Gotcha! Secret Pal not a secret anymore!

I am delighted to report that my Secret Pal (the one who is spoiling me so wonderfully) is the lovely Laura at A Frayed Knot. I've been stalking her stealthily for the last few weeks and finally uncovered her secret identity last week. Actually, I've been reading her blog for a while (before SP9) and always wanted to comment about how gorgeous her baby girl is, but I didn't want to worry the nice knit-blogger about some strange lady ogling/stalking her baby!

How did I track her down? Well, I had it narrowed down to a few potential SP9ers from her somewhat obscure clues.

1. She has a (did I mention gorgeous?)baby:
Q: Now when you say "the baby" (hint one) – is this a real honest-to-goodness human-child baby? I have to ask only because in my blog-trolling so far you would not believe how many people refer to their pets as "the baby" or "my baby" and so on... not to put too fine a point on it, what do you consider to be the age parameters within we can legitimately refer to someone as "the baby"?
A: Yes, in this case, the baby is in fact a baby who was growed right in my very own belly. I do refer to one of the dogs as my baby, but only when I'm talking to him or asking my husband about him. To me, a baby is too young to walk. Once they're walking, they're toddlers in my book. Because of, you know, the toddling.

2. Her Socktober confessions:
Hmmm...I should give you another hint. Okay, how's this: I participated in Socktoberfest and (sort of) finished one pair of socks. No, I won't explain what I mean by "sort of." Tee hee! Okay, lots of folks had their best Socktoberfest intentions fall through the cracks of the calendar (me included), but when I put this one together with the other hints, it really did help me narrow down the list of suspects.

3. She was a square in Rhinebeck Blogger Bingo:
I will be prepared to send your first package after Rhinebeck. (I'm a square, which you would think would be a hint, but I think everyone who has a blog and is going to Rhinebeck is also a square, so let's not count that one). You bet it counts, baby - every little breadcrumb in the forest...

4. And then I received my first package, followed by a note:
So here's the thing. Because you're in Canada (or possibly because I'm in the US, but let's not pick nits here), I had to fill out all this crazy paperwork to send your package to you. The PO dude wouldn't let me put "Secret Pal" for my name. Or Mamie Van Wunderpickle. So all the forms have my real name on them. You can either: studiously ignore the paperwork OR see my real name, Google me, and find nothing interesting (also, there's more than one of me -- I just did a vanity Google and I'm not everyone who comes up). It will not lead you to my blog, or to anything related to knitting or any other fiber(re) arts I may or may not partake of, or anything about me that I've ever mentioned on my blog. So you'll know who I am but not who I am, if you see what I mean. Your choice. Laura's "secret" email address was a play on the transliteration of her real name initials, and I traced it to one of her online photo galleries with some very cute baby pix. I compared these to some pix posted by several of my likely suspects and lo and behold: same gorgeous baby (and some of the very same pix)!

Now, since gorgeous baby girl's lovely face was the key to how I found them, I figure baby and I deserve a little face time someday. Don't you? Not to worry, it's okay, because as the saying goes, she know where I live. I just wish I lived close enough to babysit!