What I'm doing on the bus

Coming home on Thursday, I noticed a girl doing something crafty with what looked like plastic strings, maybe a half a meter long and in rather nice bright colours, slightly translucent greens, purples, etc. It looked a bit like braiding, but her hands were moving more like basket weaving. I couldn't figure it out and was far too shy to ask. It's not likely that I'll see her again, but I am keeping a lookout for a school girl with lots of plastic strings.

My current bus crafting is... mending the Make Do and Mend bag again! I love this bag, maybe a bit too much. I dream about it; I catch myself singing love songs while stitching it, country and western love songs. When a woman at the pub said how nice it was as she moved it out of the way, my reaction was jealousy. And a bit of concern as there were a few pins holding the patches on. Those patches are now held on by imperfect stitching which I thought was a kantha stitching technique, but I'm failing to find via google. I don't think it's a sashiko stitch, and I'm sure I didn't just make it up. If you recognise what the brown and bright green stitching is called, please leave a comment to let me know what it is called!