Tummy Thursday: It’s Pokémon Birthday Cake Time

The kid’s birthday was already at the start of the month, but of course with my body being an asshole again I couldn’t make a cake for her actual party. Thank goodness teenagers mostly require insane amounts of food and not attention, so she could have her friends over for a small party.

Last weekend we celebrated with our friends and she got her cake for that day. She went for her favourite Eevilution, Leafeon.

©Giliell, all rights reserved      The eyes are not my best work.

©Giliell, all rights reserved Yes, that’s a ton of individually cut and applied grass blades

The inside of the cake is a standard vanilla cake with a cream cheese and cream filling. The filling was really easy and tasty: I used a packet of lemon flavour jello to mix with the cheese and the whipped cream, added some lime zest and cut canned peaches. The only problem that I had was cooling it down quickly enough for the jello to work so it wouldn’t run all out on me. I then covered the whole thing in a thin layer of buttercream before adding the fondant.

Because a German buttercream (butter with custard) has too much liquid for fondant and an Italian meringue buttercream (my usual go to buttercream) was too much work for the state of my recovery, I made an American buttercream. I usually consider American buttercream the symbol of everything that is wrong with American cake making: It’s just butter and sugar, too heavy and too sweet. I love watching cake videos, but quite often the American ones leave me a bit puzzled: Yes, this looks amazing, but all you have in there is cake and buttercream. Where’s the flavour? Do Americans really spend 200 bucks on a cake that looks great but doesn’t taste of anything but butter and sugar? Please do tell me.

It did work well here, btw, because it was only a small layer to get the surfaces even and it contrasted nicely with the tart lemony filling.

Goldfinches Come for a Visit

This year I planted some cornflowers that grew in front of the window. They were planned as degu treats, but with one thing and another, I didn’t get around to harvesting and drying them. They do look pretty sad to human eyes now, but they look damn delicious to the goldfinches. I rarely get to see them, so I was all the more surprised to find them within 30 cm of my nose, happily munching the seeds.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved

©Giliell, all rights reserved This one’s grainy because I took it with my phone

Behind the Iron Curtain part 38- Vietnam War

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give a perfect and objective evaluation of anything but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty-eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.

This one will be very short because the regime ended shortly before the Vietnam war was covered in the school curriculum, so we were not told a lot. History lessons in that last year were a bit scattershot, as is expected during a year in which revolution happens. And what little we were told I mostly forgot, except very few things.

Those few things could be summarized thus: The USA tactics and behavior in Vietnam were shown as essentially the same as German tactics and behavior in eastern Europe (edit: in WW2). Scorched earth, civilians massacred, war crimes committed left and right. We were shown short films about how the US forces were the baddies and how their defeat was a victory of good over evil.

It got embedded in my subconscious, but I was also aware that the USA has helped to defeat the Nazis in Europe, including in my hometown. I was unable to shake off this comparison with Nazis and I felt like it should not hold water on closer scrutiny. But it did not get better when I sought information about the conflict on my own, which was still difficult in the following decade with nonexistent internet and the history books being only slowly updated.

It would be a shock if it came quickly, but it was not because the realization came slowly over the years – whether you call it education or indoctrination, what communists said was accurate. The tactics the USA used in Vietnam were those of Nazis, no matter how you try to slice it. The USA probably could not present itself in worse light if they tried and they gave communists an excellent propaganda tool – the best propaganda might not always be one that is solidly backed by facts, it must address emotions first, but it does help if the facts are on your side too.

When I was visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. in 2000, it felt quite strange. There were people there, looking up their long-dead relatives and acquaintances. As with all war memorials, It felt quite somber and I have remained quiet and respectful as one should. But I could not shake the feeling that this is a memorial to victims of an unjust war and whilst most of the fallen soldiers being remembered were innocent draftees, there were very likely quite a few nasty war criminals with the blood of innocents on their hands among them too. To this day I did not quite figure out what to think about it.

The Art of … Caine, Again

Surprise! It’s another unfinished painting by Caine, sent in by her husband, Dakota Grease Monkey

Another unfinished artwork by C, directly painted on a wall, circa 2006. About 20″ X 20″, ( .5 X .5 meters).
I don’t know if C ever shared these works, but it’s time to share, now.

untitled portrait, ©Caine, all rights reserved.

The USA are burning, Germany is drowning

Well, how to write this post? First and foremost: I’m fine, in case anybody was worried, I thankfully live about 100 to 300km away from where this is happening. I don’t know about or other German regulars. If you see this, please check in.

Maybe you heard it on the news, but the Southwest of Germany is currently experiencing extreme flooding. So extreme that even the climate scientists who expected something like this to happen are shocked by its scale. The effects are dramatic. There are over 100 confirmed deaths so far, with thousands still being unaccounted for, though authorities are hoping that they’ve been merely cut off.

The worst happened in two states: Rhineland Palatine and Northrhine Westphalia. In Rhineland Palatine the river Ahr, usually a small meandering river that runs between vinyards, has swollen dramatically. The catastrophe there isn’t a result of sealing large parts of the ground or straightening the river. That region is usually one of those brother Grimm fairy tale landscapes: middle high mountains with wine on the slopes, forests ion the heights, a castle at the top, and a nice medieval town in the valley. After weeks and weeks of heavy rain, the ground was soaked and couldn’t take any water anymore. It all rushed down into the Ahr. And now there are places that basically no longer extist.

Description: muddy brown water with half a bridge. The other half has been destroyed .

Description: Pictures of the town Dernau. You can see the muddy brown water in the whole town.

In Northrhine Westphalia it was flooded dams that could no longer hold the water. They tried to prevent the worst by causing smaller floods beforehand, but no avail. The Wupper, usually a small river, flooded town and completely destroyed neighbourhoods.

Description: cars buried to the windshield in rubble and water

I’ll spare you my thoughts on our politicians, climate change and so on. I’m preaching to the choir anyway.

The Art of … Caine!

I don’t normally put the artist’s name in The Art of… title, but today’s art is special, and I want as many people as possible to see it. It was sent in by Caine’s husband, DakotaGreaseMonkey, and I couldn’t be happier to share it. There is one other piece of Caine’s art that I will be sharing later in the week and a surprise bit of art by DakotaGreaseMonkey himself. You won’t want to miss any of it.

This is an unfinished bit of C’s art, painted on the wall. It is huge, about 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide ( about 2.4 M  X 1.8 M ). No way to move it that I know of other than through pictures.

Unfinished wall art by Caine.

 

 

Second Shot Experience

I did have some warning that this might happen, but one cannot prepare for these things I guess, not really.

My mother had nearly zero reaction to both the first and second shots of the Pfizer vaccine. Some shoulder muscle aches after the first one, some a bit longer muscle aches after the second one but nothing more. My father had almost no side effects after the first one (he has not got the second one yet) and I got only shoulder ache after the first shot, albeit big enough to not being able to sleep for one night and work for one day properly. But it subsided after 24 hours and I was completely OK the day after.

Not after the second shot though. I got it on Wednesday afternoon and at first, it progressed the same as the first shot – my shoulder began to ache, I could not lift my arm and I could not sleep properly because I am used to falling asleep on my left side. However, this time it did not stop there. at 4 a.m. I got serious shivers so I have measured my temperature and I was 1°C above my personal normal. That not only did not go away until noon, it also got in fact worse – at noon I had 1,5°C above my personal normal. I no longer had shivers, I was drenched in sweat instead. And not only my right shoulder muscle was aching, but multiple joints also did, continuously. Especially my fingers and spine. I had to take Paracetamol to fight the temperature. Whether it helped or not I cannot tell. It stopped rising, but it also did not go down and I had to take another at 20:00 after dinner. And I still had to change my beadsheets and pajamas during the night because I was sweating profusely.

Today morning I no longer had a fever and the aches have mostly receded, but I was still weak, I mostly slept until noon and I remained in bed until now, which is about 16:00. I am now mostly pain-free, but I still feel tired like after a day of work and not a day of layaboutism.

The last time I felt this crappy was the previous year when the flu knocked me out. Only that time it took two weeks, not two days. If a vaccine does this to me, I do not ever want to know what the actual coronavirus would have done, I might not live to tell the tale. Yay for vaccines, even when they give you the taste of the real deal.

Eye Got May Lie Sense!

When I have started building my workshop in 2009, I did not seek a building permit and I had no project. I was just winging it.

For a building of this size (25 square meters, single story), that was perfectly OK and legal, especially since it was build in place of the previous much bigger wooden barn that I have torn down because it was becoming unsafe. The new workshop is not a workshop per see, it has two rooms, one half is made from bricks and is the workshop and one half is just a storage of gardening tools and materials. It is a combination of a small workshop, garden shed, and whatever.

I was quite happy with it for a few years, but when I decided last year to start a business and went to the business registration bureau, a problem arose. I was told that since I intend to do at least some work in my new workshop, I have to register the building in the land register/cadaster. For which I needed a project and some other paperwork.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

So I had to pay a surveyor and a project architect to get the building surveyed, measured and a proper drawing made. Which I did. And then pandemics started. That has delayed the rest of the paperwork quite significantly. The whole summer and fall of 2020 I got an answer every month that “maybe next month it will be done”.

And then the bad news came. To register the building in the category “production and storage” It would need to have running water. No matter that the house with running water is literally two meters away. The office worker who issued the decision knew the law is stupid, he even said so. But his hands were tied, the law is written for corporate buildings and does not differentiate between a one-man small workshop and an airplane-building workshop. And the law says that every workshop in a production and storage building must have running water (period).

After some back-and-forth I have decided (on advice) to let the building register as a hobby workshop and garden shed within the category “building with other purposes” with the reasoning that the purpose of the building before during and after I run a knife making and leatherwork as a business will remain the same, it will always be a part small workshop, part garden shed and part whatever. Now the only requirements were that I have to have a fire extinguisher and certified revision of electric installation, which I both had because unlike running water these both make sense and I was expecting them.

That went through at the cadaster this spring, but at the same time the pandemic was roaring in CZ, the offices had limited hours and the country was in lockdown again. It was only last week after my mother had both doses of the vaccine and both my father and I were two weeks after the first shot that I felt safe enough to visit the business registration bureau in person again and apply for the license.

And it went well. The type of building the workshop is registered as was not seen as a problem for intended purposes and today I got my official papers. So as of this month, I am officially allowed to charge people for my work – and I have to pay taxes accordingly of course. I have to contact a tax consultant and research some things that I have neglected to do while the whole thing was in limbo, but that is not a legal problem anymore, that is just learning the ropes of a new business.

In other good news, today was also the day that I got my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine. My shoulder hurts like hell, I cannot use my left arm, but I feel quite happy nevertheless.

Look What I Have Cobbled Together

I have applied for concessions/licenses for several categories of non-protected trades. There are about 80 of those in CZ, knifemaking is only a part of one of them and the fee is the same whether one applies for one or for all of them. There are some really, really peculiar things in this system – knife-making is in the same category as welding and making of steel constructions, and knife-sharpening is in a different category that includes repairs of non-electrical house appliances. So in the course of applying for some of the crafts that I actually intend to do I also automatically will (hopefully) get a license to do a lot of other completely unrelated stuff that I do not intend to do. Shoemaking & repair is one of those things.

But even so, I was pretty fed-up with buying a pair of slippers every year (at most) because they start to fall apart and become actually dangerous to wear at home since I live on the first floor and have to walk the steps several times a day. Last week the approaching-end-of-usability slippers combined with other factors and I fell rather badly. So I have decided to at least once do some literal cobbling and make myself a pair of leather slippers.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

It was a learnign experience and there is a lot that could be done better and/or faster. The stitching on the belts is needlesly fine for example and thus it took me forevah to make.

Unlike the cheap ones that I was wearing until now, these should hopefully last for many years and if the sole gets worn through, I will be able to re-sole them in a day or two at most. Based on my experience with leather goods, I think I shall die before that will be needed since they only will be worn indoors. And they are made from natural leather and wool-felt, so if they become unwearable and un repairable, they can be thrown on the compost heap. They feel comfy and pleasant even against naked skin and the natural leather sole does not slide on the floor more than rubber one, so I am very pleased with the result so far.

I had huge fun with this break from knifemaking so I shall make at least two more pairs for my parents. I expect those to take significantly less time than these did, although still not time that would make it potentialy profitable business – these took me a whole week, so if I were intending to sell them they would be ridiculously expensive, at least 30-40 times of what slippers typically cost. But my plan for next few years is not to make things in order to sell them – it is to sell things so I can continue making them so maybe I should consider them as an option for my repertoire if I could optimize the time to one-two days per pair, perhaps three with some fancy leather carving for decoration.

Women Educators on YouTube – Engineer – Xyla Foxlin

I first came across her channel last year when she made a canoe. It was interesting to watch but her channel was still fairly new so I decided to not feature her here yet and wait how it turns out. But she has made some more crafting and sciencey videos since then, and those that I saw were fairly good so here is her latest, in collaboration with Derek Muller from the Veritasium channel.