Day 22, 78 to go: PJs for college girls

Heidi could change your life.

I blame Heidi.  I started making pajama bottoms and couldn’t stop today.  I don’t know what was different about today other than that it started with Shirley Temple.  My sisters and I loved this movie when we were kids. I remember watching it every Christmas.  I haven’t seen it in a long time.  It was pretty disturbing. 

Poor Heidi.  Her parents die.  Her mother’s sister abuses and neglects her for 6 years and finally decides she is tired of raising this kid and leaves Heidi with her paternal grandfather whom she has never met.  The old guy is gruff and lives in the middle of nowhere on a mountain in Switzerland.  Poor Heidi.  Apparently things were so bad with Aunt Dede that she would rather live with this strange old guy who mostly ignores her at first than spend another minute with her aunt.

Of course, Heidi charms her grandfather and all the townspeople.  (After all, she is Shirley Temple.)  But then Dede comes back from Frankfurt, kidnaps Heidi and drops her off at the home of the widowed Herr Sesseman to be a playmate for his crippled daughter Clara.  Fraulein Rottenmeier is the mean governess who oversees Clara’s life.  (What a brilliant name for the standard-issue baddie in a Shirley Temple movie.)  Eventually Rottenmeier plots to get rid of Heidi by selling her to the gypsies.  And all the while, the grandfather has been trying to find Heidi and bring her back to the mountain…

What struck me was that I watched this movie a zillion times as a kid and loved it.  I remember hating Fraulein Rottenmeier.  But I didn’t think Dede’s behavior or the grandfather’s was odd.   I guess I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had tried to sell me to gypsies if they could have found some…

Anyhow, this cinematic trip down memory lane was followed by Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  What an overwrought mess from Uncle Francis.  There are people who love this movie. I could barely watch it.  I managed to leave it on while I was sewing.  The vampire thing is lost on me, especially when the last half hour (at least) of the movie is spent in weird archaic exorcism rituals.   Uncle Francis has so much pre-Vatican II (and post Paul VI) Roman Catholic imagery in the Godfather movies and this Dracula thing that I worry a little.  

I love the way these shorts came out.

Meanwhile, I made 3 pair of pajama bottoms today.  My eldest niece, Kate, asked for shorts, so she is getting these. 

Roommates need care packages too.

I didn’t want to send a care package to her and not send anything for her roomie, Lauren, so these are for Lauren. 

 

Zebra for Zoe.

And finally, poor Zoe.  I see zebra fabric and I think Zoe.  It’s the “Z”s. (I suspect she is going to want to reprogram me.)  I just thought this fabric would make amusing pajama bottoms.  And the great thing about pajamas as gifts—the fit is forgiving and nobody has to see them – so even fabric choices made by a misdirected spinsta aunt are not the end of the world.