Crafting: polymer clay

I’m currently a bit confused, as I wanted to do this post as a follow up to the last one on polymer clay, but it turns out I didn’t write that one, despite me remembering the post. Well, just imagine that you read the first part of this post 4 weeks ago or so.

Having seen gorgeous shit on social media, I decided to do some polymer clay jewellery. I did a lot of it as a kid/ young teen, but the style back then was pretty different. I saw some tutorial on youtube and decided to go for a calaidoscope cane.

two pairs of earrings. Each earring consists of two square parts with the same pattern: colourful shapes wrapped in black, all symmetrical.

Now, while I liked the results, I didn’t like two things: One, it’s very material intensive. That was easily 10 bucks worth in polymer clay and if you fuck up that’s it.

Two: You end up with lots of the same. I can understand why there’s a lot of small businesses making polymer clay jewellery: You can actually create things within a reasonable time in a way you can’t do with beads. But I’m just making stuff for myself and friends and family, so I don’t need 50 pieces with the same pattern.

So I thought: This was nice, but I’m not going to do much more of it. Well, I should have known I was wrong. Of course I did. I learned different techniques (I’m still learning, they aren’t coming out quite as planned yet) where you can use smaller amounts of clay and end up with a couple of pieces, not a whole drawer full.

A pair of earrings. on a brown marbled background are white cala lilies and green and gold leaves

A pair of earrings. green and old leaves on a brown marbled background.

Oval earrings, blended yellow purple and blue, with abalone shells.

U shaped earrings in blue, yellow and purple

The last two pairs are a bit too bright for my taste, but the kid already stole some, so I guess they came out alright.

The good thing about having may hobbies is that I have many tools, so I used my silicone moulds for the scraps. While I love my big earrings, my ears occasionally appreciate small studs.

Drop shaped earings. white pieces with blue lines

This is another technique where you cover the clay pieces in mica powder. Again, I’m happily stocked in that particular area and I really like the results. Now to my favourite pieces from that collection:

Round blue and white earrings with a dragonfly charm

I’m just in love with them. The charms (again, yay for having tons of craft supplies) work just perfect.

The next pieces are from the same batch, only that I had to roll the clay more thinly and it turned into a whole different affair:

The effect became more like marble, with the colours blending more. Again, lots of nice, light studs. I think I could do with a second pair of ears.

Some good news: Self ID is coming to Germany!

I’m not going to waste many words on the shortcomings of our current government. Sometimes you could think the libertarians had won and absolute majority and weren’t just the most junior of the three partners, but while their youth is turning more and more pro fascist, the current leaders still have some classic liberal values.

Ages ago, our constitutional court declared the “Transsexuellengesetz” (transsexuals law) of 1981 to be unconstitutional some while ago, because it’s frankly menschenverachtend (that’s a German word you need : despising humans and humanity. Stronger than inhumane), but the ruling conservatives had blocked any sensible attempts to reform it, so up to this date trans people still needed to have their actual gender validated by psychiatrists, who got to poke their nose into people’s most intimate things like masturbation habits. Yes, if you’re wondering what that tells you about somebody being trans or not, you’re not alone. And trans people had to pay out of pocket for that particular privilege.

The proposed new process is as easy and streamlined as I believe it to be possible for Germany: You go to the registry office, declare your gender, pay a small fee, have it changed. This can only be done once a year.

Of course, transphobes are frothing at their mouths, wailing about how men will now just enter the women’s sauna. Somebody smartly pointed out on Twitter, why that is nonsense. Let’s take our hypothetical cis male pervert who wants to spy on the ladies in the women’s sauna. He goes to the registry office to change his gender. Congratulations, she’s female now. Her name changes and all her official documents. Her employer is informed, if she’s married, so is her spouse, her health insurance is informed, every doctor she visits has her listed as female. Only when she comes to the sauna, the owners tell her to fuck off, it’s a private business. So she sues the sauna. She spends a lot of money on this, probably raising a lot of media attention, all the time being gendered female. Does that sound a realistic scenario for some cis dude who wants to harass women? I mean, there’s enough mixed saunas around.

Let’s say she wins in court and the sauna has to let her use the women’s sauna. Does he now get to harass the ladies there? No, because harassing people is illegal for women, too. Something many terves don’t seem to understand, since they spend so much time doing it.

Big Gay Sword

I have featured michaelcthulhu several times already, and he keeps proving that he is a wholesome and good person.

The summary quote from this video:
“I don’t pretend to understand God or being gay. But only one side is sending death threats to a 22-year old so I’m pretty sure how I feel in this situation.”

Mike is trying to mad science how to make various patina colors on his sword in this one. I feel like I could have saved him a lot of trouble with that.

Tram Depo Graffiti – Part 5

I still have some pretty pictures from that depo, this is not the last post with them. And I did not accidentally publish twice the same picture – two of the graffitis were very similar.

Another Wooden Mystery

In one of the sacks were these two pieces.

I cut off the two ridges and I run all four sides along the table saw blade to clean them and I got two pieces 45x35x250 mm. One of them has a slight crack, but it is in a position where I would probably cut it anyway so not a big deal. This is enough for 4-6 knives, more if used as scales for smaller knives.

I am reasonably certain this is coconut palm wood. I worked with it before and Giliell has the resulting knife.

What is puzzling are the darker and lighter parts. Those are not sapwood and heartwood, palms do not have those, and anyway, I know of no tree where the outer sapwood is darker than the inner heartwood as would be suggested by the curvature here. I do not know what caused that color contrast, maybe it was cut close to the outer layer of the trunk, maybe it is decay, I have no clue. Palm trees do not grow around here so I have no knowledge about their variability and specific properties and no way to obtain said knowledge (google does not help).

It is not an extremely expensive wood but two pieces like this would cost me somewhere in the vicinity of at least 40,-€ plus shipping, so it is nothing to sneeze at either. These were, alas, the last surprise in my firewood treasure trove, the remaining sacks were all pure jatoba. Still, I can’t complain.

Solving a Wooden Mystery

I haven’t worked with anything but wood for a while now and I still won’t for another while. But I am progressing and today I started to seriously sort through the Unexpected Treasure woodpile. And it turns out that there is more to that treasure than I initially thought.

When sorting through one bag, there were a few pieces that puzzled me. The wood was sold to me as a mix of jatoba and black locust, but these were definitively neither. I am also fairly certain it is not a local species because I would recognize most of those at a glance, certainly those that can produce pieces of this size. I put the pieces aside for later use and went on sorting the wood into neat piles by size if useful or into bags as firewood. And then I opened one bag and it turns out it is full of this mystery wood.

Here are some pictures:

It is a very hard wood, not as hard as jatoba, but close to the black locust. It is also very dense – specific gravity of about 0,8. The growth rings are not very visible, the pores are very fine and the color is various shades of golden-brown and orange. It changes a bit depending on the viewing angle. On none of the pieces is a visible distinction between heartwood and sapwood.

That is not a lot to go on, so I have made one assumption – Jatoba is from South America, so maybe this wood is from there too. It would be sensible for a furniture and flooring manufacturer to order multiple species from one supplier and then for said species to get mixed up in the offcut bags.

So armed with this information I went on a search on the Wood Database website and I am convinced it is Garapa. All the properties check out. And it can be used in combination with both Jatoba and Black Locust because it has very similar properties (not only hardness and density but also shrinkage) to both. I am researching whether it could be used to make cutting boards and I think it is so. I have come to the conclusion that black locust can, despite the plant being toxic – but black locust cutting boards are, in fact, sold here. But even if unsuitable for cutting boards, there is nothing that would disqualify it from knife handles and knife blocks.

If you think my solution to this mystery is not correct, I would be grateful for any info. It is useful to know what wood one is working with.

Why Relying on Algorithms is Bad

About two years ago, I got into playing chess online and I also watch chess videos since then, usually at dinner or lunch. One funny thing that happened last year in the online chess community was that a live stream interview between the (then) most popular chess YouTuber Agadmator and chess Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura was banned for hate speech. Apparently, the algorithm has interpreted the phrases as “white is better here”, “black is defending”, “white attack” and similar as incitement to violence, and completely failed to recognize that the talk is about a board game.

At the same time, open racists and transphobes were spouting and often keep spouting their bile on YouTube completely unimpeded under the guise of “Humor” or “Just Asking Kwestchions”.

Today the algorithm struck marvelously again.

I do not remember precisely when I have seen so-called fractal burning of wood on YouTube, but I think it was some time last year. I thought that it looks cool so I researched how it is done. And I have immediately gone to the conclusion that cool looking it might be, but I certainly ain’t doing that, not even for a big clock. And YouTube channel “How To Cook That” has published an excellent video a few weeks ago explaining why fractal wood burning is not a good craft hack for woodworkers:

And of course, an excellent youtube video cannot go unpunished – the algorithm yanked it for allegedly promoting harmful and dangerous acts. And while it was banned, that same algorithm has actually recommended to me a video showing the hack in action. Marvelous work – a warning about dangerous practice gets banned as promotion of said practice and an actual promotion of it gets promoted. Logic straight as a corkscrew.

The video has been reinstated after YouTube got pushback, but I do wonder how many really good and possibly important videos get yanked and never get back because the channels that made them were small and did not have millions of subscribers to cry foul on their behalf. Because let’s be real – YouTube gets an actual human to do the review only when there is an outcry, otherwise, they do not bother.

I think that overreliance on algorithms has great potential for actual harm. Human social interactions are so complex that there are humans out there (like me) who are barely able to navigate them. I do not think that AI is there yet.

Views of Tampere from Pyynikki

Guest post by Ice Swimmer

Tampere is the second city in Finland. It’s been called many things, including Manchester of Finland (short form: Manse), the City of Women and the Sauna Capital of the World*. Before this spring it was a city I visited in order to have fun with my friends who live here. Now it’s my hometown.

The city was founded on an isthmus between two lakes, formed by an esker. The lakes are connected by a channel of rapids that were dammed and provided power for the textile factories, paper mills and other industry. The textile industry led to comparisons to Manchester and to a lot of girls and women moving to Tampere to work for Finlayson (founded by a Scotsman, James Finlayson) and other factories.

These pictures are from a Sunday walk to Pyynikki Sightseeing Tower and Nature Reserve, which are on the esker, in the middle of Tampere, next to the city centre.

First, we take a look to the east from the tower, towards the city centre.

Then we take a very touristy angle and look northeast. The big tower is Näsinneula (Näsi needle), the highest building in Finland (168 m), the amusement park is Särkänniemi. The lake is Näsijärvi. This picture is taken May 8th and there is still some ice on the shores.

I talked about the two lakes. This is the other one, Pyhäjärvi (Sacred or Holy Lake one of the many lakes with the same name in Finland). We’re looking southeast from the tower and we can see a part of the woods of Pyynikki and parts of the city centre as well as the northeastern corner of Pyhäjärvi.

Then we take a look at the northwestern parts of Tampere. The peninsula is a mostly residential area, parts of which are called Niemi (peninsula), Lentävänniemi (Peninsula of the Flying) and Reuharinniemi (the tip of the peninsula, a free translation could be Cape Rage).

The following pictures are taken from the Nature Reserve.

First, a sign that says on the top “Place for sightseeing” or “Scenic view” and below that “Dangerous slope”.

Both are true. You can see Pyhäjärvi through the trees and yes, taking a few more steps could spoil your day.

This place is a short walk west from the previous place. A bench is safer…

This view is to the southeast from the rocks, over Pyhäjärvi. I bet the apartments in the buildings by the shore are somewhat costly. I think the chimney belongs to the former knitted underwear factory (Suomen Trikoo).

This is a view of one of the roads that go through the woods in Pyynikki. This one is Tahmelantie.

This concludes our trip in Pyynikki. As you were able to see deciduous trees didn’t have any leaves yet. Now, about 2 weeks later the leaves in birches and willows have come out just about fully. I’m hoping you got a little inkling of what Tampere looks like.
__
* = The public saunas in Tampere are popular places, also for the locals.

Grey Heron

Avalus has encountered this dapper beauty and managed to snap a few pictures for us. It is a long time since I have seen a live heron. Decades, in fact, since the nearest water reservoir where they at least occasionally occur is more than an hour’s worth of brisk walk from my home. It seemed closer when I was a kid.

Greening the Balcony – Part 1

Guest post by Avalus. I am looking forward to the continuation(s) and once again I render my robe and put ashes on my head, this should go up a month ago.

A new project by me, Avalus. I use my balcony each year to grow veggies and some flowers, but I never thought about sharing this. Charly encouraged me to do so, so thank you very much for this opportunity! Similar to Full Fish Ahead, this will be some poorly held together train of thought with many pictures that will be written at random intervals and you all hopefully find interesting and worth your time reading. Comments are very welcome, as I learn something new every year I change my balcony in a lush green jungle (or in 2018, more like a dry brown savannah). Also, I hope to inspire people to green up their spaces, if they can!

So, this is my balcony, roughly 2 by 5 meters, facing south on the lofty hight of seventh floor and as of now, already pretty full of plants!

But how did I get there?

I started in late winter and early spring with the pregrowing the slower plants. Tomates and peppers mostly but also some older seeds that I expected would not germinate anymore were put in the earth*. For pregrowth I use these 2 old fishtanks that I got from a garbage pile, the seeds are planted in egg cartons and some leftover paper pots, as soil I use cocosshell soil. This foto is from late march, you can also see a sprouting avocado and a taro plant grown from a leftover from cooking.

*That is why there are some beans growing on the right. Also, the old cucumber seeds just took some four weeks to germinate, in between I bought new ones and they just took four days and now my friends with gardens and family will get gifts of cucumber plants. XD

From last year, a broccoli and two romanesco plants have endured the winter. I thought about tearing them out but then they began to bloom and instantly attracted pollinators, so they stay and I decided to side the broccoli with pansies. Later, this one will be used as a support for peas, that I planted around it.

Then, in early April I got to work cleaning the old pots out. I kept about half of the soil but mixed it topped it off with newly bought earth. For that I use peat-free planting soil although one really needs to look at the content table, as I found out a few years ago. And in the past years, this was also more expensive but this year they did cost the same. All hauling was done from a local garden centre with a hand drawn trolley, which was exhausting as I needed some 240 litres and I don’t own a car. If I lived somewhere else or was not as able bodied this would be a major problem and I would definitively need the help of friends.

My main growbeds are these half transparent outdoor boxes, I bought some six years ago in a large hardware store. They are mostly in the shade and have held up wonderfully. The lowest 5 cm are filled with porous ceramic balls to store water, on the backside I drilled a line of small holes at 10 cm as an overflow.

Others are just large planting pots, buckets or plain balcony boxes and we will see more of them later this year.

Now, at the start of May, the tomatoes are finally gaining strength, as do the mangolds and the cucumbers. Both of which I apparently did not photograph in their boxes. Planting all of these will have wait though until the ice-saints, a series of days around 15th of May, where temperatures might fall deep here in central Germany. Most of the tomatoes will be given away as well, I will just keep nine of them, as that is usually enough to satisfy my tomatic needs.

So, what will I grow? Tomatoes, peppers, aubergine, cucumbers, strawberries, lettuce, carrots, radishes, beans, onions, garlic, peas, sweet potatoes and potatoes along with a load of different herbs and some flowers for the bumbles and the bees like tagetes, sunflowers and calendula. From th last years there is Indian canna and lavender. This sounds like a heck of a lot, but the last years showed that with the right combinations these plants work well under the conditions of my balcony in summer. Over the months there will be changes as plants ripen and get collected and replacements will be seeded, grown and planted.

Why do I do it? This is of course not enough to sustain me by a long margin, but I very much do enjoy having plants around me and growing at least a bit of sustenance. It also helps me to appreciate much work goes into farming at least a little more. I cannot collect my own rainwater and the soil is bought, so there are some environmental impacts, of course, even if I try to minimize them. All in all, it just makes me very happy to eat my own grown food and gaze upon thriving plants.

And to finish this instalment, here sprout the first beans, nasturtiums and peas!

Happy planting, everyone!

I See Your Strawberries, I Raise You My Cherries

At least here fruit seems to have a good year. We went to my parents to pick cherries. Within an hour, we had approximately 10kg in our buckets, and you didn’t notice when you looked at the tree. Sadly, the rest will be for the birds. Probably good news for the birds.

Removing the pits was much more work, and I only did so with parts of them. I froze 1 kg for #1’s birthday cake (who the fuck allowed her to turn 15 next week?), weighed 1 kg for jam (with brown sugar, orange peel and a hint of lavender), and another kg for “Kerschepannekuche” (cherry pancakes)

Cherry pancakes are a traditional treat here in summer, usually served with potato soup, same as apple pancakes in autumn. My gran used to make amazing ones (though she smartly left the pitting to the eaters). The problem with gran’s recipe is that it got never written down. It was one of the things she just knew how to make (her infamous cheesecake recipe started with “You take flour”). I think that by now I’m a decent enough cook to have recreated it. And yes, I wrote it down.

For 4-8 people, depending on whether you’re serving soup alongside or whether some of them are black holes disguised as teenagers:

250 g butter

100 g sugar

-> beat creamy

6 eggs

-> add 1 at a time

vanilla to taste

700g flour

2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

approximately 300ml milk

-> add to batter, starting with flour. Your batter should be somewhat runny, but not thin as for thin pancakes. More like American pancakes.

1 kg cherries

-> add to batter, place 1 big tbsp of batter into a hot skillet and fry in a little oil or butter.

Strawberry Madness

First I must apologize to those who have sent submissions to affinity. I was busy with a lot of things and I completely forgot to check that e-mail address for over a month by now. And one of those things I was busy with were (are) strawberries.

Last year I had a successful strawberry harvest, we got slightly over 8 kg of strawberries. So this year I have decided to take a lax approach to my strawberry patches and not spend too much time on them. I have removed some of the old leaves and overgrowth from last year, I tossed some crushed reed stalks between them, and that was it. No replanting or similar. About one day’s worth of work in between repotting my bonsai trees. When the strawberries began to bloom, I thought it looks promising and I estimated that this year’s harvest might be even slightly higher than last year, like 12 kg or so.

Boy was I wrong. Very ronk.

For over a week by now, I spend just shy over an hour picking strawberries, then laying them down on a windowsill to finish ripening (this reduces the ants and slugs damage significantly, and they also become more aromatic that way). Then I had to weigh and clean them and put them in the freezer where they slowly accumulated to a dangerous degree. With 1-2 kg of strawberries daily, the freezer got filled up in a week and was threatening to burst. I had to play Tetris every time I wanted to take a popsicle out of there. It looked like I would have to stop doing everything else for a few days and start making marmalade.

Luckily my mother returned from the hospital last week. She has reduced mobility in her right leg, but she does not have the intensive pains she used to have anymore and thus is relatively fit. So she could start making marmalade. preventing me from getting to be totally overwhelmed by the red menace. For a few days now she is every day using up all the freshly collected strawberries and she even managed to take a few bags out of the freezer already. Approximately 4 kg strawberries go into this huge pot together with some other sekrit ingredients.

Today’s worth of work is several huge marmalade jars filled to the brim. And on the right side of this picture you can see the up-to-date tally – 18724 g! Nearly 19 kg, so with what I see in the patches from my windows, today evening we should cross 20 kg harvest easily. That is officially insane.

When the jars cool, we check whether the lid created a proper vacuum seal or not, and those that did get labeled and go into the cellar. You can read the secret ingredients on the labels if you wish. I do not know the exact proportions, I think my mother has them written somewhere. Other than these, she also adds pectin and Aronia juice (which makes the marmalade less sweet and gives it a slightly darker color).

So I expected to have about 50% higher harvest than last year, instead, I got 150% higher one and still counting. We have enough marmalade to last us for years at our normal consumption rate (which is about a spoon a day). I am this year spending significantly more time harvesting than I have spent actually caring.

I am slowly starting to wish they would stop so I can do other things with my time, like being lazy.

Affinity

Art, Fun, & Nonsense.

Randomizing a deck of cards

Science has always been political…but especially now

Meming this Mofo

Invasive but Cute

Shellshocked

I Guess I Use Social Media After All

If you can keep it

International Mens' Day?

A better masculinity, for those who don't want it

Crafting: polymer clay

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Some good news: Self ID is coming to Germany!

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Tram Depo Graffiti – Part 5

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Another Wooden Mystery

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Solving a Wooden Mystery

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More Summer Content

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Grey Heron

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I See Your Strawberries, I Raise You My Cherries

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Strawberry Madness

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