The stacks on my desk have shrunk a bit (at least enough so that I don't get an instantaneous flight reflex when entering the room), the cat is happily draped over my forearm again, putting her paw on my touchpad at the most inopportune moments, and most of the stuff that I dragged half across the country is back in its proper place on the storage shelf.

Not that I'm out of things to do, mind you - there's more sorting to do, the stack of emails is still towering, and of course after the season is before the next one. Which means there's planning for events, planning for markets, and planning for the next Textile Forum.

Especially the latter is interesting, as we're considering making a few changes to the programme structure, and to the conference as a whole. The aim of these changes will be to become more accessible to participants who can't spend a whole week at a conference. Of course, we want to get it right, so I'm currently working on a little survey to send around. There are also plans to slightly re-structure the website and to add some more things as information about past experiments, tests, trial runs and topics. It's all very exciting, and I hope the survey will give us a good amount of feedback on which to act, so that our little conference can saunter on into the future, doing an even better job at connecting people from the practical side of historical crafts to researchers looking at the actual pieces.

Like everything, making a survey turns out to be a time-eater, though. And even if I'm tempted to go on straight away working on it... I've already done enough survey drafting for today - I need to get a few other things done.

Such as putting the remainder of the goods into their place. And finally finishing an article that is due...

I'm back at the work desk, trying to battle my way through stacks of paper that needs to be taken care of, as well as stacks of email that has to be dealt with. It's amazing how many mails can run up in just a few days of not-really-in-the-office time!

The symposium last weekend, by the way, was an utterly wonderful thing - not only did I get to meet a lot of lovely people again that I meet way, way too rarely, there were also a number of new faces to finally connect with the names I've been reading here and there, over and over again during the last years.

Add to this a number of really interesting and well-presented papers, a concert featuring medieval music in the beautiful Marienkirche with its astounding acoustics (and I still have a selection of earworms from that), a wine tasting with wines made from old grape varieties (including the wine that saved Oswald von Wolkenstein's life as he held on to the barrel when shipwrecked, and a wine that has been processed following exactly the instructions in the Capitulare de Villis, down to reconstructed tools), common meals both in the conference place as well as in the evening, and you have a wonderful event that I would call wildly successful - and I do hope that it will not have been the only or last one of its kind!

Now, though, the season of events and conferences is finally over for me, and there's hope of things becoming a little calmer again. Which includes a chance of actually getting back on top of the things stacked here, both physically and virtually...

My bags are packed and I am off again once more - the celebratory conference of IG Wolf is taking place this weekend, starting this evening, and it's promising to be a really interesting programme. The conference includes a concert and a wine-tasting evening with old grape breeds, plus a variety of different papers during Saturday and Sunday, and I'm very much looking forward to meeting a whole lot of old friends, acquaintances and colleagues there that I only get to see quite rarely.

My own presentation will be on Sunday morning, I'll be back home on Sunday night, and then I am just as happy to not be travelling for a while. If it feels like you've been living out of a bag for weeks, it's probably time to slow things down for a bit and not rush around through half of Germany for a while!

I am back home from the Forum, and it was wonderful - a whirlwind week, as it usually is. Every time, I am surprised at how quickly time flies past when we are in Mayen, and every time I'm delighted with how much is happening. Little detail problems are suddenly thrown into the spotlight, and then people throw themselves at the problems and try to figure out how something was made, or why something might look as it does.

This year, we had an array of really interesting discussions and tests. The effects of the de-gumming on silk when dyeing was one of them, and first results were really interesting - the de-gummed silk takes on less colour than the gummy silk. A number of little test skeins were dyed, and they have gone home with Ruth, who will do light-fastness, wash-fastness and rub-fastness tests with them in order to see how well the dye sticks to the various samples.

[caption id="attachment_3461" align="alignnone" width="304"] Silk being dyed...


[caption id="attachment_3460" align="alignnone" width="465"] ...and the skeins after rinsing.


We also had some reeling of silk, some tablet-weaving and, to my great delight, some hacking of slits into pieces of silk to explore the pinking and slashing techniques. That was not only extremely interesting, but also a lot of fun - and the slashing does explain why some fabrics might have been woven in just the way they were done.

There were also really good discussions about swastika motifs in tablet weaving and the problems this motif can lead to today (especially if you are based in Germany), and discussions about the terminology of wild vs. domesticated silk.

And of course there was lots of coffee. There was chocolate. There was the traditional stroopwafel spinning...



it was a wonderful week!

I'm off to teach a full weekend's worth of workshops - spinning, tablet weaving, loopbraiding, and sewing techniques, and I'm all excitement.

Especially about the tablet weaving course. It's been so long in the "I would like to do this" stage, followed by a very long planning stage, and then, a while ago, the test run. Then some more smoothing of rough edges and planning and updating the plan and the printouts... and now it's going to get its first run out in the wild. Proof of this? A huge stack of stuff sitting in the car, waiting to be ferried off. This is by far the most material-intensive course that I teach, because I use clamps to set up the warps (mimicking the medieval tablet-weaving stands).

[caption id="attachment_3447" align="alignnone" width="902"] Starting off easy - a few straight lines, a bit of doubleface, getting an understanding of how things work.


Since I'm currently also doing brain-bending exercises with free patterning, it's an especially nice feeling for me to be teaching a method that will allow the new weavers to do their own on-the-fly patterning, from a deep understanding on how these things work. At least that is my cunning plan - and the system I teach is quite robust in regard to mistakes, too.

Well. Let me put that a bit more into perspective. If you make a mistake, the system allows you to unweave the bad bits, then re-sort the tablets into their two packs as you un-weave the last correct pick that you made, then do the last pick again and work your way forward once more, hopefully correctly. You will not need a drawing or pattern draft to re-align tablets. You will need, however, patience and an adequate assortment of sighs, curses, or motivational beverages of choice, depending on your character. As always, the best thing is not to make the mistake in the first place...

[caption id="attachment_3446" align="alignnone" width="403"] Speaking of the brain-bender, here's the current status. As you can see, I have done my best to try out how to deal with mistakes. Those, by the way, are mostly due to my weaving in the evening at the moment, when I'm already a bit tired... as a robust system should be up to a tired weaver, right?


By the way, there will be a similar-ish workshop on patterning at the European Textile Forum, and due to last-minute cancellations, there are two spaces left once more...

I'm back home, there's an insane to-do list (which includes my fair homework, of course and as always after a fair), and here's pics, as requested, to prove it did happen...


The beautiful baroque garden and, in the background, the Orangerie. The garden was incredibly and delightfully colourful, with lots and lots of different flowers in bloom, and we had good, sunny weather almost all of the time - so the visitors were really in for a treat.

There were, of course, also a few water basins with fountains. It was a proper baroque garden, after all.


I was in the left-hand wing of the Orangerie, almost exactly opposite the door - a lovely spot to stand.


To make things even nicer, I had wonderful stall neighbours: Gunhild Fette, who teaches hand-quilting, and Monika, who runs a yarn shop in Ochsenfurt. Monika had also brought her friend who demonstrated tablet-weaving and nalebinding, much to my joy and delight, as I could send everyone interested in the techniques over to her instead of making do with my small demo objects behind the stall counter.

And this was my view from my workplace:


Not so much to be seen from the garden, but the windows were gorgeous by themselves - and the autumn colours on the hillside were a treat to look at, too.

So it was a really nice three days to spend (though, as fairs tend to be, fairly exhausting). Now it's back to the old list of things to do, taking care of shop orders and emails and getting back on track, quickly, to be finished with the preparation for the next few events and other things coming up. Next on the list: the reconstruction project for the Bernuthsfeld bog body tunic...

I'm at the Nadelkunst in Schloß Weikersheim today, tomorrow and Sunday - when this post goes live, it's about one hour until the fair starts, and I'll already be there, fixing the last odds and ends at the stall and preparing for the first day.

I'll be in the east wing of the Orangerie, with a wonderful view over the beautiful baroque garden. If you're in the area (or not, but fancy a little trip), drop by and enjoy the building with its spectacularly furnished rooms, the garden and all the different textile-related things to look at, or stop by the Stricktreff to sit and knit with others. I'm sure it will be a wonderful event, just like the previous one two years ago.

Since I'll be working all weekend, there will be no blog post on Monday, as I'll be taking the day off. Hooray for an Ersatz weekend!