minus getting soaked, so I feel pretty good about this latest version.