I have a supply of old stamps from my late uncle’s stamp collection, he thought they’d be worth something some day. I have to lick them with my tongue to make them stick. Does that count?
For breakfast, I make my own biscuits from scratch, out of all-purpose flour, baking powder, butter, and some old milk that I’ve let sour, and cut them and put them on a baking sheet in the oven.
If I’m going on a trip, I look on a paper map to see how to get there, and I take the map along just in case I forget, and I never know where I am unless I see signs on the side of the road, and when I need to stop for the night, I look around and see what the motel prospects look like in the next town I come to and then go in and inquire at the desk.
I can make fire (with great difficulty) with a bow drill. I can make a canteen out of a ostrich egg and some twine. I can make bowls, cups, spoons, masks, etc. out of gourds.
I stargaze by star hopping, not typing in a target on a computerized mount.
I also do self processed film photography from time to time. Learned in the early 70s. Heck, I’ve even made my own film. Used to be pretty easy to get all the supplies for that from a local camera store. I loved those aisles of chemicals…
I grow my own spaghetti.
I can do color separations, not like there’s a huge call for that in small markets.
I crochet doilies, the finer the thread, the better I like it. My eyes, however, aren’t so happy with the fine stuff anymore. Crocheted a tablecloth a few years ago that won first place at the Western Washington Fair, too.
I worked in a very old-fashioned law office, so I can take dictation by shorthand.
I believe they still teach it to journalism students, but as far as offices go, shorthand was mostly dead even before I was born.
(I wouldn’t be surprised if typing pools go extinct in the next few years. When I left the job 5 years ago, the younger lawyers were already doing their own typing, because they could type faster than they could dictate.)
I can knapp flint into usable forms such as tools or arrowheads.
I can repair electronics at the component level.
I can make a spark transmitter and used to be pretty good at Morse code.
I can splice magnetic tape.
I can make chainmail from wire stock and flexible leather armor and cuir bouilli from stock.
I know the basics of fighting with a sword. Not fencing, not kendo, not “swordplay” but killing people with a large bladed weapon.
I can make basic rag paper.
I know it’s not “lost to the world” but an increasingly small percentage of the population of industrialized nations can stalk, kill, dress and process game animals. I can.
I keep score at baseball games. No reason to do it any more, and almost nobody does, since the play-by-play of every game is logged instantly at a thousand electronic sources. But I’m old and I like doing it and it makes me feel like a fan in a Damon Runyon story.
I can set type on a Linotype as well as maintain and repair the machine. In fact, until about a month ago, I owned one that I had restored to tip top shape.
I bake bread, from scratch, by hand. Not with a “bread machine.”
I crochet and also do tatting. I had a funny incident at an airport one time when the screening xray machine picked up my tatting shuttle. I knew right away what they were looking at, and very calmly explained what it was and that it was incapable of causing injury even if I wanted to. The agents were very interested once it was brought out and demonstrated. I now put it through separately in a plastic bag.
