Soviet garrison + hedges
Today I went to finish cutting the §$%&€ hedges, and also to scout an abandoned Soviet garrison that is very close to my trailer. An armoured regiment used to be stationed there … ♥
Hey, it’s a 10 year anniversary
I’ve had a website for ten years now. :3
The first incarnation was a Geocities site that had a design that incorporated lots of tables with that typical late 90’s/early 00’s “3D look”. Waybackmachine thankfully has no archive of the site the way it looked back then …
At some point Geocities started to get really annoying with the ads, so I got my own domain. I had more “Communist” themed comics back then so it kind of made sense. Today “kommiekomiks.com” as a domain can be a bit annoying, because I always have to explain that I’m not a Communist myself (although some Anarchists do call themselves Communists, in the sense that they work for true Communism, which the Socialist countries never achieved), but that the site has a post-Soviet concept.
But it’s perhaps useful as a test to see how people react to it when I hand out my card at parties. If they cringe at the “kommie-“, it means they probably aren’t worth my time … :oD
* * *
Today I got my new teapot. And it’s an anniversary teapot, but for 50 years, not 10.
It was made for the 50th anniversary of НКМЗ, “the largest producer of the unique and high-duty rolling mill, metallurgical, press and forging, power-generating, ore and mining, hoisting and conveying and special equipment in Ukraine and a reputed company all over the world”.
NKMZ was commissioned in 1934, so this teapot was made in 1984.
It has a little crack at its snout (awww :3) and drips with a tiny drop at each pouring. I should make a little scarf/snoutwrap for it. :3
Это моя швейная машинка!
It’s a Soviet PMZ from 1960 (the manual was printed in 1960, anyway). I just got it off eBay for very little. Maybe because it’s not old enough to be antique and not at all uncommon – supposedly at this time there was an overproduction of sewing machines in the Soviet Union.
The PMZ factory in Podolsk was in tsarist times a Singer sewing machine factory. After the revolution in 1917 it was nationalized and became first Gosshveimashina (acronym for “National sewing machine works”), and then “Kalinin” Mechanical Works of Podolsk. The machines were naturally all based on the prerevolutionary Singer sewing machines, but probably with some improvements over time.
The early sewing machines are really beautiful. The 1960 model isn’t so bad either. :o)
All it needs is some dusting and maybe a little bit of oil. It has been in normal family use, and there is a nice little Russian children’s sticker on the case, and someone has carved “Лида” in tiny letters in the metal.
Thanks to the simple build and the well-written manual that came with it I could quickly figure it out and make the correct settings.
It works with a hand crank and can sew forward and backward. It sews quite fast (the manual states among some other important vital statistics that it can rotate up to 1,200 times per minute …).
I did some serious sewing with it today, and I must say the hand crank system helps avoid the neck pain I often get when I sew! I appreciate that it’s very quiet and has no influence on my electricity bill.
It has much less trouble with thicker fabrics and many layers of fabric than any electric machines I’ve used.
I miss having a zigzag a litle bit, but I’ll just have to make different types of seams for fabrics that unravel easily, use zigzag scissors and a second straight seam for sturdier fabrics, or just do that part by hand like my grandma.
