Just in case you wondered about yesterday's blog silence - our DSL was cut.

Literally.



Thankfully, the issue was fixed a few minutes ago - because I have found that while it's theoretically possible to go into the 'Net via my phone, it is rather slow, sketchy and tedious.

Now I can get some actual work done again! Amazing how many things are possible only with an Internet connection...

 

Today, it's actually technically correct for the Thursday to feel like Friday... as tomorrow's a holiday.

So, with these timely Easter flowers blooming in our garden, I wish you a good Easter time, with the appropriate amount of eggs (chocolate or other) and hopefully some wonderful weather:



I'll be back on the blog on Tuesday!

Looking for some entertainment for your next five minute break? Karina Grömer has done a science talk about iron age clothing, and you can watch it right here:

Enjoy!

I'm currently having a lot of fun with an Instagram photo challenge, initiated by ig14.at - there's a topic for every day as a prompt, and the challenge is to post a living history photo for it.

Some of the topics are really easy, but others I find quite hard. Not because I don't have associations, or haven't had the situation (like "cold"... who hasn't frozen half-solid at some event or other), but because I usually don't have a picture for it, at least not one showing me in that situation.

One of those prompts was "innocence". After a while of thinking, I ended up with this picture:



Why? Well, let me take you around the three corners that brought me here:

Sleeping Beauty is a story, more or less, about innocence lost. (It's actually not a very female-friendly story, as unless you read the cleaned-up version, it's not just kissing that happens when the man finds her. She loses her innocence to him, in some versions without having a say in it, as she's still asleep.)

Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger while spinning, or so the tale says. Well, as I have told a lot of people posing that question on events, that did definitely not happen on a normal handspindle, and also not on a modern treadled spinning wheel. While the early Great Wheel does have a pointy spindle, it does not need to be really sharp. With enough enthusiasm or clumsiness, though, yes, you could hurt yourself on the tip of the spindle rod (mine is about as sharp as the tip of a modern dessert fork). A late medieval version of the tale from France sees Sleeping Beauty ram a wooden splinter left from bad flax processing under her fingernail - which I guess is at least as probable as ramming her hand into the spindle of a wool wheel.

If you'd like to read more about this, I've written a bit about the Sleeping Beauty Question here - and if you are curious about the other things on the challenge that I posted, you can have a look at my Instagram feed here.

Back when I was writing my thesis, I hung out a lot with physicists working with a small detector - so I got a glimpse, occasionally, of small things being scanned and imaged in incredible detail. It made me aware of the fact that with modern technology, a lot of really mind-boggling things are possible.

Something along the same lines of "really cool things that are now possible" is the virtual unfolding of old letters. Over the centuries, quite a lot of letters were never delivered, due to some reason or other, and most of them still hang out somewhere. Now, before the advent of the modern envelope, those letters were folded and sealed, and the folding was sometimes very intricate. In order to read the letters, though, this means that they have to be opened... and apparently that is not always easy, and usually leads to some damage to the letter.

Enter modern technology. Or, to be more precise, X-ray microtomography, which makes it possible to scan the many layers of the letterlocked letters, then reconstruct the whole thing in a 3D-simulation, and finally to unfold the whole thing virtually so it can actually be read. Isn't that incredible?

You can read more about this in this article on nature.com titled "Unlocking history through automated virtual unfolding of sealed documents imaged by X-ray microtomography", or, if you prefer to read German, there's also an article here on Spiegel.de.

And now I want to learn at least one of these cool folding methods...

There's another EXARC textile chat coming up tomorrow - as usual it starts at 15:00 CET, and the topic this time is nalbinding.

You can find out more about it here on the EXARC page!

In other news, having nothing at all to do with nalbinding: My little lemon tree has actually decided to make a bud. Yay! It came with a lot of flowers and buds when I bought it, but only made the one lemon that was already on it when it arrived here. Afterwards... nothing, nothing at all. So I'm very happy that it seems it now has remembered its job. Hopefully the flower will not remain the only one, and there will be a few fruits, too!



 

It's time to close some of my accumulated tabs again - so here you go, a Monday Link Roundup:

The NHM in Vienna did a special for Valentine's Day - about 19 youtube minutes featuring love in the animal kingdom and a bit about reconstructing erotical stuff from prehistory (featuring Karina Grömer, of course):


It's in German, but if you don't speak the language, you might still enjoy the glimpse into the museum.

There's a virtual conference on May 8-9 about Draft Animals, hosted by Lauresham. That is international - so if you're interested, check out the info page where you can also register (for free).

If you're looking for an interesting lace pattern to knit, featuring bunny ear decreases (one of my favourite decreases), check out the pattern for "thyme" on gannetdesigns.com.

If you're interested in the origins of money, take a look at this article on Plos One.