For a change, there's good news from the EU: the seed regulation draft has finally fallen through. (In case you don't know what I am talking about, here's an old article from the Guardian about the regulation.)

Things like this give me hope - if it was possible to get the seed regulation canceled for good, we might still get the same result for TTIP, the weirdness and utter fail that is the Digital Goods VAT,  and other weird ideas that someone cooked up without doing a reality check first.

My tomato seeds have sprouted, by the way. There shall be tomato plants this summer - five different old or old-ish kinds, and three of them grown from seeds that I have harvested myself. I hope this year will be a better one for tomatoes than the last!

I love tea. Especially at this time of year, when it is cold and dreary outside, a nice cuppa makes life so much better, instantly.

I also love to have the tea on a teapot-warmer - for some kinds of tea, especially black tea, this seems to keep the taste nice for a longer time, as opposed to putting the hot tea into a thermos bottle. (At least that's what it feels like for me.)

Teapot-warmers, though, need something to burn within them. Which, usually, means tea lights. Now, these come in handy little packages, each one in their little aluminum shell, and the wax is not the most eco-friendly stuff either. That always scratched on my green conscience.

So from time to time, I'd try different things. Beeswax tea lights. "Eco" tea lights with different wax. They all did not work properly, due to different reasons.

A while ago, though, I discovered an alternative and have now tested it for a bit: oil lights. They are basically a cork swimmer thingie, you insert a short little wick into that, fill something like a small, flat bowl with water, put some vegetable oil on top, place the wicked swimmer on it and light the wick. There you go. Small, lightweight, no aluminum waste, and just a bit of oil that hangs out in the kitchen anyways. Plus, the company that has been making these since 1867 is based here, in my region, and does all the production locally as well.

I would have linked to them here and now, but they do not sell to end-users, and the oil lights seem to be relatively hard to find. Which means... I am actually thinking about getting them into my shop. It has nothing to do with textile production per se, but it is a wonderful product, we all know textile people need hot tea (right?), and it might also be just the thing a few living history folks need. (There were hanging oil lamps in medieval times, which definitely need something to hold a wick. That would be another nice excuse...)

Back in March, I posted about videos with yoga exercises to help relax tense neck and shoulders. I did actually manage to keep doing good things like that for my shoulders - and not only them. These and related videos have resulted in my personal discovery of yoga.

Which has led to the inevitable: a yoga mat.

Yoga mats, essentially, are a non-slip surface with a little cushioning effect thrown in for good measure. Their main job, physically, is to keep hands and feet from slipping (thus making some poses much easier). In addition, they usually provide a bit of insulation against cold and said cushioning effect. The desired amount of non-slip, cushioning and insulation varies depending on the form of practice, the surroundings and personal preferences.

Yoga is not just about the physical, though - it also means going for a certain state of mind, awareness, however you would like to call it, with the practice. And entering any special state of mind tied to any activity is always made easier by using certain rituals - such as putting on special dress, or unrolling a mat - and ritual props tied by association to the procedure and the mind-set. Which is another (though less discussed) function of the yoga mat.

And finally, there is also the eco conundrum thingie - since many of those practicing yoga are inclined to be of the greenish persuasion (at least slightly greenish). And as you might know, I am fitting in right well with that.

There's gazillions of mats out there, from many different companies, manufactured in different places and from a multitude of materials. There is also quite a few these days that label themselves "eco" or "green". Well. To put it very bluntly, and going just for the most environmentally friendly, the best yoga mat? No mat at all. Nothing made, transported, and sold. No materials and no energy used. Second best is something serving as a mat that does not fuel the industry and incite them to make more mats (because they are obviously getting bought). That could be a rug or other substitute, or an old mat that is not used by its original owner anymore. (Not buying a new mat if the old one still serves, but continuing to use the old one, would also fall into that category.)

Buying a new mat, even if made from natural materials and produced (and transported) in the most environmentally-friendly way possible, preferably also with fair prices and wages paid for every one and every thing involved in the whole production process? That is third-best. At best. Because every thing that is produced... has an impact.

(Now is the point where I could ramble on about the "no-impact" and "no harm" thingie. There is no such thing as no impact, we each of us live and breathe and that alone makes a difference and an impact on the world. Not regarding that we eat, too.)

You can do worse by the environment, however: There's enough choices out there that use PVC or processes involving toxins, made in factories with not very good conditions. Those are usually cheap mats - which is not saying that pricier is always better in that respect.

I did, by the way, buy a new mat. One of those labelled "eco". Which smells, strongly, of rubber (dissipating only very slowly - it smells less than at the beginning now, though); which is very nicely non-slip, a pleasing colour, and gives me the feeling that I did something to treat myself to a little luxury...

First of all, the good news: The 14C-Dating of the Ribe mitten is fully financed, and the initiator is, accordingly, quite happy. Thanks to all of you who helped funding! If you have not helped funding yet and are sort of sad that the others did it without you: You can still pitch in, any extra money will be used for additional analysis of the piece. Ideas on further research are including the stitch type used, wool analysis, and yarn analysis. For the previously blogged English instructions on how to fund on the Danish site, click here.

The petition against the full cut of heritage conservation funding in one of Germany's federal states has led to some political discussion... but with no clear statements yet. You can read a short piece about that on Archaeologik (in German). The petition still lacks about 1.400 signatures to reach its goal, so if you have not signed yet, please do so and spread the word, there are still 30 days left to go. The text on the petition site itself is in German. If you need to get up to date on what it's about first, you can read my blogpost about it or go to the DGUF who initiated it; they have an English translation on their webpage.

And a last one - I have posted a link to the petition against food patenting before, but it seems as if there's more in the works: an EU law to make almost all traffic of non-industrially produced seeds illegal. When I first read about that, I thought it was a belated April Fool joke, but no, it looks like they really mean it. I found a link to the draft proposal here, and I'll keep my eyes open for protests against this. If you know more, please share in the comments!

There's quite a backlog of things-of-interest that has accumulated, both in my browser tabs and in my email inbox. And I am going to start blogging them... tomorrow.

Because today I have to post this:



If you enjoy a) organic food, b) good and funny movies, c) Star Wars parodies, d) parodies of all kind, or - the best - a jumble of that all... make sure you watch it.

And tomorrow... interesting and really usefull stuff.

Almost one year ago, I wrote a blog post about our then fairly new grocery box subscription. Now it is winter again, we still have the grocery box, and we are still totally happy with it. The box has changed our grocery shopping habits, changed our eating habits and our cooking habits.
It also makes me think of Friday as the Day of Plenty, because that is when the new box arrives, filled with fresh organic fruits (from all over the world) and vegetables (from our region only) - food that will see us over the next week. I hand the empty box from the last delivery back and get a full one; I carry that into the kitchen and place everything on the counter, and then I take a moment to step back, look at all the food and feel very rich and very, very lucky.

And because we get only regional vegetables, I feel as if I now have a better connection to the area I live in. There is a lot of farming going on right outside the urban sprawls here, and a grocery box subscription means support for the organic farms in the area, less grocery shopping and dragging bags home for us, less carbon-dioxide and fresher produce due to very short transport, and jobs for the totally wonderful, nice and enthusiastic people who run the subscription service - it's a winners-only situation. (By the way, this winter, there's less cabbage and beetroot, but more black salsify and red kuri squash. I had never cooked either of those before this winter.)

There was a coconut in last week's box, too. It had been ages since I last had eaten a fresh one - when I was a child, I remember that my parents had sometimes bought one, gotten it open, and then there was a little coconut water in there that everyone could try with a small sip. I remember that, when buying the nut, the aim was to find the one nut with the most water in - and despite our careful selection, there was never more liquid in it than perhaps a very small glass about half-full.
Last week's coconut from the box? It was almost half full with the water. Lots. And it was sweet, delicious water - just like the nut itself was sweet and delicious.

Need I say that we have been eating very well this last year?

This year, there's proper winter weather in our spot of Germany - lots of snow, covering everything with a generous layer of white. There's so much snow that some even stays on the streets, which is quite unusual.

In spite of all the snow and the occasional icy patch, we are still using the bicycles to go anywhere in the city. It's fast (well, we go a little slower in the snow, of course), it's quiet, it's green, the bicycle always starts, and there's never a problem with parking space. Those bikes that we use during the winter get their tires changed in late autumn or beginning of winter - as soon as the conditions hint to possible ice on the roads - and then we merrily cycle through winter on spike studded tires. And these are really wonderful!

If you would like to ride a bike in winter, but don't dare to because of slippery roads, give these a try. Yes, they are rather loud on free road surfaces, but on snow or ice they have wonderful grip and make cycling so much safer. I used to have at least one fall each winter season, where a patch of ice turned up somewhere unexpectedly in a corner, but since we have the winter tires? None anymore. And this year, the tires are especially good to have, with these lots of snow around.