The Heathen Housewife

There is news from the dye pot, and good news at that – 0ther than my hands being all sorts of colors because I keep forgetting to put the gloves on. But I’m going to make you wait till tomorrow for pretty pictures. More info and answers to questions then as well.

In the mean time, look what Sophie did today:

I knew she could do it!

Y’all have to realize something about this dyeing thing. I’m totally winging this. Playing it by ear. Experimenting. Having fun. Figuring it out. I don’t know where I’m going with this exactly, but I do have a general set of plans and dreams. I have some ideas for colorways that I want to create. Actually, I have a really fun theme for a set of colorways that I’d like to create. But it’s a secret for now. For now, I’m just having fun playing mad scientist, and you’re welcome to come along for the ride.

Hey, Diva – I don’t know about selling my hand dyed yarn yet. I’ll tell you what – if the results turn out to be good enough, I just might. A few extra bucks in the bank account would be nice. I’m still trying to figure out if I can even do this competently yet.

Stacy – I checked out about eight books from the library on dyeing, and most of them discuss only the professional dyes. I think there may have been one or two that briefly mentioned the possibility of using Kool-Aid, but none of them mentioned Wilton as far as I can recall. The two that I’ve enjoyed the most are Yarns to Dye For : Creating Self-Patterning Yarns for Knitting by Kathleen Taylor and Dyeing to Knit by Elaine Eskesen. Most of the others were pretty much over my head, or at least more technical than I was interested in at the moment. I picked up a few hints here and there that I think I can apply to the Wilton dye process, but nothing significant. Really, if you’re interested in reading up on this, start by doing a google search on yarn Wilton dye or something like that. There are tons of items out there, and that’s where I learned most of what I’m doing now.

Oh, and about the word verification thingie. I’ve had a couple of people tell me they’ve had trouble with it. I may try turning it off again, although I originally turned it on after I got a bit of spam showing up. If you want to post a comment and can’t, feel free to just e-mail me at shellyk at shellykang dot com. Actually, if you’ve tried to post a comment but had trouble because of that gizmo, please to e-mail me and let me know. If it’s a big issue, I’ll get rid of it. Thanks!

Now, on to the fun!

I spent a few minutes last night lining up all my dyes in the order that I want them to stripe on this sampler skein I’m working up. I typed them all up in a nice little list so I wouldn’t get confused, then put them back in the box. It’s more or less going to be a rainbow spectrum. You’ll see.

This afternoon it was warm and sunny, so we all went outside to play for a bit. Julie was drawing a “picnic” on the driveway and Sophie was – well, helping.

Here’s what it looked like when they were done.

They also spent some time in the sand box. I was pleasantly surprised by how well they played together, and also with how well Sophie played without putting things in her mouth. Julie was such an oral kid, and for the most part Sophie isn’t. She played in the sand box for about half an hour without tasting the sand once!

While they were busy playing, I was busy walking back and forth across the yard, stringing my yarn around a couple of lawn chairs. The whole time I was doing it, I was thinking “the neighbors must think I’m totally insane.” That, and trying to convince Julie that she really better leave my yarn alone. Really. Get away from the yarn. Right. Now! No, you may not run back and forth touching my yarn. Well, whatever.

Then, the neighbors across the street stopped by on their way home from a bike ride and D (the guy) started to ask what I was doing, the L (the woman – hi L!) said “Oh, are you getting ready to dye some yarn?” Which was cool because she had read the blog and knew that there was a somewhat-sane reason for me to be stringing yarn all across the lawn. And we all had a nice little conversation about how it’s going to work instead of them going in their house and peeking out at the crazy woman and her yarn. Ha!

The whole point was to make a long loop about 40 yards in circumference, then tie it off at one yard intervals ending up with a pile that looked like this:

I don’t have the capacity to dye all almost-40 colors in one night, so I soaked only a portion of the wool while we cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, and stuck the rest of it in a ziploc bag to keep it dry and under control.

And I spent some time prepping the dye itself – I measured out .5 ml of each color and mixed it in jars with a quarter cup of vinegar. I know mixing metric (good) and imperial (bad) measurements is going to bite me in the hiney, but it was easy and I wasn’t thinking when I reached for that quarter cup. Don’t ask me why I used those specific amounts – they were what felt right after my initial experiment months ago and after all the various reading I’ve done on the subject.

Once the dyes were well-mixed I filled the jars with more warm water and arranged it all in my canning pot thus:

I heated it up till it was almost at a boil, then turned the heat off and walked away so the whole mess can cool down enough to handle. You’ll have to wait at least till tomorrow to see the results, which are as far as I can tell so far pretty good.

As I was walking into my office, I witnessed this:

That’s Joe, in his office, wearing his new purple sneakers and using his Swiffer. Reason 1,573 why I love my husband. He is just so cute.

I’m off to play with wet yarn then cuddle with the blankie.

Today was actually a better day. Even though we woke up and saw this out the window as we ate our breakfast.

On the bright side, Julie enjoys making patterns with her feet in the snow. I think that is so cool!

This, however, is just plain wrong. Those are my pitiful little tulips peeking out under the gloppy white.

Nothing wrong with this picture. Julie having fun with her little friend K.T. at knitting this morning.

Sophie was happily trying to tag along. The only thing wrong with this picture, which you can’t actually see, is how filthy her hands and knees ended up after crawling all over the coffee shop. Walk, already!

Nothing wrong here. Sophie did a great job scooting around on the little play tractor in the basement yesterday.

Finally, some books from the library (these are just the two that were at hand – I’ve checked out five total) so I can hopefully have a better clue of what I’m doing when I start playing around with the dyes again sometime in the near future. More fancy food dyes arrived in the mail today, and my lovely neighbor across the street gave me her stash of oral syringes for measuring out the paste dyes more accurately. I’m just waiting for the blank yarn to show up. Anyone out there care to suggest a good source for blank sock yarn besides Knitpicks? What I’d really love is something in superwash fingering with the twist of Koigu, but with a bit of nylon in the mix for better wear. A skein of my finished product to the person who makes the suggestion that I end up going for!

Oh, and look over on the right. I signed up for Sockapalooza 4. As far as I know, the signups are still open, so now’s your chance to get in on the swapping fun! I think I am just plain crazy for signing up for another swap right now. Like I need more knitting to do! But it will be fun, and I don’t want to read about all the fun on everyone else’s blog and not be in on it too. And the button has monkeys on it.

Speaking of swaps, I’m still trying to assemble my first package for my SP10 pal. It’s about halfway done, and I’m hoping to get it out in the mail maybe this weekend.

Off to knit a square before bed.

It’s been a lame-o day here. The best thing I can say about this day was that I finally got the kitchen floor scrubbed, and oh how it needed it.

In other news, Joe was home sick today, and I spent the morning feeling slightly annoyed by the fact that when he is sick, he gets to lay in bed and sleep all day and when I am sick I pretty much get to get up and tend to the kids anyway. Then, when I suggested he get up mid-afternoon so that he would be able to sleep tonight, I realized that he is truly feeling awful. All he ate today was plain rice! Um, sorry honey. You go right back to bed.

Sophie is teething hard again. On the one hand, I’m glad she’s finally filling in the front of her mouth and will have a nice little row of pearly whites. On the other hand, my nipples are killing me because she wants to freakin’ nurse all day long and her latch has gotten lazy so she’s biting me. I spent the whole evening in the nursery trying to get her down in the crib (aside from the 20 minutes I spent on my hands and knees in the kitchen). Finally, at 10:30, I gave her a dose of Tylenol on top of the dose of Motrin she’d already taken, and she fell asleep in my arms a little after 11.

Our internet is still creeping along, thanks to the overload of traffic from the recent linkage. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad ya’ll are here for the visit. We just really need to move my site back onto a commercial server somewhere not in our house. Our DSL is about the slowest possible DSL one can have as we’re technically too far from the hub to even have DSL at our house. Normally this isn’t too much of a problem, except when there are 20,000 people trying to read the blog in one day. If anyone has a suggestion of a web host they use and like, I’d love to hear it.

It’s freakin’ cold and we’re getting a mix of snow and rain here this week. I am so over winter. I need me some spring!

Finally, I have placed orders for all kinds of fun stuff like a new t-shirt, some books, some dye, yarn to dye, and a replacement part for our dishwasher (which is still working but the top rack is loose). I was expecting some of it to come today, and none of it did.

Bleh.

Tomorrow I’ll be back with a better attitude. Hopefully

First, I’d like to say hi to all the folks coming over from Stephanie’s blog. Welcome! I’ll be talking about blankie and Harlot related stuff in a minute. Just let me apologize for the slow loads on my blog today. We serve our web pages on an old PC right here in our house, and our DSL is not all that fast. We’re seriously considering going back to a web hosting company after several incidents where our current setup just can’t handle the traffic on a given day. More on that another time, maybe. Let’s get to the fun stuff!

Yesterday was Easter, and although we are a bunch of heathens, Joe and I grew up Christian, and I have fond memories of dyeing eggs and visits from the Easter Bunny. As I pointed out at Christmas time when we were busy decorating our tree, these are really old pagan traditions absorbed by the Christians when the pagans were converted. Or something like that.

We didn’t give the girls Easter baskets this year, other than the basket Julie got at the egg hunt we went to last week at the community center. Julie still has never had any candy, other than a few chocolate chips while helping me bake cookies. We want to keep it that way as long as it’s not a big issue, and it hasn’t been one yet. She can’t have most chocolate anyway because it contains soy lecithin. I think next year we will invite the Easter Bunny legend into our home, and I will just assemble baskets with small gifts and non-candy treats like fruit leathers and apple sauce.

In the mean time, we did color some eggs. Half were hard-boiled and the other half were blown-out empty shells. After the eggs were done, I let Julie play with the dye bath and some paper towels for a bit just to stretch the fun out a bit longer.

Here’s the end results: This was my first time trying the rubber band trick, and I really liked it. You just wrap a wide rubber band around the egg a couple times, and it leaves white bands underneath. Pretty slick! Julie loved using all the little bug and flower 3-D stickers that came in our kit.

Later, while Sophie was napping, Julie and Daddy played the Honey Bee Tree game. I like this picture because for once Julie is just smiling up at the camera like her normal self and not making the crazy for-the-camera smile she normally gives me.

Now, to follow up on some of the items from last week! That bag I ordered from Dan arrived today, and it is so cute! I couldn’t believe how fast I got it – I placed the order on Friday, he got it in the mail on Saturday, and here it is today! Look how nicely packaged it was.

And here’s the bag itself. I don’t know why I love monkeys as much as I do, but there you have it. I kinda love my monkeys.

And here’s the coordinating fabric inside. This bag is the perfect size to hold a medium-sized knitting project plus a wallet and a cell phone. Thanks for the great service, Dan!

Several people have asked about the blankie and the sock yarn for the blankie. First, I want to again thank everyone who contributed yarn to my little project so far. Here’s a peek at the stash I have left.

Clockwise from bottom left: a box of wool/nylon bits that have been used in the blankie twice; a box and a bag of bits that have been used in the blankie once; a box of Koigu and other similar merino hand dyes that will not appear in this blanket, but will be in another project yet to be fully determined (I have plans, but refuse to allow myself to think too hard about them till blankie the first is complete); a box of solid-color sock yarns of various types for which there are also vague future plans.

Careful observers will notice Daisy cat sniffing the Koigu. I loaned that particular box of bits to a close friend so she could pick a few out for a project she is working on – a beautiful sweater – and she returned it to me all organized in these cute little mesh thingies that she got leftover from a flower shop. Also, my friend has a cat, so I think there was lots in there for Daisy to sniff at.

Many people have asked me if I will share some of my collection with them. When I was being buried, I did give away probably at least as much as I kept. There is a blankie knit-along with links in the column over on the right – many of those people got sock scrap care packages. Also, I received a lot of yarn that was not appropriate for this project, and that yarn went to people knitting for charities – specifically, a friend of mine who knits for Children in Common, and another very nice lady in Canada who knits teddy bears for various childrens’ charities. They are very cute, and if you dig through my archives you can find several posts detailing that effort. There have been a few other good causes as well, plus just some random gifts to people who asked. At the moment, I have about what I need to finish the blanket, and will probably have some left over. I may be willing to part with it to someone desperate to knit a blankie at that point. I would never consider selling any of this yarn. It was given to me by generous knitters, and when I pass it on, it will go in the same way.

Some of you have written asking if I’m still looking for more scraps. That is so sweet! While I do have enough to complete the current blankie, the honest answer is that the more variety I get from more people, the better. If you have some that you want to send me, e-mail me at shellyk at shellykang dot com and I’ll give you my mailing address. The current blankie will include only wool/nylon superwash fingering weight multicolor yarn. I’m collecting Koigu-type bits for what will probably be a sweater, and Oh! I forgot to pull it out and include in the picture, but I have a small box of wool/cotton/nylon bits that will probably be another blankie one day (I do have two girls after all, and we can’t have them fighting over the heirloom knitting). Anyone who sends me yarn will be publicly thanked here, and even if it’s yarn that doesn’t fit into the current projects, I promise to find it a good home.

Now back to the dresses! Thanks for those of you who played along in my little guessing game.

Dress number one (J. Jill with flower embroidery) was very pretty, but was ultimately rejected for several reasons. Linen doesn’t travel well. I’m not sure I want to spend my vacation to L.A. tracking down an iron and attempting to get wrinkles out of a dress that will be rumpled again before we can even get to the wedding. Also, as some of you noticed, I don’t quite fill out the top of it in the right places. In the end, I just thought it looked a bit dumpy.

Dress number two I actually liked quite a bit. I just wasn’t quite sure I could pull off the busy plaid patterning, and I do think it is the kind of dress that people either love or hate – I loved it, but I had a feeling some people that I love would hate it.

Dress number three was the winner! The all-over pattern is quite camouflaging, I liked the hem length just above the knee instead of just below as the other two hit, and the fabric just seemed to flatter me more. I felt almost sexy wearing the thing. I will have to find a different bra to wear under it, but I still have a few weeks.

Oh, and about the too-pale thing. Look, I appreciate you all saying what you said about pale being pretty and smart and all that. I wasn’t fishing for complements about my skin or my figure. We all have a right to our own body issues. In general, I’m pretty comfortable with my body. Yes, I’d like to lose twenty pounds, but I also have two little kids and am still nursing and it will happen when it happens. I, personally, don’t like the way my legs are so pale that they really do look purple, especially in the spots where there are broken capillaries that showed up when I was pregnant. I refuse to wear panty hose.

I have used the self-tanning lotion in the past, and last year I had really good success with the kind that is meant to be used every day in body lotion. It’s very light, and you can control the streaks better than the intense stuff because if you make a mistake one day, you just scrub that area a bit more while you’re in the shower to exfoliate, then don’t put lotion on it the next day. You have to remember. I have just been through seven months of Minnesota winter with next to zero sun exposure. There is pale, and then there is truly blindingly white. Not to mention that I will be going to a Korean wedding. I will be surrounded by people with beautiful brown skin. I think it is perfectly acceptable for me to feel a bit self conscious, and to want to fit in as much as a big loud white girl can in that situation. Enough said!

Oh, it is late! I am tired. Thanks for coming by, everyone. Feel free to stick around.

So there’s this wedding coming up next month. The one for which I just bought Julie that expensive but very cute flower girl dress. As a stay-at-home mom, I don’t wear all that many fancy clothes – I tend to stick mostly to blue jeans, chinos and t-shirts. All of my clothes from before the girls are too small, and I really want to look as much like a put-together grown-up at this family event as possible. Especially considering the giant fashion blunder I made the last time the whole Kang family got together. But let’s not go there.

I’m not the best shopper in the world. I don’t absolutely love trying on clothes, and even when I was twenty pounds lighter and in great shape, I didn’t love looking at my body in the mirror. Still, the shopping had to be done, and I wanted some good honest advice along the way. I begged my friend Jen to come along to the mall with me, and along she came, gladly enough. We were both excited to have a morning away from our beloved families.

After a stop at the coffee shop, we got down to work. Warning! Pictures of me and my deathly purple-white skin to follow. I promise – I will be using some kind of tanning product before wearing any of these things in public!

We started at J.Jill, and I think I tried on about fifty million items of clothing there – everything from pants to skirts to tunics to blouses and god knows what else. The sales lady even made me try on a necklace! She was really very nice. The only thing that even came close there was this linen dress with embroidered flowers:

And I think it’s really funny that this dress is one that I had been looking at last week when I had the kids with me and no time to try it on, and then Jen e-mailed a picture of it to me as an idea when I suggested that I needed to go shopping. She and I have very similar taste, only hers is a more refined version of the same. I’m just too lazy when I shop, I guess.

There were a few other stores and trips into dressing rooms in between, but we ended up finding final candidates at only one other store – Von Maur, which is a nice department store here.

All three of these are V-necks because I needed something with nursing access. I tried on some skirt/top combinations and some pants/top combinations as well, but none of them both flattered my current egg-shaped figure and qualified as dressy enough.

By the time we got to the end, I was feeling a little punch drunk and was making silly faces for the camera:

Jen apparently felt the same way – she had the camera out in the hall while I was changing back into my normal clothes, and produced these very funny shots.

That’s the new hat she got while we were out. She was just trying some on to amuse herself while I was picking up a package of – well, maybe the whole Internet doesn’t need to know exactly what else I was buying today, but it was something to help control that egg-shaped figure. Anyway, she had this little green number on, and it was very cute and I had my credit card out any way, and it wasn’t very expensive. I mean, just think if I had hired a personal shopper for four hours! This was a tiny fraction of what that would have cost, and way more fun.

Finally, we settled on a dress. Can you guess which one?

I came home, ready to see what my family had been up to all day. Julie was having a little snack.

Sophie was ready to play a little game of behind-the-back peek-a-boo while I folded some diapers. She would peek out from behind one of my shoulders and give me a big wide-mouth toothy kiss, then cruise around my back and do the same on the other side. Over and over for ten minutes full of giggles and grins.

Off to go crank out some more blankie squares!

Yesterday was Harlot Day in St. Paul. I woke up with a feeling not at all unlike the feeling I had as a little kid waking up on – well, not Christmas. On the day of a big field trip at school or a birthday party whose invitation has been tacked to the fridge with a magnet for the last month. Excited, happy, enjoying the anticipation that was almost over.

The girls and I spent the morning with my knitting group, as we do most Wednesdays. Then, to help pass the few remaining hours till Joe was to arrive home early so that I could skip off to the fun, we went over to Knollwood Mall and did a little shopping and lunch. Julie got to climb around on the kiddie rides for a few minutes, and by chance she is wearing her handknit leggings. More about those later in the post, I think.

At home, I gathered up all my things and got myself ready to flee out the back door the moment Joe walked in and took over parenting duties. I ran over and picked up my friend Kelle and we were off to St. Paul by 4:00. I was floored with surprise to find an open parking spot in the tiny lot behind the store, but there were actually two! We stopped in to check out the scene inside the Yarnery, and there was a nice crowd milling around. We said a few hellos, then ran over to Cafe Latte to pig out on salads and deserts.

While we were there, we ran into several other knitters, and I had a nice little explanatory conversation with the lady at the cash register trying to help her understand that yes, there are a lot of knitters in the neighborhood today – there’s an author coming for a book signing. I stopped when her eyes started to cross in confusion. As we were leaving, I ran into Susan Rainey and her (I think this is right, and please forgive me if I am wrong on this or any other name in this post. I am the world’s worst memory when it comes to names even when I try my hardest) sister-in-law Kim. I love Susan and her work. See that sweater peeking through behind the beautifully knit jacket? It’s a Bohus. A lovely Bohus that won ribbons at the State Fair a couple years ago. By the way, Susan, I really want to take your zipper class one of these days!

I went back over to the shop for a few minutes and was standing around schmoozing like an idiot when one of the managers spotted me and said “Aren’t you supposed to be over at the auditorium helping to set up?!!!” And I said “Oops! I thought I had a few minutes, but I’m going right now.” So I trotted right on over to William Mitchel and scooted past the line of people waiting to get in – see the line of people waiting to get in:

And then I got to hang around for a little while kind of helping to set up, mostly trying to stay somewhat out of the way, and failing somewhat as I practically drooled over the tote bags they had on display for sale. I came within a hair’s breadth of buying one, but when I asked about it, the cash register wasn’t ready to go yet, and I figured it was fate intervening on my wallet’s behalf. I do, after all, have about a million bags around the house already. They were SO cool, though! There was one in particular with brown and pink color scheme and it had monkeys on it. Oh, but it didn’t happen. And that is life.

So then it was time to open the doors, and my job was to hand out tickets to the book signing as people walked in – we were trying to stagger people in groups so they wouldn’t have to wait in a gawdawful line, but it just didn’t work out very well because everyone chose to be in the first group. Still, I had fun greeting everyone as they came in, and I had to keep reminding myself and my friends that I was supposed to be working and that I was holding up the line by chatting even for a moment. (Duh!) The auditorium filled up just about completely, but everyone who showed up managed to get in. Here’s a picture of the crowd right before Stephanie came out.

You can see my friend and Yarnery coworker Jess on the stage in this one – she sang Oh, Canada! in both French and English to welcome Stephanie. In fact, someone videotaped her, and you can see it on YouTube if you like.

I got to meet and also re-visit lots of friends, acquaintances and readers during the event overall, but I was particularly happy to meet Flan and Kathleen. Flan reads here, and I read their blog. Kathleen flew in from wherever exactly it is that she lives somewhere in the deep south (Atlanta?) and it was very cute to see the two of them together. Anyway, nice ladies.

And we all sat down and listened to the Harlot and she was incredibly funny as we all expected and we all laughed and had a great time for an hour. It was great! Then, there was the neverending line for the signing and since I was still sort of staff, I hung around all over the place talking to various people and helping out a little bit when I could. I met the guy who makes the awesome bags I was telling you about a minute ago, and I begged him to come leave me a comment here so that I can find his etsy site and maybe even buy the remaining monkey bag that he says exists in his possession. Dude! I can’t even remember your name, but you rock! Please, oh please e-mail me – shellyk at shellykang dot com! This guy also was knitting a beautiful knee sock out of his own handspun that I think he had dyed himself. And there were lots of other very nice people with interesting projects, and I am SO bad with names it is embarrassing.

And anyway, three hours later the line eventually slowed to a trickle and then finally we were down to the last handful of people waiting to get our book signed, say something nice to Stephanie, and take a photo or five. Having hung around all over the place, including just a few feet away from the signing table for much of the time, I was amazed at Stephanie’s grace in dealing with So.Many.People. with such patience and wit. Even though she’s been on an insane schedule with almost no sleep all week. She could easily be a poster child for caffeine. But then it was my turn, and I stepped up and put my book down and she looked up at me and said “You’re Shelly and I helped get all those knitters to bury you with yarn for that blanket you’re holding.” and I started blathering about yes, and thank you and you don’t know how much fun I had with that and blah blah blah thank you some more… and she signed my book and we took some pictures and boy I look good with my middle section hidden behind the blankie because that is where at least twenty pounds of the remaining baby weight is hidden.

And at that point it was very late, and although I was still jazzed up from the excitement of the event, I was also very tired and aware that I had to get up with the girls in the morning and get them through their day. So I came home and crashed pretty quickly. Except that I did stop over at CafePress and ordered a t-shirt just like the one Stephanie was wearing because I am a shameless copy-cat and I love the geeky inside-jokedness of it all.

I had lots of knitting time last night as I was walking around talking to people, and yes, I can knit while walking and talking without looking. But it has to be plain stockinette stitch, preferably in the round. I had cast on a new sock and knit up just the short-row toe in preparation for just this scenario, and over the course of the evening I finished the foot of the one sock. I started the heel today. This is that KnitPicks blank yarn that I dyed up with the Wilton food dyes a few months back. I’m a little surprised with how nicely it’s turning out. Makes me want to experiment a little more, in fact. Actually, I’m thinking of dyeing up enough of the some stripes to make matching leggings for the girls for next fall. Julie has gotten so much wear out of her current pair, it makes more sense than knitting them sweaters, which will just get covered in food stains and/or taken off five minutes after I put them on.

I couldn’t resist sharing this shot with you. Here is one of the many reasons why I love my husband forever and see him as one of the sexiest men on the planet.

Joe doesn’t cook for beans, but he does clean up the kitchen after dinner more nights than not without complaint, even after a long hard day at work. That’s what I call love!

Finally, here’s Julie with her Duplo block creation from this morning. She had to fight Sophie off t get it built without the random chaos and destruction that only an almost-toddler can reap, and she had a fairly elaborate story to go with it about characters from various books and videos going to the hospital, riding on boats and trains, and living together in a city. This kind of shit is what makes it worth being a mommy for a living.

In case there were every any doubt, I love my little girl with a passion. It feels almost (and I hope I am not tempting fate here because I need this to be true) as if the gap that was rent in our relationship after Sophie was born, the one where I lost her complete trust and attachment by giving birth to another child who needed me even more than she did at the time, has been closing a bit in the last month or so. Julie has been more willing to cuddle with me again, has retaken the habit of crawling into my bed and cuddling in the mornings, and is more willing to come sit in my lap or just come over and lean on me in the way that she used to in the pre-Sophie era. Please, dear daughter, let’s hold on to that closeness for as long as we can!

And now dear readers, I am off to go make up with the blankie. It’s hungry for yarn, and I’ve got three new DVDs waiting. Barring unforeseen obstacles, there will be a Blankie Friday tomorrow.