// Add scala aliases for apply/update to roughly equivalent Ruby names
if (name.equals("apply")) {
  addUnassignedAlias("[]", assignedNames, Priority.ALIAS); 

After 223 attempts to call the [] operator in various ways trying to get it to call apply() behind the scenes and about twenty other approaches to getting the reference needed, I had to dive into how Scala gets compiled for the JVM, find that when the Scala code is for a Scala Object with a companion class (so basically a class with an associated singleton object), Scala compiles that to two classes on the JVM, one with the original name from the Scala code and one with a postfix’d dollarsign symbol.

To get the singleton reference for a Scala Object when it has a companion class, you need to access the MODULE$ field in the class with the $ postfix, but you can’t just call for that in JRuby as $ is a special character for accessing global variables amongst other things, so you have to go round the houses a bit.

It goes from this in JRE8 (actual package and class names changed to protect the guilty):

Foo::Bar.apply.addListener(self)

to this mess in JRE21:

bob = 'Java::Foo::Bar$'.split('::').inject(Object) { |n, c| n.const_get c }
fred = bob.java_class.get_field('MODULE$').get(nil)
fred.apply.addListener(self)

But, it works, and fred.apply gets back to the Object so you can call addListener() and register your callback function (this is from some inhouse library code, which looks like this, but obviously changed to skirt NDAs):

object Bar {
  private val A = new BarImpl
  def apply(): Bar = A
}

private[kafka] class BarImpl extends Bar {
  //Lots of internal guff redacted including a list of listeners
  @PublicAPI
  def addListener(listener: ListenerThingy) {
    val exists = listeners.contains(listener)
    if (!exists) {
      listeners.add(listener)
      notifyOtherThings(listener)
    }
  }

Next time, I choose an easier language. Like, say, assembler.

Nearly had a woopsie on this one when I didn’t notice the rest moving…

And one of the simpler projects was a bunch of disks for kids to paint in a creche that the partner of a workmate runs:

Similarly, made a batch of simple xmas trees for the St.Declans christmas fair, and instead of finishing and waxing them all, left them sanded but plain because then the kids can paint them:

And there was a small elm bowl, first one I’ve made in a while.

That was a little over a year ago. Since then there’s been exams, which went well.

And there was upper air work with stalls and turns and basic flying stuff and then there were lots and lots and lots of circuits and landings that were so bad I’m sure flying instructors are a little bit broken putting up with them. There was also a bout of covid and the worst winter weather we’ve had in a decade or more so the airfield was closed for six months literally the week before I was meant to do this:

And now my tie’s on the wall
There’s a lot more training to do before the licence, mind you. Many more circuits, nav work, cross-country flying, then a skills test. Not sure if it can all fit into this year given how weather-dependent everything is. But it’s fun!

But the leatherwork seems to have stalled with six projects mid-way. Some little things got done though. This one was a bag I made a while back for fun, and I wanted to make another one, so I made an anti-tank bag…

The tractor is just a commercial embroidery patch (hard to go into Home Focus without picking up little things like this).

Didn’t turn out too bad. Just have to keep it away from Russian tanks now…

I made up a prototype from some dyed vegtan leather (nothing terribly fancy, just some 1.4mm stuff from Tandy) using oxblood Fiebing’s.

It’s based off a Corter Leather pattern (albiet with a lot of changes and additions). There’s a spot behind the zippered pouch for your mobile phone to be stored. But adding in the zippered pouch made the design too tight to close when everything was filled up…

So Mom took that and used it for a few months and figured out what worked and what didn’t while I sourced some nice materials. Red Maremma Leather from Tuscany via Tatra Leather, Vinymo #5 thread via Leathercraft Tools in Japan, and some hand-dyed vegtan for the interior, and some brass hardware from Paracord EU and even Aliexpress got into the act

That’s the shiny red leather third from the top there.

Started off with the zippered pouch and the card holder because those could be made separately, and then started on the inside. Used a French edge for the lining of the inside but didn’t trim off excess for reasons that’ll be obvious in a minute. Added in the gusseted pocket for the mobile phone next:

Then added on the card pocket holder thingy.

If you’re wondering what the snap is for on the top left corner of the card thingy, the idea is to hold it in place instead of falling back and forth because it’s a double-sided panel arrangement (it’s just lining leather wrapped around a piece of buckram for stiffening and then pockets sewn to it).

And underneath, sewed in some more card pockets because it’s surprising how many cards Mom has gathered up for regular use.

Don’t worry about the far right edge, it’s ragged because it’s to be trimmed later. Next up, sew on the zippered pouch with the zip to the left so that you don’t have to open the whole purse up to get into the pouch.

The pouch is only attached to the mobile phone pocket at the top and bottom – it can flex in the middle when Mom overstuffs it and it won’t distort the rest of the purse as it fills.

And there were also some pen loops needed.

After that, started working on the outside shell.

That was the most stressful cut of the whole project Need enough offcut to act as a cover on the back of the purse. Managed it with a few millimeters to spare – the problem being that the wider the offcut, the less room I had for flex on the main shell to cope with the purse having a lot on the inside (which was what happened to the prototype – overstuffed and unable to fully close). But this looks like it’ll work.

Then that offcut needs lining and some magnetic snap hardware and I rolled the edges to keep it neat (there’s a patch of vegtan for the hardware to grab onto – that lining leather is too thin for any real strength).

Pretty. And the top edge is skived down and then folded into the french edging as I line the main shell.

The insides of these bits are getting complex btw, this is what the linings are hiding:

Those are two buckram panels to try to control where the shell will bend and the center panel is 2mm HDPE to give a backing you could write on (it’s not all glued down, there’s an unglued section in the middle that the notebooks will rest against). The skiving around the edges wasn’t perfect but hey, I’m just learning still.

Stitched the second line in the french edging on the shell and added the main closure (and screwed up the placement and made a patch to fix that and drove the chisels through exactly the same holes again because this was after midnight and so I made another patch the next morning….)

And now it’s time for a large amount of contact cement and gluing the linings in place. There’s probably a name for this where your french edging’s excess is actually your lining, but I don’t know it.

And with that done, time to start putting the two halves together, with a rolled edge to keep the edges as tidy as I could manage.

It’s a bit fiddly and you can’t just sew straight across the bottom because the three panels have the two halves sewn together but the gaps between them, where the shell bends, do not get sewn straight across (there’s a gap like at the bottom of bifold wallets at their spines) and they have more material on the outer shell than the inner part because physics. But, got it done.

Yes, the purse has a giant billfold. And that was about it – added the D-ring, added the closure hardware, which wasn’t complex, just lots of being nervous about lining up cutters and using the arbour press to punch through the shell and linings and screwing the closure in place (and the woodwork showed through, I clocked the screws) and that was about it.

It’s a bit odd for a purse. Has a large billfold, loads of space for cards, has a cover and slot on the back for an A7 notebook for shopping lists (and a 2mm thick stiffener underneath so you can write on the notebook while walking round the shop ticking items off), a D-ring on the outside so you can use those special tokens for trolleys or the mini-loyalty-card things, you can access the zippered pouch without fully unfolding the purse and there are pencil loops and a pocket to keep your mobile phone in. It’s like a weird purse/wallet hybrid of sorts and means Mom doesn’t need to carry a handbag most of the time now.

Here’s a few vanity shots:

And yes, it held everything it had to and the client is happy with the end product

It’s a slightly modified version of a @hahn_atelier design:

I made the D-ring attachments slightly different, used a different connection between gusset and front/back panels and added a shoulder pad to the strap. But also, lined it, with french edging around the edges and the internal seams lined as well.

The french edging was made a lot easier with the welt knife.

Made a prototype initially using flooring vinyl.

But the real thing was made using Oceano coloured Maremma leatherv from Tuscany (from Conceria Puccini I believe) sourced from Tatra Leather and using Vinymo thread. Been trying that thread for the last little while and I’m liking it. Got some from Etsy and ordered a kilometre or so of it after working with it for a bit. The 100m spools from Etsy and the like are nice because you can pick out a colour for just one project instead of having to get a kilometre or more of the stuff.

It takes hot foil stamping (120C for 5 seconds) well and it also heat embosses quite well with the stamp at 120C and applying pressure for ten seconds or so.

The shoulder strap has some padding and also acts as an additional keep for the buckle on the strap.

All in all, it came out pretty well. I’m starting to see some actual improvement for once which is nice. Give me a few years and I might actually get good at this!

And got a new tool. Well. I say new, it was made in the 1950s in Germany, but never bought. New old stock is the term I think.

It’s a welt knife. For cutting welts, obviously. What’s a welt?

The problem is trimming the welt without cutting into the upper leather. The solution was the welt knife – it’s got a blunt runner of sorts on one side of the blade, you run that along the upper and the blade cuts the welt and only the welt. Why do I want it? Because you need to do that for a french edge, where the lining of a piece is glued face-to-face to the outside, stitched, then folded over the top of the piece to the inside, glued again, and stitched again.

Leaves you with a bit to trim off below the second stitch line. Do it with a normal straight knife, you risk cutting into the piece itself. If you flip over the straight knife and cut with the back of the knife running along the piece, you get something of a ragged cut like you see there. The welt knife on the other hand has a blunt runner thing beside the cutting edge:

That lets you do this:

Not a perfect result but not bad for having used it only three or four times. Plus, it cost half the price of a french edger, which is the only other tool I’ve seen used for this. So I’m grand with that.

All Italian veg-tan finished leather. Some of it is earmarked for a purse I’ve been prototyping, but the matt emerald green was used to make this Corter Leather pattern bucket bag for my sister:

And the ocean blue was used for a small backpack along with some nice suede for a friend in the US:

First time making a strap, that. It’s annoying that I’m still learning stuff quickly – every time I make something like this and look back at it, I see six to ten things I’ve since learned you should do…

Some of the pieces are more rustic though

That one taught me that Americans have very small beer bottles – the pattern came in two sizes and the standard beer bottle size was smaller than this one and only fitted 300ml bottles, not our 330ml ones. I did finish the first one after finding that but all it’s really up to is hot sauce…

I think the most well-received ones went to the niece and nephew though…

My niece (who’s six and going through her pink phase) is quite taken with the bag.

That bag (it’s not fully finished in that photo) was for another friend who’s helped enormously this year.

Gotta say, the hot foil press was really useful in all of these. The press itself wasn’t very spendy – the brass letters set was a bit, but the biggest part of the total cost was a shock – almost a hundred euro to ship the package from Hong Kong and when it arrived, without any advance warning, there was 120 euro in customs, duties, handling fees and so on levied at the door. And the driver couldn’t take a card, we had to call into the head office to sort the bill out. Not very impressive UPS, not impressive at all.

Can’t fault the machine mind you, it’s small, neat, effective. Not up to commercial use obviously, but even for a small batch run it’s pretty nice. It’s a pain swapping out the T-slot holder so you can bolt in the makers mark and other custom stamps, but there’s a stamp holder that you can get that will fit into the T-slot so that should prevent a few more fun burns on the fingers (the nut you have to tighten to hold the stamp is in between two plates that are almost always at 120C….)

Playing with the machine and some of the foils I got was fun

I was also in a secret santa this year with some other engineers. My giftee was a D&D fan who also camps so obviously you’d make up a travel dice tray and dice bag…

Still getting to grips with the foil stamp there And in return, someone sent me this beautiful thing:

Bunch of new tools arrived for these – an acrylic pattern for wallet making (well, more so I could see what acrylic patterns looked like), a strap cutter for those bag straps, magnetic bag closures, some fine thread, a few stitching chisels and more rivets in brass and copper. It’s funny how much cheaper tools are for this than they are for woodworking!

Even got a set of dies and moulds to make this lovely little cats-paw. Might be making a few of those for fun.

And bought some more materials – lining leather, some more natural vegtan leather and some more vegan leather (the cork-bonded-to-fabric stuff). I think I have enough materials for six months or so now at the rate I’m going.

The cork fabric stuff is really interesting – they (MB Cork) have done some really neat effects with metallic inlays and dyes.

Still have a few more projects underway, but trying to get as much time walking in the hills as the weather allows…

The tool collection has… grown a bit. In fact I think it’s almost complete. There are some things that I don’t have to hand but they’re more machines than tools. And most of this is cheap knockoff clones from chinese sources rather than actual decent versions and I might change some of the most used ones out over the next few months but for right now I don’t really have a hole in the tool lineup for what I’m doing, which is really nice.

I even found my old schoolbag from primary school (my parents may be hoarders). It’s in dire shape and I hated its harness when I was Calum’s age, but maybe I can rehabilitate it, improve it a bit and Calum might get some use from it if it works…