As I write this, I'm curled up in bed, a dog at my feet, and another with his tiny head resting against my hip. I'm wearing a purple tank top and the bottoms from a set of flannel pajamas that Fuzzy gifted me with several years ago. They are decorated with a lavender grid pattern, darker purple bones and WOOF WOOFs and turquoise terriers. They are too long, unironed, and completely undignified, but they are also soft, warm, and comfortable, and I love them.
I really don't do much flannel. Oh, yes, we have a lovely set of flannel sheets, but we lived in California, and now live in Texas, and the temperatures in either place are rarely low enough to require flannel on the bed. (I use them once a year anyway, around Christmas time, as they are also soft, warm, and comfortable.)
As a child, of course, I looked forward to new flannel nightwear every Christmas eve. One year, it was red flannel feet-in pajamas (I only wore the pants to those as well, and eventually cut the feet off, too.), another year it was a voluminous nightgown with ruffles and little red and orange flowers, most years, though, it was some version of nightgown in solid red, and my mother has oodles of pictures of me, with a cocoa mustache and a present-bow in my hair, from various years – pictures I'm inclined to burn, actually, so it's good that they're with her in Mexico.
Ugly pictures aside, there's something comforting about flannel. It's not bulky, like fleece, and doesn't make corduroy-esque swishing sounds like nylon windsuits, it's just soft, and warm, and somehow satisfies the need to nest, even if you're sitting crosslegged on an wood floor, while wearing it, and not curled up in a warm bed.
Flannel. One of my favorite parts of winter.