Crimes against mankind: fat women existing

Let’s get it out of the way, right at the start: I’m fat. That is a simple statement of fact. I’m not a bit “on the chubby side” or have “womanly curves”. Actually, I find such statements pretty offensive because they imply that being fat would be a horrible thing (it isn’t), but I’m not (I am). Listen, everybody with eyes to see knows I’m fat. this is not a moral statement. This does not tell you much about who I am or what I do. It has absolutely no relationship to my character.

Yet, when you’re fat, especially when you’re a fat woman, your weight is everybody’s business, usually under the guise of being “concerned” about our health.

So, Nike creating a range of sportswear for fat women should be universally lauded because it will encourage us to finally take up that exercise you’ve been bothering us with for the last few decades, right? Right?

Comments on the picture:

You don’t have to be so PC, Nike, this is trying too hard, fat isn’t pretty nor healthy.

Another guy, Aaron,  feels obliged to explain this to us in detail:

Nike have officially just lost my respect and cracked other the PC brigade of having to keep people happy (sic), next you all will be supporting severe obesity where people can’t walk or get out of bed lol health and facts have literally gone for all you snowflakes. So we want people to be happy with their weight, even if it causes cloths (sic) higher blood pressure, diabetes, sever (sic) difficulty in breathing and lazyness (sic), is this what you loneys (sic) all support because if so then you’re supporting a person’s insecurity to try feel proud of themselves but really hate every inch of there (sic) body and emotionally eat themselves fat, and you still support it, anyone who supports this is the reason, and proof that this world is losing touch with keeping healthy.

I don’t know, but it seems like Aaron is a bit, uhm, emotional about a clothing line for women. Especially given that this is sportswear, so it’s actually designed for people who want to, you know, exercise. But Aaron’s (and other guys’ anger is well justified, because if we make clothing that fits fat women (somehow fat men are of little concern even though statistically, there’s more of them), they may actually feel good about themselves (because nothing can cause grumpiness like an ill-fitting bra) and that cannot be permitted. Because as Aaron and every other dude like him knows, we’re categorically miserable. Really. We may seem to live happy and productive lives, have friends, lovers, lots of fun, but as Aaron knows, we’re actually just faking it (you cannot be productive anyway because fat people are lazy, don’t you know?).  The obvious solution for this is that we just stop being fat. Somehow. While please not existing in public, because that really offends dudes like Aaron. No exercise and sports either, because somehow that supports us in being fat. Sorry if that logic escapes you. It’s because you’re a woman, or fat, or both, or neither. Don’t ask me, I don’t make the rules.

Or maybe we just see Aaron for the sad entitled prick that he his, feigning concern for our health while being very upset about a company selling clothing that makes it easier for fat people to actually exercise and do something for their health*.

And  I’m sorry I have to say it, but Aaron, you should have sat still and paid attention in your English class.

*And no, exercise is not about losing weight. Exercise is good for you. Go find something that you enjoy and that makes you feel alive. Forget about your weight.

Making Kitchen Knives – Part 10 – Shaping the Outlines

I have not forgotten or discontinued this project, only when it is cold I have to first heat up my workshop before doing any work – which wastes a lot of fuel and a lot of time. Therefore in winter I never manage to do as much work as I would like to. But I managed to do something in the last two months – like building the tumbler (that has run for five days straight by now btw. and it has made a very nice satin finish on the broken blade).

But I could not do much actual work on the knives themselves, because first I must focus on making the necessary improvements. I managed only one step in the process and one failed improvement in the next one.

The step that I have managed with success is shaping the outline of the blades. Last time I ended up with three stacks of blanks held together with screws. So I took them to the belt grinder and ground the outline of all three stacks. After that I disassembled the stacks and cleaned up any irregularities, burrs etc.

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

I ended up with a stack of 12 knife blanks. They are not all identical, but in three shapes – next time I will have to think a bit more about how to get reliably reproducible results. To save my self trouble when cutting the handle scales I have marked the blanks in each group on the tang with letters T, V and X. Why these letters? Because they are easily distinguishable from each other and can be scratched with just two lines.

This step was not actually very time-consuming before – just 10 minutes per blade, or 1, 55% of the whole process. Theoretically not worth improving. But I hope that having three groups of four reasonably identical handles will save me some time when shaping the handle – which took 110 minutes per handle, or 17% of the whole process.

Nevertheless, shaping four blades at once did bring some minor time-saving in itself – I have spent only 5 minutes per blade now, so I have saved 5 minutes from my process. This has confirmed that this was indeed low hanging fruit – it was a very easy improvement.

Next step is basic grind of the blade – and this is where I have my first failed attempt at improvement to share in my next post.

Friday Feathers

We have many wonderful reader contributions which I’ll post the next week (no, I haven’t forgotten those). For now it’s the rest of the birds that I met walking through a Winter Wonderland.

On the first day I walked past a shrubbery that is always full of birds, but as we were approaching they all flew away, but all in a certain direction. Some landed in that shrubbery and then took off as well. we soon spotted the reason for this:

common buzzard

©Giliell, all rights reserved

It’s a common buzzard, but they are not frequent in this particular area as it offers little space for soaring.

Walking further we then saw our usual small friends.

chaffinch

©Giliell, all rights reserved

I cannot quite decide between sparrow and lady chaffinch with the back and tail being hidden.

crow

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Crows are always slightly out of focus, I’m afraid.

crow

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Or hiding.

crow

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Or leaving.

great tit

©Giliell, all rights reserved

But you can always count on the tits.

 

Early winter wildflowers

Something special from Nightjar,

These photos are my new year gift to you and also to everyone at Affinity currently dealing with a dull winter. The mild Portuguese winter is, as you can see, full of life and colour, and even if I can’t share the sun and temperatures with you I can at least share the sights. I hope they bring you some happiness.

Coincya sp. (I think), ©Nightjar, all rights reserved

 

Chickweed (Stellaria sp.), ©Nightjar, all rights reserved

Daisy (Chameleon fuscatum), ©Nightjar, all rights reserved

Fumaria muralis, ©Nightjar, all rights reserved

Fumaria muralis, ©Nightjar, all rights reserved

Thank you, Nightjar. My winter remains dull and your flowers are a welcome gift.

 

When you don’t have enough hands or faces to palm.

American politics have a serious side effect of headaches from shaking them or facepalming constantly over here in continental Europe (made worse by the weeping over the Brits), but sometimes it’s just bizarre.

Have you heard about that big scandal involving Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

Well, hold on fast, because these revelations will break your heart. When she was a teenager, she danced and had friends.

Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is…
…High School video of “Sandy” Ocasio-Cortez @AoDespair

And then there’s Elizabeth Warren. Did you know what she did? She drank beer on Instagram!

I hope I have now thoroughly ruined your new year with these groundbreaking revelations of human women doing normal human things.

 

YouTube Video: A Super-Material You Can Make In Your Kitchen (Starlite?)

Today a bit of chemistry and engineering that took my fancy. I have read about Starlite before, and I always wondered what it was made of. It would be swell if it could be made to actually work on big scale.

There are other materials that have similarly amazing insulating properties – aerogels – but they are brittle and a pain in the arse to make at home (i tried, and failed).

I am already thinking about how to use this in knifemaking.

Oh and sorry for being so quiet, but I was away for almost a week without internet and I am still catching my breath after getting back to work after.

It’s the season! Making bird food.

One of the secret to great tit pics is to feed them well. You can buy “tit balls”, but for several reasons I prefer to make my own.

The first is that they are relatively expensive, costing around 30 to 50 ct apiece. More importantly, they are usually in a green plastic mesh that can get lost and end up in nature. They’re quick and easy to make, so if you want to try your hand at them, here’s how to.

I use some silicone baking forms for this. the small Gugelhupf forms are the best, since they have a hole in the middle already, but I only have four of them. Standard muffin forms work nicely as well. What you absolutely need is some ring as a centre for the suet to stick to, otherwise they will fall apart after the first pecks. I just use some rattan, but anything goes.

I just fill them halfway with birdseed and then add the ring.

Those that don’t have something to form a hole need something to make that, otherwise hanging them up gets difficult. I use some straws or an ice cream stick.

Birdseed popsicles

Finally I just fill them with suet. Don’t be shy, the birds won’t mind some extra. Now all I have to do is wait for them to get hard again and the next two weeks are covered.

Filled up with important winter calories.

I know there are controversions about whether or not to feed birds in winter, but one undeniable advantage is that we get a lot of organic fertiliser…

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

We had sunshine today! It didn’t last long and by the time Jack and I got outside it had gone behind the clouds again, but I saw it. And it was a grand, blinking beacon of hope in the long tunnel of winter. This photo was taken at Pittock Lake. It’s part of a water management system and the water level in the lake is lowered every year over the winter. During the rest of the year the water line is up near the trees. Normally what little water remains in January is frozen over, but so far not much has been normal about this winter. You can just see the dam on the horizon line at the right.

Tummy Thursday: Gumbo or what makes an easy meal

Since I told you all in depth about our New Years Eve dinner, here’s the recipe for my American main course.

I searched the internet for a gumbo recipe that seemed doable and delicious and then had a trial cooking.

The first problem was to get some sausage that resembles Andouille. As you can see at that link, there is a sausage called anduille in France, but it sounds very different from the creole version and actually I detest it. I decided to go with smoked polish sausage that was very hearty, but did not have caraway seed (Eastern European sausages often have generous amounts of caraway seed and I don’t like that either). I think it made a great substitute and got used both times.

Next was the okra. I had never used okra before, and I even went to a Turkish supermarket to get some fresh okra especially for this, but, let me tell you, they aren’t called “slime fruit” in German for nothing. The little “stars” looked nice, but I don’t think they added much taste and really, I can do without the added consistency of slime, so they got left out the second time.

I changed the seasoning somewhat, leaving out the “hot sauce” but adding a “Cajun” spice and pepper mix that I quite like and the result was simply to die for.

gumbo

©Giliell, all rights reserved

This is the trial version before i added the shrimp.

Making the gumbo got me thinking of how the idea of “easy meal” probably changed with women’s work shifting to the outside (I hate the insinuation that housewives “didn’t work”. I want to to see those people scrub the laundry). I can imagine that for a woman who had to do all the chores and probably some farming on the side, this gumbo would have been an “easy meal”. Sure, the roux requires a bit of your attention, but you can use that time to chop your veggies. Then you just hang it high above the fire or put it on the side of the wood stove and go about your day and do your work, while the meal is cooking itself. And you can make a big serving and don’t have a lot of dishes afterwards. Perfect meal for getting your family through a busy workday.

Nowadays, the idea of making something that needs to stew for three hours screams “festive meal” to any person who work outside.

 

Wednesday Wings: Hunting Kinglets

Kinglets, or more specifically goldcrests, are the prettier cousins of our common wrens. They aren’t exactly shy birds, although they don’t like too many people in the woods, but they move fast in an area with lots of bushes and twigs. I know a spot where I have good chances of spotting them. Taking their picture? The work of Sysiphus… The big lens needs a lot of light and the autofocus needs time. Given the terrain, chances are good that the bird is long gone once it has found that particular twig*.

So here are my results of several hunts.

kinglet

©Giliell, all rights reserved

The best shot, though I don’t recommend “click for full size”. It is grainy, since the ISO went through the roof, but shooting birds at less than 1/125 is impossible anyway.

*I could still bite my own ass for not having waited a few months longer until I had enough money to buy the “sports” version…

And now for a whole row of “I should have put superglue on the branches”…

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Speaking of Gratitude…

Beautiful, delicious and all gone.

A few days ago I posted about the resin horse that Giliell sent me, but I didn’t tell you about the rest of the package. Giliell also sent me a box of home-made cookies and, Oh My but they were good. It doesn’t show up well in the photo, but the chocolate cookies were dusted with gold. The waffers come from a recipe of Giliell’s grandmother and they were so pretty. The ‘S’ shaped cookies are just like the ones my German grandmother made and they brought me a flood of warm, happy memories from childhood.

Origami and a pair of adorable llamas

There were lots of other surprises too. Origami ornaments and a pair of adorable llamas. Ha! Not just on the card, but the whole damn llama stamp set. What a great idea.

Look! I can make llama art.

Birds are just so Affinity and they don’t come with more personality than these 2 fellows.

Birds of a feather to keep me company.

I saved the best for last. Giliell has made me an undersea world in a bottle, which I love. It’s madly creative and also came with a flood of memories, this time of my happy place by The Gulf of St. Lawrence on the beach in Perce.

An undersea adventure world.

Giliell, you’re incredibly talented and I thank you so much for the treasures. To all of you who’ve seen Giliell’s wonderful baking, I can tell you it tastes as good as it looks.