Legal Fundraiser closed

Thank you all for participating in our efforts to help out our colleagues and friends. Voyager is the winner of the auction, let me know what you want me to create for you, my friend.

To all of you who have already donated: I hope to get your stuff mailed at the weekend, since our sorry excuse for a post office is only open during the morning…

Tummy Thursday: Me gusta la cocina mexicana

Earlier this week I told you about our trip to the Sagrada Familia and that we wanted to see it at night time. This meant that after we left the cathedral we went for dinner. Of course a tourist city like Barcelona has restaurants galore, many of them trying to push the menu into your hand while you’re walking past them and for me that’s the most failproof way to make me avoid a place. Yet still you find lots of small places that offer good food, especially if you love international cooking. For this meal we found a nice Mexican place where we ate while it got dark.

Starters: Frijoles refritos (mushed baked beans) and nachos with cheese.

My main course: marinated grilled beef, cactus, pumpkin flower and sweetcorn, guacamole and stuffed habanero, served with tortillas.

Dessert: Guayaba marguerita. I love guavas and they’re so rare here that I consume them whenever I can find them or their derivates. It was delicious.

Holidays: Sagrada Familia 1

This year we decided to finally visit the Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s masterpiece, which just now got a construction permit. I went there 20 years ago, when you just showed up, threw a few bucks at them and then explored at your leisure. Now you have to book in advance, have a 15 Min window to enter and then have to go through security like at an airport. We bought “evening tickets” which are cheaper and give you an hour to explore the cathedral, which we deemed to be enough with the kids and also we wanted to see it again later in the dark. The entrance prices showed why the whole thing is absurd, since the kid who had to pay reduced admission was complaining and staring at her phone the whole time, while the kid who got in for free called it “the best thing she’d ever seen”.

Let’s start with the outside.

You enter the cathedral through the “Birth Portal”. Why it’s called that we’ll see in a minute.

You can clearly see the older and newer parts here.

And here we have him, baby Jesus, apparently needing a bath in a tub.

Holidays: Partial Lunar Eclipse 3

In the last pictures you could see the first clouds sliding in. They got thicker and thicker while I had another whisky, which didn’t make things easier. At least I could still see the clouds in the pics afterwards, so I didn’t imagine them…

Holidays: Partial Lunar Eclipse, 2

After sitting at the beach for a while, we noticed the eclipse, which we hadn’t even known was going to happen.

Legal Defense Fundraiser: Get your Pretties, part 3

Last, but definitely not the least. Please see this post for how this all works. The exception here is that this will be an auction. So what are you bidding on? A necklace and matching earrings made to your specifications. The images are therefore just samples of what I can do for you. Thanks to Marcus I now have a wide range of different woods to work with, as well as other material from moss over algae to withered bones. If you want to bid on this, just send an email to our usual address: affinitysubmissions @ gmail.com (without the space) and tag it with “defense fund”. I’ll frequently update you to the current highest bid. This will run until the 10th of September, 12:00 blog time. The starting bid is 20$, should two people offer the same amount, the first person will win.

©Giliell, all rights reserved
One of the matching earrings

©Giliell, all rights reserved
Mermaid necklace 1

©Giliell, all rights reserved
Mermaid necklace 2

©Giliell, all rights reserved
Mermaid earrings

©Giliell, all rights reserved
Wood and resin necklace and earrings

Feel free to browse through the other posts tagged “resin” and yell, eh comment if there’s something you like.

Legal Defense Fundraiser: Get your Pretties, part 2

Part two of the fundraiser. Please see this post for how this all works.

All the Bird in the Sky, necklace 15$. This will come with silver coloured necklace that is attached to the sides. The item is about 3″ across. The unicorn is not part of this as my sister snatched it.

Pine cone in resin, $10. Turquoise and gold, about 2″ across.

Bottled sea. The item you’ll receive may vary from the pic. It comes with a hook and jumpring so you can attach it to a necklace. I’m getting a lot of interest when wearing these.

Legal Defense Fundraiser: Get your Pretties, part 1

As you all know, our friends and colleagues are still being sued and while it looks good for them in the legal sense, the cost of defending themselves against this nonsense is prohibitive, so they all need a bit of help. So here’s your chance to do good for yourself and our friends and get some pretties. After all it’s almost Christmas anyway and if you celebrate you can never get your gifts too early. I’m therefore going to sell some of my resin art. All items are handcrafted and made with love as a secret ingredient. Every piece is unique, so make sure to get your favourites quick.

Here’s how this is going. I will sell most things for a fixed and really affordable price. Unless specified, that price will not include a chain or leather cord unless specified, because it wouldn’t make sense. I’d just have to add the cost to the price and then you’d end up with what I have, not what you want. The price will also not include postage. I’ll calculate postage once I know where you live and then tell you the amount. I’ll ship from Germany, which is reasonable, even to the USA, compared to the other way around. Which is good for me, since I’ll donate the shipping. that means you buy an item, I tell you the total (price plus shipping rounded to the next dollar), you donate to the go fund me and mail me your receipt. Please use our regular email address for this: affinitysubmissions @ gmail.com. Just remove the space around the @. Then I’ll ship your items. Feel free to ask questions if I didn’t express myself clearly.

So, let’s move to the goodies. All of them are about 1″ in diameter. If they’re missing a cap, that’ll be added, as well as a jump ring. They are all 5$ each. For more pretties please see part 2 and part 3.

Holidays: The Moon, Part 1

I didn’t know there was going to be a lunar eclipse, but one night I decided to take the camera to the small beach next to the campsite. That “beach” was our evening retreat. It’s actually only a cut in the line of boulders put up to secure the higher coastline where the railway tracks are, but it was a nice place to sit and have a drink. Taking pictures that night wasn’t that easy since I didn’t take the tripod with me and I got increasingly drunk.

The first pictures are taken before the eclipse, with the rising moon and the sea.

I wanted to catch the moonlight on the sea, but I would have needed a tripod and a half-coloured filter to darken the upper half of the image.

Tummy Thursday: Senegalese Food

There’s a saying in German that states that “the farmer won’t eat what the farmer doesn’t know”. It’s again this intersection of class and culture, where the educated classes take pride in “discovering” new tastes, while certain parts of the working class take pride in never trying anything new, especially no “furrin food”. Of course, both positions come with their racism, where the latter is more obvious than the former. I was lucky to be raised in a family that loved food. My grandparents could never travel the world in person, so they tried to travel it with their tummy, even though some of grandma’s creations would probably not have been recognised by the people who actually invented them. Mr, on the other hand was raised in a family that sees lasagna as exotic and his parents have never eaten a single Döner. Mr has tried to shed that attitude, but mostly ended up in a position where he will eat foreign cuisines, but only after they have been thoroughly approved by white people. Italian is standard, Chinese is ok, Greek is high end. So when we came upon a tiny Senegalese restaurant in Mataró, he was not happy when I proposed to eat there and the kids enthusiastically agreed.

Guess who enjoyed his meal the most?

The restaurant was tiny (less than 2m from side to side and probably 8-9 m long). The cook prepared three different dishes, as Senegale food is stews that take time to prepare, and starters, so we simply ordered one of each and shared among us.

I’ll definitely try to cook some of these, hopefully with better results than grandma…

Holidays: Wednesday Wings

Parakeets firmly own the city of Barcelona. I know they are pests. they’re also cute.

The circle of life

Nature as we imagine for children is this sweet place with fluffy bunnies with chequered hankies, and when we grow up we still call it “Mother Nature” as if it were some nurturing, benevolent entity. Actual nature doesn’t care for that shit. It’s a cruel and violent place where 90% of baby bunnies don’t get to see a second summer. But in nature, death is never wasteful. One animals tragic death is another’s lucky find. So here’s an unlucky shrew and a been grass snake, and some very happy insects and ant.

Holidays: Park Güell: Straight Lines are of the Devil

The last pics from Park Güell. The columns make your head somewhat dizzy, and we have a bunch of silly tourist pics where the kids try to keep them from falling over of where I aligned the camera with the columns and the kids “slide down”. No pics of the kids on the net, though.

Apparently even the trees decided to play along…

Affinity

Art, Fun, & Nonsense.

The abundant availability of health data

My grandfather, in WW2

Abortion Action Nonsense

Hating the artist, hating the art

The Great Gardening of 2025 - Part 39 -Toe-May-Toe Saws

The Probability Broach: Blood on the highway

Legal Fundraiser closed

Like this:

Tummy Thursday: Me gusta la cocina mexicana

Like this:

Holidays: Sagrada Familia 1

Like this:

Holidays: Partial Lunar Eclipse 3

Like this:

Holidays: Partial Lunar Eclipse, 2

Like this:

Legal Defense Fundraiser: Get your Pretties, part 3

Like this:

Legal Defense Fundraiser: Get your Pretties, part 2

Like this:

Legal Defense Fundraiser: Get your Pretties, part 1

Like this:

Holidays: The Moon, Part 1

Like this:

Tummy Thursday: Senegalese Food

Like this:

Holidays: Wednesday Wings

Like this:

The circle of life

Like this:

Holidays: Park Güell: Straight Lines are of the Devil

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: