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Katrin Hieroglyphs.
23. Februar 2024
Yes, that would sort of fit that aspect - but you can also go from bits of woods to sticks if you ar...
Bruce Hieroglyphs.
23. Februar 2024
I think the closest English equivalent would be 'Down the rabbit hole'. It has one entrance (No, not...
Harma Spring is Coming.
20. Februar 2024
I'm definitely jealous! Mine disapeared except for one pathetic little flower. But the first daffodi...
Gudrun Rallies All Over Germany.
23. Januar 2024
Vielen Dank für den Beitrag. Ja, wir müssen darüber reden, gegen das Vergessen. Zum Glück haben mein...
Anne Decker Aargh.
17. Januar 2024
This is less likely to have an effect on your personal samples as you likely wrap the same way for a...
JAN.
17
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Personal Stuff, part I - weight loss.

This blog has seen one or the other post about personal stuff over the years... and it's time for another one. Actually, for two, but as they are relatively unrelated topics, I'll make two posts out of it.

Back in 2016, I went on a weight-loss journey that took most of the year, and I've been normal weight ever since I hit that goal weight in September. It did not stay at the goal weight very long - I went slightly above it pretty soon, as in one or two kilos, but that was okay with me. It was still a reasonable weight for me, and I did keep to this okay range for a year or two. Or, actually, even almost three.

However... since then I have gradually, slowly, sneakily gotten back into the habit of eating just a tiny little bit more than I need. Which means, Thank You Captain Obvious, that I've gradually, slowly, sneakily put on a bit more weight again than I'd like to have. Reasons for that (not the putting on, but the eating a tad more) are unclear, but they might include other health issues, a bit of emotional eating or boredom eating, old bad habits coming through again, a genetic predisposal to an appetite that is a bit too large, having the occasional bout of not sleeping enough, and there might be more, but I think that's already quite enough to have on the list, so I'll just stop here.

Now, back in 2016 when I was hardcore dieting, I logged everything I ate and drank to keep track of my calorie input, and very obviously, that worked as a strategy for me. It's a bit of a numbers game to play - how much have I had today already? Was it enough protein? (From experience, I know that I need a certain amount to feel okay, and not perpetually hungry.) Do I really want to eat that bit of chocolate or had I rather be finished earlier with the dieting? How much do I actually need to feel okay, and how much do I actually need for maintenance? It's amazing, and can be a real eye-opener, to weigh out portions and see how much or how little the same amount of calories can be. 

After months of logging all the food, it did get a bit old though. I wanted very much to be able to eat without logging everything as a crutch, and in the start, that worked fairly well. Over time, though, it looks like I'm prone to having just a little bit more than necessary. That's not bad if it happens once in a while and gets evened out by eating less on some other day, and lucky the person who does that naturally, but unfortunately that's not me. I just eat a little more occasionally, and never too little to even it out.

I've tried several times to lose some weight again freestyle, without logging, but it seems like I'm still not good enough at estimating caloric values, and at eating less without having numbers to cling to. So the smart thing would probably have been to do a week or two of tracking now and then, just to make sure my internal calibration, so to say, gets re-adjusted.

Well. I didn't, because I wanted so, so much to be able to wing it... and now I've gotten precariously close to overweight again, and while my clothes all still fit, they fit tighter now. So I've gone back to doing what works for me: Logging everything, and trying to go for a significant deficit each day. (Because I am also, still, an impatient person.)

And, surprise surprise, it's not as bad as I feared. Yes, it is a little more work when cooking, and preparing food. Yes, it also means taking care of what gets eaten (There's the protein quota to be met, which of course has an impact on the kinds of food that are smart to eat, and those that are a less smart choice). However... weighing and logging everything before I eat it also means that it's not as easy to just have a piece of chocolate, or a cookie, or another coffee (with milk, otherwise it wouldn't really count)... and because I'm a lazy person, that already helps with having less of the "boredom food" than I'd usually have. Snack fruit in the afternoon. The bit of chocolate in the break. Taking another small serving, just because it tastes so good. (I blame you, good-quality-food that does not even need a lot of cooking skills to taste delicious.) Having a last spoonful of whatever before putting leftovers into the fridge. All those little things... adding up.

We'll see how it goes now, playing this numbers game this time around. I will be trying to figure out my current daily energy needs while I'm at it (there's a brilliant spreadsheet hanging out on reddit for this), hoping that fluctuating water levels will not muck up things too much. And then, for the future, I hope I'll be smart enough to do a week of logging for re-calibration sooner and not later, so there's less to lose should the numbers go creeping up again.

I know that weight and weight loss can be a sensitive topic for a lot of people, and it used to be for me as well - until I got all my dieting myths and preconceptions blasted by the book "Fettlogik überwinden", which in the meantime has also come out in English, as "Conquering Fat Logic". So...if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

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FEB.
25
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Open Library from the Internet Archive

I like online resources for research - who doesn't? And occasionally, I stumble across a new one, which is always a nice thing.

My most recent discovery happened because a colleague was searching for a specific article, published as part of a book, that I thought sounded interesting. So I checked my own library database, but of course it was not in there. Then I did a bit of a search on the 'net, and there was a link to the Internet Archive (which you might know through the WayBackMachine, which I can totally recommend if you want to look at websites that once were but are no more today) and, more specifically, to their lending library thing OpenLibrary.org - where you can virtually borrow digital copies of books. Quite a lot of books, actually, including the one in question that my colleague was looking for.

Borrowing works if you have a free log-in for the Internet Archive, and then you can read for one hour in the book in question, with automatic extension as long as nobody else wants to read it. Some things can also be borrowed to your e-reader for a 14-day period.

So in case you're running out of things to read... you might find something there. I hope you have fun!
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SEP.
22
1

Tales from the Summer Break (4)

Because the Forststeig trail is a true multi-day hiking trail, there's no rubbish disposal along the route, apart from the one regular campsite in Ostrov (which is after the second day of hiking or so). This means, and you are explicitly told about that on the website, that you have to carry your rubbish with you until you reach the end of the trail.

Our home-made bars, and the mostly home-made other foodstuffs, meant that we had a very manageable amount of rubbish accumulating on the trip. Also a good thing, because you are required to take everything along with you for the whole journey, there's no waste disposal along the trekking route. Because I was curious, I weighed our rubbish upon our return... and it was 140 g of plastics. (That's not counting the ziplock bags we had at home and brought along, which will be re-used.) We had thrown away about 10 g previously, at the camping place in Ostrov, and of course there was a good amount more of it when preparing the things at home, in form of the packaging for the ingredients used. It was not much in comparison to some of the other hikers on the trail - due to the homemade bars, and not using convenience food, regular or hiker-specific. It was still quite a bit, though.

So many things are still sold in plastic. Even organically grown stuff - which is especially hard for me to understand. I can sort of get it when it's soggy stuff that is being sold, or moist and oily things, but dried beans, or grains, or pasta? Please, come on. These can very well live in paper packaging.

This feeling of it being too much plastic by far was reinforced when we came back home: Indra Starke-Ottich's book "Mein Weg aus der Plastikfalle" had arrived during our time away, and was waiting for me on our table. I confess I bought the book mostly because I wanted to support Indra's cause, not because I thought I actually needed it.



Well. I now know that I did need it, and a lot of other people might also need it. The book is written in a very nice manner, with a wonderful voice that pleased me throughout. It was a gruesome read, though - and really drove home the necessity to change our ways, and our consumption, as much and as quickly as possible. I did know that plastic is not good, but did not realise how big a problem plastic poses for the environment. It basically never degrades, only falls apart into smaller pieces, which can then be consumed easily by animals and people... with the result of the average person eating about one credit card's worth of micro- and nanoplastics per week. Per week! Eeek!

Reason enough for us to look over our lifestyle again, and make a few more changes. One of them, for me, was installing an app called "replace plastic", which aims to show the makers (and packagers) of things that their customers do not want everything plastic-wrapped. Once you have the app installed, you enter your name and postcode. Then, whenever there's an item you use, or would like to use, you can scan the barcode; the app will pass the request on to the manufacturer once 20 people have scanned this item or after about 4 weeks, whatever happens earlier. That is a very quick, very pain-free and easy way to ask for a more environmentally-friendly packaging!

Another change is that I will be much more consequent in getting foods without plastic packaging. Foodstuff packing is, like probably everywhere, where the bulk of our plastic waste comes from, even though we've been trying to reduce that for a good while now. We've switched to milk in glass bottles and, more recently, we're getting our milk as raw milk directly from the farmer, and we found a source for quark in deposit glasses. (The quark costs more than twice as much as the plastic version, but it's organic as well, which means the cows do get better treatment. Our milk is actually cheaper by about the same factor now, as it's sold directly by the farmer, who will earn more per litre of milk sold at that price than for selling to a dairy factory.)

For the other food things, there's fortunately a few online shops offering plastic-free things that are hard to get locally, such as poppy seeds. Finding those involved some internet surfing, and some checking and comparing of prices to get an indication of what is sensible, and what is not. And now it's just getting those changes done, one step at a time, until they are the new and comfy way of doing stuff...
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JUNI
13
0

Just Two Links Today...


... but they are both to spectacular things. Number one: A one thousand year old sarcophagus was opened in Mainz - here is the link to a short video report (in German).




Number two is more textile-related stuff: A report about the conservation of embroidered and textile book-bindings at the British Library. These stunning book covers are definitely worth a look!

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JUNI
01
0

My Knitting Library.

You might have noticed that I am actually ding more of the making fabric with sticks and string thing recently - and I thought that maybe you are interested in the knitting library I have. Which is... how shall I put it... rather minimalistic.

[caption id="attachment_3846" align="alignnone" width="461"]library That's it. That is my full knitting book library.


I like to look at knitting patterns, but I'm not a collector - so I'm not someone to buy a magazine just for the patterns. In fact, I leaf through them and usually think something along the lines of "oh, a basic sweater with lace pattern XYZ, aha, nice" or "ah, cabled socks, nice, cable soandso looks pretty in this yarn" - but then I sort of not want to knit it. Or I think that I'd probably fare better by taking a standard vanilla patterns for a sweater or socks (of which I know it will fit me) and modify that with lace pattern XYZ or cable pattern soandso. (I'm looking at food and recipe magazines the same way - I look at something and think "ah, variation on basic stew A" or "hm, standard cake batter with some extra spices thrown in" and that's it.)

So when I set out to assembly my knitting library, I knew what I wanted - also thanks to the first book in the assembly: Knitting Rules by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. This is a wonderful book - it is fun to read and it's chock full of good, sane, sensible advice, tips and tricks. It has a very sane view on gauge swatches, for instance.  It's a lovely book, and I would recommend it to anyone who starts out to knit in a heartbeat.  It also advises to have a stitch dictionary and a basic knitting technique book in the knitting library.

Advice I took to heart - and got a small stitch dictionary, with pretty colourful pictures - the one you see to the right of Knitting Rules. It's called "Field Guide to Knitting". It is nice... but I very soon found out that there are so, so many more stitch patterns than in that book, and that I'd prefer having more patterns instead of colourful photos. And then I found out about Barbara G. Walker's "Treasury of Knitting Patterns" series, and got the first three books. (There is a fourth one, but that was not as interesting to me as the first three, so I left it at that.) I wouldn't buy the Field Guide anymore, but I totally recommend the Treasury books; they are indeed a treasure trove, and utterly wonderful to leaf through.

The "sock innovation" book, written by Cookie A, was a souvenir from one of our England travels, and while it is quite nice and I did make a pair of socks out of it, I was sort of disappointed by the book. It promises to tell you how to design and adapt sock patterns, but the patterns in the book are only given in one single size, and I'd have appreciated to actually have examples of adaptation instead of just a hint on which technique to use. Also I prefer to knit my socks toe-up, and these are all cuff-down. The socks are beautiful, and I did enjoy looking through the book and marveling at the intricate patterns, but I'm pretty sure I would not buy that one again.

The remaining two books are June Hiatt's "Principles of Knitting" and Cap Sease's "Cast on, Bind Off", and both were very good buys. They are both solid books, full of information on how to do things - especially the "Principles" will probably tell you about everything you need to know about everything.

So... in the nine years since I started knitting, I managed to buy only two knitting books that I'm not still in love with, and that I would probably not get again. I also managed to buy only eight books altogether, including those two. With the six others, I have yet to find another book that I feel would add more knowledge not covered already to this bit of the bookshelf - so I am really happy with these choices!
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JAN.
20
0

Things for your amusement.

The sun is shining, it's cold outside, and here are things from around the Internet!

There's a project on indiegogo to get a Mini-Mill from Canada all the way to Iceland, to spin the wool from local sheep into nice yarn. You can support that project starting with a 4 USD donation, and there are multiple perks to get hand-picked wool or yarns. So if you are looking for some really special fibre or yarn... you might find it just there.

Hugo Nomination Season is upon us, and will run until March 17. While I am, as usually, abysmally behind in reading current stuff, I do intend to nominate at least a few things. EscapePod, for one thing - and since there's some more spinning hours in the weeks ahead, I think I might find one or two more stories from 2016. In the "Best Related Work" category, Gillian Polack's "History and Fiction" is actually eligible... and I hope to find some more exciting stuff before the deadline. Hints about books and short stories published in 2016 that blew you away are utterly welcome!

While we're on the topic of reading, Aarhus Press Free Ebook of the month is "Elephants are not picked from trees", a book with stories about the taxidermied animals in Gothenburg National History museum.

Not free, but available again in digital version after they went out of print: past issues of Experimentelle Archäologie in Deutschland/Europa. You can have a look at the volumes on the EXAR website and click through the "buy" link to land on the publisher's homepage, where you can buy pdf downloads of individual articles from out of print volumes.
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MAI
09
0

Back home. With boxes.

I'm back home from the long weekend, and it was a wonderful thing to hang out with this special bunch of friends - as most of us only meet once a year, for just this long weekend. The weather was lovely and sunny, and we managed to get outside to enjoy it, at least a bit... while most of our time was spent indoors, sticking bits of paper to bits of cardboard, with the occasional curse for various reasons (such as one of the bits not being the correct size, not being really true to the angles it should be in, or not sticking where/how it was supposed to be).

Something I find equally fascinating every single time we meet is how the individual preference for things done on that weekend has developed for each of us. We all started out taking the same course on basic hobby book-binding, with the same teacher (in that same youth hostel), some of us a few years earlier, some later - I was one of the last to take the course. So we all started out with the same knowledge, and a similar background. Now everyone has his or her speciality - some like to do books either from scratch or with pre-produced inner parts, some do lots of repair work on books. One of us likes to do a variety of things - boxes, photo albums, booklets, CD covers, with something different every year. One of us usually brings things she binds anew, for better useability, with little regard to how the book or catalogue (much of it are coin catalogues for numismatic purposes) looked originally - useability and practicability are priorities here. On the opposite end of that spectrum, someone else in the group repairs books, taking great care to keep the repairs as unobtrusive as possible, and to conserve as much of the original material as possible.

Me, I've been making at least one folder and at least one box per year for a long time now. I love boxes - they are sturdy, they are beautiful, and if you are making them yourself, you can have them any size and any colour and in any design. This year, I made four boxes in identical size:

IMG_8889
IMG_8887
I had a huge amount of fun doing these, using bits of paper that I like but did not have a lot of anymore... because, you see, these boxes are ridiculously tiny:

[caption id="attachment_2398" align="alignnone" width="414"]IMG_8888 That is a 1-Euro-Cent piece hanging out with the boxes there. They are about 2.4 x 4.8 x 2.4 cm in size. See? Ridiculously tiny.


 
I'm not sure what I will put into these, or whether I will give some of them away. A small USB stick might just fit in one of them, or a small piece of jewellery. They are lovely, however, and I have to giggle whenever I see them, as they are so ridiculously tiny - but still proper boxes, with all the parts that have to be there for it to be a real box. (For the record, it's 7 pieces of cardboard for each of them, as the lid has two parts; plus 8 pieces of paper to stick onto and into the box (or more, depending on how you handle the inner wall coverings). Small boxes do take a little less time than large boxes, and those felt as if they were very quick to make, but they still do take a noticeable amount of time.

Well worth it, though, if you ask me!
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