Random facts:

• I have finished spinning warp yarn for the large fabric, and am now doing the weft yarn. I overshot a bit on the warp yarn amount, but that's always better than cutting it too fine.
• The cat is not amused when she tries to sleep on my arm on my desk and said arm moves too much. It has to move in order for me to work, though.
• Our new printer does not print things 1:1, but loses about 2 mm in size on 10 cm. So if I have to print something to original scale, I have to enlarge it by 1.03 or something. I'd check, but the paper where I noted this is either underneath the cat, or in the other room, so in both cases currently inaccessible.
• There's a really amazing optical illusion presented in this video, even if it hides behind way too many ads when I try to view it.
• Xmas baking madness has started around here. We're late this year doing it. We also need to buy more flour, which might be done through a lengthy bike ride, but it's currently snowing outside and we have not decided yet if we want to brave the weather or not. (If not, we'll have to do something else, like a shorter bike ride or a walk - The Rule is to go out at least once per day, no matter what.)
• TAG conference is coming up! I'm giving a short presentation there on Friday morning. Registration is still open, and the conference is free.
• It's Blogiversary day today. Another year has whooshed past... and this will be post number 2759. Hard to believe, but the years sort of add up...

If you're interested in medieval embroidery, especially concerning goldwork, go check out the really interesting post by Jessica Grimm on Alex Makin's blog "Early Medieval (mostly) Textiles".

Also, Amica and Maria of historicaltextiles.org are doing their advent calendar again - starting with a weaving tablet made from wood, which absolutely delighted me.

You're probably also getting them: Loads and loads of advertisements and promises of deep discounts and insane deals, coming up on Friday, or the weekend, or all this week, even.

I think I posted a similar rant last year, and I'm kinda tired of doing it again, but... but. I will still write about this.

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving (the US food coma holiday), and it's been made a retail and shopping madness day at some point years back. It has since spread over about all the world, and now people are getting loads and loads of ads and discounts and whatnots to tempt them into buying stuff and more stuff.

Now... I totally get the desire to have nice things, and new things. I'm not adverse to having something pretty, and having stuff is, for most of us humans, a quite basic desire. Stuff like food is a necessity, as is clothing appropriate to the time of year and climate. Then there's the social component, stuff that shows one's taste and preferences and social status. There's stuff that we need for work, stuff that we want for comfort, stuff we buy to make others happy. Stuff we get to repair other stuff. Stuff we get for future use (stash acquisition, anyone?) and stuff we get for future use though we strongly suspect while getting it that we will never actually use it.

I am, overall, fine with that. For myself, I try to stop and think before buying something new whether I will really use it, and do so in time. Do I really need this? Will it be useful? Am I sure about this? Then there's some secondary considerations, like how is it packaged? How much energy does it use? How long will it last? Can it be repaired? Does it have a fair price, and where does the money land that I pay for it - where the work has been done, or somewhere else?

Altogether, these things lead to shopping decisions that I'm usually happy with, not just after buying, but years and sometimes decades later. My thermos cup felt really expensive back when I bought it, back in 2012. I'm still very happy about the decision to get it anyways every time I pull it out of my bag to have a coffee on the road. It looks quite battered by now, but it's still working very well. Deals limited to a short amount of time, intending to put pressure on people to buy right now this instance or the opportunity will be gone make me deeply suspicious, though. As do deep discounts - because, well, if the sticker price can be discounted that far, either the seller loses money with the deep discount (which is not a smart business move), or the sticker price is way higher than it would need to be for the seller to make a decent profit. But if there's still money made with the deeply discounted price... how cheap is the item, actually, when they buy it? I'd really love to know the calculations behind these deals...

For now, though, I'll stick with not buying stuff this Friday. Just like most Fridays. Like most days, actually. And that's something I'm totally fine with.

Once more, I'm not quite sure whether to rejoice - hooray, the week is over, the weekend is waiting - or to panic - the week is over, and why is there still so much work left at the end of the week's work time?

There's been spinning, and sending off goods from the shop, and cat-cuddling (wait, that's not work, though quite important too) and planning for future possible courses, and some (very little) weaving. More spinning is among the things on top of the list, but there is definite progress on that front. Which is good!

I'm also, due to a comment from Alex Makin on her Instagram, pondering the quirk of preferring one special tool over another. In her case, her favourite needle had to be replaced by another one which did not work as well. I know that effect very well - and now I'm trying to find out which of my tools has this effect the most. I know I mislaid one of my knives a while ago, and it was very uncomfortable to use a different one for the carving task I had to do. I also try different needles for sewing until I find the one that suits the fabric and stitches best at a given time, and I have a few favourite needles that get used most. Then there's some things that I feel are interchangeable, like my spindle sticks - no faves there.

For now, though, it's time to pack some things and go visit my gran, who is celebrating her birthday this weekend... her 100th birthday. Isn't that amazing?

It's the time of year when citrus fruits are a Thing - at least here in Germany, they are mostly available in autumn and winter, and that's the time of year when they are best anyways. Mostly unrelated to this, we recently had a conversation about chinine and bitter lemon and from that started to wonder what chemical causes the bitter taste in grapefruit, which led to a visit to Wikipedia and... oh wow. I wasn't aware of grapefruit being such an interesting player when it comes to drug interaction!

I really like the taste of grapefruit, especially of the more mild, modern variations. I still remember that when I was a child, they were very sour and often also quite bitter, and generous amounts of sugar were added to the fruit. Which was eaten by cutting it in half, then cutting around the outer rim of the fruit with a special grapefruit knife, and then spooning out the flesh. After the addition of said generous amounts of sugar, of course. (These days I usually peel them and remove the inner skins between the segments.)

If you're taking medication, though, citrus fruits or their juice might not be the best choice - quite a lot of drugs (and caffeine) interact with the stuff. Or, more precisely, citrus fruit contents interact with enzymes and transport proteins in the body and can cause both underdosage and overdosage, depending on consumption and the type of drug. It's quite fascinating!

You can read more about the fruit on the grapefruit wikipedia page, and more about its effects on drugs on this page.

I'm back from my trip to Lübeck, and it was wonderful! If you're in the area, make sure to visit the Europäisches Hansemuseum (where you can read everything in German or English or Danish (if I remember correctly)...)

The two days planned for workshops and constructive sessions in the museum were full, and intense, and a lot of fun, just as they should be. There was a bit of time for me, before travelling home again, to take a stroll through the city and visit some of the important sights. Such as the Holstentor.

Much more thrilling for me, though, was walking down the Hundestraße - one of the many places in Lübeck where archaeological textiles were found...



There's a lot of other places which I did not go to, due to lack of time - but I'm hoping there will be a next time, and then I will go to the Schrangen, and visit some other museums, and enjoy some more of that lovely city.

Speaking of archaeology in Lübeck - there's been another find of something that usually easily decays: a layer cake has been found in an excavation! It was retrieved from a house that collapsed during the Second World War, in 1942, and it is something of a miracle. There's been analyses of the cake, and it was a nut cake. It's kind of nuts that it survived, so I find that very fitting! You can see a picture of the cake and read a bit about it (in German) here.

Sorry for the blog silence yesterday - I completely forgot to post! That happens only rarely, but this year, I had the very interesting idea of scheduling workshops fairly soon after the summer break, and together with the catching up on things that is still going on... well, it totally slipped my attention. Even though "blog" is on the list of daily things to do. But just like calendars, lists are of limited use if you don't look at them...

There's quite a bit going on here at the moment, behind the scenes. There's a newsletter to write for September, I'm preparing the items for the next online sewing workshop (on October 10, and there's still spaces free if you'd like to learn about medieval stitches and seams, in German), and both of these meant taking some photos yesterday. There's also a new thing for the shop, hooray! (Which obviously needs to go in as a listing before the newsletter goes out.) Oh, and I figured out how to solve the broken image problem on the blog - they should all be back now. (For some reason, there was a 1 added to a lot of picture file names, and deleting that meant the pics, which were on the server, could be found again.)

I'm also doing some spinning tests for the next reconstruction project - a museum would like to have Bronze Age fabrics for visitors to touch, and try on garments made from them. This is a lovely project, and a wonderful task, and it means a lot of spinning, which also means a bit of test spinning. Once I have the tests finished, they will go to the weaver to see if they are suitable, and give me some feedback, and then spinning for real will start. I'm very, very excited!

Other news? The vote in Germany is over (that was last Sunday), and now we're waiting to see who is going to run (or ruin) the country for the next 4 years. Mathematically, a lot of party constellations are possible - not, unfortunately, those that I personally would have favoured most. We might still end up with the "traffic lights" - that is SPD, FDP and the Green Party, which is the one I'd prefer out of the options left. It's definitely living in interesting times...