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Yeah.  I totally went there.  Happy Sunday.

Amazingly enough, one of the things I had planned to do this year is to post more to my blog.  And that hasn’t exactly happened.  Between relatives being born, cars breaking down, and folks getting the flu, there hasn’t been much opportunity to sit down and write stories about life or spread my own baffled opinions on the word around me.

And then I realized that sometimes the best stories in the world are the short ones.  Somewhere between That Guy redirecting all his/her twitter posts to their blog and the epic adventures of bloggers like the Yarn Harlot, there are all these smaller things that don’t take as long.

That, and I finally downloaded the files from my camera.  Go me!

I call this little snapshot “Resistance is futile.  You will be photographed”. Basically, we went to Eat Eat and noshed on French Toast and Eggs Benedict.  Yes, there is a photo of the maple syrup somewhere on my flickr page.  Because Maple Syrup is awesome.  Yes, Chelsea has not yet realized that one cannot fully hide behind a cup of tea. Yes, Robin has resigned himself to the fact that getting me the camera for Xmas last year was probably a Bad Idea. Yes, we went to the yarn store afterwards.

Sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone to do something nice.  Usually, if you suggest going to a resteraunt to someone, they will choose somewhere close by, generally only a few minutes away.

Of course, standing in line, waiting around at Red Lobster with the little pager-thingy proved to be a boring endeavour.  When we were quoted a wait time of about 1/2 an hour, we accepted it, but soon Robin was asking “Are you sure you want to stay here?  We could go somewhere good like Big T’s.”

Big T’s is a BBQ joint, and it’s excellent.  Try the brisket.  Seriously.

Sure, it took us an extra fifteen minutes to get there, but once we were headed west on 16th, it didn’t take long.  Plus, there was no lineup when we got there, and the place wasn’t over-crowded.  There were only a couple of folks with small children (a family with kids old enough to know what a dessert fork is, and a table that I inwardly called “boys night out” because it was a 1-yr old with his Dad & Grandpa), so the place was pretty quiet.

After that?  Grabbed a couple of movies at Blockbuster & settled in for the night.  Yay!  Reminder to self: Horror movies before bed are probably not a good idea.  Yay for comic relief afterwards…

Finished up work on Yule Sock #1.  Cast on for Yule sock #2.  Yay for picot edging!  Also have a pretty red vintage sock off the needles as well.  I’m going to have to cast its mate on fairly soon.  Only thing that’s holding me back is the fiddly-ness (is that even a word) of the pattern.  Sure, it goes quick once you get going, but I really had to make myself work on it towards the end.

Also put a few more rows on the Baby Surprise Jacket.  I’m finding that, of all projects, this one is the most challenging to do with my new knitting style.  For those who don’t know, I recently switched the way I knit, mainly for ergonomic reasons.  I knit English style, feeding the new yarn over the fingers of my right hand, and carrying the knitted work under my palms.  I switched to a style known as Irish Cottage Knitting, most notably done by the Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.  Again, it’s a matter of getting out of one’s comfort zone in order to get a better result.  I still carry the yarn on the fingers of my right hand, but it’s wrapped in a different way (over the middle & ring fingers instead of over the pinky & pointer fingers), and I carry the right needle between thumb & forefinger instead of under my palms.  There’s a video on The Anticraft that shows this method wonderfully.

Apparently the ‘Harlot teaches courses in ergonomic / production knitting, but I have yet to be able to get myself to one of ‘em.  Possibly someday I’ll get wind that she’s in Calgary and doing a course.  Might be able to pick up some of the finer points.   Til then…well…I can’t knit the way I used to anymore.  I started using the new method almost a month ago, and it’s stuck.  I’m almost as fast, if not faster, than I was before I switched it up.

(Actually, after re-watching the video, I’m going at about the same clip she’s going.  So that’s pretty good.  I think she’s holding back a bit, but hey).

As to the BSJ, the reason it’s a challenge is because you wind up draping the knitted fabric of larger projects over your thumb.  The BSJ is just large enough to be a bit unwieldy.  Hopefully this will change as the sweater gets bigger.  If not, I might be screwed