I accidentally shaved off my beard a few days ago.
This has happened before, so I was careful this time – carefully set the length with the length-setting dial. Started with my moustache because I wanted to leave the beard long, just trim up the edges.
However, the clipper protection cage is apparently how this clipper adjusts length – the dial slides the cage in and out, controlling its distance to the clipper element – and it seems to have been improperly clacked onto the clipper with the result that despite setting the dial to a moderate length, it shaved off one third of my moustache, leaving me with two-thirds of a moustache and a bare spot where the final third should have been.
I know from experience that had I tried to symmetrize my moustache by shaving a third away from the other side I would’ve been left with a rather narrow bit under my nose, a moustache that went out of style here in Austria in 1945. Yeah so anyway back to the drawing board.
Speaking of drawing board I have been looking for something to do with all the fibers in my garden so I fell down a Youtube rabbit hole of DIY twining/stringmaking tutorials.
Did you know that twine making is probably the oldest human cultural… thing? That led to everything else?
Like, after twisting some twine from the leaves of day lilies in our garden and… enjoying how soothing it is to just sit there and twine for hours while chatting on the terrace, I began to wonder what one does with all this twine. I finally found a website that had a list of things you can do. Three of their suggestions were, seriously, “wrap it around a stick, wrap it around a rock, wrap it around a seashell…”.
Did you know that the oldest man-made fibers discovered so far (and they were probably making string before this but being organic traces are harder to find) were found in a 90,000 year old Neanderthal settlement? My friends and family do! So string-making… predates homo sapiens? Or at least, homo sapiens have no monopoly on it.
And when you have all this string, it leads to other things.
You ask yourself, what am I going to do with all this fucking string? I am going to need a vehicle to move it around (invents wheel). I am going to need a bag to hold it in (invents weaving). Ack my bag fell apart (invents sewing and knitting).
Etc etc.
Actually I stumbled onto string-making while looking at basket weaving tutorials, after finding out that one harvests willow switches in the winter. So to kill time until then I started clicking videos of basketry-adjacent stuff in the right margin and the rest is history.
My wife used some of my twine without asking first to tie up the roses, I was shocked at first but I suppose that was ok, proved it works, and plenty more where that came from.
Feels nice to be out from under the boot of Big String.