Neil, as a fellow bread maker, I’m begging you to share your recipe. Those look amazingly delicious and mine never turn out that well.

Here's my notes to myself from the time:

100 ml starter 200 grams rye flour 220 ml water Mix well, cover with cling film, leave overnight. Next day, add 50 g of Buckwheat flour, 50 g of Barley flour, 100 g of rye flour. 1 tsp of sea salt and 1 tbsp of maple syrup in 2 tbsp of water. Mix well, cover with cling film, leave for a couple of hours in a warm place. Put a big pot of water on to boil. Add syrup to the water. (I’m using date syrup.) Take a bowl of water. Wet hands. With wet hands, make a ball of dough, handful size — think medium snowball. Smooth it, make the hole in the middle, drop into boiling water. It will sink to the bottom, then rise. After a couple of minutes, turn it over in the water. After a couple more minutes take it out and put it on baking paper on a baking tray. I sprinkle the paper with flour. Keep hands wet through all of this, as if working with clay. Don’t crowd the bagels in the water pot. No more than 4 at a time. Give them time — they get puffier. When all the bagels are on the baking tray (it makes 6 or 7) put them in the oven for about 16 or 17 minutes. Then turn them over. Back in the oven for another 6 minutes. And then they come out. Off the tray. Let them cool, and then eat them.

There's no heat setting mentioned, because I was cooking them in an Aga oven which doesn't have fancy things like temperature controls, but is somewhere around 220C or 420F.

Reblogging for the people who have been complaining that Tumblr isn’t showing this post on a search. I searched for it and found lots of people talking about how nice it was that Neil Gaiman was sharing a bagel recipe but not seeing this. So I’ve re blogged this and am using my name (Gaiman) and the singular of bagels (bagel) in here to see if Tumblr’s search functions work if you prod them.

Thanks, Mr. Gaiman

cc: @petermorwood. Nice recipe, intelligently multigrain (never hurts to give the yeast different ways to stretch themselves. Some variety’s always nice when you’ve been doing a job for a billion years...). ...Have we got any kippers / mackerel / smoked fish in the freezer...?  :)

I've made this recipe a couple times and am not sure if the rye flour I'm able to get is the right thing... It's DARK rye flour. My bagels came out really brick-like... Making yet another stab at it today, though. My last attempt with a straight up substitution of plain ol' all purpose for the rye flour, but keeping on w/ the barley and buckwheat came out reasonably well.

I was using White Rye Flour, or sometimes Wholemeal. (At the time the brand I was buying was Doves Farm - https://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/products/organic-white-rye-flour-1kg)

Neil, how do you freeze your starter and know it will reactivate?

You take your starter. You spread it not too thickly on thin plastic wrap. You let it dry out into a crusty flaky stuff. You take the crumbly dried-out starter off the plastic wrap (it just falls off) and put it in a container in the freezer. When you need starter, you take it out and feed it with flour and warm water, and the yeasts in the starter wake up and come back to life.

Yeasts are tough. Did you know there is bread now being made from 4,500 year old yeast, reclaimed from inside ancient Egyptian bread-making clay vessels?

a roman toddler’s footprint in red clay tile 🥺 (ancient Vasio Vocontiorum)

Spider-Man 3 (2007) dir. Sam Raimi

+Years later:

OSCAR ISAAC Saturday Night Live

I hope im not just a blog you follow but also the only person with 100% correct opinions about the little mermaid

Dish those opinions, let's hear it

My biggest issue is the absolute ice cold take of "Ariel gave up her life/voice for a boy" when the film repeatedly shows Ariel was preyed upon by Ursula. She was exploited and stalked by the literal antagonist of the film into making a really bad decision, especially when Ursula knew Ariel was at her most emotional and the least unable to reach out to her support network.

And the deal Ariel made was meant to be an impossible task that she was tricked into taking AND STILL Ariel was smart enough to almost achieve it if Ursula wasn't playing dirty and directly interfering in with it all.

Ariel was absolutely a victim of manipulation and circumstance, and people who use this as an irredeemable flaw in her character act like they got big brain energy when their brains are smooth as fuck.

(not to mention she was 16)

Also?

URSULA is the one who says Ariel’s doing it all for the guy.

According to Ariel herself, what she wants is:

—to be where the people are

—to see dancing and walking

—to ask her questions about the human world and get answers

—to not live in the ocean

—to be part of the human world

—to explore the human world

WHERE DOES ERIC COME INTO ANY OF THIS?!

She wants to see a world she isn’t able to see! She wants to have adventures, not a boyfriend! What the hell!

I would argue that she was totally fine with the boyfriend, but Ursula was the one who forced it to be a priority.

AND ANOTHER THING

Her first impression of him is a dude who is both attractive, capable, and willing to jump back on to a burning ship to save his dog.

Later, dude climbs aboard a SHIPWRECK that's caught in a WHIRLPOOL so that he can RAM IT into a 150-foot-tall MAGIC SEA MONSTER in order to save her.

It's not like girl was settling.

Ariel is a field anthropologist. That she happened to fall in love with a member of the culture she was studying isn't exactly a problem.

#Do people give Milo Thatch a hard time for giving up everything for a girl?#no because not enough people have watched Disney's Atlantis#but that's a secondary problem via @thebestworstidea​

Leaving gold in the tags agin, I see.

Y’all know I hate doing this, but I could use some mutual aid to afford some masks that don’t hurt my ears and, most importantly, don’t fog up my glasses because let me tell you, it doesn’t really help with acing a job interview when you have to take off your glasses and squint at your potential employers. Personally tested by yours truly.

So, the masks I wanna get are called 3M. There’s tons of fakes out there apparently, so I’m only willing to trust a vendor an acquaintance recommended. Unfortunately, the smallest box they sell is 20 piece, and that means it’s 50€.

Long story short, if anyone could kick a couple bucks my way to at least lessen the financial impact, I’d be forever grateful. (If it matters anything to anyone, I’m queer, disabled, and currently attempting to escape unemployment, so money’s tight.)

Pypl

I am broke as hell, and can't donate, but if you put the nosepad of your glasses on top of your mask, it will not fog. Doesn't matter what kind of mask. I don't know if this helps, or if OP still needs those particular masks, but I hope it helps?

This is so beautiful and took a lot of patience!!! ✊

idle Jaskier-related notion:

Joey Batey is really approximately the same size and shape as Henry Cavill, and there are a number of clever techniques in pretty much all Jaskier's costumes to hide this fact and make him look about three or four inches narrower than he actually is. The costumers work really really hard to make him look that twinky, often with cleverly cut shoulder decorations that pretend he's trying to look bigger than he is and have the actual effect of making him look a lot lighter.

On a Doylistic level this makes sense, because it's hard to make Geralt look Huge and Imposing next to your non-combatant harmless sidekick if said sidekick is a jacked six foot burly man.

On a Watsonian level, however, the notion of Jaskier as this big meaty dude aggressively arguing with all his tailors to ensure that he looks as non threatening and foppish and entertaining as possible while also looking as sexy as he can (for a Jaskier definition of sexy, at least) is generating considerable entertainment for me this fine morning.

"No! My shoulders must look slender!"

"But, sir, you could look ripped!"

"Absolutely not! I must look slim and gentle and unassuming!"

"As you wish, sir... So do you wish it to be cut with much excess fabric, so that you look small and also very wealthy to afford so much?"

[howling] "No! I must look slender and gentle and also above else very attractive!"

Geralt doesn't notice any of this until they try to share a tiny hostel bed on the road and Jaskier cuddles up to him and abruptly there is no more room in that bed

I need a full picture costume run down of this by someone in the fashion field stat

Ask and ye shall receive! I may not work in the fashion field but I do work in the costume production industry for theatre/film so this is totally my area. Using clothes to change someone’s appearance is super common, and Tim Aslam’s costume design for The Witcher is actually a really good example of this, so buckle up because this is a long ride!

Creating an illusion like this has two main components: shape (the style lines created by the clothes), and fit (the way the clothes hang on the person’s body), and is the result of close collaboration between the designer and the production team. 

We’re going to talk about season one, because that’s where the difference is the most obvious. Take a look at Geralt:

First, let’s talk about shape. The goal here is to make Geralt look strong and imposing, and the best way to do that is to exaggerate the triangle of his upper torso. See how much broader his shoulders look than his waist in both images? A loose shirt over tight pants is a classic way to establish this, because the shirt blousing at the waist (note that the pants sit high up at the natural waist) makes the hips looks narrower in comparison. Note also that his shirt has an asymmetrical closure - a centered vertical line down the shirt would make him looks slimmer, while the off-center one adds width.

His armor does this by giving him those massive shoulder pieces, which both lengthen and raise his shoulder line. I would estimate that they raise Henry Cavill’s shoulder line by a good two inches just from the bulk of the leather alone. His torso armor also does a really clever thing by having a very subtle V shape to the vertical lines, making his waist look smaller. If you count the number of stripes above and below his belt (again, sitting high at the natural waist), you’ll notice that the narrow stripe at the front edge of the armscye disappears, which allows the side stripes to make that V shape.

Now let’s talk about fit. The fit of Geralt’s shirt looks simple but is actually super specific. It’s very easy for an actor to get lost in a shirt that is too loose - if there’s too much extra fabric then it will just make the actor look smaller by drawing attention to how baggy it is. This shirt fits just right: the sleeves are full enough to allow for movement but still relatively fitted (and rolling up the sleeves actually also helps add breadth to Geralt’s torso by continuing the horizontal line at his waist). The body of the shirt fits smoothly across the shoulders and chest, and has just enough fullness to drape at the waist without feeling baggy.

Now let’s look at Jaskier.

We’ll start with this look. Shape and fit are very interconnected here so it’s just gonna be a jumble. First thing I notice: the jacket. Unlike your traditional fantasy/historical doublet, all of Jaskier’s jackets end at the waist, rather than continuing into a peplum/skirt like Geralt’s armor does. This cropped jacket is evocative of childhood/immaturity, an association that is generally considered to have its roots in schoolboy uniforms of the 19th and early 20th century (see the image of schoolboys wearing “Eton Jackets” below)

Jaskier also tends to wear his jackets open. This creates a vertical line down his torso, which is generally slimming, but it also totally obscures the shape of his torso. The brain is going to take the line of his hip, which we can see, and the armscye of his jacket, (which actually looks to be cut ever so slightly artificially narrow but it’s hard to tell) and fill in a line between them, which is likely going to end up being slightly narrower than his actual ribcage. He does have poofs at the top of his sleeves, which can be a technique used to add width, but if they’re cut and fit carefully you can actually hide some of the breadth of the shoulders inside the poof and make it look like the fullness comes from the poof and not the body.

Note: the “armscye” is the technical name for the armhole, but specifically the torso part. The corresponding sleeve part is the “sleevehead.”

Again, we have another open jacket, this one with strong vertical lines. See how the line of Jaskier’s hip flows up through the edge of the doublet all the way up through the armscye? This makes his torso look narrower despite the jacket’s shoulder tabs. In contrast, this line is always broken on Geralt’s outfits, whether at the waist with his shirt or with the giant shoulder pieces with his armor. Jaskier’s pants also tend to fit more loosely, which de-emphasizes the triangle of his shoulders to waist.

Okay this is my favorite image to illustrate everything we have going on here. Look at Jaskier’s jacket. What’s the first thing you notice? The bright yellow inset slashes in his chest. The high contrast in color draws the eye inwards and distracts from the breadth of his shoulders, where we have another cleverly cut poof. His jacket is again cropped, with strong vertical lines, over the baggiest pants he wears in the season.

Now look at Jaskier and Geralt together. Jaskier is all about long vertical lines, while Geralt’s predominate lines are either horizontal or diagonal. Additionally, Jaskier’s hips look even to his shoulders, even if they’re not, and Geralt’s shoulders are exaggerated. The two characters have a very different presence, even if the actors underneath are similar.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this introduction to costume design! Creating the illusory effects like this is one of my favorite things and I am excited to share!!

I… I did not expect anyone to respond, let alone respond with a fucking screenshot-worthy answer. I love you. I literally love you. Can I marry you? Wait, can you be my tailor? Do you have an Etsy shop? I’m gonna be an archaeologist one day, I’ll need OUTFITS PLEASE I WANNA INDEFINITELY HIRE YOU

This is not my ship.  This is not my subject.  This is really not anything I ever anythinged about.  I just have to reblog this because of the utter BALLER response this person gave, which revolutionized my perception of costume design without me even knowing I wanted said perception revolutionized.  This comment is everything good about tumblr in one place, and @redhorsedawn, I salute you.  Magnificent.

#and jaskier being consistently so much smaller in fic#is proof that all these tricks WORKED#and worked so well that people didn't even notice or question them#just accepted them and quickly incorporated it into their fanon

I even knew something clever was going on to make Joey Batey’s six feet look small and dainty and yet still the costuming was so impressive that I was genuinely astonished when this happened:

Azigen !

Me: What good herding dogs! 

Camera: *pans over past the hula hoop*

Me: A TWIST I DID NOT EXPECT

This is the most bored farm kid shit I’ve ever seen and one of my farm kid friends were Moose Farmers.

B Dylan Hollis greatest one liners warning NFSW

Night Rider - now on Kindle Vella

With their nation long conquered, Night Riders like Shade are the only defense Evendarians have. Yet it will take more than outlaws to save a fallen empire. Nikolas is a student, burning to make a difference. Reyma hides dangerous visions from her mother the queen. Rhea Belldoria builds an entire rebellion underground while Shade sparks revolution…neither knowing they need the other. NIGHT RIDER is an epic fantasy in a world with hints of hope, for fans of The Witcher and LOTR. 

Read the first episodes for free here.

Shade: A Story of the Legacy

In a world where friends are a liability, Night Riders like Shade have none. When a man who was once his friend—and knows the identity he cannot share with the world—chances upon him, Shade makes the mistake of making the smallest personal connection.  Set in the world of the Legacy, SHADE is a prequel to Night Rider, coming soon on Kindle Vella.  Read it for free today!

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/didabh7m79

Rebloging because lord I suck at self promo, but does anyone want my free ebook?

Ok the guy with the net fucking killed me, I’m sure my neighbors heard me laughing.

School shootings. They don’t want you to hide guns.

This is where we are, folks. We’ve come to the point where they’re demanding that children carry all of their school supplies in hand so that they don’t have to do anything about the gun violence problem in this shithole of a country.

I love malicious compliance

HISTORY COMES FULL CIRCLE, HOLY SHIT I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY’RE STILL DOING THIS TO KIDS. 

They did this shit at my school way back when Columbine had just happened!

Naturally, we invented all sorts of bullshit ways to carry our shit, because what the fuck, we need backpacks. 

My favourites included: 

-Fishing rod with twine tied around two pencils and a small pocket notebook.

-Tons of people got those little clear plastic bags they have in grocery stores for fruit and shit, and used them as see-through pencil cases 

Note: THEY PROCEEDED TO THEN ALSO BAN THE BAGS AS “CHOKING HAZARDS”. WE WERE NOT THREE YEAR OLDS. OUR HEADS DIDN’T EVEN FIT IN THE FUCKING BAGS, AND BELIEVE ME, WE TRIED AS SOON AS THEY ANNOUNCED THE BAN, BECAUSE MOST OF US WOULD RATHER HAVE DIED THAN BEEN IN FUCKING SCHOOL BY THAT POINT. DID THEY THINK WE WERE GONNA STUFF THE BAGS DOWN OUR THROATS? CHRIST.)

-One kid dressed up like a priest and used the loose fabric of the cassock to carry three text books around all day. 

-Someone hollowed out a fucking loaf of bread, pretended to be French all day, and made a show out of pulling a ridiculous number of highlighters out of this fucking bread in the middle of class. 

Now that I think about it, I think that kid invented Panera Bread by accident. Y’know, the little bread soup bowls? This was that, but with highlighters instead of soup. 

Eventually, things escalated, and the principal called the police after he went to the parking lot and found his car broken into– Nothing was stolen, but there were about 5000 fucking backpacks stuffed in his car, to the point that the door wouldn’t even open.

I don’t know who did it, or what group of people did it, but they’re all fucking heroes because the next week backpacks were permitted again. 

Shade: A Story of the Legacy

In a world where friends are a liability, Night Riders like Shade have none. When a man who was once his friend—and knows the identity he cannot share with the world—chances upon him, Shade makes the mistake of making the smallest personal connection.  Set in the world of the Legacy, SHADE is a prequel to Night Rider, coming soon on Kindle Vella.  Read it for free today!

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/didabh7m79

to be a fan of both dracula and sherlock holmes is to have the widest experience possible on the question of “what would the author think of x” because bram stoker would be getting in months long twitter battles defending lucy while arthur conan doyle would come after anyone who asked him any question with a baseball bat

bram stoker: (with tears in his eyes, speaking with joy from the bottom of his heart) dracula is still popular???

acd: (with disgust and frustration so palpable you could spread it on bread) sherlock holmes is still popular???