Sure we could have walked half a block to the 24-hour Safeway and spent under $20 for four gallons of perfectly respectable apple cider....

But why do that when you can:

1. Make an apple press from scratch using leftover Redwood scraps from our fence project.

2. Hunt for wild apples in the local park only to discover that even though the trees were weighted down with delicious orbs this time last season, there isn't a single one in sight this year, and end up going to Berkeley Bowl to buy and haul home 20 lbs of various apples.

3. Core the apples and then blend them to get a chunky puree.

4. Put the puree in a sack of cheesecloth and press in the press.

5. Sample the delicious juice as it trickles beautifully from the tray in to our mouths. I mean glasses....

6. Boil the juice to remove bacteria.

7. Siphon the Juice from the pot in to the demijohns (carboys).

8. Add yeast and sugars. (We tried white sugar, brown sugar, and honey, in different gallon jugs to see which yielded the best cider.)

9. Pop in the airlocks to make sure everything stays pure and delightful.

10. Put the cider in a cool, dry place to ferment for 8 months.

11. Siphon the fermented cider in to bottles, add sugar and cap. Put back in to storage. (This phase is where the bubbles come from.

12. Let sit for 1 month, until cider becomes 'sparkling'.

13. Open bottles every two weeks to check for levels of deliciousness and bubbliness. (hm, bubbliness is not a word... bummer.)

14. After every tasting, make scrunchy-sour face, spew the disgusting fizzyness in to the sink, scrape tongue with toothbrush, recap the bottles, and return them to storage.

15. Move the 4 gallons of rancid cider to the shed for at least another 12 months or until  the government allows us to permanently store the concoction in the huge secret warehouse-slash-bunker where Indiana Jones permanently stored the Ark of the Covenant.

16. Walk half a block to the 24-hour Safeway and buy a gallon of perfectly respectable apple cider.

OK, the first leather messenger bag was pretty awesome, but didn't quite fit the aesthetic I was going for. Time for another try. Below are photos from bag number two which I've now been using for several months with great results. The leather this time came from leftover scraps found at a local salvage store. I repeated the bike gear on the flap just for show. All of the buckles I made from hand by bending thin metal rods. I also experimented with letter stamping on the inside pocket. I stamped it with an excerpt from a Walt Whitman poem I like:

    "I too am not a bit tamed,
    I too am untranslatable,
    I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world."

I like this quote because it describes 'YAWP' as an incredibly manly sound.... which it's not. This reflects well in making leather man-bags - which I like to believe is very manly too.... but struggle to convince myself of this some nights when hunched over the sewing machine.

Overall, a vast improvement over the first bag. It's more comfortable, and the leather is a bit stiff which helps the bag hold it's shape.

Click the upper left of the photo for slideshow.

My first ever sewing machine project. I made this bag in 2009 when we got a sewing machine for our wedding. I went with a cycling theme since I intended to use it mostly when riding through town.
Like almost all of my work, it's made from salvaged materials. This bag started out as a trench coat! The shoulder strap is just the belt from the coat, and the cell phone holder strap was the coat's cuff.

Click the upper left of the photo for slideshow.