On Friday's Ask me anything, Cathy wanted to know

Why did you decide to go into archaeology as a career?

That is actually a long(ish) story... when I was close to finishing school, my plan was to go into medicine. A while before the actual final exams, though,  I discovered that a job as a medical doctor (or similar) has several different sides that did sound very un-appealing to me. So I decided that it would be not my line of career, after all.

That decision sent me into a sort of limbo, because all the years before, I had always had a plan on what to do with my life after school. Finally I made a list with all the things on it that I wanted in my future professional life. Things like working outside at least part of the time, working with people, having both manual work and brain-/desk-work. At that time, I was already into living history and had been for a while, so I added "something to do with the Middle Ages" to the list. (To be precise, it was "something to do with the Middle Ages but not History because I am so bad at remembering numbers".) I also wanted to go to university.

Then I leafed through the book you got, back then, listing all the possible course lines that you could study, and the places where they were offered. I found "Archaeology of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age" in that book, and it sounded appealing. It also sounded like it would fit in with all the bulletpoints on my list, combining outside excavation and fieldwork with academical work using books and computers at a nice, comfy desk.
My parents supported the decision, though it was very clear from the beginning that it is not a line where you are guaranteed a steady, well-paid job - and that's how I ended up studying in Bamberg and doing Medieval Archaeology: because I had made that list, and the career seemed to fit in with what I wanted.

It did fit in with what I want still, and I have not regretted it, and am deeply, deeply thankful to my parents for making it possible.

Did that answer your question, Cathy?

Tomorrow will be the start of my sewing workshop, and I'm really looking forward to this - I'll do the last preparation bits necessary for it this afternoon.

Otherwise, I have been busy registering my photos with VG Bildkunst, after getting the prod in the behind that I needed to finally get myself a password and do the paperwork. I'm really curious to see how much that will bring me! This is what made me find out, by the way, that I have posted a bit more than 200 photos on this blog. That's not so much, actually - it roughly means one photo every fifth blog post. (I should post more pictures. Pictures are nice.)

Also, I have decided to do an Ask me anything - go ahead and post your question in the comments. I will do my best to answer anything, within reason. (Non-reasonable things being those too personal, or those too complex to answer in a blog post. Or those I deem unreasonable for some other reason. You know how those things work, right? And probably better than me, too.)

In today's random list of things that I found interesting:

Are computer searches making us dumber or smarter?

A very personal, and very impressive, answer to someone depressed and thinking of suicide.

A piece on gender behaviour and its possible biological roots.

The journal Archäologische Informationen is now online and open access. h/t to tribur.

Norway is trying to break the Australian record for sheep to sweater, and it will be televised.

And finally, should you be looking for inspiration on how to quit your job in style - look at the art of quitting.

A while ago, I hinted at something developing connected both to the Eternal Spinning Experiment and Ravelry.

Though I have been mostly away, and busy, and mostly without internet access during the last two weeks, that thing has gone on developing (huzzah for collaboration with others not absent during that time!) and it has, also during my absence, gone live.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you a new Ravelry group: SpinStats. The aim of that group is to use the immense number of (handspindle-)spinners on Ravelry to collect some data about things that are of interest for research into hand-spinning... such as: how much yarn do people pack onto a spindle?

Spinning styles and methods can differ wildly, as can fibres and thread thicknesses and whatnot. But we do need some more data than is currently available on hand-spinning processes, and Ravelry with its mass of spinners from all over the world is a wonderful place to collect said data. This is why we came up with the idea for SpinStats. We will post challenges to that group that anybody who likes can join - beginners, advanced spinners, we want you all.  The first challenge is already up and running, and it will hopefully tell us something about the normal cop weight that modern spinners put onto a spindle. Is there a difference between spinning styles? Or depending on the spindle? Fibre, maybe? If we are lucky and get enough data, we might gain some insight into this.

So if you are a hand-spindle spinner and would like to help in generating some data, please go join our group. (In case you are not on Ravelry yet - it's free to join. Should you not want to join for whatever reason, but still like to participate, just email me and I will give you the challenge data.) If you know hand-spindle spinners that might be interested, please pass on the word - the more spinners, the better. We have the first few cops submitted already, and I am absolutely thrilled to see the group up and running. (I'm still working on my cop, though, being a slow-ish spinner with thin threads, and so on...)

As my last post probably showed you, I am one of the folks who consider gender issues and think about gender.

If you are getting involved into textile stuff, it's probably unavoidable. There's so much gender preconception still attached to handling fibre, cloth, and textile tools that most of those who do it are... female. And that stretches out into modern jobs regarding textile, both new and old. Most textile conservators? Women. Most ancient textile researchers? Women. Most modern textile crafters? Women.

We still live in a gender-biased world. I am one of the lucky ones who had a course of study where women were neither the majority nor the minority. Even better, on the digs where I were, it was accepted that while the women on the dig might not fill the wheelbarrow completely full, they and their work was just as good and just the same as the menfolk's. You just walk a few more times with the wheelbarrow, and that's it. (And a lot of the menfolk did not want their wheelbarrow filled to the brim. Those things are really hard to push when you fill them up as much as can be!)

I have, however, had my fair share of gender-bias in other circumstances. In bicycle stores, for instance, when the guy doubted what I was saying, or did not want to listen. When selling my old car. The usual, you know?

Now, gender differences are there, and I am not going to deny that. However, they are more fluid than often assumed, and they can change with our culture. (Here's a recent article about that.) The little differences between people - whether they come from their DNA, their upbringing, their culture, personal preferences, talents, or gender - make life the colourful and interesting thing it is. However, when one of those things means that your work will be neglected or belittled, it quickly becomes bad. When it means that you are having it that little bit harder in your life because of something you had no influence over, that is bad. When it means that it may not even be possible to change something by complaining about something bad that happened to you, that is really bad.

And sometimes, sexism hides. Benevolent sexism is what this article calls it - I'd have called it a backhanded compliment, but the effect is the same: It makes you feel good while secretly lowering your self-esteem. Bad. Really bad.

So... I guess if I had a wish in regard to that topic, I'd wish for this: Next time, if you are taken back about the gender, race, ethnicity or whatnot of someone because you did not expect that - don't blurt it out. Think about it. About your preconceptions, your expectations. And then say something that is a real compliment, not a backhanded one. Because it helps nobody to dampen someone's potential by an -ism, any -ism.

Thanks.

The summer is definitely coming to an end - there was fog lying all across the garden this morning, and temperatures are becoming sort of nippy. I hope we'll have a few more warm days, though, so that some more tomatoes can get edible.

The cat is sitting on her cat bed beside my desk and is busy washing herself. Once she'll finish, I know exactly what she is going to do: Nap. Until the afternoon. While I have to work. I think she does that on purpose.

Work, for today, includes checking my lists and packing up stuff for the Textile Forum. I can't believe that it's already starting next week!

Two days ago, I snuck into the workshop in the basement and spent something like a good one and a half hour there. The result? I made the weaving contraption that I lost the source for. It is not the most beautiful of thingies, but it does work, and nicely so - I am now hooked on bandweaving, and am finally making progress on that optimistic-length warp that I set up oh, ages ago. (I also found out about how important good alignment of the elements in the contraption is.)

There is a fun blog around with advice from old books, called Ask the Past. Go and enjoy - it's not all very long gone past advice, but all of it is interesting.

That's the random stuff for today...

Here's three links to pictures that might interest you - or at least amuse you.

First of all: Men photographed in classical pin-up poses. I think this is all kinds of cool, for several reasons - not least of them: those pictures do show how weird these poses are.

Secondly: Self-portraits, taken with napkins, in aeroplane lavatories. The article calls them "in the Flemish style", and they do indeed look a little like Flemish portraits.

And thirdly, for something completely different: A tattoo artist helps women who had breast cancer surgery - by tattooing them trompe-l'oeil nipples.