What are your jeans doing today?

[PartTimeBarista]

There is a specific kind of ancient hexagonal coral that is unique to my area, the fossilized remains of which are actually the state stone of Michigan and can be found washed ashore all along the coast of Lake Michigan. It is especially prevalent in my area and is named after the town I live in (which itself is named for a Native American chief).

Many locals would probably consider it a lowly tourist activity, but seeing as I’m not originally from here, I actually quite like hunting for them. It appeals to the part of me that enjoys jigsaw puzzles and seek and finds. They are pretty difficult to spot when they are dry because they don’t look very different than other rocks. Most tourists result to walking the shoreline or wading in to scoop handfuls of rocks out to sort through, but I’ve found the best way to find them is to mist piles of dry rocks with a spray bottle. 

Dry they look like any other rock, wet they look nice, but polished you can see how they’d become a tourist attraction.

Edited June 19 by PartTimeBarista
Additional picture

[Lukenstein]

Dog Party

Samurai, Foot Patrol

[Hopethisoneisnttaken]

Had a nice little ride this weekend on a circular route around the town. 
 

Summer’s heavy grip has already taken hold on most of everything. Most vegetation is now dry and yellow, with the exclusion of some thorny bushes and some trees that do not aestivate. 
 

 

I started at around 6:30 am and when finished about 90 mins later its was already 30 degrees Celsius. The dog was not too pleased. At 12 years old he seems to grow tired of my shit. 
 

 

Sweet potato fields forever

 

Finished the weekend with a fifth of Lagavulin 16. With this weather there’s no denim is sight, I did however wear a whitesville t for good measure. 

Edited June 21 by Hopethisoneisnttaken

[julian-wolf]

Held a reception in town for the broader group of friends & family who couldn't make it up to the mountains for the wedding ceremony (and broke out a fresh Kapital tux for the occasion)

One of our very favorite restaurants around here is Sfizio, which started up around 3 years ago. When they first opened, one of the guys I was working farmers' markets with at the time was on their (fairly small) staff, and only had good things to say about it, so it didn't take long for us to try it out, and then to become regulars. It's small—seats 20-something inside and about the same outside in a little parklet—but they cycle folks through fast, and even though there's almost always a line it almost always moves quite quickly. The food's very good modernized-Italian fare, and the overall feeling (the ambiance itself, but even more so the pacing and the flow) captures mid-size-Italian-trattoria quite a bit better than anywhere else I've tried around here, at least recently (shout out to the now-closed Trattoria La Siciliana, just a few blocks up the same street). Anyway, for our reception we rented it out for the night, and they set us up with a top top notch five courses. Can't recommend them strongly enough to anyone in the area, either for a regular night out, for a special event, or even for take-out

After dinner, we had a great little house party at my folks' place, who conveniently live just a few blocks away from the restaurant

 

feat. Kapital x2, Feaw Handcraft, Yoko Sakamoto shirt, Duke belt, Moto derbies, vintage bolo + tie

[smoothsailor]

Actually shorts, but finished a cargo frame and fork next thing to do is make the rack to carry the cargo.

 

[Well27]

More like what did i do this summer

saw the new James Turrell art at Aros.

super impressive and really immersive(?) piece of art. Felt like being in a futuristic spaceship/cult church

all made of concrete made the acoustics being insane, with the sound bouncing all around in the dome.

every hours it went through a series of colour changes.

then spend some time at the coast, by a really great beach.

 

and lastly, a short trip to sweden included some nice BBQ

[MJF9]

@Well27 looks like good fun... was the beach near Aarhus too?

[Well27]

1 hour ago, MJF9 said:

@Well27 looks like good fun... was the beach near Aarhus too?

Liseleje, the north coast of Zealand.

we did visit a nice beach close to Aarhus called Bellevue

[smoothsailor]

Visited Aarhus when I was a sailor, good times there

[Thanks_M8]

Not in jeans, but I got BR chinos packed. Cycling around Rügen, day 2, 50 km to go tomorrow.

[julian-wolf]

Did a big pot of coreopsis last weekend

Everything we were dyeing was cellulose, so the first step was aluminum acetate 

 

…then rinse everything off and start the dye liquor itself

 

Initial dips look promising…

 

…fast forward a half hour and we're ready to rinse

 

The initial colors were gorgeous, but I never end up wearing much orange in practice, so we saddened one shirt (Yoko Sakamoto typewriter cloth, lighter yellow above) to a tan / grey and the other (Tender Co. airbag cambric, darker orange above) to a deep brown

 

Results, feat. Tender Co. cords & belt (also shown: Far East Manufacturing oxford-cloth shirt, dyed in the same coreopsis bath—though lacking in process photos—but shifted from orange to more of a pink with baking soda)

[Well27]

Very cool @julian-wolf

really love how they turned out.

what is the purpose of the aluminum acetate at the start?

[julian-wolf]

Thanks @Well27

Protein fibers (like silk and wools) naturally bind well to a pretty wide variety of dyes. Cellulose fibers (like bast fibers & cotton) bind well to a much smaller range of dyes. To get plant-based fibers to bind well to a wider range of dyes, more like animal fibers, we can “animalize” them by binding many smaller proteins to them along their length. (This is one of my favorite turns of phrase, since it holds the history so clearly and directly: for much longer than we’ve known about any of the related biochemistry, we’ve known that we can make plant fibers take dye better by tricking the dye into thinking they’re animal fibers. If the history was reversed, we might call them “binders” or “bridges” or something along those lines.) The most common family of animalizers is tannins. With some notable exceptions like oak galls, though, most natural sources of tannins tend to darken fibers significantly—think tea, or whiskey.

Separately, for all natural fibers and most natural dye stuffs, we can increase colorfastness and / or strength of color by “mordanting”: using metal salts to build a different sort of bridge between the fibers and the dye molecules.

Here, aluminum acetate, like a tannin, serves as an animalizer, allowing dye stuffs that prefer animal fibers to bind to our cotton and linen goods, but without darkening the goods in the process. It also (for both animal and plant fibers) serves well as a mordant, so it’s an easy one-stop shop. Sadly, I don’t know enough chemistry to comment on the specifics—as I’m writing this out, it’s becoming clear that there are some holes in my picture of how it all works, like how aluminum acetate can act as an animalizer despite not itself looking like a protein—but hopefully this touches on the broad strokes.

[yung_flynn]

23 minutes ago, julian-wolf said:

Thanks @Well27

Protein fibers (like silk and wools) naturally bind well to a pretty wide variety of dyes. Cellulose fibers (like bast fibers & cotton) bind well to a much smaller range of dyes. To get plant-based fibers to bind well to a wider range of dyes, more like animal fibers, we can “animalize” them by binding many smaller proteins to them along their length. (This is one of my favorite turns of phrase, since it holds the history so clearly and directly: for much longer than we’ve known about any of the related biochemistry, we’ve known that we can make plant fibers take dye better by tricking the dye into thinking they’re animal fibers. If the history was reversed, we might call them “binders” or “bridges” or something along those lines.) The most common family of animalizers is tannins. With some notable exceptions like oak galls, though, most natural sources of tannins tend to darken fibers significantly—think tea, or whiskey.

Separately, for all natural fibers and most natural dye stuffs, we can increase colorfastness and / or strength of color by “mordanting”: using metal salts to build a different sort of bridge between the fibers and the dye molecules.

Here, aluminum acetate, like a tannin, serves as an animalizer, allowing dye stuffs that prefer animal fibers to bind to our cotton and linen goods, but without darkening the goods in the process. It also (for both animal and plant fibers) serves well as a mordant, so it’s an easy one-stop shop. Sadly, I don’t know enough chemistry to comment on the specifics—as I’m writing this out, it’s becoming clear that there are some holes in my picture of how it all works, like how aluminum acetate can act as an animalizer despite not itself looking like a protein—but hopefully this touches on the broad strokes.

@Well27 I’m not an expert in this sort of chemistry but I think that it’s a coordination chemistry effect. The Aluminum metal center can coordinate to both the surface OH groups on cellulosics as well as similar functionalities (catechols, phenols, etc) on the pigment. This effectively serves as a bridge or glue layer between the pigment and the textile

[Well27]

@julian-wolf

thanks for the thorough explanation, make sense.

I’m also an inorganic chemist, hence my curiosity.

After starting this hobby and reading here on SuFu this stuff has taken a bit of my interest, so I find myself going over to the old ladies with home dyed wool yarn, whenever we are at such a market  

[MJF9]

San Sebastián, Basque Country slide show 😎

Edited August 12 by MJF9

[smoothsailor]

What’s it like? @MJF9.

I would like to visit the region. I like those independent people and places. 
 

[PBTony]

On 8/12/2026 at 8:07 AM, MJF9 said:

San Sebastián, Basque Country slide show 😎

Great photos. Cheesecake there is sooo good. And the cider 

[MJF9]

1 hour ago, smoothsailor said:

What’s it like? @MJF9.

I would like to visit the region. I like those independent people and places. 
 

Hey mate... it's a really lovely place.  Well worth a visit. 

It has 3 really good beaches, one called Zurriola for the surfers with a place called Gros nearby with that surfy vibe (albeit small scale), the main bay and promenade called Kotxa is the busier and a third called Ondaretta which is nice and quiet-ish with some Eduardo Chillida sculptures looking over it.  Interestingly he was originally a goalkeeper for Real Sociedad the local team.  

Good food - lots of pintxos (tapas) in the Old Town especially, so you can walk easily from bar to bar, eating as you go.  As @PBTony said the are famous for Basque cheesecake, defo worth a try.  Loads of places to eat with good food. Though I would say the cuisine is not as diverse as other cities, even compared to where I live up north.

There's a nice vibe and energy to the place, and enough going on to mooch around and keep you busy enjoying the buzz of the city.  Underlying, there's a spirit of independence in the region, hence their fervent support of similar more challenging causes worldwide.  

We stayed about a 25 min walk from the centre, but it's a nice walk in along the rivers which splits the city and gives you a variety of bridges to walk over to get around the place.

Good temperature too for Europe in summer... usually in July / August it's 20-25C and luckily it was when we were there. Barring the heatwaves we're all seeing - and struggling with. 

We went to Bilbao area after San Sebastian... spent more time on the beach - again a good vibe all round.

[smoothsailor]

Sounds good, hopefully I can make it there in the near future.

good to know the temperature is good in summer, I just got out of my Airbnb bed in Paris cause I can’t sleep from the heat. 

you live in Spain?

 

[MJF9]

England mate. Sorry to hear you had to escape the Paris heat. The average temp over years in San Sebastián is good in summer but they have also faced heat waves - a few months ago it was double average temp at 40C. The UK is going through our 5th heatwave this year which is a bad joke too. 

Edited August 14 by MJF9

[smoothsailor]

Up north in the uk.

yes pretty bad those heatwaves, 

we had a good time in France though. Marseille and Paris. Both nice.

i believe holland had a heatwave to.

one of the reasons we travelled by train. On the way over we had a delay and a little stress, but it’s pretty smooth to go by train.

back to the grind next week

[Double 0 Soul]

Morning super-peeple, have you missed me?

We've just got back from Sicily.. it was 42°C when we landed but averaged out to a balmy 36

The last time we visited.. we did the northwestern side of the island via Trapani.. this time we did the southeastern side via Catania.. We'd only been there for a few days when Mt Etna erupted and they closed the airports..  ..over the following week lumps of volcanic ash would land on us from the sky while sat outside restaurants..marking our clothes with little black dots. .. it was too hot to hike up Etna, folks tend to leave that biz till October.

We planned a week of nature and relaxation in the mountains followed by a week of chaos in a vibrant city..  I’d booked a Fiat Panda to pick up at the airport.. I love those little cars.. i always try and get one when we visit Italy... alas, they didn’t have one available so ‘upgraded’ us to a Citroen C3 which wasn’t half as pretty but it was great for nailing it down the Autostrada.. sadly, not so great for getting too and from our first property which was a remote farmhouse within 5 acres of olive groves.. SP73 was a narrow pass cut into the hillside with millimetres to spare on either side while zigzagging around high walled hairpin bends.

It's difficult to describe exactly where the first house was.. it's  Here   if you zoom out, you will see  Cavagrande del Cassibile aka the Grand Canyon of Sicily .. our plan was to hike the trail and swim the lakes rather than join the hoards at the beaches.

This was our first house

The house was off grid / solar powered (even the internet, much to the disappointment of the young'un) water was pumped from this well in the yard with a hand drawn bucket.. once used for washing your clothes, although the house looks a bit rustic, the interiors were incredible / contemporary .. massive cast iron peg for seating and hand glazed drainpipes, just some of the quirks.

We had this side of the house ..

..the boy had this side

..the two buildings were connected by this room with hammock and framed view slot.. it slept 11 so perfect for the 3 of us

 

 

..everything was a 30min drive from everywhere.. so I was driving out to cafes for breakfast.. and out again for meals at night then driving back up unlit mountain roads in the darkness.. if we went out too early in the evening, we would get stuck behind the local goat herders moving 1000s of goats down the hillside.

 

I always wondered what happened to Goat-Peter after his Heidi cash ran out..

 

 

.. some photos around Noto where we tended to go for breakfast, Noto was completely reconstructed after being destroyed by earthquake in 1693 .. now a unesco world herritage site famouse for it's baroque architecture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

as you can imagine.. driving a Citroen C3 through the narrow streets was quite a challenge.. finding parking was even moreso.. thankfully the offsping sorted the parking apps on his phone

 

Set of walking up to the gorge with the boy from the house..

 

..looking back at the house

 

..once there, the route down the rocks was sketchy af!

 

you can see the lakes reflecting in the sunshine.. which is where we were heading for a well deserved swim.. alas, i'm not sure our £12/ person holiday insurance would cover a fall from rocks..

 

 

..we could see this trail cutting through on the opposite side of the gorge

 

..so we walked back to the house.. got the car and drove around the gorge to the opposite side through the sketckiest dirt tracks in the middle of nowhere, the sensor on the dash told me to stop because i had a puncture.. Oh Noooo!

 

I limped the last few miles to our destination and pumped it back up.. leaving the pump connected to the 12v while we went on the hike so i could put a bit more psi in before we drove home.. i was hoping i'd just knocked the air out driving over rocks on the mountain road.

 

The lakes from the opposite side while we're halfway down the ravine

 

 

.. when we got back to the car, after our swim.. much to my relief, the tyre looked fine but turning the key, the computer said the tyre was fked.. Ow! while contemplating finding a garage in rural Sicily and paying for a new tyre on a hire car i found a bottle of sealant in the the boot.. which connected to the pump.. of course the instructions were in Italian but i thought i had it figured out.., the pump was still plugged into the 12v.. i missed the part which said 'don't turn the ignition till the bottle is connected to the pump and the pump is connectd to the tyre ..so as soon as i connected the sealant.. the pump started and it sprayed out everywhere.. allover the fking car and allover me, then promptly dried hard in the sun.. none of it went in the tyre.. Bollocks!!

 

Thnkfully.. the offspring was fiddling with the computer while i was creating a mess outside and found that you need to tell the car you've inflated all tyres before clearing the warning light.. so it wasn't a puncture after all.. just as previously thought.. knocked the air out driving over rocks.

 

The house owners gave us a bottle of their own olive oil to take on our journey.. we set off to Avola for 24hrs which was a bit more well heeled

 

 

..before driving down to our third destination for a week in Modica

 

I'd hired this garage for the week, cut into the rocks with a roller shutter.. after driving around the mountains, i was glad to ditch the car and walk evrywhere.. although there is plenty of space around this old Fiat.. shoehorning the Citroen in here wasn't easy

 

 

We rented the second floor of this apartment above Cafe Adamo in the heart of central Modica, the boy's bedroom was he left balcony, ours was the right.

 

 

The apartment was massive.. it belonged to the guys grandparents and was largely untouched since they moved out.. the dining room was something @CSL would enjoy with it's tiled floors and vaulted ceilings.. that's a 6 seater table so you can see how big the rooms are.. must'av been a fancy-ass apartment back in the 50s before it became prime Modica real estate.

 

 

..breakfast at Adamo's was usuly Granita.. a trad Sicilian breakfast which is a cross between creamy gelato and icy sorbet, spooned onto  pieces of brioche 😋

 

 

Looking from our balcony

 

 

..and down the street, it doesn't get anymore Italian!

 

 

..the house also had a roof terrace.. one of the few in central Modica

 

 

 

 

Modica is built into the limestone hillside so lots of stairs..

 

 

Duomo di San Piero Apostolo which was 2 mins walk away

 

..looking back from the steps

 

..more steps en' route to Duomo di San Giorgio

 

 

..looking over Modica ♥️

 

 

Hiked up to the highest point one day in 38° heat

 

 

 

..found this little artsy community at the top

 

 

 

..and of course another church

 

..drove down to the beach twice while we were in Modica to do some snorkeling .. Sampieri and Marina di Modica.. they were reasonably quiet, called at an out of town mini-market on the way home to stock up because everything in Modica is insanely expensive.. you can't simply buy bread, you can only buy artisan-bread.

 

 

Modica is famous for it's chocolate.. a recipe passed down from Aztecs, it's dairy free, just cacao, cold pressed with sugar giving it's grainy texture..

 

..as promised @MJF9 .. take your pick they're near enough 4€ each .. top right (60, 70, 90%) are from Dolceria Rizza, middle and bottom row are from Bonajuto the oldest chocolate shop in Modica it's packed from dusk till dawn, i had to queue outside.. middle row use single origin cacao from Madagascar, Tanzania, Venusuela and Peru bottom row are 70, 80, 90 and 100% cacao, just be aware that chocolate from Bonajuto is only 50g whereas the rest is 100g for the same price.

 

 

Sarah modeling her tourist tat

 

 

..en route home, sadly..

 

 

..we wondered if Lenny would be excited to see us?

 

 

..apparently not?

Edited August 24 by Double 0 Soul

[CSL]

Fabulous! Looks like the trip of a lifetime.

[JohnM]

Incredible post Double 0.  We did miss you and need your Soul here on sufu.

Around 2005, my wife and I took my then 80 year old mother and young son to Sicily.  Flew into Palermo, drove across the northern coast to the hill town where mom's parents were born.  Mom had never been to Sicily, her six siblings in the USA had all died, and her only living relatives were in this Sicilian town.  She saw the house where her parents were born and walked hand in hand with cousins she knew only from letters.  We then went to Taormina, south past Etna and Catania, and through the Madonie mountains heading west.

Your photos brought back memories, though your trip was far more adventurous then ours.  Nonetheless, I know exactly what you mean when it comes to not wanting a big car.  Memories of Palermo driving through a narrow alley that got narrower and narrower with only an inch to spare.

[Double 0 Soul]

Wow! ♥️  we avoided Palermo because it's been made into a ZTL (Zona a Traffico Limitato) since your visit meaning non residents can't drive into the historic city anymore  blocking the narrow streets.. it's still well worth visiting if you don't have a car.. all would be fine if we still drove Fiat 500s and/or Vespa GS

[MJF9]

@Double 0 Soul enjoyed that post Neal - great pics... and thank you for saving me a bar... I'll ping ya... grazie mille!!!  

@JohnM such a great story... 

Edited August 24 by MJF9

[Double 0 Soul]

We stood at the back and observed mass late one Saturday night just for full absorption into Sicilian culture.. not bad for my atheist self 

This was a few 100 meters up the steet from the apartment in Modica at Santa Maria di Betlam church which stood on the ruins of 4 other churches..

Edited August 24 by Double 0 Soul

[smoothsailor]

Good come back @Double 0 Soul.

 

[smoothsailor]

Since I’m a hobby builder I can post what I’ve made while wearing my jeans.

another cargo frame, this time with smaller wheels and a coasterbrake.

im going to show it at bespoke a handmade bicycle show.

 

and bonus a picture of Marseille, was pleasantly surprised how cool its there. Eventhough its grime and a lot of homeless people. Its still friendly and easy going