Two posts in one day, because this one has pictures:



it's very roomy inside:


and is bigger than the others I've made.



I didn't knit it any larger, it's just proof that felting is an inexact science and the same yarn will behave differently in different colors. Maybe the stripes had some effect on the felting, I don't know - both colors felted simultaneously and evenly, so it's not a "light color vs. dark" issue. But the bag is definitely larger and taller, big enough to use as an overnight bag. I like it, I'm just endlessly fascinated by the quirks of felting. BTW, it is sitting on a crocheted cat bed I put on the purple chair, I know I will fight a losing battle with the cat hair but at least this contains it a bit.

Boris has discovered the view from the end of the cabinets facing the big front window, and pronounced it very good:



After enjoying the view he had a nice nap.

I cleaned house all day - I had intended to go to L's house and hang out, but by early afternoon I was on a roll and begged off. I tackled the hall closet, and ended up in a very Clark Griswold moment, sitting on the floor looking at family photos. My daughter is going to want to Baker Act me after she reads this, but I suddenly had an urge to get into scrapbooking. (I normally mutter nasty things about women with way too much leisure and money to piss away on pretty paper and decorative crap who need to get lives....) But I sat looking at the pictures of the kids when they were small and the few pictures of my husband, who hated to have his picture taken even though he was, as the women I worked with all said excitedly after meeting him, "Really goodlooking!" The older he and Richard Gere got the more alike they looked, which is weird because I don't think they looked at all alike in Gere's "American Gigolo" years, so go figure that one. When I married him he was a skinny Air Force sergeant with ears that stuck out and coke bottle glasses. He had aged well, salt and pepper hair, trendy little eyeglasses, leather jackets and laugh lines, he was a hottie at 40. He still hated the camera, and most pictures of him are of him looking bemused, bored, or annoyed, and I have damn few in the last decade, when the kids weren't around to pose with him. Listen to me now people and believe it - take pictures. Don't worry that you're overweight or you have a bad haircut or whatever, someday your family will be looking at those pictures and remembering YOU, not critiquing your need of a good haircut. Trust me.

I digress...I suddenly had the urge to scrapbook because I started remembering the stories that went with the photos, and I want to preserve some of this for the kids. I also want a scanner, so I can save this stuff to CD, and maybe share some of it here. So yeah, maybe I'll try this scrapbooking thing. I have boxes of unsorted family photos, unfinished crappy cheap baby albums, these pictures deserve better. And they will get scanned.

That said, I found pictures of me from Murphy's puppyhood - why didn't anyone TELL me I looked like that? God Almighty, I was dumpy and badly dressed and my makeup was awful. It "incentivized" me to take off another ten pounds. I'm better now than I was a few years ago, and that's not a bad thing to say after another birthday. I could be better, though - my role model Sally Field still looks great. I used to look like that. I can still do it. Yep.