NESAT will be taking place again next year - and I'm so very much looking forward to it already! It's always a wonderful opportunity to go somewhere and meet up with old and new colleagues. If you're not familiar with this conference, NESAT stands for "North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles" and was started to make textile archeologists feel less lonely once in a while.

This means every three years - last one was the virtual conference (due to Covid) in Oulu, Finland, but now we're looking to meet up in person in Poland for the next one. To my great delight, the paper about membrane gold threads that Tracy and I have proposed was accepted, so we'll be able to talk about our project there in May!

In case you're interested, you can learn more about the upcoming conference, and the past ones, on their webpage. Registration is also open now until end of February.

It feels like we're nearing the end of the year alright - days are getting ever shorter, the cat sleeps more and more (though that is due to age, I think, and not just due to the time of year and weather), and I'm trying to get things sorted for the end of the year, and winding down a little. 

Getting things sorted includes sorting and labeling pictures, and here's one for you: 

That is a good amount of quite expensive ground-up lice about to be stirred into a beaker of hot water. It was really, really exciting to dye with kermes, and I'm feeling very privileged!

That said... the colour turned out very nice indeed, but it's not that you couldn't come close or imitate it with a good knowledge on how to handle your madder and cochineal. Though it may be possible that with some post-processing, it can go more into the purple-y shade, and that might be harder to get with madder and cochineal. But, well, who knows?

It would be really, really interesting though how many people in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age would have been able to actually tell if something was really done with kermes, or if it was just well-faked. My guess would be that a good fake is indistinguishable from the real thing today, and would have been back then. Similar, probably, with shellfish purple. But, hey, expensive! Prestigious! So definitely a must-have!  

Today's been mostly spent with odds and ends - packing away stuff, trying to sort out some more of the Textile Forum backlog (as in doing some colour documentation/checking and putting away the dried lake we made from the used-up dyebaths), packing up things to go into the post... and then realising that I'm about to run out of stock with the brass pins.

So I made some more. 

It's fun to make these, and it definitely got easier with practice. Also I find that getting exactly the "right" amount of windings cut off (which is two, not one and not three) is the optimum for going forward.

More windings are harder to get onto the shaft - and less than two increases significantly the probability that the head will not sit firmly enough on the shaft. So that, for me, is definitely a good set of reasons to try and get them headed just like the originals...

Well, you certainly can't say that the rose in our garden has not been trying hard until the end... 

She did manage to get one flower properly into bloom about mid-November, but the second of the late blooming attempts was really too late. So it got snowed upon and frozen out when it was just half open.

Still quite a feat, though, and somehow I find it very amusing. Shows that not just human beings can be a little too late...

In case you enjoy a bit of whimsy and don't necessarily stop that enjoyment at the end of the Middle Ages, you can have a look at this collection of fantastical animals. It's an online exhibition with text in German, but images will work in any language - and you'll see interesting critters from graphical artwork from the 15th to the 18th century.

Because we can all use some images of gryphons and dressed-up locusts, right?

By chance, I've stumbled across a new repository framework - called EUDAT. It's intended to help researchers, both institutionalised and independent, to save, store, publish and share their research and research data. That sounds fantastic, and it's now on my list of things to look at it a little more, and see if that might be a good thing for the Textile Forum data that's been accumulated.

As the documentation and info I've already looked at tells me, it is based on the Invenio software, which, to my delight, is also free and open source... and might be a solution for my (still unresolved) photo database problem. Another thing to look into. Seems like it will not get boring around here!

Somehow it feels like it should have been Friday today - at least I feel ready for the weekend. Maybe it's because it has gotten quite dark and cold outside? Or maybe because the little cat has been spreading sleepiness waves? Who knows. Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow will be Friday! 

If you're not sure whether it's Friday yet and would like to check, there's the wonderful website isitfridayyet.net to help you. And since I last went there, many years ago, it seems like it has gotten an upgrade - it's not just "yes" or "no" anymore!

Well, maybe not completely - we took a little break this noon to watch one of our friends give a presentation. But otherwise - it's cold outside these days, and there's even some snow, as is fitting for this time of year. The little cat likes to hang out on my desk, lying on my right arm and occasionally "helping" by adding a lot of empty spaces, or äääääää, or whatever her paw happens to hit as she stretches (or walks off, across the keyboard, of course). 

While she is chilling, I am trying to keep up with the things on my list - wrapping up Forum stuff and working on the museum projects that I have in the pipeline. And, of course, the shop. As November is almost over, it's high time to send the monthly newsletter... and in theory, being a good shopkeeper and marketing person, I should (have) put in there a lot of things to animate people to buy stuff for Xmas. 

But... well. Just a few days ago, there was all this "Black Friday" and "Black Week" madness, with ad bombardments everywhere and gazillions of "great deal!" newsletters, and I'm already being bombarded as well with reminders that Xmas is coming up and I might want to buy this or that as a present. And frankly, I'm quite sick of all this demand to be a good consumer and buy, buy, buy. It's just too much. 

So I did decide not to do the usual pre-Xmas-extra advertising this year - the newsletter is mostly like any other one during the year. I've never been very good at tooting my own horn for the stuff I sell, but my hope is that it will speak for itself well enough to keep things going. And maybe I'll feel more like "hey! go buy this!" next year again, when the consumerism craze of the end-of-year has passed... 

The dyeing instructions and experiment protocol have been successfully tested:

The results? Two beautifully dyed objects, one set of instructions with notes and corrections, and I've already managed to do the fixing-up and the instructions are sent out. 

(The result this time turned out to be a rather orangey colour, by the way. That might be due to the pre-treatment, or a different batch of madder, or the different alum, or the water, or whatever. Madder. Might drive one madder and madder...)

Now it's time for me to wait and see what will happen. I'm already looking forward to getting the first of the samples and be able to compare them to the original reference. And, well, I guess I could also think about when to start my own homework...

To make sure that all the instructions for the madder dyers influence test are as accurate as possible, and easy to understand, there's a little test run taking place. Thankfully, the Most Patient of All Husbands has taken on the task, so I have the benefit of getting the stuff tested by a non-dyer.

The instruction test is simulating the real thing - so there's Erlangen tap water being used instead of de-ionised water (but at least I filled it into a bottle that once held de-ionised...) and the madder is some that I harvested (and then steamed, and then cut it up and dried some, and then ground it and dried it some more) and the alum is ammonia alum and not potassium alum... but for testing the how-to, it will all do.

The madder has been soaking, and it looks a promising deep red:

Next will come the mordanting, and then the dyeing, and then I'll fix up the experiment protocol with the missing info and necessary corrections, and then... off it will go to the volunteers. Hooray!