First Felted Bag

Knitting

Here’s my finished French Market Bag. Isn’t is cool? I am really excited about this felting thang. I am thinking Christmas presents.

Here’s the before picture so you can see how much is shrunk. Pretty dramatic.

When I was in RI last week I used my mother’s washing machine to perform my first felting experiment. I would say it was a success. I feared that the two purples that I chose were too subtle next to each other but they aren’t at all in the finished piece.

While this whole thing was easy to knit and the felting is cool, the shape of this bag is not going to be that useful for me I don’t think. The sides aren’t really that high and the straps aren’t long enough.

But next time I will know how to alter the pattern. I also think the next time I will hand felt which will give me more control. The washing machine was pretty rough and I left it in about 8 minutes, a little longer than I had wanted, but I got distracted watching “What Not to Wear.”

Love that show. And the few episodes I caught when I was getting my fill of cable TV at my parents house featured very willing and cooperative participants. Sometimes they are awful, kicking and screaming through every step, from new clothes, to hair, to makeup. Jeez, they are making you over, have fun with it.

Dating

Well, I think I am inadvertently online dating again.

In my daily scouring I regularly saw a post on Craigslist for Seeking Intellectually Curious Who Love Fine Arts? Have you seen it?

So I click on the above mentioned post to find intellectconnect.com, a new free online dating and friending site. I questioned whether I was smart enough for these potential dates. But I jumped in (I think the FREE was the hook I needed), created a profile, and then kind of forgot about it. Until I got a response a couple of weeks ago from a man who seems charming, nice, looking for friends, likes cultural pursuits, lives nearby in Woodley Park. So we are meeting next week for a beer.

I say inadvertently because this past spring when Gabriel just simply stopped calling and returning my calls, after a year of dating, I decided to take a break. So my focus has been on meeting people to do things with, like hiking, museums, going out to dinner, all the things you do with a boyfriend but without the complications of actually having to consider another person. (Yikes that sounds selfish. But you get my point.)

So I met that group of women on Craigslist and I have become involved in MeetInDC and meetup.com, and a few other things. And it’s all coming together, the work is paying off and I am meeting some new people and have some fun things on my calendar.

Like tomorrow I am going to Gettysburg with the Capital Hiking Club. I have never been to a Civil War site – shame on me, living in the South and all. I don’t know anyone on the trip, but that’s part of the adventure. I have an introverted personality so I have to force myself to do social things by myself. This will be a good exercise for me.

Just for laughs, I recently trolled around match.com, the old stompin’ ground, and all I saw were the same old faces, reading the same old profiles (“I am comfortable in a jean and a tux,” “I SCUBA dive and climb mountains, all in the same day,” “Looking for my soul mate as long as she looks like a super model”) so I give up on the online dating scene.

I had fun over the many years on match, met tons of men, went out on tons of dates, but I am done with that.