Bronwyn

PLEASE, retail workers

from a religious minority living under Christian hegemony year-round

(factcheck: true)

the public space stuff this time of year is a lot

(though I'd 100% take public Christmas but w/national abortion access if playing forced choice, ofc)

PLEASE DO THIS

it is a kindness

My recipe is somehow has brandy in it despite descending from the teetotalling Baptist arm of my family tree, but I definitely put WAY more brandy on it, over 4-6 weeks of aging, than my great great grandmother probably intended.

Okay, if you come from a homemade fruitcake tradition, how much alcohol would you say each cake gets soaked in, on average?

Hey linguists, check it out! @lingsocam.bsky.social has virtual registration options for the #LSA2026 meeting:

web.cvent.com/event/d45318...

🐦🐦

Good to know, thank you! I see my doctor regularly for other reasons, and I'll see if I can interest her in a broader set of tests.

Life is short. Use the stickers.

So far it has blessedly been confined to my upper body, but yeah. Carrying heavy loads and bra bands/straps are so far the main triggers, I'm giving it a month before I try to get my doctor interested.

I have been getting really weird pressure-induced hives recently. Not sure what's got my immune system all up in arms, but it is *annoying*.

I attribute this to the extremely Québécois pronunciation every single commentator has committed to. There is very much a diphthong on that second vowel. ([ʃãmpæʲɲ]? I'm not great at transcription.)

It somehow took me until today, after literal weeks of Political Budget Drama, to realize that our current finance minister's last name is literally Champagne. 🍾

Hey! Northern hemisphere folks:

this is my annual reminder to myself and perhaps also to you that if you have the schedule autonomy to permit it, get out for a walk or whatever during daylight hours! It's important!

You can work more when it's dark but you need whatever sunlight is available!

About 10 years ago I finally looked up what Toronto's latitude was, because I felt like winters were darker and summers brighter in my Vancouver youth. And they were! Canada's population corridor is astonishingly southerly.

(I am considering getting a blood pressure monitor, because my blood is apparently SURGING through my veins in a way that is not recommended. Possibly a medication side effect, which alas means I may soon have to go off the med that means I can fall asleep in <30 minutes sometimes.)

Today is the day that online product recommendations got bad enough that I finally subscribed to Consumer Reports. Apparently they're a nonprofit?

This is an amazing concept for an office plant! I should look into something similar in mine.

That would be excellent! I will try not to literally forget the conference is happening!

The LSA is expensive, so I get that not everyone can afford it. But if you're a student, consider asking your advisor/department if they can help with the cost.

(By "real hybrid option" I mean "I have faith in the people involved such that I don't think we'll be making satirical merch on Zazzle this time")

This year the LSA has a real hybrid option! And as Jessi says downthread, if we want this to remain an option in the future it's important to actually register to attend virtually.

Thank you for the reminder that there's a virtual option this year! I knew this, and was excited, but today was the day when I also had the bandwidth to actually register.

Several pairs of hand-knit socks on a wood table. At the left is a single blue sock, then going clockwise are wine-red variegated socks, green-and-brown multicolour socks, white-and-beige socks, blue lace socks, and in the centre are two grey lace socks.

Finally, enjoy this garden of socks I knit before I realized that I don't actually like wearing hand-knit socks (the stitches are too bumpy). If anyone has suggestions for what to do with these please share—they're a bit too worn to frog, probably.

They are unbelievably warm, though they need to be blocked aggressively because they're so thick that they ended up a smidge too small for me.

It is SO fun and easy to knit a tube. What I really need to do is start leaning into giving these things away.

A beret-style hat draped on a white teapot (only the teapot base and spout are visible), with a partial view of matching mittens in the foreground. The hat and mittens all have a cream foreground, with a multicoloured vareigated background.

I am quite proud of this hat, because I charted the feather pattern myself, but I don't wear it very often. I knit it to match the mittens in the foreground.

A hand-knit grey and teal striped cowl draped over a white teapot.

A grey and teal striped cowl draped over a white teapot, this time draped to show a different part of the stripe pattern.

I have knit objectively too many cowls, because I don't actually like wearing cowls, but here is a grey-and-teal striped cowl that I like quite a bit (but still never wear). Pattern is Foolproof: www.ravelry.com/patterns/lib...

Two hand-knit mittens on a wood table. The mittens have a black pattern of interlocking spirals against a grey ombre background, fading from dark grey at the wrists to very light grey at the fingertips.

Two black-and-grey mittens with their cuffs turned out, against a wood table. The left mitten has a bright yellow interior, and the right mitten has a teal interior.

While I gird myself for another couple hours of Ravelry updates, please enjoy the following sampler of finished and semi-finished knit objects.

First up: my Fiddlehead Mittens! Their mismatched interiors bring me disproportionate joy.

Friends, I am thrilled to announce that my yarn stash is now totally organized! And miraculously it all fits into 2 large bins, as opposed to 3 haphazardly full bins + mystery yarn languishing in drawers in project bags!

Now we're onto the languishing I-hate-weaving-in-ends semi-finished projects.

Interestingly, for me it only makes sense to organize by weight (and then by colour if I have enough of a certain type). But if I were storing yarn somewhere visible, my very strong preference would be by colour—so in a way it's lucky I don't have space to store yarn anywhere visible!

I think this is *the* licensing issue of our time.

Whether it's prohibiting fascist uses or stopping AI training, liberal open licenses are falling down.

I still like CC BY-SA, forcing to share derivatives, but am not sure a license change is the technical solution to this social problem.

There is a field for that, and I sincerely hope that at the end of this process I will make history by actually filling it in!