Mingus is the big one, and Fellini, the small one. They are such silly boys. If you’ve been on the Three Stone Steps site, looking at the Fellini Pannolini Large Messenger Bag of repurposed materials, or the Mingus Cross Body Bag, in either post-consumer waste recycled black trash bagor repurposed mosquito netting, you now know the origins of the names.

Honestly, I never planned to name bags for the dogs that hang here at Three Stone Steps, but, hey, I was naming something with the Italian word for diaper, “pannolini,” and Fellini fit just so well, that I just couldn’t resist. And, fair is fair. You can’t name one bag after one of the “boys” and have the other one feeling all left out.

I spent a very inspiring Friday morning in ournationscapital at a roundtable discussion at theNational Museum of Women in the Arts as part of their International Women’s Artisans Initiative. The group of almost all women –with one man–were all passionate about improving women’s lives in the developing world though working with artisans.

And, what an interesting group it was: There were women who worked with artisans in India, Bolivia, South Africa, and Madagascar, to name but a few. There were representatives from big organizations, like the Department of Labor Women’s Bureau and departments within the World Bank, the executive director of the Fair Trade Federation, and small importers like me.

I learned a new phrase that I’ll now use often, I’m sure: pity purchases or what I call the buy this bag or I’ll kill this puppy school of selling. I know that I could sell many more bags if I told you that many are made by polio and landmine victims, and artisans with HIV. But, a bag is about its function and its design. The fact that it helps a worker in a developing part of the world is value added. I’ve often joked that I would be rich, rich I tell you, if I told some story that buying one of our bags helped a teenage amputee mother with AIDS in a country that recently had a genocide escape from sexual slavery, but that’s not what I think it’s about. I respect the customer and the producers far too much to engage in selling based on emotional blackmail.

The deservingly popular–if I do say so myself!–Fellini Pannolini Bag was recently featured onGreat Green Goods, a fantastic site that manages to unearth some fantastic products. You can read the review of this great big eco-chic and fairly made bag that can be used as a diaper bag, or laptop bag, or knitting bag, or gym bag, or bicycle bag, or going off to work for the day bag, or overnight bag, or for any other uses you can think of bag right here:

Bags Created From Recycled Mosquito Netting

Ok, while anorexic fashion models aren’t quite Three Stone Steps’ thing (ok, Venus, our tall, thin mannequin model is an exception), I was delighted with this little write up in the Baltimore Examiner’s online edition last week.

And, delighted, too, that scarves were the featured fashion accessory. Really, I have seen fashionistas here and there, even in the heat and humidity of the Baltimore summer, wearing scarves. And, I must admit, that Three Stone Steps just received some great new hand loomed 100 percent Cambodian silk scarves. As with everything else, I’m still busy getting them up on the site, but honestly, these scarves are so beautiful and luminous and just so tactile that it helps to see them in person.