Gotta love the equivocal dislike/like for Him on the wikipedia article; on the one hand disparaging Him, on the other observing He uncaringly beats the poseurs.

I have lived for Fred all my life. I’ve always found that the scruffiest, least affected people tend to be far and away the best performers in Real Life terms, and typically also the nicest people. The old quiet guy on his untrickedup bog-standard Ninja on the racetrack, faster than the guys voguing round the pits with their tyrewarmers and their slicks and stickers and paintjobs and custom leathers.

I always had a quiet smile at the poseurs that I would sail around in my decrapit car or my disintegrating bike, happily freaking the machinery while they strutted fatly and failurely in their expensive symbols.

like i blogged recently:
That subsonic groaning of too-soft metal and jittering squeaking ripriprip of rubber just past the limit as you jink skid round a suburban corner. The long ululating wail of the old (RWD) corolla’s tyres as you sail past a sportscar at its driver’s limit, round the outside in the Cahill Expressway’s 270° in-rock half-tunnel curling up to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, racing fading vectors to slip in between the next and the barrier and off and across the bridge on the speedlimit with the outraged embarrassed sportscars buzzing past on the straight.

&

Screaming down the country roads on the crest of the wave of sunshine and field scent, dancing round the twisties and the corners and the wriggly bits, and random what-the-hell let’s-liven-this-up-a-bit slaloming in between the white lines on the A-roads and motorways getting faster and faster till the front wheel starts to skip too much. Then hauling up at a country pub for a huge feed of top notch nosh and some steaming in the garden’s breezes before creaking back into the saddle and bam! off and away again, dancing dancing down the country lanes.

I wonder if I shouldn’t just get one of those Speedy Stitchers. I should never have put all my eggs into the Timbuk2 basket. Frikkin fraying strap. I’d had to return the last two bags I bought from them. Should tell me something, lol.

But I’m with you on not carrying stuff on my person in a Baltimore summer. I have a neat solution that I’ll post about on the NBBB site soon. It’s as sweet as a fraying strap is shittay.

Seriously, though, sewing canvas bags is probably the hardest thing to start with. The material is thick, home sewing machines are generally somewhat challenged by it, and it’s easy to break needles.

We were having a weird problem with the thread getting sucked down into the bobbin area and the fabric not advancing. This created a real nice cluster of knotted thread…

Anyway, I would just say to go slow, take it easy, especially at seams where there’s lots of fabric… go manual at that point (turn the wheel on the side of the machine…)

Oh, another thing. My mom always sewed right over any pins that she used to hold things together - at least that’s what I remember. Whenever I do this, the needle always jams up or breaks. These days, I use less pins, sew right up to the pin and pull it out right before I’m about to go over it…

then again, you could skip sewing and go for rivets!