Its Christmas and that means cutting up a lot of food in a lot of different ways. So I thought I might share a little peek in our humble knife testing facility.

My mother is giving the knives thorough testing and so far she has not found any task they are not suited for. I have tested them too, yesterday, when I was gutting, skinning, and fileting the carp for traditional Christmas dinner. The three knives were up all the tasks, including sewering the head from the body and de-boning the fish (which consists of cutting out the ribcage and spine). I am usually very critical of my work, and these knives do have some cosmetic issues but functionally I am very satisfied with the design. The handles do allow for a variety of grips that are commonly used in the kitchen by both noobs and pros. The rounded tips on the medium and the chef knife did allow me to easily scrape off the scales with the former and place one hand safely on the blade for additional pressure for the latter. The tip on the smaller knife was sharp enough to pierce the wall of the abdominal cavity and its shape did help to avoid piercing the guts as well when cutting it open. Which is important, especially regarding the gall bladder – if you pierce that, it can render a lot of the meat useless.

The testing will continue of course – what is not known yet is how the cheap oil finish will stand up to time. For that several months are needed at least, several years would be ideal. But I do know already that when I am finished with my current batch of knives, it is worth making these sets for sale because they are not just ornaments and will be genuinely useful to whoever buys them.

Regarding my third Covid shot, yesterday the slightly elevated temperature was gone and I was feeling mostly OK. But I did notice a symptom that I do not remember from my previous two shots – in addition to a sore shoulder near the injection site, the lymphatic nodes in my left armpit swole a bit and became tender, and the pain extended to my left pectoral muscle. It has receded a bit, but it still hurts somewhat, although not as much as to impede me in any meaningful way anymore.

It seems that I had a different reaction to each of my three shots, although they were all Pfizer. And not only different in duration, but also where, when, and how the symptoms are expressed. Interesting but hopefully not very consequential.