Not entirely “Brainless”

I’ve said before how much I enjoy Yarnissima’s designs. “Brainless” is no exception. It’s a free download on Ravelry, and the pattern I’ve chosen to knit up Firstborn’s socks.

[I may have broken a personal record as to how many apostrophes I can cram into a sentence. Yay! for CTRL+V, as I do not like the default one, nor the default quotation marks.]

I was well into my third pattern repeat when I looked at the cabling on the sides and realized my count was off, somewhere. So I frogged back to just above the second cable twist and fixed that. This pattern goes quickly, and once I have worked a few more repeats of the chart, I will no longer have to put a tick-mark down for each completed round. Then it truly will be brainless knitting.

I may have commented on how much I dislike this yarn. Once or twice or eleventeen times. I love the colors. The multistrandedness [my German roots are showing] makes for exceptionally subtle color shifts, and visually it is almost as fun as knitting with Noro, just to see what happens next. I think it will make a supremely wearable sock and be easy to care for. But the softness of the yarn verges on deadness, kind of like alpaca only more so. And the splittiness, oye, the splittiness!

Nevertheless, it is going quickly, and I would not be surprised to begin the Beguine heel gusset later today.

In doll news, I seem to have organized a small meet toward the end of next month. Fourthborn and I may be the only ones there, and I might need to borrow one of her dolls for the occasion if my Cuprit has not arrived, but I am looking forward to meeting others in the local community. I’ll post details closer to the date, and if you are going to be in the area, come by and say hi.

I am learning my way around DoA [like Facebook or Ravelry for BJD doll collectors]. I have posted my statutory number of posts and am now just waiting for sufficient time to elapse before I have access to the marketplace, which is what I really want. I have already reached my limit with the number of O’s followed by M’s and then G’s which I see in sundry posts. Augh! Jane Austen would be horrified.

I have a new restaurant for you: L & L Hawaiian Barbecue on FM 3040 in Lewisville, just west of the Sonic. It’s a chain that started in the Islands, and I had [among other things] undoubtedly the best macaroni salad I have eaten in my life. According to Brother Sushi, in Hawaii macaroni salad gets served with pretty much everything. I could eat this salad three times a day, no problem. The pot-stickers were good, too. I don’t remember the name of the hot sauce, but it’s deep pink, fiery with a sweet aftertaste; I don’t think I will need to wax my lip or my brows for a couple of weeks.

I got the sample plate: teriyaki beef, Korean pork ribs, and teriyaki chicken. The beef was tasty but a little on the dry side; to be fair, we got there late in the day. I have about half of it left for another meal. The pork was garlicky, and is history. Even dealing with the bones, which I don’t like to do, didn’t put me off. The chicken was amazing. I only have any of it left because I had eaten all my pork and half my beef and two pot-stickers and my macaroni salad and all but a few bites of rice. Oh, that rice! I am not much for soy sauce because of the sodium, so I only dribbled a little on one corner, but underneath the mound of rice, where the teriyaki sauce from the chicken had run?

Bliss.