• It was a beautiful day for a visit to the Fort.

    You all would have had a chuckle if you had seen me.

    Remember the movie True Grit with John Wayne and Glen Campbell? Mattie Ross wore a black hat. That is the hat I felt I was wearing yesterday. Except mine didn’t have a tie strap. I kept waiting for it to fly away in the wind.

    This was topped with a white linen vest, about four inches too small across the belly and 2 across the chest. But it looked period.

    That was over a linen shirt. The shoulders of which were a little tight.

    Black pants finished the look.

    I had planned to do some spinning. I didn’t. I spent most of the day talking to people and learning and finding things that need to be fixed.

    My primary learning goal was to observe and ask questions about how linen is made. They didn’t have anybody in the weaving room.

    I did find a very knowledgeable lady, but she had knowledge but not skill.

    A bit later, I managed to get one of the interpreters to actual show me how it was done. It is an interesting process. There are some specialized tools that are needed for the processing. I don’t have them, I think I can make them.

    We bought a bound of flax seed from some monks a few years go. I think we might plant it this coming spring. Maybe at the fort.

    Subsequently, I ended up talking to guests. I do not have the skill to disengage when I am done. So many interactions lasted to long.

    Tomorrow’s post will be about some feedback I got from an Australian farmer who was there when they took the guns.

    My daughter spent several years working for a corporation where she didn’t feel her skills were appreciated. One of her coworkers did not interact well with her.

    When she changed positions and is in a new team, with a new chain of command, she was exposed to some people that she described as having “quiet competence”.

    Ally came to me with a sickle. Told me it needed to be sharpened. I found some sharpening stones and did so.

    I’m sitting out in the courtyard for the light on a capped well. The director took pictures.

    Seems that there is a skill to sharpening, which I have been working on, but which I didn’t have on my list.

    So I got another, “He just sharpened it, amazing.”

    All in all, I had a good time. My bad knee hurts, but that’s a good hurt. I was outside most of the day. I meet people.

    The only thing that would have enhanced it would have been if there was live fire involved.

            

  • I’m up at the Fort with Ally and my wife. They are having a show and tell.

    She picked out the garb to wear, and I have my black felt hat.

    Originally, I intended to do some wood working, but that is currently on hold until I get some raw lumber.

    The lathe needs bracing before it can be put into use. We could just use 2x4s, but that wouldn’t look very nice.

    My goal is to bring up a 4 or 5 foot length of Oak from the woods. It will be heavy.

    That will be fed through my bandsaw to make some rough blanks. The blanks will be taken up to the fort to be hand planed and turned into braces.

    So… What will I be doing up there today?

    I will be combing wool and spinning it. I have my wheel up there to use, but it is likely I’ll be using something a little older. Some 100+ years older than mine.

    I am also hoping to learn how to process flax into fibers for spinning. It is an example of something I have knowledge of but no skill.

    The next project is to make an inkle loom. My fine felt hat is too boring, even for me. I want a hat band. That requires me to make a hat band.

    To make the hat band, I will need some sort of loom. I’ve decided to use an inkle loom. I could spend dollars to buy one, instead I plan to make it.

    There will be some shortcuts used. The intent is to use the modern jointer, plainer, and lathe to make the components, but we will be starting from a log in the woods.

    The threads for the hat band? Those are what I will be spinning. My wife will be dying some of the thread, I will have to decide on colors.

    I hope that some of you make it out to the Fort this weekend.

            

  • I’ve talked about bugging in versus bugging out. I haven’t talked much about long-term bugging out, mostly because I’m not suited to it. Frankly, I don’t think most people are, despite their desires. In any case, it’s not something I could do for a long time, so there is no point in planning for it.

    Short term bugging out or having an emergency come up while I’m out of the house and have to make my way home are absolutely possible scenarios. That means I have spent considerable time contemplating how to deal with it. For me, there are many issues that come up when considering being bugged out, and it’s a very individual thing.  You’re going to have to figure out your list of pros and cons on your own.

    My first question is whether I’m temporarily bugging out, or am I on a trek to get home after being caught out? I can forsee several situations where I might temporarily bug out of the house. We back onto acres and acres of woodland, with even more nearby. It’s not going to be searched, even if FEMA comes by and investigates. I don’t have the kind of subbasement that Bill had in The Last Of Us (this scene is freakin’ marvelous, I might add – go have a watch!), so there are places we can go to hide until the feds come and go again. The bottom line is, they won’t stick around, and I will.

    And here’s the thing. I have a well stocked pantry out in plain view. I expect that to be ransacked. I have a hidden pantry that I also expect will get found and ransacked. That’s why I have caches elsewhere. There’s always more food, more seeds, more of what I need. I also try to keep up on the letter/number combos that FEMA puts onto houses when it goes through a neighborhood. I keep a variety of spray paint on hand, and once I know what color they’re using, I should be able to sneak in and mark up the house. Emergencies are wonderful things, sometimes, and allow you to make everyone think “someone else took care of it.”

    (more…)

            

  • The blog has now been moved to a temporary server. I hope that it will be more stable. I have to move the citation server. Once that is moved, GFZ and Vine Of Liberty will be free of K8S.

    I have a few other websites to move, but I am making great progress.

    In the Supreme Court of Mass acutes, we had a Second Amendment win. They found that knives are arms under the plain text of the Second Amendment. As such, it was the government’s burden to show that the current regulation, a ban on switch-blade knives, was consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulations.

    The state did not meet their burden, the law is facially unconstitutional.

    There have been a few more wins at the district court level.

    In many circuits, the district judges are applying Bruen faithfully. This led to a cascade of wins for the Second Amendment.

    It is at the circuit court level where most of the clown show exists. The Fourth, Ninth, Seventh, and Second come to mind.

    Answering the question of the fastest way from sheep to cap, socks or tunic. The answer is to knit them. It is but a short time to get from clean fleece to yarn suitable for knitting with.

    The comments are of course open.

            

  • These are people you should know about. They are often the people to put together the NPC videos of all the MSM saying the same thing of the same scripts.

    They are also the people who provide the positive vs. negative percentages for MSM.

            

  • This is mostly to test the autopost to Twitter/X

            

  • There is this interesting point where you realize that you own a data center.

    My data center doesn’t look like that beautiful server farm in the picture, but I do have one.

    I have multiple servers, each with reasonable amounts of memory. I have independent nodes, capable of performing as ceph nodes and as docker nodes.

    Which took me to a step up from K8S.
    (more…)

            

  • I’m going to start with Harris, only because I don’t think this is going to take very long to research. I don’t mean that in a snarky way, either. I just don’t believe she’s actually accomplished all that much.

    According to the official WH website: “As Vice President, she has worked to bring people together to advance opportunity, deliver for families, and protect fundamental freedoms across the country. She has led the fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own bodies, the freedom to live safe from gun violence, the freedom to vote, and the freedom to drink clean water and breathe clean air. While making history at home, she is also representing the nation abroad – embarking on more than a dozen foreign trips, traveling to more than 19 countries, and meeting with more than 150 world leaders to strengthen critical global alliances.” Semantic content, zero. This is literally more of the word salad she uses in her speeches.

    To be clear, women can already make decisions about their own bodies. People are already free to live safe from violence of all kinds, not just gun violence, and we have a whole police force to take care of it when violence becomes a problem. If anything, Harris made the country MORE violent by bailing out violent offenders who burned the country during the riots. Everyone has the freedom to vote, and there’s been not one whiff of a smidgen of a hint that anyone’s interested in repressing that right. Drinking clean water and breathing clean air is a function of many things, and if you want to do it you have to move out of the cities. There’s nothing a VP or President can do about it. And in four years, Madame VP has made “more than a dozen” drips. Wow. In what way did she “strengthen critical global alliances,” pray tell? Again, this has no actual content.

    (more…)

            

  • Image from Sheep To Shawl Competition

    What they did may we not do? And even better, for are we not armed with ages of superior knowledge, and have we not the means of protection, defense, and sustenance which science has given us, but of which they were totally ignorant? What they accomplished, Alice, with instruments and weapons of stone and bone, surely that may we accomplish also.
    —Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (Project Gutenberg Aug. 2021)

    First published in 1912, the conceit of John Clayton still flows through the veins of modern men (and women).

    He was sure that his “superior knowledge” would prevail over his lack of actual skills.

    Does he know how to make cordage? He makes their first shelter with rope left by the mutineers. He did not know how to make cordage.

    He protects himself and Lady Alice with the rifles and pistol. He has no way of making more cartridges. When his supply is gone, there is no more. He just has a fancy stick.

    I have extensive knowledge about many things. That doesn’t mean I have skills in all of those things.

    I know the basics of long-distance shooting. I don’t have the skills. That means my shots will be well within 200 yards. Yes, I consider 200 yards to be close in.

    Did John know how to make clothing? How long is the clothing he has going to last?

    Can he make thread? Can he make a drop spindle? A spinning wheel? Can he collect fibers and turn that into yarn and then turn that yarn into clothing?

    One of the skill contests that happens in many places, a few times a year, is sheep to shirt.

    A team will be set up and at “go” they will shear the right number of sheep. While that is happening, they second team will be cleaning the fleece.

    After the fleece has been cleaned, it will be spun into thread. There are always multiple spinners. As six to twelve doing the first spinning. Those are either spun to make stronger two or three-ply material.

    While the spinners are spinning like made, the weavers are creating the warp. This is the process of taking the thread and wrapping it around pegs to organize the threads and to make loops that are the same length.

    The longest warp I’ve done was about 18 yards.

    Once the warp is prepared, the loom needs to be warped. This is the process of passing each thread through the reed and then through the heddles. The warp is then tied to the back roller and the warp is then pulled to the back of the loom.

    More thread is put onto bobbins and then one person starts weaving. All of that to make a few yards of cloth.

    Having made the cloth, a new team takes up sewing everything together.

    A good team can do the entire process in 12 hours or so.

    Did John have any of those skills? I have all the skills except for shearing and the cutting/sewing of the final product.

    I have knowledge of how to shear. I don’t have the skill to do it. Nor do I have the tools to do it.

    Part of preparing is learning how to do things.

    So here’s another example. Making soap. My wife makes soap. I have the knowledge of how to make lye from hardwood ash. The question is: Do I have the skill to make lye?

    Currently, the answer is “no”. I’ve tried, and failed. I’m not sure why.

    So my answer was to buy large bottles of Sodium Hydroxide. 5Kg is #34.50 and 50lbs is $78.00. I can make pounds and pounds of soap from that much Sodium Hydroxide.

    Yet, there is still a problem, Mixing Sodium Hydroxide with water is an exothermic reaction. This means the stuff gets HOT.

    To make soap, you need the temperature to be reasonable.

    We had the knowledge, but the last time my wife taught a class, she wasn’t prepared for that exothermic reaction. We had to use an ice bath to cool it down.

    There are many skills you require. You should be looking at skills to live comfortably.

    The question of the day for you, you have a spinning wheel, you have the wool, you have the loom. What is the fastest path to a shirt, gloves, socks, hat?

            

  • There are always songs that stay with us forever.

    My first year at University, I was amazed at how many concerts and shows were held on campus. Over the time I was there, I was able to see off Broadway productions of Cat and A Chorus Line.

    In addition to plays there were the concerts. And they weren’t little names.

    Harry Chapin gave a concert every year.

    When my roommate tried to get me to go, I begged off. I was studying for a test or some such thing. That was a mistake.

    A few months later, Harry died in a car accident.

    Having been introduced to Harry, I purchased many of his albums on CD and nearly wore them out.

    I’ve already written about Sniper.

    I listened to the following song, and it felt like it was telling a part of my story.

    My father was in the Navy, he would deploy for 6+ months every few years. He worked a lot. When I was old enough to actually do things with him, he was CO of the base, which left him little time.

    His support was always there.

    He and mom delayed moving to their dream home after he retired to allow me to complete high school in the school I started.

    They left at the end of the school year, I went to Europe for a trip, came back to the states and spent the summer staying with a friend and working.

    From there, it was straight to University. I went “home” for Christmas and the summer break.

    That was the last time I lived with my parents. Every other summer, I was at school or working. Or both.

    So when I heard this song, it hit me hard. My father has always been there for me. As much as I needed. He was the strength behind mom. He was.

    And I was the selfish son who couldn’t make time for him.

    So I told him this song was so meaningful to me because I wasn’t making time for him and I never had.

    He heard the other side and felt like he wasn’t there for me.

    I hurt him. I regret telling him about “Cat’s In The Cradle”, but at the same time, I hope he heard that I felt I hadn’t been there for him.