Itsy Bitsy and Very Lively

I dug out more spider pics, because, why not?

I have made these pictures last year, but I never got round to send them. These were one of the first macro shots I have made, when I still did not know what I am supposed to do (I still do not, but slightly less so).

This spider is slightly translucent and very small – that mesh is just a few mm across, it is the texturing on a sheet of extruded polystyrene that I have used to make thermally isolating covers for my sewage treatment facility.

I love the copper colour of the abdomen contrasting with the translucent green of the thorax and the legs. It looks like made from glass or gemstones and precious metal. Actually it could be a nice inspiration for a jewelery, if it were not a spider. But maybe there is a market for spider shaped jewelry?

I just could not get a good shot at its face. It was running around constantly and in all possible directions, not staying still for a moment. But I noticed that under certain angles its eyes seem to reflect light like cat’s and I managed to catch that on a few shots. Then I have let it scuttle away, taking care to put it in a place where I will not squish it.

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

Behind the Iron Curtain part 15 – Cars

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give 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.

Cars were some of those goods that were difficult to obtain and difficult to maintain, even when you had the money – so we never had one. We did not exactly need one either, because public transport was in those times sufficient. It was not market driven and thus was not dependent on population density.

However cars were still useful and partly they became a status symbol so many people in our little town never understood why my parents did not get one. One of my mother’s colleagues was visiting us one day and she snooped around in our garden shed looking for the car she was convinced we have stashed and hidden away there. She just did not understand that my parents did not use their positions to enrich themselves and get the much coveted goods of the time.

What was fairly typical of the cars was their distribution in any given land. Someone interested in cars could probably travel in hibernation between the various lands of the eastern bloc and then recognize which country they arrived at by looking out of the window at the nearest parking lot.

In Czechoslovak Socialist Republic the far most predominant cars were Skodas, at the time of my life mainly Skoda 120 and towards the end of the regime occasional Skoda Favorit. There were zero cars from the western part of Europe and a very limited amount of cars from other countries in the Soviet power sphere. Father of one of my classmates had a very coveted Lada VAZ-2101 “Žiguli” which was admired for its sturdiness and strength as well as for being essentially very rare piece. He only could afford it – and get his hands on it – because he was middle ranking military officer of the border patrol.

The parking spaces in CZ were mostly empty and usually there was some mix of different cars despite the prevalence of Skodas. I was not used to seeing many cars all at once, or a parking space really full.

So when I was visiting East Germany for a summer camp at about eleven or twelve years age, I had an entirely new experience at that time, one that was very strong to an impressionable little child.

Rows and rows of cars stretching for hundreds of meters on each side of the street. Parking lots so cramped it was difficult to squeeze between the cars. Different colors, but all the cars were essentially identical, leading to strange uniformity. All were Trabants.

Trabants were known in CZ, and they were much derided. They were the cheapo cars for those who could not afford a “proper” car. Having a Trabant was seen as a sign of under achievement, barely better than having no car at all. There were – and still are – many derogative terms for the car, like “angry vacuum cleaner”, or “bakeliťák”.

This added a discordant note to the experience. Seeing that eastern Germans had apparently more cars than we gave me a sense of awe, seeing that the cars are of lower quality gave me a sense of superiority. However the strongest of all the memories is the sense of a complete lack of choice and of a mind-numbing uniformity wherever you go. It was my first experience of an outward demonstration of the fact that we are actually expected to blend into crowds. And that everything in the system – all the overt legal and covert economic pressures – is designed to quash individuality and make us into a uniform mass.

I did not form this opinion so clearly at that time of course, but this was the start of that realization.

Itsy Bitsy Spider (Not)

I was moving old woodpiles closer to the house for winter and sorting some old planks for sawing, when suddenly I found this huge orb weaver on one piece of rotten wood. I put it carefully in a place where I could take pictures and it was kind enough to stay in place long enough for me to fetch my camera, and my PC today obliged to getting its act together for long enough for me to correct the pictures for posting (my homemade macro lens has, unfortunately, strong chromatic aberration).

In Czech, local orb weavers are called “křižák” (pl. “křižáci”) which means “crusader”.  The name derives from the markings on their back which often have the spots arranged in somewhat vaguely cross-like pattern, especially from some angles. I will be most interested in their names in other languages.

I am not exactly arachnophobic, but I do not particularly enjoy unexpected encounters with such a big spider either and my first reaction is to flee. I found out that having a first thought “I must take pictures to share on the blog” helps with that.

We were told at school that no local spider can bite through human skin, but one of my friends was bitten by one on the neck and he disagrees. I was also bitten by one local spider in the thin skin on the back of the hand (I do not know the species), so I disagree with that wisdom too and I am careful with them. Not for fear of poison, but allergic reaction or skin infection are not fun either.

For last picture I cropped all the excess around the beast to show her (probably) in all her magnificent and terrible (and hairy) beauty.

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

No spiders were harmed in making of this blog post. The specimen in question was released in safe location where I could not squish her with firewood. If she stayed there is another matter of course.

A Bohemian Rhapsody Movie? How Did I Not Notice?

Today, when reading my portion of stomach turning politics on RAW STORY I noticed that one of the film ads looks suspiciously like it is talking about Queen, but Freddie Mercury was shot way too up close and the picture quality was way too good for seventies. So I looked closer. And I googled. And I found out that two of the living members – Brian May and Roger Taylor – are producing a movie about the band that is due to be released in November this year.

Now I wish I was living somewhere near a functioning cinema that would screen the stuff. My sister absolutely adored Queen when I was a kid, but I did not notice them much at that time. However later in life I found out that some of their melodies actually got embedded in my brain and to this very day Bohemian Rhapsody, Under Pressure or Radio Ga Ga are amongst my most favourite songs and Spread Your Wings is sure to bring tears to my eyes. All the more that since then I learned English and therefore can understand the lyrics, which makes it all the more powerful.

I do not listen to music much, because when I have the time (like when driving) I find it often distracting, and I rarely have time to just sit and enjoy it. But multiple Queen songs rank definitively near the very top of my personal “Top Ten”.

Maybe I should paint a picture again. I used to listen to music when painting. I miss that greatly.

I got mugged in the Memory Lane.

Making a Rondel Dagger – Part 15 – Troat of the Scabbard

I have decided to make the fittings for the scabbard from the same shovel that provided steel for the rondel. It is good carbon steel of appropriate thickness and I reasoned that after I grind it to remove all pitting from the outer side, it shall be thin just right. However, because I wanted to bend the steel at least in part whilst it is cold, I had to first anneal the shovel – in case you do not know, shovels are hardened and tempered. So I have decided to burn some more rotten wood, bbq dinner and anneal the shovel at the same time. Luckily the droughts in the place where I live are less severe than in the rest of CZ, so we do not have ban on fires (yet). Nevertheless, despite how it might appear, I am actually careful with fire – I always watch the direction in which the wind is blowing, I have water prepared and I douse all coals when I am done. And I have portable fireplace that I position in the middle of a gravel field¹.

I proceeded to make a paper template by wrapping it around the scabbard and adding about one cm for length. That I transferred onto the shovel and I cut the rough shape with angle grinder.

My improvised bending setup did not work as intended. The main problem being, that this steel proved to be extremely tough and hard, even annealed. I tried and tried, but it just did not work. After a few attempts I gave up and had to think up another way. I have decided that I have to do what I did not want to – forge it hot.

I could not go outside and make fire, because firstly it was way too hot outside for that and secondly because my improvised anvil for this delicate task was an old annealed file held in a vice. As a source of heat therefore I had to do with handheld propane torch and a few fireclay bricks as an impromptu forge. Unfortunately I forgot to make more detailed pictures of this process so you have to be content with red-hot glowing steel on fireclay brick laid on a granite paving stone laid on wooden bench. I see you cringe with my mind’s eye and I agree. For subsequent works I moved the whole assembly onto the circular saw table (also seen in the picture) which is made from metal and therefore fireproof. Needles to say, bucket of water was on standby the whole time and I checked the workshop a few times after I finished. I do not like doing these things inside, I will have to get some better setup, perhaps a mobile vice? I will have to think about it.

The bent strip did not fit neatly around the scabbard whatever I have done, so I decided in the end to shorten it even more so the ends do not meet, but lay just outside the stitches in leather. And to cover that gap with another slim strip of steel. this proved to be a very good fit all around.

I was thinking about whether to make the throat covered in steel or whether to let it be just the wood and leather on the inside. I decided to go for steel, which of course meant third piece, flat piece covering the throat with cut-out rough shape of the blade. Very rough. I was not even trying to aim for a good fit and I left a good 0,5-1 mm free space on all sides.

When thinking about how to connect those three parts in the most authentic manner I decided to go for silver brazing. I do not know how much silver is actually in the brazing rod I bought, but it costs 12,-€ a piece. Compare that with brass brazing rods that costs 5,-€ per five (or more) pieces. Whew. But I wanted to first try it with the more expensive silver rod because it has lower melting temperature than brass and my welding, brazing and soldering skills are not top-notch, to put it mildly. I also hoped that the silver solder will have less profound color contrast with the steel than the brass one would have. Which it does, but the color contrast is still very strong.

It took three attempts to braze the thing together with no gaps anywhere and I used up almost the whole rod. Oopsie-daisy, this is proving to be expensive. So when removing all the excess solder, i was filing it carefully and slowly onto a piece of paper and collecting all the silver dust into a little plastic bowl that I later have sealed with a lid. I hope to be able to mix that dust with boric acid and use it for brazing the chape. I certainly would not like to spend another 12,-€ on the chape alone.

As far as I know – and I would love to inspect some medieval originals sometimes – medieval craftsmen did not take particular care about the “back side” of the scabbards and scabbard fittings, or even swords for that matter. After all what is the point in finely polishing something that will not be seen? Today the aesthetics sense is slightly different and people expect things to look just perfect from all angles. I have decided to not overtly polish the back side, but I did somewhat polish and buff it for the sole reason that polished steel resists corrosion better. But, unlike on the front, I did not remove all pitting and I did not bother about some minor file scratches remaining visible there. And here you can see the result of my works these last few evenings. I will buff it with hematite befoe fixing it ont he scabbard for good.

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

The most important lesson of this exercise was perhaps that I should do these metal fittings before I shape the scabbard to its final shape and cover it with leather, and not the other way around. In retrospect it seems like something from The Collected Sayings of Captain Bloody Obvious, but fitting a piece of soft wood and leather into a steel tube should be easier than to form a steel tube around a piece of soft wood and leather. I tried to google how to do scabbard throat before I did anything of this, but I do not remember seeing this mentioned anywhere.

Last piece in the mosaic is the chape then. And then there will be pictures.

1 – The bough you can see is one that I “harvested” near the road, where it broke off of an elderly apple tree. The city seemed unwilling to clean it up, so I confiscated it for knife handles.

Anatomy Atlas Part 19 – Torso Muscles

Compared to the back, muscles on the front of the torso are relatively well-known even to laypeople. Prominent pectoral muscles and the famed “six-pack” are shown-off in comic books, movies, advertisements etcetera ad nauseam.

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

However Professor Kos had nothing interesting to say about any of the muscles shown here, except the musculus platysma, which is not on the torso but on the neck.

It is a thin sheet muscle, directly under the skin to which it is connected with fascia. In humans it is a muscle of relatively minor importance, nearly a vestigial organ. But vestigial of what? According to Professor Kos, its function can be really well observed in horses and cattle. These animals use their tails and ears to try to keep flies and mosquitoes at least somewhat at bay, however they cannot effectively reach their necks and parts of torso. However what they can do, and do (I have in fact observed this myself) they can flex their  musculus platysma and similar thin muscle sheets directly under the skin, thus giving their skin a mighty shake in some places that can scare some insects off.

It is a nice story, but I doubt that this is original purpose of this muscle and its equivalents somewhere else on the body. More likely it is its repurposing for another function. Who knows?

The Completely Wrong Way to Cook Shrimp. Deliciously.

No politics today. Giliell¹ got me drooling so I cooked myself really generous lunch today and now, two hours later, I am still barely able to move. And because I did not follow any recipe anywhere and was more “freestyling” I have decided to make pictures just in case. And write-up the recipe and share it, because it turned out very tasty.

The Ingredients. ©Charly, all rights reserved

The ingredients are, as you see, one very big tomato, one lime, two cloves of garlic, about one half of a leek and a very, very small pattypan. The lime and the leek are store-bought, the rest is the courtesy of our garden. Not shown here is rice, because rice is rice and there is nothing interesting about it.

However with rice I started, because I like natural rice and that takes half an hour to cook. So first thing I have done was to start cooking rice, start the timer for half an hour and then proceed to make the next step.

Shrimp Bath. ©Charly, all rights reserved

Next step was prepare the water for cooking shrimp, because those need a bit of time to cook too. For this I have used the lime and I squeezed all the juice out of it into about half a liter of water. I added white pepper, shredded caraway, about a tea-spoon of salt and splashed in some olive oil with garlic essence (If I did not have olive oil with garlic essence, I would have thrown in third clover of garlic). I have set the water to boil and proceeded to cut or otherwise preparing other ingredients.

Preparing the shrimp was easy. Take the bag out of the freezer, take out one serving of shrimp, give shrimp into a mug, give the bag with the rest of the shrimp into the freezer.

Chopped up veggies . ©Charly, all rights reserved

Rest of the ingredients had to be chopped. Well, except the peas. The pattypan into about 20×20 mm bits 5 mm thick, the leek into rings and the garlic into tiny bits, but not too tiny. And the tomatoes into thin crescents, although ring would work just fine too.

I cut all the green stuff out of the tomato and toss it away. It has unpleasant taste and contains unhealthy toxin, so it hardly counts as wasting food.

The pattypan was rather harder than I thought it would be, To cut it and peel of the 1 mm waxy skin I had to use a small knife, because the big one was not a safe option for that task.

At this stage the water for shrimp started to boil, so in they went, still frozen. I had to ramp up the power afterwards for a bit so it starts to boil again quickly, and once it did I have put a lid on it and let it slowly boil for about 15-20 minutes.

 

Leek Rings. ©Charly, all rights reserved

Frying pattypan. ©Charly, all rights reserved

I put a generous amount of sunflower oil into a frying pan, heated it up to 150°C and fried slightly the leek rings. When they just about started to turn transparent, I have thrown in the pattypan bits and also fried them to the point when they surface started to turn transparent and darkened. As I said, I was freestyling, but I had a reason to do it this way – the darkening signifies the breaking of cell walls and it is the point where the veggies start eventually lose water and suck in the fat. And I did not want too much of that.

Simmering Veggies. ©Charly, all rights reserved

When I judged the leek and pattypan to be at the right stage, I tossed in the tomato with a pinch of salt and the green peas and with occasional stirring gently simmered it under cover for about ten minutes.  The tomato was very juicy, but still I had to add a bit of water twice, because I have kept the temperature relatively high.

Tomatoes actually lose a lot of taste to fat, but this was exactly the reason why I used generous amount of oil at the beginning. Because I have done similar thing before, with different vegetable mixes, but the cooked shrimp were always relatively bland and without much taste – they were not bad, exactly, but they were not delicious either.

Frying Shrimp. ©Charly, all rights reserved

Therefore this time I had another plan for the shrimp than just to cook them. When the veggies were cooked I put them into saucer and I poured as much of the sauce and oil back into the frying pan as I could manage. And after that I have thrown in the shrimp with the finely chopped up garlic and ramped up the powah.

The shrimp simmered with the garlic for a bit in the sauce, and when the water evaporated and only mostly oil remained, they started to fry as well. I was frying them for just a few minutes, until they changed colour from opaque white-pink into just-barely transparent gold-brown, but not as long as to burn the garlic which would have turned bitter. When I considered them finished I took them out of the oil and onto the veggies and rice in the saucer they went.

And here it is. It turned out also to be ever so slightly more than one serving, so if you decide to reproduce my recipe, take that into account when scaling for more people. However I cannot guarantee you will enjoy it as much as I did. This time, the shrimp were juicy and their unique taste was finally brought out with just a touch of garlic and not completely outcompeted by the vegetables.

A very generous serving. ©Charly, all rights reserved

1 –  Not blaming, quite the opposite.

Not an Alien Facehugger.

The crab spider on our Sunflower has grown pretty big and fat. The diet of bees apparently suits it well (I have seen it to eat another unfortunate bee).

I think this picture shows how the spider manages to subdue much bigger prey without falling off the plant with it during the struggle, although I have not had the luck to see it in “action”. You can see that the spider has built a small web and has thus essentially tethered itself with spider silk to the plant. Ingenious.

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

The Handmade Dilemma

The heat is killing me. Temperatures outdoor during the day over 35 °C, overnight never lower than 18 °C. Temperatures indoor 28 °C throughout the day and there is nothing I can do about it – if I open the windows wide, the house will be swarmed by mosquitoes in minutes. I have nets, in some windows, and in normal weather those suffice for ventilation. Not in this weather though.

So works on the dagger progresses at a snail’s pace. Not that it matters much, because snail’s pace is also the speed at which linseed oil hardens. But it means it is unlikely I will have anything to post about it anytime soon. However, that does not stop me thinking about stuff and one of the things I am thinking about – will it be fair to say, that the dagger is handmade?

In the past, when I have made a knife, it was truly and undoubtedly handmade. The only electrical tool I had was a drill that I used to make holes for pins. Everything else I had to do manually, with hand-held and hand powered tools, whereas today I have a table top belt grinder, handheld belt grinder, an angle grinder, a lathe, a bandsaw, a circular saw and a jigsaw. And in due course I intend to build a power hammer and a polishing drum.

And I do not spare any of those electrical tools. If I can save time or my muscles by using electricity, I do it without hesitation. But there are some purists, who would argue that therefore things I do are not handmade.

I disagree with that.

The way I see it, these electrical tools are nothing but providers of raw power. They do not provide or increase any skill – all that still has to come from my hands, because ultimately they guide either the tool or the workpiece during work and therefore determine its quality. In fact, some of the tools – especially the belt grinder – require a slightly different set of skills to do the work properly, than doing the same work with bastard file and a set of polishing stones would.

So I think the dagger is handmade. And purists can go and purify themselves.