To my grand delight, I will be part of the Knitting Symposium taking place in Leiden on November 2 - which includes an adventurous train trip there (with a night train! Yay!). The symposium itself features a number of very interesting topics, including information about current research in knitting history, dye experiments in regard to the silk stockings found in Texel, the experience of wearing such (reconstructed, obviously) stockings, and Citizen Science (which is why I have gotten the opportunity to join in, as I've been involved in Citizen Science before that was a term, it seems).

In case you are in the area, or can get there, and want to join, it looks like there are still tickets available. The Symposium is organised by the Textile Research Centre; you can read more about it (and download the full programme) on their website. You also find instructions for registration there.

 

If you're looking for things to go to, or something to read, here are possibilities:

The EXAR conference, which will take place in Vienna on September 26 to 29, has its programme online. Registration is possible via their website, with a reduced fee if you register before August 15. As there is still space in their poster session, you are also welcome to hand in an abstract for a poster.

There will be a conference "Craftsmen and Metalworking in medieval cities: 35 years later" in Paris on September 12-14. The programme of the symposium is finished, but not available online yet; you can contact the organising committee via their website, though. Registration is open until September 5 or until the limited number of places is taken.

If you are looking for even more conferences, check out the "Conference" section on the RMBLF.be website, where there is a long list of all kinds of them, or the EXARC webpage.

Finally, the book thing - Jane Malcolm-Davies and Ninya Mikhaila are publishing "The Typical Tudor", which will be delivered in May 2020. If you are interested in Tudor-era clothing, this might be an interesting book for you; read more about it on their website (where you can also pre-order).

Here's some stuff about places you could go at times when there are things that might be vastly interesting:

The CfP of the EXAR conference in Vienna, September 26 to 29 2019, is ending on June 15. You can send your paper proposal via their website.

If you are interested in Tudor clothing, there's a conference with a lot of event stuff around it called "Missing Persons". It will take place in Nottingham on April 3-5, 2020. You can register via the Tudor Tailor site; conference costs are 299 GBP (with an Early Bird registration until June 19 for 275 GBP).

The University of Sheffield will offer Zooarchaeology Short Courses in September 2019: Understanding Zooarchaeology on September 10-12 and Birds in Archaeology on September 13. The courses are directed to students, professionals and enthusiasts, no prior knowledge required, and the courses include hands-on practical activities. For more information, visit the website at the Uni of Sheffield.

The CfP for the European Textile Forum is also open; the Forum will run from November 4-10 in the Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology Lauresham, Lorsch, Germany. Focus topic this year is "Shared Warps, Shared Wefts", but other, non-weaving related papers or presentations are also welcome.

Finally, for those in Germany, I will be offering a two-day tablet weaving workshop on August 31 and September 1, teaching how to do tablet weaving patterns without a written pattern draft. As this is a system and we will start from the very beginning to learn the system, no previous knowledge about tablet weaving is needed. More information and booking possibilities are here via the pallia webshop.

It has taken a good while, but it's finally all settled - the European Textile Forum 2019 has a venue, and it will take place November 4-10 as planned.

Our venue for this year is the Lauresham Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology, connected to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lorsch Abbey and a spectacular place to be. I have a lot of personal fond memories of Lorsch, having been on archaeological digs there several times, working together with lovely colleagues, and having some memorable moments. Like the one where one of the students found some coins right after the assistant prof promised a money prize for finding a coin. Like the one where I was staring so hard at the greenish-pinkish bands in the sand there, to find the line between an old trench and natural undisturbed soil, that I stopped seeing in colour and had to stare at a white wall for a while. Like assisting the technician in taking site measurements; he was a very, very special character, so working with him was sometimes quite exhausting (but I got treated to an ice cream sundae in the evening, which did make up for that). Best of all is that I was part of the student group that excavated in the so-called "Südosttor" area... and what had been thought to maybe have been the south-east gate turned out to have been the loo.

So I'm very happy to return to Lorsch, especially since I have not been there for years, and the whole Lauresham Laboratory is also new to me.

For the Forum, we are graciously given use of the Visitor Information Centre with several rooms, plus use of the facilities in the open-air laboratory itself. This includes houses and workspaces modelled after archaeological finds and ideal-typical monastery plans and descriptions from Carolingian times. Most important for our purposes, there is a dye house on the grounds, as well as a weaving house with three warp-weighted looms installed there plus one mobile warp-weighted loom. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am at how this all worked out, and I am so much looking forward to our conference!

I have also been promised that our group will get a tour of both the Abbey grounds and the Laboratory, which will surely include a visit to the 8th/9th century Gate Hall, the most famous building in Lorsch, and truly, truly spectacular.

So now, finally, it's time to send out the Call for Papers. As every year, we will have a focus topic, and this time it's "Shared Warps, Shared Wefts". You can find the CfP on our website, or you can download the pdf version here.

Last details regarding the conference still need to be figured out, so registration is not open immediately, but will be possible from May 27 onward.

For now, please save the date if you're planning to come, and spread the word about this conference if you know people who might be interested!

The annual meeting of EXAR, or, with its full name, the European Association for the Advancement of Archaeology by Experiment, will be taking place in Vienna/Austria this year, from September 26 to 29. Presentations will be held on September 27 and 28, with the rest of the conference days reserved for get-together and excursions.

An EXAR conference in Vienna was the first EXAR conference I've attended, and it was utterly wonderful - so I deeply regret that I won't be able to go there this year, as I've already booked my booth spot for the Nadelkunst in Weikersheim, and that is on the very same weekend.

If you have no such date clash, however, this year's conference will be focusing on “Experimental Archaeology in Science and Teaching”, and it will be presented in cooperation with the Natural History Museum Vienna. (Which is, all by itself, a gorgeous place to visit.) The Call for Papers for the conference is now open, and they are looking for presentations or posters, addressing the following topics:

• methods of analysing finds and features which provide the basis for
  
  experiments
• experiments and their results/reconstructions based on or used for
  
  experiments
• science-based demonstrations and related museological teaching methods

Presentations are possible in either German or English, with the request to do the slides in the other language to make your presentation as widely accessible as possible to the audience (so German slides if you are talking in English, and vice versa). Presentation length should not be more than 20 minutes.

The Call for Papers will be open until June 15, 2019, and is possible via the website www.exar.org. Conference registration will be open until August 31, and conference fees for non-speakers are between 12,50 € and 40 €.

If you're interested in attending the Early Textiles Study Group conference "Fibres in Early Textiles" at the Uni Glasgow, 6-7 June 2019, registration is open - and places are limited, so you might want to register as soon as possible.

Just in case you are not into textiles, but more into stones - or know someone who is: The ArchaeoParc Val Senales is having a Flint Knapping Symposium on May 29 to June 1. It's a conference for experts, museum professionals and hobbyists working with flint knapping techniques, intended as an opportunity to gather and share experiences.

I've been to the ArchaeoParc (we had the wonderful opportunity to hold a Textile Forum there), and it is a wonderful place with spectacular scenery, incredibly nice people and utterly delicious food. So if you needed an excuse to go there, this conference might just be it.

You can find more information about it here on the Museum website. Be aware that it is taking place during the main travel season of South Tyrol, so if you want to go, try to arrange registration and booking as soon as possible!

(And if you do go, please say hello to Johanna for me!)