Either I'm getting told about more of them, or this year is especially conference-heavy... no matter which of this is the case, here's another conference call blog entry for you.

Aarhus University of Denmark celebrates 40 years of Medieval Archaeology with a conference 26 to 28 October 2011, and you can find info and the conference programme on their conference website here. The conference will be in English, so no need to speak or understand Danish really well.

Another conference in October is the annual EXAR conference, this year taking place in Schleswig, northern Germany. You can find information on the exar.org webpage; the conference is from 13th to 16th of October, and it includes an optional excursion to Nydam (to see the Nydam ship). Deadline for registration is the 15th of July - still a few days left! -, and if you are interested in giving a paper, there seem to be still a few paper opportunities left. If you are not speaking or understanding German, please be aware that though the official languages of the conference are both English and German, the years when I attended the conference consisted mostly of German-language presentations.

As my departure to Leeds IMC is creeping closer and closer, I checked back on Jonathan Jarrett's blog about the Blogger meetup. And true to his word, he and Magistra from the magistraetmater blog have decided on a time and place: It will be Tuesday evening, 18 to 20 o'clock, at the Stables pub.

Here's the full article on Jonathan's blog, where you can find a picture of him for identification. I'll be there, too - so maybe we meet at Leeds?

I spent Saturday and Sunday in Stuttgart at the "Medieval Times" event of the Junges Schloß Stuttgart. "Junges Schloß" is a museum concept especially for children - every object in easy view of children, things to touch, experience, try yourself and garments to dress up with. I had the opportunity for a quick walk through the exhibition on Sunday morning, and I was so bummed that I'm already older than ten years.

No, really. It is a wonderful museum for children (and me and the two grown-up colleagues also had a heap of fun sitting on the thrones and on the knight's horse), and if you are in the area with a child, or if you are interested in museum concepts for children, or if you are plain curious - do go there. I was really blown away by the exhibition.

If you are too far away (or if you want a look before), here's a picture of the main room, a renaissance "cabinet of curiosities" showing treasures from throughout time.


(Picture from a photostream made by the museum that you can find here.)

And those glass cases can all be opened by the staff in the museum so that the young visitors can touch the original objects in there. Awesome, isn't it?

I had hoped to sneak off and catch another few minutes in the exhibition room, but the medieval event was so well received and so well visited that there was absolutely no time for it. I spent all Saturday and Sunday spinning, explaining about worsted and woolen, combing wool and spinning even more. And letting people try themselves. Oh, and threatening my neighbour with my distaff, because that's a very medieval thing to do (and always good for a laugh).

So go visit the museum, everybody who is able - I'm sure you will enjoy it!

Here's the rest of the conference info that found its way into my inbox; first of all, a conference in Aarhus:

Call for Papers: Prayer and Performance
Acts of belief as symbolic communication in the late medieval and Renaissance period
An international interdisciplinary colloquium examining the nature of prayer as performance in late medieval and early modern culture

• Aarhus University, Denmark
• April 23-24 2012
• E-mail: Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein.

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 A one-day conference called "Why Leather?" will take place at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL on the 8th September 2011. You can find the schedule, prices, link to the registration form and abstracts on the conference webpage of the Archaeological Leather Group. The abstracts sound wonderfully interesting to me - there will be a talk about cuir bouilli and one about the importance of leather for the (old-style) textile industry, among quite a few other not-so-common angles of looking at leather and its uses.

archleathgrp.org.uk

And finally a non-conference announcement: The next issue of the ATN (Archaeological Textiles Newsletter) is due to go into print, so this would be a perfect opportunity to subscribe, if you have not yet done so. 

Please visit the conference website   www.NATCConference.com  for more information on conference papers/posters, accommodations, pre- and post-conference workshops and tours. 

On August 6, there will be a tour opportunity called "Fashion at the Getty", with a guided tour through the two fashion exhibitions Paris Life & Luxury and Fashion in the Middle Ages. The registration is possible until July 25, but places are limited and probably gone soon. You can learn more and register via Heather A. Vaughan's blog.

More in my region (well, comparatively speaking) is the 7. Archäologenkongress which will take place in Bremen October 3-7, 2011. The programme (lots of interesting sounding papers and a very nice accompanying programme with excursions), info and registration info can be found on the (German language) homepage,  www.nwdv.org. There's also an early bird fee on this one, with the one-week conference ticket (including a public transport pass) for 60 instead of 80 Euros.

Even more conference invitations tomorrow!

It's amazing how time flies - the conference in Leeds which seemed so far in the future is now more like right around the corner. I'm not giving a paper, but I still have to prepare for this - packing (and figuring out what to pack before that), getting my conference gear together, choosing sessins that I want to attend, finding out what the exchange course is, all that stuff.

There are some things that I really like to bring to a conference:

• working pens - that's a given, isn't it?
• my conference book - so much neater than using a writing pad, and with the book, all my notes from conferences are in one place
• something to read for relaxing in the evening
• a usb stick
• a camera
• my computer - because there's heaps of stuff in there, and I might just want to show something to somebody
• business cards (and maybe promo brochures)

I used to bring a laser pointer, too, since it can come in handy to have your own, but mine has somehow gone AWOL a good while ago.

Do you have a never-without-this-list for conferences?

On Sunday evening, Sabine and I have made the final decision on whether there will be a Textile Forum this year... or not.

It was a hard one - we did re-calculate twice, we thought hard about it some more (that was a topic already discussed time and again during the last month), and it did make us very sad, but we finally decided to cancel Textile Forum 2011. There were too few registrations in spite of all the plugging we did - here, on Facebook, on Huscarl, via the Forum newsletter, and in spite of all the promotion that friends, colleagues, former and current participants did (and our heartfelt thanks for that!). We are fine with a small event, but too small a group means that the Forum idea will not work properly. And while day visitors or short-term participants are a very welcome addition to the participant group, the core group has to be large enough to carry the event on their own.

We are deeply sorry to miss out a Textile Forum, but we are certain that it is better to have a one-year hiatus than to see through a Forum that will not measure up to the participants' expectations (or to ours). It was a hard step for us to take, and I feel almost as if a pet had died - the Forum is a thing very dear to me, and having no Forum this year does make me very sad.

"Es hat nicht sollen sein" (it was not meant to be) is the German phrase that perfectly fits this year's Forum planning, which was quite generously garnished with larger and smaller troubles, now culminating in the cancellation. We are, however, working on the Forum 2012 already - we will not be stopped by one single squib load. We'll be keeping you up to date about developments once we have settled things with our prospective venue.

And we do hope to see you then and there!