The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 29 – Pretty Polinators

I realized that I have a pretty expensive camera, but I haven’t been using it for a long time except for photographing my mother’s gingerbread creations. So this morning I took a break from heavy lifting, and I took the camera to take some pretty-ish pictures of the pollinators that like to visit my oregano patch. I did not manage to make very many because I did not have the battery fully charged prior to this spur-of-the-moment action, but I did get some. And I did not bother with the macro lens.

Butterflies do not have a long life, but some manage to have it pretty rough and survive even so, as this specimen proves. Faded colors, chewed-up wing edges, yet still it flies.

Peacock butterflies are probably the prettiest butterflies that live around here. They look drab, almost coal-black with their wings folded, but stunningly beautiful when they flash their eyes from time to time to scare off or confuse predators.

There were multiple bee species present, but they were turning their hairy butts towards me and generally being uncooperative and blurry.

And of course several bee-mimicking hoverfly species were also present, being just as uncooperative as bees.

Bees and butterflies get all the press when it comes to pollination, but some beetle species are important in this regard too. And they are often very tiny.

There were also smaller butterfly species there, and I did not manage to capture all those present by far.

Merry Gingermas 2025 – Part 2

I was fighting with upgrading my notebook for a few days, and I completely forgot to post the rest of the pictures. So here we go.

There will be part 3, someday.

Merry Gingermass 2025 – Part 1

I decided to stock up on honey this year, so I contacted my friend and former colleague, who is a beekeeper, to see if he could give me a bucket in exchange for some garden goods. We agreed on some marmalade, pumpkin mustard, walnuts, and one batch of baked gingerbread for Christmas. And after a long pause, this year I got a gingerbread idea of my own, and I made it. I made a beehive out of gingerbread, with bees and flowers from marzipan.

My mom added the green leaves around the flowers after I was done with it. They did improve it, although it is still not of the same quality as my mother’s creations. And in this first part of this year’s Christmas Gingerbread posts, I am showing some of the creations she made to pay for the honey they are made from.

My friend liked it, and I hope he and his family enjoy it and all the other accompanying goods. We are stocked up with honey for a year or more now, since my mother is the only person who actually uses honey for food – I can only eat it in gingerbread form.

My mother was able to enjoy her hobby a lot more this year, since the carpal tunnel surgeries were a success.

TNET 49: Full Auto Crossbow

This is a really interesting video from a craftsmanship and engineering point of view. I have been tempted to try to build a crossbow for decades now. I will probably never do it, because of time, but it is a challenge I would like to take on.

Crossbows are, of course, weapons, and as such, they are subject to some regulation in most civilized countries.

In CZ, any crossbow can be bought, built, and owned by anyone over the age of 18. Crossbows with a spanning force under 150 N can be legally openly carried and fired anywhere without any regulations. They are still considered a weapon, though, and if someone gets hurt, there are appropriate consequences. Crossbows with higher spanning force, such as this one, can be owned by anyone, but they can be transported only unloaded, in an enclosed container, and they can only be fired at a range or a fenced-off area inaccessible to the public and in a way that there is no danger to the public.

Open thread, talk whatevah, just don’t be an *hole.

Previous thread.

Am on Bluesky

I did not post on my Twitter account for a while, I had only two followers, and I got zero engagement anyway. I also could not figure out how to delete it since I logged in via Google and thus had no Twitter-specific password. Today, I invested a bit of time into how to get rid of it, and finally, I managed to do it.

I made a new account on Bluesky.

I am going to continue there what I intended to do on Twitter, before it became definitively shitter – to shout out new articles on my knife blogge. So if you are interested in that, follow me on Bluesky @kb-noze.bsky.social

It’s been a Bluey kind of week

Me and the kids, we love Bluey. While the girls are officially out of the target age by about 10-12 years, they are also in that sweet spot where they feel nostalgia for their childhood definitely being over and evaluating things from a more mature perspective. Not always the most comfortable spot to be in, as a parent. Also, it’s sometimes frightening how much the Heelers resemble our family taht we’ve been wondering if the Australian government is spying on us. Anyway, I had 10 days of no school and I actually took a week to take care of things outside of school, having pulled 50+ hours weeks ever since the year started. Which means: crafting time!

First of all, while we already have a Bluey plushie that the little one got for her birthday, we clearly needed a Bingo as well. The pattern was no problem, with the amazing Choly Knight offering one for free. What was difficult was finding three corresponding fabrics. I now have about 8 or 9 different browns and tans, because you can never tell exactly from the pics on screen. (Please don’t tell me that I should shop locally. The local fabric store has business hours that don’t work for people with jobs.) They’ll get used up eventually, I’m sure.

After that, the sewing and embroidery could start and the pattern turned out to be about 95% the same as the commercially made Bluey, because how else are you going to do that.

Finally the Heeler sisters are united again and my little “Bingo” has a Bingo to cuddle.

Next, I had a bag that I’d gotten as a freebie. It’s a sensible shoulder bag, but it was booooring, so I added some embroidered patches.

The only problem here is that nothing sticks to corduroy. I think I’ll have to sew them on in a few select spots.

And, last but not least, my new favourite denim jacket. I bought the jacket on a kind of Ebay for second hand clothing, because it’s difficult to get second hand stuff in my size in regular stores. While I was shopping the Kid #1 asked for some new pyjama pants and I mus say, sometimes the people on these platforms are weird. My jacket was 9 bucks including shipping, which was about the usual range, only brand name ones were priced at 20 bucks. And that jacket looks like it’s pretty new. And then there’s people who offer clearly used Aldi and Lidl pyjamas for something close to the original price… Yeah, no, I don’t think that is going to sell quickly.

Back to my jacket.

Isn’t it the best? I wonder what the kids at school will say. I do have to strengthen my reputation as the weird teacher, and Bluey knows that I will!

P.S. Did you know that apparently some conservative moms are upset about finding out that Bluey, a blue heeler, is indeed a girl despite being, you know, blue?

Gingy Breads – Ree-Sye-Pea

This is the basis for the recipe that my mother uses most for her yearly gingerbread creations. It is not the actual recipe she uses, because she made changes to it that cannot be easily conveyed by text. I will write the changes at the end if you want to experiment, this is what she started with.

Ingredients:

650 g fine flour
240 g powdered sugar
4 whole eggs
100 g honey
50 g of vegetable fat, shortening, butter (ghee), or lard according to taste and availability
1 tablespoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of gingerbread spice mixture*
1 teaspoon of baking soda
2-3 tablespoons of cocoa powder if a darker color is desired (optional)

Process:

Put the sieved powdered ingredients and some flour on the rolling board. Add the eggs and molten fat with honey and start adding the rest of the flour. Work from the center of the board towards the edges and knead the dough until it is smooth but firm. A kitchen robot can be used at the start but elbow grease will be needed for finishing the dough because it becomes too firm.

Roll the dough to approximately half the desired thickness of the final product and cut the shapes with a butter knife or forms.

Bake at 170-180°C until the color changes to golden brown (approximately 10 min). Te exact time depends on the actual kitchen equipment available.

If a shiny surface is desired, egg wash can be applied with a pastry brush on hot pieces directly after they are taken out of the oven (my mother does not do this).

For the best taste, they should be left to wait for a few days until they soften up a bit. For decorations and building more complicated structures, like gingerbread houses, you should proceed ASAP while they are rock-hard.

My mother’s changes:

3 egg yolks and 1 whole egg instead of 4 whole eggs
300 g of honey instead of 100 g
flour is added to the mixture not by weight but until the desired dough consistency is reached so the actual amount of flour used depends on the size of the eggs, the honey consistency, etc.

Gingerbread spice mixture is sold in CZ. Here is the site of the manufacturer (-click-). Ingredients according to Google Translate are: ground cinnamon, ground coriander, ground star anise, ground allspice, ground cloves, ground anise, ground nutmeg, ground mace, and ground fennel.

Hippo New Year (with plush)

I’ll say it out oud, 2024was not my favourite year. Apart from the world going to shit, I had to deal with a lot of health problems and I don’t like that. Also work was very stressful, especially towards the end of the year. With roughly 1/3 of people being sick, the rest of us worked a lot of overtime and I just made it to the christmas break before going down as well.

But at least I got a break and got myself a gift: time to make a pattern I’ve been wanting to make for months but didn’t have the time: a baby hippo modelled on the infamous Moo Deng

The face pieces nearly drove me nuts, and I didn’t wire the legs because that cutie lives in my bed, and I’m totally in love with her.

Image of a plush hippo, front. You can see the wide open pink mouth, the feet and one ear.

Side veiw of the hippo. You can see the chubby legs and the neck rolls

Gingy Breads 2024 Xmass – Part 3

Aaaand for the third part the gingerbread cottages.

Gingy Breads 2024 Xmass – Part 2

Today a few Christmas trees.

Gingy Breads 2024 Xmass – Part 1

Today just a little teaser of my mother’s creations this year. She made so many gingerbread houses this Christmas that I will have to post them over a few days. I shoulda start two weeks ago but I somehow never got to it.

Aye Maide Some Cutting Boards

I haven’t posted here about crafting for a long time, so I decided to do some posting now. I already made my first cutting boards from jatoba and they are currently tested in three different kitchens. Here are the pictures:

So far they work reasonably well. Jatoba is very hard so whilst the surfaces get scratched by knife blades, the scratches are extremely shallow and since these are end-grain cutting boards, it will take a lot of cutting to wear out some material. Considering that ordinary side-grain boards from beech wood still hold reasonably flat for decades, I think these will last a lifetime. Which means I won’t need new cutting boards, ever.

My mother already forgot the middle-sized one (with slanted rows) on a wet towel and it warped something awful. But after it dried out, it straightened again and the glue held. She put the board on a wet towel so it does not slide on the table and this was not the first wooden board that had warped due to this ill-thought-out practice. From now on, she is using a silicone mat for that purpose, and the problem is solved. I also put a few offcuts in the dishwasher and they performed as I expected – the glue failed.

Currently, I am making jatoba cutting boards for sale. And just like with knives, I will prepare short documents about how to care for them to customers. That is why I am actually glad that my mother did the thing with wet towel because I would not have thought of it and I do need to know all the different ways these can fail.

Although I must say, if someone gives a wooden cutting board in a dishwasher, then they are probably about as smart as an average Trump voter, and thus probably just as resistant to information. Well, c’est la vie.

When making the next cutting board, my drum sander broke. I had to improvipair it and today I got to work on it for several hours. It does indeed have higher power now and thus it functions a lot better. I might be able to flatten boards without the router, as I originally intended. I did flatten this board like that, and it is huge.

It is made from black locust and I made it for myself. Not for the kitchen – it is 60×30 cm, a bit too large for that – but for my workshop for leather work. I expect it to be more cut-resistant than even the very best cutting mat. I love how the black locust grain looks and I am contemplating making kitchen boards from it too.

I am writing about making the boards weekly on the knife blogge but I will write a series of posts here too.

Making a Thicknesser – Part 2 – The Failure

Fuck it. I did not expect to have to write this.

Works were progressing nicely, I ran several tests and optimization rounds. I got the thicknesser remove material in parallel both across and lengthwise with several iterations that I won’t write about now because they are moot. It was working adequately. Also as I wrote, I did try to plane one board across the grain manually and it worked just fine. I really did not expect any significant problems. I was ronk.

Today I glued sacrificial sides to all my kitchen boards and decided to try to flatten those. The first one I tried to push under the thicknesser, removing barely 1 mm of material – BOOM. And the planer was broken. When I disassembled it I found out that for some reason the wood bent the steel knife of the planer, thus it bit into the housing. Subsequently, the propulsion shaft broke off and the aluminium cylinder for the knives got deformed too.

Apparently, planing hardwood across the grain is even more pernicious than I expected. Now I don’t have an electric planer anymore. That would not be a problem since I do not really need one. However, I still do not have a thicknesser, which I do need. And I have several glued-up boards which I cannot finish with a reasonable amount of work. This is a huge setback and I am at a loss about how to proceed.

I can buy a new hand planer but it won’t fit in the stand I built. I can’t buy the same one because it is no longer on sale and it is no longer possible to get replacement parts to fix it. Not to mention that when I removed the cover, so many metal parts were bent out of shape or broken that repair is probably not feasible. Now I am even afraid to run these boards through any kind of thicknesser whatsoever. If I bought a thicknesser for 500,-€, and found a way to fit it into my workshop somehow and this happened, saying that I would not be happy would be an understatement of the year, I would be ruined.

Affinity

Art, Fun, & Nonsense.

The rightwing snit over the The Odyssey (2026)