Fun with Neoprene

Not that kind.

Saul Griffith, in a sidebar to his MAKE magazine (Volume 2) article about making his own neoprene laptop bag, noted that you can buy 51" x 83" sheets of the stuff, brand-new, from foamorder.com.

Your choice of 25 colors (20 shown up top) and patterns, with thickness ranging from 1.5mm to 6mm.

However, he advises against that, instead offering the following tips:

Scoring Used Neoprene

• If you don't surf or dive, ask a buddy who does. He or she should be able to set you up with a thrashed suit.

• You can recycle some of the 5 billion dot.com mousepads that still plague us — they're made of neoprene too.

• On eBay, you'll find plenty of wetsuits being sold by people who liked the idea of surfing after watching "Endless Summer" and gave up after swallowing a pint of ocean the first time they got in the water.