Velcro is not my friend

One of my happiest possessions is this ordinary-looking black messenger bag I use constantly:

It is waterproof, roomy, full of hidden pockets to keep vital travel items separate, it has a huge reflective strip for safety at night, and its strap is both comfortably wide and adjustable.  But on the inside of the flap it also has:

Velcro closures.

You can see there the remains of this strip's previous meals.  Some other woolly things that have been caught in the teeth of the Velcro closures, when carrying the bag open so as to knit from a pouch that is tucked inside (aka every time I use the bag):

Yesterday one of the closures grabbed a bright red strip of fingering-weight Twisted Fiber Art preciousness and I watched the stack of straws come tumbling down from the weight of this last one.  I came home, dug out my seam ripper, and did what I should have done before the outside corners of the bag started to fray and get unsightly:

I removed the Velcro.

Huzzah!

And promptly remembered all the felted wool I could have chosen from, to cut into tiny rectangles and feed to the teeth so as to retain the Velcro for times when I actually need the bag to stay shut.

But I'm trying not to think about that.