Sophie Blackall, IF WE WERE DOGS

Summary

Podcast Summary: Totally Booked with Zibby

Episode Title: Sophie Blackall, IF WE WERE DOGS
Release Date: November 21, 2025
Host: Zibby Owens
Guest: Sophie Blackall

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Episode Overview

This episode features a warm and insightful conversation between Zibby Owens and celebrated author-illustrator Sophie Blackall. The center of their discussion is Sophie’s latest picture book, If We Were Dogs, which delves into childhood friendships through imaginative play. They also explore Sophie’s creative process, the power and importance of picture books, fostering community among artists, and the role childhood reading plays in inspiring lifelong creativity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Inspiration and Origins of If We Were Dogs

• Three Stories Spark the Book

  • A Candid Encounter with a Child:
    • Sophie shares meeting a nine-year-old, who revealed her anxieties about making friends at a new school and her plan to get “dog everything” to showcase her love for dogs.
    • “She had this plan, and I thought, this is amazing. This is gold.” (02:16 – 02:34)
  • Diesel the Farm Dog:
    • Inspiration struck from Diesel, an exuberant golden retriever near Sophie’s Catskills home, whose joy and presence deeply influenced the energetic ‘big dog’ character in the book.
    • “Diesel owns the valley...he's irrepressible, but adorable.” (02:35 – 03:20)
  • Observing Dogs and Kids in Prospect Park:
    • She noticed parallels between dog parks and children’s playgrounds, especially those who prefer quieter activities amidst chaos.
    • This reflection merged with personal events: Sophie’s husband’s unexpected heart surgery and the emotional limbo she experienced while caring for him.

• Writing as Solace During Crisis

  • While caring for her husband in the hospital, Sophie found herself unable to work on her adult memoir, but comforted by illustrating and developing If We Were Dogs.
  • “I couldn't do it in hospital. But what I could do was this book that popped into my head...” (05:27 – 05:45)

The Book’s Core: Friendship and Finding One’s Voice

• The story features two children (or dogs) in imaginative play. One, a dominant ‘idea person’, and the other, who eventually asserts their own ideas.
• It’s about recognizing and negotiating friendship dynamics, learning to assert oneself, and feeling heard.
• Sophie observes how deeply and instinctively children connect to these dynamics, sharing heartwarming interactions from her school visits:
  • “Kids get this completely... I look out at an auditorium of a thousand children, and they're all making this sign, which is, I know this. I agree with you.” (08:44 – 09:31)
• The narrative intentionally keeps the relationship ambiguous—they could be siblings or friends, making it widely relatable for children.

Sophie’s Artistic and Writing Approach

• Art Comes First:
  • For this book, the visual concept appeared before the narrative—she drew two dogs at a table and the story grew from there.
  • Support from her editor was crucial:
    • “To have an editor who has that much faith and confidence that you will figure it out is a great gift.” (07:29 – 07:38)
• Grappling with the Creative Process:
  • Sophie describes wrestling with her projects as ultimately rewarding:
    • “The grappling...it gets me in that world for a little bit longer and I get to stay there.” (06:44 – 06:59)
• Collaboration
  • She discusses the different energy of illustrating her own texts versus collaborating with other authors, highlighting the joy of creative partnership, particularly referencing Kate DiCamillo.
  • “Sometimes doing all of it myself, I can become paralyzed...so to have one part of it already set...can be freeing and exciting.” (12:34 – 12:51)

Building Creative Community: Milkwood Residency

• Sophie and her husband established Milkwood, a creative retreat on a former dairy farm, responding to a need for in-person, deep dialogue in the children’s literary community.
  • “I yearned for a place where we could sit around a table and have the kind of in-depth, protracted conversation that can last days...” (15:32 – 16:02)
• The retreat, now in its fifth year, welcomes writers, illustrators, educators, and librarians from across the globe, emphasizing the value of analog conversation and collegial bonding.
• Milkwood also offers a library of 5,000 picture books as inspiration.

Picture Books: Lasting Power and Early Literacy

• Sophie is passionate about the importance of picture books for children of all ages, countering the push to transition to chapter books too early.
  • “Picture books are a child's favorite first immersion into a world of art...And children will gravitate to reading the same book over and over again.” (24:03 – 24:37)
• She underscores that rereading fosters vocabulary retention and a safe space for children to engage with new ideas and comfort.

Cultivating Connection and Joy

• Books act as bridges between people and generations; small, real conversations (even on the subway) matter.
  • “It seems to be a real effort to make that happen now. And maybe it does mean that we have to go to a retreat or come to something like this...to keep it human and to keep talking to each other.” (20:49 – 21:16)
• Sophie’s anecdotes with children—like the child who wants to be an eagle to eat worms—highlight the boundless imagination picture books encourage.
  • “If we have books early on and if we continue to read...those books that give us the right to dream as grown ups, are imprinted on us, and we're imprinted on them.” (24:40 – 25:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Kids and Relatable Stories:

  • “Kids get this completely...they're all making this sign, which is, I know this. I agree with you.” (09:11 — Sophie Blackall)

• On Creative Confidence:

  • “I just have this perhaps unearned faith and confidence that I will solve it in the end.” (06:46 — Sophie Blackall)

• On Gifts and Lunch:

  • “Lunch is always good. And bring me three stories.” (11:56 — Sophie Blackall)

• On Books as Lifelong Companions:

  • “The earliest books in our lives give us the right to dream for the rest of our lives.” (23:18 — Sophie Blackall, referencing Maira Kalman)

• Charming Child’s Logic:

  • “A five year old told me that she would be an eagle...because then I could eat worms.” (21:51 – 22:11 — Sophie Blackall)

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Noteworthy Timestamps

• 02:16 – 03:20: Sophie recounts the real-life inspirations behind If We Were Dogs.
• 05:27 – 05:45: Sophie describes how her husband's medical emergency shaped her writing.
• 08:14 – 09:51: The friendship at the story’s heart and how kids respond to it.
• 11:39 – 12:23: Sophie describes how a supportive editor helped her start writing her own stories.
• 13:32 – 13:51: The joys and freedom of collaborating versus working solo.
• 15:32 – 16:17: Sophie on Milkwood and the importance of communal, in-depth dialogue in the arts.
• 20:37 – 21:16: Ways to foster real-life community and human connection in a digital age.
• 21:51 – 22:11: The eagle-and-worms anecdote – the delight of childlike creativity.
• 24:03 – 25:25: Sophie’s advocacy for picture books and their lasting impact.

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Episode Tone & Atmosphere

The episode is intimate, reflective, and brimming with admiration—for children’s imaginations, collaborative friendships, and the transformative power of stories. Sophie’s warmth and humor (plenty of references to cake and lunch) make the conversation accessible and encouraging to both creators and readers. Zibby’s thoughtful prompts guide the interview with genuine affection for Sophie’s work and its place in her own family’s life.

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Future Projects

• Sophie hints at numerous new works in progress, including her still-developing adult memoir and an art project inspired by the sea (“cyanometer” — to measure the blues of the ocean).
  • “I am still grappling with the grown up book, which is such a lovely place to grapple because it's about the sea and it's a love story, and so I get to just return to the sea.” (25:41)

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Final Moments

• The conversation closes with mutual appreciation and lighthearted wishes to meet again—next time with cake, not at a hospital—echoing the value of joy, togetherness, and small daily pleasures.

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Summary prepared for readers who want to connect quickly and deeply to this thoughtful episode, rich in storytelling, creativity, personal resilience, and the enduring importance of children’s literature.

Transcript

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[Sophie Blackall]

Can I just let it go?

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[Sophie Blackall]

Better.

[Zibby Owens]

Welcome to Totally Booked Live at the Whitby. I am thrilled to be here with Sophie Blackall, who has been on my podcast before and is now back with if We Were Dogs. Congratulations.

[Sophie Blackall]

Thank you, Siby. It's lovely to be here and to see all of you.

[Zibby Owens]

I mean, if we were dogs, how would we be sitting right now?

[Sophie Blackall]

Oh, well, I think at a table with hats and having demolished pretty much everything in front of us.

[Zibby Owens]

Tell us about your new book.

[Sophie Blackall]

Oh, every book I do comes about in a completely different way. And I think I have done 60 of them now, which suddenly makes me feel very old. This one came about in a fractured way. There were three things. Three short stories, if I may.

[Zibby Owens]

You may.

[Sophie Blackall]

One, I met a nine year old child who began talking to me in the middle of a sentence the way children do, which is what I love about them, she said. And also I had never met this child before. And also she said, I love dogs, but I'm worried that people might not know I love dogs and I'm starting school in the fall and they might not know. So I have to get dog everything. I have to get a dog backpack and dog socks. And she listed this whole thing. She had this plan, and I thought, this is amazing. This is gold. That was one number two. I split my time between Brooklyn, New York, and up in the Catskills, where we have a farm dog that lives nearby called Diesel, who is a golden retriever and is the most exuberant dog you have ever met in your life. Diesel owns the valley, turns up on our doorstep, will sit overnight waiting for us, and when we open the door in the morning, he is there saying, hi, Hi. Hi. I've been here all night. Are you ready? Let's go and play. I've just rolled in a skunk and isn't this great? And I love you and let me lick you. And again, skip skunk. And you can't. He's irrepressible, but adorable. So Diesel was the inspiration for the big dog. Then at Prospect park, where I live in the city, there's the rambunctious dogs rolling and wrestling and fighting and howling. And there's always one dog who would rather be reading a book. And so I started to think about this contrast and how alike they are to children in a way. And then, Zibi, I don't know if you remember this, and there is absolutely no reason you would, but I ran into you.

[Zibby Owens]

I remember.

[Sophie Blackall]

Oh, you do remember this.

[Zibby Owens]

Pankotidian.

[Sophie Blackall]

Right, Pankotidian. My husband Ed had ended teaching. He was about to lose his fancy pants medical insurance and come onto my terrible artist's freelance insurance. And so he was doing all of his medical appointments and he went in for a regular checkup and came out with an appointment for open heart surgery. And suddenly our lives changed. And I saw you there, and we had just gone in for the pre op appointments and the next day he was gonna go in. And I don't know if any of you have had that experience. I'm sure many of you have or know someone who has. And suddenly everything in your lives, it's distilled. And I just have a drooping microphone here, which is now in my lap, and it's quite cozy, but I'm not entirely sure this is where it should be, so. Oh, thank goodness. Technical people who can come and do the right thing. Thank you. I was starting to lean into it. Ed was in hospital. And those of you who have had experience of hospital know that it is traumatic and miraculous. Hopefully and also at times, boring. You spend a lot of time with the person you love most in the world who is unconscious or asleep. And I was working on a grown up memoir, having spoken a lot about memoir today. And I was delighted to hear all of the other writers today talk about grappling with writing. Because writing is so hard, but I always think it's only me. And I think everybody else can just write fluidly and easily. I was grappling with this book and I couldn't. I couldn't do it in hospital. But what I could do was this book that popped into my head, if We Were Dogs. So that was a very long winded way of telling you how this book came about. And I didn't even tell you what it was, which is two kids pretending to be dogs, but one of them has all the ideas and the other one, at a certain point gains the courage to turn around and say, I have an idea too.

[Zibby Owens]

How is your husband?

[Sophie Blackall]

He is very well, thank you for asking. Yes, he was on the miraculous end of the hospital experience.

[Zibby Owens]

Grappling with writing is obviously, it's so common, but when you're in it, it feels like it's impossible. Like if the material is not coming easily, it's just never going to come. How did you then work through it? Did you abandon that project or did you turn to this and say, I'll do like an intermezzo or something?

[Sophie Blackall]

This was definitely the sort of palette cleanser or the little sorbet. But I was talking to other writer friends about this and. And the grappling I have come to love because if I love the subject matter and if I want to stay in this world, it's a thrill to go back into it. And I see it as a puzzle to be solved. And I just have this perhaps unearned faith and confidence that I will solve it in the end. So the grappling, although sometimes it feels so incredibly difficult, it gets me in that world for a little bit longer and I get to stay there.

[Zibby Owens]

And then for you, where does the art visual piece come in with this particular book?

[Sophie Blackall]

If We Were Dogs, it came first. And I drew this picture in hospital, which ended up being the COVID and sent it to my editor saying, I don't know what this book is, but I think it is about these two dogs. And there's a big dog and a little dog, and they are sitting at a table and I have no idea what they're doing. And she said, you will figure that out. You will go into your room, into the room in your head. And you will figure that out, and I know you will. And that's another thing. To have an editor who has that much faith and confidence that you will figure it out is a great gift.

[Zibby Owens]

And for the rest, for this book in particular, when you did the illustrations, how does it work when you illustrate a story like this? I mean, the illustrations themselves, just so those in the audience in person, can see, are a huge piece of the story and are charming and amazing and detailed and quirky and everything that you always do with all of your work. So how do you tackle the rest of it? Did you write the rest of the words? Did the other images pop into your head? Like, what happens after the first image? How did you finish it?

[Sophie Blackall]

Then? I had to figure out the story. And this story is about a relationship between two friends, and it is purposely ambiguous. So they might be siblings, they might be friends. One of them is the kind of friend who has all of the ideas and knows exactly what is going to happen and is very loving and wants the best for their friend. But the other friend may not necessarily always want to do what their friend wants to do. And I think so many of us have been in that kind of a relationship that can be a little dominating or a little overpowering. And so it is about the small dog gaining the courage to turn around and say, actually, I don't want to do that. And it doesn't mean I don't want to be your friend. And the most wonderful thing is kids get this completely. And I've just been on the road for the last two weeks all over the country, talking to children in schools, which has given me so much faith in the next generation, and particularly at this time. And also that first graders are still so smart and they all have this experience. And they do a lovely thing in so many schools where they do the sign language pointing to you and pointing to their chest when they agree with something. And so you look out at an auditorium of a thousand children, and they're all making this sign, which is, I know this. I agree with you. I have experienced this. Let's get there. It is such. It's a lovely moment of connection, and it is this thrilling thing of being seen for small children who have very little power or agency. And. Yeah, when did you know you had.

[Zibby Owens]

This gift to both tell stories, to illustrate and to really reach kids where they are?

[Sophie Blackall]

Oh, gosh. It's interesting to call it a gift. I do think it is a gift in that I can't quite believe I get to do this. And I feel so incredibly lucky. And I was talking to my dear friend and collaborator, Kate DiCamillo. I don't know if any of you know Kate. I think she's often been called one of our country's greatest writers, especially for children, but for children of all ages, because I do believe picture books are for everyone. That is my little aside in parentheses. It is something I always wanted to do. Sibi. I was the kid who was seven years old in Australia, up a tree, reading a book. The book was Winnie the Pooh. And for the first time I thought, this writer has written this book for me and I talk to kids about this. Have you had that experience? And what is the first book that made you feel like? The writer was talking and they all have. Which again gives me so much confidence that there are kids who still love reading, who want to read and who have that experience of connecting with an author. And then the illustrator Ernest Sheppard was a marvel to me. And I would trace his drawings over and over again to try and understand how he had built these characters with so few lines. And I had the epiphany up a tree, age 7. Someone did this and they're a grown up and this was their job and if they could do this, maybe I could do this too. And so it was a single minded purpose from the age of seven.

[Zibby Owens]

Wow. We've talked to other authors today who got a lot of no's before yeses. Is that your experience or what was it like getting started in this world?

[Sophie Blackall]

Yes. I mean, I was dogged about it and for many years I illustrated other people's manuscripts and those were all gifts too. And then at a certain point an editor said, why aren't you writing your own stories? And I said, oh. I mumbled something about having a few half finished manuscripts in a drawer. And she gave me a great gift, which was to set a deadline to invite me to lunch and to say, give me three, bring me three stories. And I've done that for other people since. Because sometimes that's all we need is that push and someone to have that kind of faith in us that you can do this. Let's have lunch. Lunch is always good. And bring me three stories. And she bought two of them on the spot. And then that was that. Then I started writing.

[Zibby Owens]

Which were those?

[Sophie Blackall]

One of them was called the Baby Tree and one of them turned into Negative Cat. Wow.

[Zibby Owens]

When you collaborate with other people, tell me what that experience has been like for you.

[Sophie Blackall]

That is a very exciting thing because sometimes doing all of it myself, I can become paralyzed. There are so many decisions to make. Any one of them could go down any number of paths. And so to have one part of it already set and I'm then responding to that can be freeing and exciting and can send me down paths I might not have anticipated. And then to have got to this point where I'm so lucky and so fortunate to work with extraordinary writers and whose work is astonishing. And I have that feeling that I talk to kids about. I have that feeling that they are writing just for me. And sometimes they say they are. And Kate DiCamillo sent me stories all through last summer, and each one she said, I'm writing this to you. Which, yeah, again, I'm using the word gift too much. But each one was a gift.

[Zibby Owens]

I mean, the more gifts, the better.

[Sophie Blackall]

This is true. Gifts and lunch.

[Zibby Owens]

Gifts and lunch. Last time we spoke, you were about to launch Milkwood, and now it's up and running and looks amazing. Can you talk a little bit about this residency and farm and everything that's going on up there?

[Sophie Blackall]

Yes. Oh, thank you for asking. During COVID we bought my husband and I a dilapidated dairy farm in upstate New York with the idea to turn it into a creative retreat and residency for the children's book community specifically. And we've been running it now for five years. Every year we have 12 retreats or residencies with 10 people each, so only 120 spots, but we get about 1500 applications for those spots, which has just shown us that there is this incredible need for community. And because it began at the tail end of the. It was also a time where I felt that the publishing industry was very fractured and people were eating each other alive and all of our conversations were happening online and in tiny little bite sized tweets. And I yearned for a place where we could sit around a table and have the kind of in depth, protracted conversation that can last days, where you might shift your viewpoint a little or at least expand your own ideas to encompass somebody else's. And that is really what this book about is about at its heart as well. It is that recognizing somebody else's humanity, perhaps feeling slightly differently and having a different viewpoint, but acknowledging that we are all different and that we can meet someone halfway or we can at least listen to them and reconsider our own. We may end up sticking exactly with what we thought. We may be dogs or we may turn into something else. And Milkwood has been that. We have had people From, I think 20 different countries come. We have a retreat for librarians and educators who are embattled at the moment. And to give them a place where they can come. We feed them cake. Cake's important. And cocktails. And they get to talk to each other and share their experiences. We talk about books. We have a library of 5,000 picture books, books which is just a celebration of the enormous legacy that has gone before us. And it is a joy. It has changed our lives. We've never worked so hard, and it's really one of the most surprising and wonderful things that could have happened. Are you gonna.

[Zibby Owens]

Can you make more of them? I feel like there's a need. You need to scale it, open them all over the world.

[Sophie Blackall]

It does feel slightly miraculous. It is like an ark or something, a refuge. And it's wonderful.

[Zibby Owens]

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[Zibby Owens]

How do you think we can all build in more community in the day to day when we can't necessarily go to an artist's residency and there aren't events all the time that pop up. But for those who long to be in conversation and in community, what is your answer to that?

[Sophie Blackall]

I think books are such a wonderful bonding thing that so many people can talk to one another about a book. Even I see people on the subway and not as many people as I wish were reading where so many of us are on our phones. But then when you see that little people making eye contact over a book and then maybe a tiny little shy conversation, it's so important to have the in person human conversations and they're becoming. It seems to be a real effort to make that happen now. And maybe it does mean that we have to go to a retreat or come to something like this where we get to spend the day together and actually talk in person and meet someone new and learn something we didn't know before to keep it human and to keep talking to each other.

[Zibby Owens]

And.

[Sophie Blackall]

And if there's cake, then that just makes everything easier. Or a brownie a little delicious. I'm so sorry we don't have a cake. No, the brownie.

[Zibby Owens]

If I had had a preview into this conversation, I would have a cake roll out right now. Next time. Next time. What makes you happy these days?

[Sophie Blackall]

Oh, I'm generally a happy person. I feel incredibly lucky about this in some. In spite of everything, in spite of how concerned I feel about just about everything that is happening in the world today and the planet we live on. Spending children, spending time with children makes me so happy with this book. Around the country, one of the questions I ask kids is, if they were an animal, what would they be? And a five year old told me that she would be an eagle. And I paused and she said, because then I could eat worms. And I said, oh, would you have to be an eagle to eat worms? And she nodded very seriously, yes. And I said, so you can't eat worms just now as you being a person? She shook her head sadly like, no. And I thought, what's stopping you if this is your goal in life, is to eat worms. But. But if she were an eagle, you.

[Zibby Owens]

Would have a very unhappy parent a few minutes later.

[Sophie Blackall]

I do go around schools just spreading kind of, you know, dissent and subversion. But I loved this kid and I just wanted to talk to her all day about, you know, this deep desire to eat worms. But it made me think of, I was talking to, do you know Myra Kalman? The. She said a couple of days ago that the earliest books in our lives give us the right to dream for the rest of our lives. And it is that that a picture book does for children which enables them to imagine being an eagle or a dog or a duck or anything else that they do naturally in their own lives. But that gets ironed out of us pretty quickly. But if we have books early on and if we continue to read, and we won't continue to read unless we have books early on. And not to get on my soapbox, but literacy rates are at an all time low in this country and I think a lot of parents try to push their children past picture books onto early readers and chapter books. But picture books are a child's favorite first immersion into a world of art. But also it's something that they have control over in their lives. And children will gravitate to reading the same book over and over again. And often people will steer them away from that. But studies have shown that a child who reads the same book over and over again will retain many more vocabulary words than if they read individual, many individual books. But it's not only that. Psychologically, a kid knows how this story is going to end. And there's a safety and comfort in returning to that book each time. And then over time, those books that are our beloved first books, those books that give us the right to dream as grown ups, are imprinted on us, and we're imprinted on them. And all of us probably have had that experience of returning to a book that we've loved, and we've left a little part of ourselves in them. And I was thinking about that listening to Nate Berkus before, talking about the rooms that we leave a layer of ourself. And our houses are parts of our identity. And books are, too. The books that we read, the books that. That we share, the books that we return to, they all have become part of who we are, but we've left a little part of ourselves in them. And we can find that when we return to them.

[Zibby Owens]

That is so beautiful. Oh, my gosh. Do you have more coming down the pike that we can get excited about?

[Sophie Blackall]

Oh, so many. So many. And I am still grappling with the grown up book, which is such a lovely place to grapple because it's about the sea and it's a love story, and so I get to just return to the sea.

[Zibby Owens]

Oh, I saw the Instagram thing.

[Sophie Blackall]

Oh, yes.

[Zibby Owens]

What do you call that?

[Sophie Blackall]

Yes, it's called a cyanometer. It was an 18th century way to measure the blue of the sky, but I painted one to measure the color of the sea.

[Zibby Owens]

Well, Sophie, I'm such a fan of your work. My kids and I have spent so much time. I know they're not just for kids, but now as a grown up, I get to read without my kids, too, and just enjoy your beautiful colors and illustration and the happiness and joy that you can feel throughout all these pages. So thank you for all you do to connect all of us.

[Sophie Blackall]

Oh, and thank you for all you do to connect all of us. Siby, it's a pleasure.

[Zibby Owens]

I hope we run into each other again. Not near a hospital.

[Sophie Blackall]

Yes, me too.

[Zibby Owens]

Okay.

[Sophie Blackall]

With cake.

[Zibby Owens]

With cake. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review. Follow me on Instagram, Ibby Owens and Spread the Word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.

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[Zibby Owens]

Yes.

[Sophie Blackall]

We're earning unlimited 3% cash back on dining and entertainment with a Capital One Saver Card. So let's just get one of everything. Everything.

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[Sophie Blackall]

Yes, chef. This is so nice.

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[Sophie Blackall]

Oh, tiramisu.

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[Sophie Blackall]

Can I make my site softer?

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