Via the MEDTC-List, I received this info about K'zoo:

Forty-sixth International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 12–15, 2011
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, Michigan USA
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/

A 'preview' of the program is available here
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/Assets/pdf/congress/Schedule11.pdf

I had a look at that programme. Oh my goodness. How on earth are you supposed to choose which sessions or papers to attend? That conference programme has a freaking two hundred and ten pages! This really, really boggles my mind, which is used to small or medium conferences only. Must be really nice to have such an enormous group of medievalists all together in one spot! (Though I still think it must be awfully hard to choose what to listen to...)


For those of you interested in textile stuff, I will just repost the list of of-interest-sessions that also came via the list. I had planned to go through the pdf myself and list the page numbers with the textile-related sessions, but I'm afraid I will get lost in that document and never find my way out again. Do I need to say that I would love to hear those papers? Alas, K'zoo is far away...

Thursday 7:30 p.m. Session 157 (Schneider 1280)
Vair, Able, Phoenix, and Kitty-Cat: Desire and Reality in Medieval Fur Fashions
Sarah-Grace Heller, Ohio State Univ.

Friday 1:30 p.m.Session 243 )Fetzer 1010)
Dress and Textiles I: Documentary Evidence
Sponsor: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and
Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion)
Organizer: Robin Netherton, DISTAFF
Presider: Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Univ. of Manchester
Textiles and Dress in the Household Accounts and
Inventories of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509)
Susan Powell, Univ. of Salford
Histoires and Misteres: Understanding Medieval Tapestry
Tina Kane, Tina Kane Textile Conservation and Restoration
“Translating” a Queen: The Wardrobe of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots
Michelle Beer, Univ. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
Juana of Portugal’s Farthingale: Rumors of Scandal and Shame
Emma Lehman, Independent Scholar

Friday 3:30 p.m.Session 301 (Fetzer 1010)
Dress and Textiles II: Implications and Interpretations
Sponsor: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and
Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion)
Organizer: Robin Netherton, DISTAFF
Presider: Robin Netherton
Lanval’s Lady: An Uncovering
Monica L. Wright, Univ. of Louisiana–Lafayette
Cosmographic Coverings: Textile Language in Alan of Lille’s Plaint of Nature
Jonathan Abresch, Univ. of Toronto
Late Medieval (Chiefly Middle English) Attitudes towards Dagged Clothing
John Block Friedman, Independent Scholar
To Be or Not to Be Medieval: Costuming Maid Marian for Film and Television
Sherron Lux, Library, San Jacinto College–North Campus

Friday 5:45 p.m. Fetzer 1055 Medieval
Dress/Textile Arts Display and Demonstration
Sponsor: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and
Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion)
Organizer: Robin Netherton, DISTAFF
Presider: Robin Netherton
A display of reproduction textile and dress
items, handmade using medieval methods and materials. Items
will include textiles, decorative treatments,
garments, and dress accessories. Exhibitors will
demonstrate techniques and be available to
discuss the use of historical evidence in
reproducing artifacts of material culture.

Sunday 8:30 a.m.Session 523 (Fetzer 1005)
Recycling Clothing in Late Medieval Paris
Kathryn J. Kelsey Staples, West Virginia Univ.

Sunday 8:30 a.m.Session 543 (Bernhard 210)
Dress and Textiles III: Techniques
Sponsor: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and
Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion)
Organizer: Robin Netherton, DISTAFF
Presider: Robin Netherton
Loopy Clues: Unraveling Errors, Omissions, and Assumptions in Loop Braiding
Instructions
Cindy Myers, Independent Scholar
Early Knitting Techniques and Tools: Clues from Extant Middle Eastern Socks
Jackie Oppelt, Independent Scholar
Cornettes: Variation and Change in a Fourteenth-Century Hairstyle
Barbara Segal, Independent Scholar

Sunday 10:30 a.m. Session 576 (Bernhard 210)
Dress and Textiles IV: Armour, Dress, Textile
Sponsor: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and
Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion) and
the Brill Encyclopaedia of Medieval Dress and
Textiles of the British Isles, c. 450-1450
Organizer: Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Univ. of Manchester
Presider: Julian Deahl, Brill Publishing Company
What’s In a Name? Identifying Textiles
Gale R. Owen-Crocker
Textiles and Thomas Becket
Elizabeth Coatsworth, Manchester Metropolitan Univ.
What’s the Pourpoint?
Karen Watts, Royal Armouries
Padded Protection: The Rothwell Jack
Maria Hayward, Univ. of Southampton

After a long silence on the topic of workshops, I finally have a date again to offer you. On 25-27 of February 2011, there is a medieval weekend on the Schönburg in Oberwesel am Rhein where I am part of the workshop programme.

I will give a workshop "Making an Undertunic" which will introduce the participants to seams and stitch types that were in use during the Middle Ages as well as the basic principles in planning, cutting and sewing an undertunic/undershirt for the medieval wardrobe. But that's not all: After this one-day stint, you will get a very special tablet weaving course on the following day, short but juicy - an introduction to the too-little-known technique of brocaded tablet weaving. This is really, really easy to learn so even total beginners can get started in this workshop.

And if you would like to bring someone else (maybe even somebody not so interested in textile stuff - I hear that people like that do exist), there's also fighting or woodworking in the offer. You can learn more and book via the organising group's homepage, Mittelalter-Treff - and I'd be delighted to meet you at the Schönburg in February!

Here's to let you know about one (more) thing we are working on: Next year's Textile Forum. There's no update on the website yet, but for all of you who have been wondering about whether or not there will be a Textile Forum III: yes, there will be one. And next time, to keep things interesting after going to Eindhoven in the Netherlands and then Schnals in South Tyrol, Italy, we'll go to... England.

There's been a lot of high-quality Living History in Britain for a good long time, and I think the UK was the absolute pioneer of using Living History in museum presentations to make the past more accessible to the visitors. Plus a few of the really widely known books about textile finds come from England, like "Textiles and Clothing", for example. So... we are very happy to be "away from the Continent" for our next Forum!

We'll let you know more through the usual channels once we have figured out the details - through this blog, the Textile Forum website and the Forum newsletter (subscription instructions on the Forum website under "Newsletter"). And can you believe I'm already looking forward to September and the Forum?

It's already been a week since I came back from the OEGUF conference, and I haven't even posted a picture of it yet. So... here's photographic proof that:


... I had something to say (this is me and Karina delivering a commentary to a short film showing different methods of preparing wool for spinning)...


... I went on the excursion to Schwarzenbach to see, among other things like the museum and the "Keltenfest" area, a flock of Racka sheep...


... and a most beautiful sunset...



... and also to the excursion to Asparn an der Zaya...



... and I did engage in Photo Wars with quite a few people.

 


Special thanks to Wulf Hein for the first photo and the shoot of myself in the Photo Wars!

I'm back home with the slight residue of a cold I caught somewhere during the last two weeks (fortunately it was a light one), a brain full of new information, project development for the winter season already started (it was a long drive home, with plenty of time to plan together with Sabine), and - as usual - a nice backlog of work and stuff to be taken care of.

The OEGUF conference was wonderful, though it had a few minor drawbacks: Our room was getting quite stuffy quite soon, there was no conference coffee point (which seriously cut back on the usual coffee socialising), and that in connection with short breaks due to the programme being stuffed very, very full, there was just not enough time to catch everybody I wanted to catch to chat or comment or discuss with. But apart from that, there was lots of laughter, oodles of fun, and a very large amount of presentations that were brand-sparkling new (at least to me) and of a very high quality - archaeologists and craftspeople alike meticulously looking at tiny details and working out things about bell beaker making, salt mining, and music instruments, to name three topics among many. The spinning experiment presentation was very well received too, and I did get quite a few comments about it, including one from a skilled statistician who offered to also take a look at the database and see if he might be able to see something in addition or something different from what I found when staring at all those numbers.

I met with some folks that I had not seen for a longer or shorter time, and it was wonderful to reconnect and see them again; and I also have some new acquaintances among the colleagues. There were two excursions, and during one of them I had the opportunity to make contact with the caretaker of a herd of museum sheep, a special old Hungarian breed - wonderful wool for historical spinning, and amazingly well suited to dye them coptic black, since the wool is already almost black. With all these things together and stuffed into a few days only, it's no wonder that my brain sort of ran on stand-by on Monday and still during part of yesterday, also an indicator that it was a good conference.

Socialising, learning about stuff, getting new and weird ideas, and carrying home material for textile works - have I mentioned already that I love conferences?

Those of you that know me in real life will know that I have a strong fascination with fire - if I see a fire burning and have access to it, I can seldom resist from sidling up and poking a bit around in it.

So it's no wonder that I spent a good while (read: too long a while) on YouTube yesterday morning, looking at fire-making videos. I had actually thought about embedding one that shows basic firemaking in yesterday's post, but did not find one that suited my purpose. Instead, I learned that punk wood (rotted dead wood) makes wonderful tinder material, and that there is a technique called "floating hands" for using a fire drill.

There's oodles of videos about making a fire out there, but actually I always found that getting the spark to catch on the tinder material is the easy thing (just takes more patience when it's damp), and making a nest for the ember and blowing that into flame is also not really hard (might also take a bit of patience when it's damp, but we've done it successfully with half-dry grass); I found that the hard bit is to get a real fire going from the good and hot nest - and there was no video showing that. Getting a fire going from the embers is, of course, easy with the perfect materials and in nice, dry weather, with a ground and wood that is not soaked through and cold, but in my experience, that perfect setup is rarely there when I want to make a fire - so you have to use techniques that will even work in the cold and damp, and with less-than-perfectly dry wood. And that was just what I couldn't find.

Still was time well spent. And now I finally know how to mix up that scrambled egg or that pancake batter with a whisk twirled between my hands without having to stop every five seconds to bring my hands to the top of the whisk stem again.

It's utterly amazing how many small things that would be nice to have or get done can turn up during a market/camp weekend - things like a new bag for my flint and steel, making new tinder, a bag for small woodbits and even smaller kindling to make starting the fire easier, mending a dress and mending a basket, and so on and so on. And this time around, I have actually more or less kept track of a lot of those small things, and a few of them are already taken care of as well - like refilling the tinder box, and starting work on a bag for kindling. I've even made new kindling already, since I know that I'm not so keen on getting to work with the hatchet once I'm getting hungry and cold, so if there's not tinder, hay for getting the embers started, wood and kindling readily available, I opt for buying something to eat and either going to an already burning fire or retiring into bed. And while both of these are good, nice and valid options, I'd like to have the possibility to just start a fire when I feel like it, and maybe have a nice cup of hot, freshly brewed tea while I have it running. Plus, finally starting a fire properly and all the way through felt so good at Tannenberg, after I had not done it for ages, and I found I really missed it.

We started trying to make proper, medieval-style fire years and years ago, and our first tries were more than pathetic - it would take us more than half an hour, several tries and three to four people blowing on the nest of ember, coughing in the thick, dense smoke coming out of it, and doing all kinds of things with a slight touch of desperation. And it did take a long time until we figured out the differences between starting a fire the modern way (with a lighter or a match) and starting it the old-fashioned way (with embers).

First of all, there's a huge difference in how the heat travels. Flame heat travels upwards, so if you want to light something with a flame, you light it from below and put the kindling on top. But embers work differently - they glow their way downwards and outwards from their nest of kindling. So if you want to light something with embers, placing the something on top of the ember won't work as well as placing it below them.

After that piece of insight finally found its way into my brain, it only took a medium long time for me to start realising something else: When the nest of embers and the kindling below it sit directly on the cold earth, there's a good chance that the heat from the little nest will be far from enough to counter all that cold. And the ember will die before the kindling has caught. That was when I began to start building the fireplace by placing a large-ish piece of dry wood with a flattish surface on top under the kindling and stuff - preferably a slab of wood that is already charred partly. This helps tremendously.

So my current setup is something like this: Slab of wood underneath it all; then comes the kindling in the middle of the underlying slab, set up mostly like a log cabin (two bits parallel to each other, then the next two parallel bits at a 90° angle across the previous two, and so on), but growing gradually wider towards the top. Around this small inverted-pyramid-log-cabin, I make a slighty larger log cabin setup from fuel wood that reaches as far up as the inner kindling one. This is both serving as a kind of flue to direct air and as the fuel wood to catch the starting fire. Then I catch a spark on the tinder (charred cotton cloth, usually) and place it into a smallish nest of hay with some small wood shavings and maybe a bit of birch bark in it. I fold the nest and blow on the ember until the nest has flamed up briefly once, then I put it into the inverted pyramid, place a last bit of fuel wood on top of the nest so that it stays compact and doesn't pop out again - and ideally, then I can just lean back and wait for about ten minutes to see everything erupting into a nice flaming fire. (Non-ideally, there's still some need for blowing gently but firmly on the ember nest.)

Oh, and a nice added benefit to lighting a fire with flint and steel? If there's a strong wind blowing, that might blow out your flame from a match or lighter, but it will actually save you work when doing it this way. Nifty, eh?