Felting Silk and the Weird Things I Think

Today's knitted object is a bag using the "Lucy Bag" pattern, made with entrelac, out of Silk Garden yarn left over from my recent vest project. What makes it interesting is that, as an experiment, I washed it like you would a wool item, and it came out SO incredibly soft. It has inspired a couple of friends to wash garments made out of this yarn! You just want to snuggle up with it, like a "blankie." However, it really is not a great bag. Sharp items easily poke through it. But it was an interesting experiment.

About thinking weird thoughts, I realized one day last week, as I was driving through the hideous desolation that is the toll road construction near my house, that when I am near so much ugliness, I imagine myself back in Gainesville, driving through all the leafy, green streets with all the camellias and azaleas. I feel like there are two of me. One is here, coping with single parenthood, under-employment, stressful interpersonal relations and a lot of ugliness. And the other is back home, having not had to move away in 8th grade, having gone to high school with the people I went to elementary school with (and Tom Petty, LOL), having met a nice, fun, responsible dude in college and stuck with him, perhaps working at the college doing something I like and also knitting. It's nice to think about this mythical me who didn't leave her happy home where she was on the road to being successful and popular to start over in a school where no one talked to her for a year. I KNOW that there would have been challenges and issues, even if I had gotten to stay in my home town until college, but it sure seems like things went "awry" once I left the surroundings that made me happy, with a brief 4 years of happy when I went back for college.

Hmm. No, I don't really blame my parents for everything that has happened to me. It has been my own decisions and actions that have affected me, not that stuff! It's just weird things I think when I am tired and staring at concrete rubble with a few Mexican Hat Flowers thrown in, on the side of the road.

And there's a lot of good in my life. I would not want to miss having my wonderful kids and the wonderful friends I have met in Texas and at work!