Still raining. That’s all I can say without swearing except that I hope the world is drier where you are.
©voyager, all rights reserved
Jack’s Walk
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Still raining. That’s all I can say without swearing except that I hope the world is drier where you are.
©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s another well captured critter from Avalus, who tells us that this hoverfly was enjoying the cucumbers that his mother had planted. I’m enjoying everything about this photo from the beautiful light to the sunshine yellow flower to the rich detail of the hoverfly itself. Thanks for sharing, Avalus.
©Avalus, all rights reserved
These pictures and a heart warming story are from Nightjar:
This isn’t just a cute photo series of chicks, it’s a heartwarming story of the kind you don’t expect out of chicken! At least I didn’t. To cut two long stories short, we recently had to join two broods of chicks born one month apart. The younger ones had to be taken from their mum the day they hatched, which always breaks my heart to do, but in this case it was for their own good. She wasn’t a good mum and their siblings died as a result. So we joined the three survivors with the older chicks, made sure everything was peaceful and they were warming each other at night, and hoped for the best. To our surprise, a few days later, we noticed that one of the older chicks had adopted the three little ones, she was behaving as if she was their mother. Calling them to her side, teaching them how to eat, opening her little wings to warm them. You can see that in the first two photos, the head of a little baby underneath her wing. She’s giving me that look, “do NOT even THINK of touching my babies”. They follow her around everywhere and she never leaves one behind. Just like a mother hen would, except this hen is only a month old!
Cheers,
Nightjar
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
Very cute, but I must say, those feet really tell you about the dinosaur foremothers.
It’s got layers!
One of the things that I’ve learned so far is that when things don’t go your way, the answer is usually to add more layers (and time, sigh).
We (my BFFs and I) are going to participate in a one day small village Christmas market and I’m producing merchandise for this (i.e. I have an excuse to make a lot of resin stuff). As usually i have many ideas and sometimes they even turn out as planned, especially the second time.
First, a pendant you already know plus its failed forerunner:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
As you can see, in the right one the leaf has been swallowed by the blue. Here I poured a layer of clear resin, added the leaf, and then poured the blue onto the wet resin. The best description here is “interesting”.
The rest is below the fold ’cause it’s a lot of pictures.
Not snow, just fungus, ©voyager, all rights reserved
This week’s tree come to us from rq who says that she took the pictures while waiting for a light to change. It’s a wonderful talent to be able to see the beauty in an ordinary, everyday moment and then to use that moment to create art. I think the photos are serene and contemplative and I wonder if that reflects rq’s state of mind. Perhaps the artist will tell us in the comments below. Thanks for sharing, rq.
©rq, all rights reserved
©rq, all rights reserved
As I said last time, I am going to make multiple knives in parallel, because I think that a non-trivial amount of time can be saved just by that. I had all my steel already straightened, so I could go right away to drawing, drilling and shaping. First thing to be done was to draw and drill one blade on one half of one steel bar. That I have subsequently used as a template to drill holes in the other half and in all the other steel bars.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
For the drilling I clamped the template firmly with the drilled steel bars and before proceeding to the other side I inserted a steel pin in the drilled hole so the bars do not shift and slide. This has saved some time, despite it being a step with negligible time in the analysis, but my main hope here is that this work on multiple pieces in parallel brings better reproducibility regarding the hole positions and and that better reproducibility could save me some time later on when shaping the handle scales.
I have learned two lessons, one of them rather expensive. First lesson was that for this I have to take the 6 mm drill bits as de-facto consumable material, because I blunted and subsequently broke one towards the end despite using copious amounts of cutting oil. And I do not think it can be avoided.
Second lesson was that I really have to buy a new drill press, and preferably one with continuously regulated speed at that. My jury-rigged press with a very old hand drill has only two speeds and both of them are apparently too high for drilling 16 mm hole in 1,8 mm steel. Towards the end of the work the step drill bit overheated and it got irreversibly blunted on the 16 mm step. Ouch. That drill bit costs 40,-€. I think this investment is unavoidable, if I want to save time I cannot take the bit out and dunk it in water after each drilled hole, slower rotations would be better. And I cannot buy 40,-€ drill bit for each dozen of knives I make – that money be best saved for grinding belts. Hobby or not, at this rate I would spend the price of an acceptable small to middle sized drill press (300-400,-€) on the drill bits rather quickly.
Cutting the blanks in half and roughly cutting the outlines of the blades with an angle grinder did not take long at all. and working on multiple blades in parallel seemed to work comparatively well. But for the sake of precision, next time I will halve the blanks individually – two came out somehow too short and two too long. Not by much, but it is noticeable. The end result were three stacks of four roughly cut blades.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Before this step took me 15 minutes per blade, now it was 10 minutes per blade (teasing out broken 6mm drill bit and fruitlessly trying to drill a hole with blunted 16mm drill bit included). So I would call it a semi-success. I learned some do’s and dont’s and I achieved my two goals – the holes in the tangs align across all 12 blades nicely and I have saved some time without even really trying to.
That might be a slight exaggeration, but the sunshine through mist was certainly a treat for the eyes. Photos from one morning out in the country.
One photo from the bedroom window, just in case I missed the beauty by the time I got dressed.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Down in the appleyard, an air of mystery was dominating the scene.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The bees, though, were casting shadows.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Apple season is over, but the spiders are still hopeful for a hearty meal.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The morning was so wonderfully bright; the future is far more murky. Today of all days, I send my good wishes out to those of you at the electoral crossroads. My reservoir of hope isn’t empty yet, but the edge of despair is never far.
Dreary November Day, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Drizzling. Dreary. Drab. In other words, the weather hasn’t changed. Jack and I decided to go to the forest hoping the canopy would help keep us dry, but too many leaves are down and there was really no protection at all. I’m normally a fairly easy-going person, but this constant damp has me feeling irritable and out of sorts. At least Jack doesn’t seem to mind and his wagging tail and happy smile sure help to make being outside passably tolerable. Still, it’s good to be home and I might just hide out here for the rest of the day.
From Nightjar,
rq’s triune of lizards reminded me of this very special lizard I was lucky enough to see during my summer holidays. A Mediterranean Chameleon! They are native here in Portugal but not very common and only occur along the south coast. This was only the third time I saw one and the first time I had a camera with me. I was obviously very excited, but tried to be quick in order not to disturb it too much and also to avoid calling the attention of more tourists (one never knows… chameleons move slowly and unfortunately there are many humans who can’t be trusted around defenseless animals).
The photos are wonderful, Nightjar and I’m impressed with how close you got to this wild, little fellow. I notice in the second photo that his left eye is watching you even though his right eye is facing straight ahead. That is some interesting anatomy and so are those feet. I always thought of chameleons as being arboreal with those feet being designed to cling to small branches, but I see that they do equally well on the ground. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing, Nightjar.
©Nightjar, all rights reserved
American lynx. I liked how the enclosure was styled as an “abandoned farmhouse” with lots of corners and hideouts. The lynx (what’s the plural here anyway?) were still kind enough to pose for a photo shooting.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
* I wonder if I should apologize for once again bringing up the rather weighty topic of death – late autumn and early winter seems to be a pensive time, and the dark nights and misty mornings are ideal for darkly wandering thoughts. Also, this season, until the solstice, is traditionally known as veļu laiks – “the time of spirits”, where the souls of dead ancestors are, for a while, released back into the world, to tread through the fog on familiar paths, and be welcomed into the household. In olden times, extra place settings would be set out, and foods left by the door to feed the hungry ghosts. This is not to say that there are no celebrations – there is at least one more harvest festival coming up soon, and the dark season is also rife with mummers and random visits in costume to one’s nearest neighbours. But one must also be wary out on the roads, especially after nightfall, so be kind to your ancestors and remember them well (the ones who deserve it, at least). In any case, the point of this ramble is that I feel affected and the lack of sunlight is very conducive to not only depressing thoughts, but also existential themes. Not everyone has to follow me, though. I promise I won’t haunt you about it.
Back in Macedonia, having taken the ropeway to the top of the mountain, I decided to walk down – there’s a paved road, and I was told it only takes about 45 minutes to 1 hour. I suppose that’s 45 minutes if you don’t stop for photos along the way, which I did. A couple of times. It’s a nice walk with several gorgeous views and a lot of hairpin turns before the bottom, very quiet and isolated and, that time of year, with few people to meet along the way, except for the random cyclist coasting at speed. Along the way, which is the story I wanted to tell, I came upon a group of 5 or 6 inebriated young men. Not that there’s much to tell, because I did my best to walk past them without bringing undue attention to myself.
Of course, this was not possible – I don’t speak much Macedonian, but I’m pretty sure the things they yelled after me were not particularly polite. As soon as I’d turned the first bend with them out of sight, I took it upon myself to jog the next few turns, and carried a stack of prickles down my spine the rest of the way (more than half). At least they were going up the mountain.
In any case, I haven’t run through so many escape scenarios in my head for a long, long time. It was hard to go back to just enjoying the scenery and surrounding nature. But because I did enjoy it, you can, too.
Yellow flower.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
It was a sign.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Nice paved roads.
©rq, all rights reserved. Click for full size.