Well, off I go - off to be ready for the forum lanarum that starts tomorrow at ten! I was hoping for a little better weather to load stuff into the car, but it looks like it will continue drizzling down... good thing that it is only a short distance to the car, and the things I have to load are all packed up nicely.

While I am lugging around boxes and checking (and double-checking) my list of things to take with me, the cat has found a good use for one of the baskets I am not using this time around:


I use that basket when I am doing Living History events - but for the even more limited storage space I have at some of the wool fairs, modern crates without a taper towards the bottom are better suited, so my things are packed and stacked in those. Which means the cat can slumber on without disturbance...

There's planning going on here - planning where your input would be more than welcome...

I've been discussing, with one of the organisers, the workshops at the Hochmittelaltertreffen Jerichow. I will definitely offer my spinning workshop and teach spinning with distaff and spindle, but there is ample room for more than one workshop during the week-and-a-bit that I will be there.

However, it's always hard to guess what people would like to see, or learn. I was thinking about a tablet-weaving class to teach brocading, or one that teaches the broken twill technique for tablet weave, but there's so many other options too... embroidery (including gold embroidery), loopbraiding, theoretically also netting (but only theoretically, since I don't have enough netting needles at the moment, and will probably not get more in time), ...

If you could have your perfect workshop - what would you like to learn? Or what would be your expectations? Please let me know in the comments, that would be really helpful for me. (And if you are going to the event, do tell me, too!)

I'm back home from a very big, very interesting fair - the Nadelwelt really was huge! There were a lot of stalls catering to all imaginable needs around modern textile crafting - buttons, bands, patterns (including patterns custom-made or customised to your measurements), threads, clasps, fabrics and inlays, quilting and patchworking ideas, sewing machines, embroidery machines, needles - you name it, it was probably there.

There were also a few other spinners, such as the Handspinngilde, and of course several places selling knitting yarns, though I think Margit was the only one selling naturally dyed yarns - and I was the only stop for historical supplies. We stood out a little with that... as we usually do when at a fair.

I managed not to buy lots of things there, in spite of all the tempting things. I bought a few clasps for stitch markers (I have beautiful handmade glass beads for these)... and, because I really, really don't need any more yarns...


... I at least did my shopping close to home. At home in our own stall, so to say.

I've been in love with Margit's colourway "Kürbis" (pumpkin, guess which one of the colours that is) since I first saw it and realised that I can actually wear that colour. So this time, after hanging out right beside these skeins for two days.. I gave in.

These three guys are going to turn into a two-coloured Renaissance Shawl, and because it's only half as bad to buy more yarn if you do it for a specific project and cast on straight away, I did:


I'm knitting it with 3 mm needles, so it's fairly tight - but I want to actually wear this one, and use it for warmth when needed, so it suits me well. And the yarn is wonderfully cushy and soft. The middle part (with the leaf pattern) will be knit in the wonderfully bright orange Kürbis colour, and the start and end in the nightblue in the picture.

Now I only need more knitting time..

I'm back from the weekend at the Adventon, and it was really, really nice. The Adventon settlement is a work in progress, with a lot of building activities going on (not this last weekend, though, when all the settlers were busy with the craft fair). It was nice to see the partly-finished houses, with the wattle for wattle-and-daub walls already installed and waiting, the place where wood shingles are made for the roofs, and many more things. (I have no pics, unfortunately - I left the camera at home...)

The Adventon is also home to a variety of animals, from cattle to a few different breeds of sheep and breeds of chicken. Two of the sheep, called Othello (who is a black sheep) and his lady Luise (white) wandered past my spot quite often, always on the lookout for interesting things to nibble, open doors to houses (Othello loves to go inside) or open chests to stick his nose in. A flock of chickens also came by several times - especially one of the chicks came and stayed forever right across the road from me, as there was food preparation going on, and she (correctly) assumed that a chicken who is not shy at all might wheedle some food out of the humans.

It was very nice to have this experience of domesticated animals and humans sharing the place, and naturally you'd throw leftover bits from food preparation to the chicks (as you do when you have chickens, and would have done in the Middle Ages). I was not so thrilled with some other animals who shared the spot with me, though... as I had ants in my tent.

I don't mind ants so much (except the really aggressive ones that my parents have in their garden, as they will bite you if you sit on their lanes), but it felt as if I had not just an ant trail through my tent, but more like at least three ant motorway junctions, so many were there. They were in my food and tableware chest (I was really glad that I had stuck my food into airtight boxes instead of just putting it into the chest and a basket, like I usually do), they were on my bench, and they were in my bed. The latter is the reason I was really, really, REALLY glad they were not agressive. They were also not active while it was dark, so most of the night went fine... and the only real issue I had with the critters was when early in the morning of Saturday, one single ant decided to venture boldly where no ant had gone before.

Into my right ear.

I woke from a tickling in my ear, and, half-asleep, reflexively stuck my finger in. Whether that pushed the ant further in, or whether it was already on its way to venture deeper, we will never know - but in any case, the ant was in so deep I couldn't get it out with my pinkie finger.

Only... the ant also couldn't get out anymore. In case you ever wondered what ear wax is for, apart from annoying you when it builds up and you need to clean your ears? It kills ants. Or, I presume, other small insects that end up in your ear. It was not a nice experience, though. I alternated between feeling sad for the poor ant who struggled and was doomed to die sooner or later and thinking "die already, stupid ant, I want to go back to sleep" - which I couldn't while the ant struggled. Ear wax, you see, is not only sticky and gooey, and protects your delicate inner ear from the wandering insect of choice, it also transfers vibrations to aforementioned delicate inner ear. Which means you can really hear the movements of the insect... loudly.

About an hour later, I could sleep again. (Good thing I had turned in indecently early, a luxury I love to have when I'm on events like this all on my own.) The ant, thanks to the mysterious workings of aural peristaltics, left my ear (with a little help from my finger) at some time in the afternoon. Dead, obviously.

Fortunately, there was no other ant incident in the next night.

There were lots of interesting chats with visitors and Adventon folks alike, and I even got to pack up a dry tent in the evening on Sunday, as there was rain and storm all around in the region, except in the park and its immediate surroundings, where we got to enjoy wonderful summer weather. (Unfortunately, the bad weather in the larger area meant that rather few people came to the craft fair, fearing the rain...) So it was a wonderful weekend - and now I get a little time off for coffee with a friend before I have to prepare for the next weekend: the Nadelwelt fair.

For those of you in the London area and with no plans for tomorrow, you could go to the Art Worker's Guild and attend the MEDATS meeting about textiles on the move. (Sorry for the utterly short notice - I only found out about this yesterday at night.)

MEDATS is short for Medieval Dress And Textiles Society, and it's aiming to improve public knowledge of medieval textiles and clothing. The Society is open to everybody interested in the topic, regardless of the background, and the topic of their meeting tomorrow - On the Move - sounds really interesting. The meeting starts at 11 am and ends in the late afternoon; more info, including the programme, can be found here.

I'd love to be there, but I haven't mastered the art of being in two places at once yet...

If you are interested in late medieval embroideries, you might consider a trip to Frankfurt this summer to visit the Städelmuseum. From June 22 to September 25, the museum has a special exhibition called "Heaven on Display" with the stunning liturgical artwork from the convent of Altenberg.

The exhibition features not only the paintings and sculptural art, but also the linen embroidery, with the Altenberg pieces coming together from different museums - from New York to St. Petersburg. Getting all the pieces together again will allow a really outstanding impression of the interplay of the many different media used in early fourteenth-century church furnishing. The Altenberg ensemble is unique in that respect, and I'm definitely planning to go see this.

If you can't make it to Frankfurt, or if you'd like to have a closer look at the individual items first, there's also an accompanying book available, with texts both in German and in English.

We've been planning the next European Textile Forum for a while - in fact, starting to look for a good date usually takes place very shortly after a Forum has finished, and we have all recovered a little bit. Then come a few months of not much ETF-related work (apart from thinking about a focus topic), and then, suddenly, it occurs to me that it's high time to write and send out a Call for Papers.

This is accompanied by putting together and testing a registration form, which usually meant quite a bit of headache and cursing. This year, it was actually easier even though I had to do the form again from scratch, as the Forum webpage has migrated to Joomla!. I'm quite, quite happy about this change, as it means more possibilities and less html-writing work for me.

So - I've finished writing the CfP, the website is almost ready to go live with the registration, I'm only waiting for a last little bit of feedback so I can set things in motion tomorrow... and I'm already looking forward to a wonderful conference again!

Oh, and if you'd like to have more info about the Forum, here's a brand new review of last year's conference.