I was asked recently about my electricity needs for my market stall - for lighting in the evening hours. My electricity needs are described in a single word: None.

I have a very easy policy for late-night market hours. Evening or even night market hours are a phenomenon that seems to become quite common these days on events, especially on events connected to a town anniversary festival.
My policy is that when dusk comes upon the market area, I am slowly packing up the small stuff, and when dusk is fully come, I close my shop. Nobody is going to see anything in my market stall anyways in the dark hours, except if I install a floodlight contraption (which will not fit into my tiny little TGV and aside from this is not really historical). There's just no sense to shop for plant-dyed threads in the darkness, and there's no way anyone will be able to appreciate the gossamer-fine hairnets and the delicately manufactured needles and needle-cases in the evening hours.

And my shop is not the only one thus affected - which is why evening- and night-hour markets are one of my (albeit lighter) pet peeves. Would you shop for something at night? When you can't discern its details, or properly search for flaws? I cannot believe that back in the Middle Ages somebody would have shopped for something in the evening hours unless driven by dire need. And in all the years that I visited markets, I have never bought anything after dusk (except food or drink, of course). I have looked around and chatted with people, and I have said things like "oh, that's where his/her stall is, I'll have to come back tomorrow and have a look".

I can just see no reason at all to shop at night, and I think that it doesn't fit in with a "historical market" scheme. A few oil-lamps or lanterns are nice and add to the atmosphere, but will never give off enough light to properly shop by.  With lighting by oil lamps or lanterns also come the problems with fuel spills and other, flame-related, hazards. Thus, a lot of the late-hour stalls have electrical light installed. That is more or less hidden and more or less made to look like lantern light, but it is still electrical lighting and thus out of place in an otherwise historical stall. I refuse to buy something under electrical lighting in both cases: When it looks like lantern-light (because then it's too dark for my taste to see and properly appreciate the wares) and when it looks like a floodlight installation gone astray (because this just glaringly stands out of the historical setting so much it hurts).

I'm fine with food and drinks stalls, I like to sit somewhere and see people walk by, or perform something, or listen to some musician on the square and have a little chat with friends. And I can understand if incense or lanterns are sold after dark. But all the rest? Even if it is a merchant or craftsperson I know and trust, I want to see the things I'm about to buy in daylight to fully appreciate them. So why do we need to transfer our modern late shopping hours to a historical market anyway? Is it our modern taste for convenience? Is there anybody really shopping at night, spending money enough to make it worth opening shop for so long? Or do the merchants just stand around and look decoratively with their stalls open and lit?

Soon (read: at the end of this week) this blog will go on a several-week summer-induced break - we are having a bit of a holiday, and then I'm off to do some yummy and exciting textile-y things. And I'm looking forward to both parts of this summer blog break very much!

As to the work part after the relaxing part, first there's the workshop and "Spectaculum" in Friesach, and afterwards I'm travelling to Vienna for an exhilarating project: A reproduction of some of the Hallstatt woven bands. For that, the team doing the reconstruction is actually starting from scratch, with the raw wool, and everything will be prepared and spun using proper historical implements. That means several kilometres spun on handspindles all together, and in really fine quality: The thread used in one of the bands is plied yarn with a thickness of about 0,2-0,3 mm. I am very excited about this and looking forward to doing a lot of ultra-thin spinning and then some plying - it's wonderful to be part of that work!

The whole reconstruction work is itself part of a large project called DressID, by the way - with the aim (beside others) to show the key position of dress for identity. DressID is also another try to get researchers from all over Europe together and give them the opportunity to exchange knowledge and network a bit.

I am fully occupied with sorting through some stuff here, trying to stow tools and materials in a better way than before, getting my textile technique demonstration projects maintenanced and ready to show things again, plus planning for and working on some stealth projects.

And I have one non-stealth project to blog about, too: My "Fehlerschautafeln" have arrived! These are rectangular black cardstock boards with slits punched into each of the long sides. Using these slits, thread can be wound onto the card and then sits in exactly parallel lines. And then it's very easy to get an impression of how evenly spun the thread is, if it is smooth or rather fluffy on its surface, if there are any thick blobs of fibre or badly twisted bits, and so on. Now I just have to decide how to handle all the thread samples with their vastly different lengths - should I start winding about five metres in, where possible? And if yes, from the beginning or from the end? Or should I try to get the middle section of each thread? Going "x metres in" would be much easier to accomplish, but I am willing to do the "more work" approach if there is a good reason for it; however, the method has to be the same for all the samples (except the utterly short ones where I'll use an alternative method of determining where to start).
I can wind about 3,5 metres on each of the boards; most of the spinners made between 30 and 40 metres of thread during the one hour spinnng time. 3,5 metres would thus correspond to about 6 minutes of spinning time.

Now, if you spin for two hours, and there's a sample from hour one and from hour two - when in each hour would you suspect are the most representative six minutes to pick?

During the weekend, we had one really strong gust of wind that lifted a few of the tents on the place slightly off the ground. Now an A-frame tent is not so very light, so it does take a strong wind to set it flying, and usually  our tents are securely anchored to the ground in addition to their structural weight. However, in Hanau, the tents we had were not fastened to the ground properly.

Why? Because the little town square where we had set up is paved with cobblestones - but the spaces between the stones are sealed with concrete. And that means most of our normal tent constructions, relying on pegs to keep the structure up, will not stand or stand badly there. Just like we had done last year, we wondered again why anybody would want to seal cobblestone paving like that, and like last year there was a lot of adjustment and make-it-work-somehow and shifting the places to set up tents because things would not work out as planned, and accordingly lots of swearwords. But this year, a nice lady that was born in Hanau told me why exactly we had all those problems: because of fashion.

In the 1950s and 60s, modern shoes for ladies featured stiletto heels. And on that cobblestone pavement of the town square, necessarily also crossed by fashionable ladies, that led to broken-off heels galore - because the heels, not fatter than the tent pegs or thick nails that we would have loved to use, would fit into the gaps between the stones. And if you wedge a stiletto heel into pavement well and tight, it will most probably break off.

The solution? Seal the gaps with concrete. Problem solved. Fashion influences even city architecture.

I came back late from the weekend in Hanau, which was nice weatherwise - spots of windy weather and rain broke the sunny weekend weather, but nothing too bad except for one really bad gust of wind that sent stuff flying all over our little market space.

Public interest in the market was, sadly, not as good as last year - at least not in the corner that I was in. Still, I had some very nice and interesting chats with visitors and inbetween nice and fun chats with the colleagues.

And of course I did not get a new hairnet started. Not because I wasn't trying - but because I used a not so suitable thread for the foundation loop; together with the extremely fine silk that I am using for the netting, that led to problems when working the second row, since the knots on the foundation loop were not sliding easily enough. In the end, I abandoned the started net after about an hour or so of work and will start again with a different thread as foundation loop - and this time, inside in quiet and most importantly without wind...

Instead, I worked on all kinds of other stuff after abandoning the net project - a little bit of goldwork, a little bit of sewing, some finishing work on weaving tablets, a bit of mending of a broken seam and a little fingerloop braiding. So altogether, I had a very nice weekend with lots of little odds and ends done!

The weather forecast looks mostly good for the weekend, with just a bit of rain on Saturday morning (and I'll just hope that this won't happen after all). My things are almost all packed and only wait for their transfer into the car, and then I will be on my way to Hanau.

I am usually not planning on any projects for a work weekend, but I hope to get started on a new silk hairnet - since somebody pointed out to me a while ago that the spiral is the way to go, I have planned to abandon the hairnet that I started with that is shown here due to a mistake in the cast-on loop count. So for this weekend, I hope to get started with a new, more accurate version of the net, again worked with very fine silk thread - and this time definitely worked in spirals.

Of course, if that should not be possible due to some unforeseen things, I have a few other demonstration craft pieces with me. Whatever happens, I will not be bored - and neither will the people stopping to have a look at my things!

The next medieval event is coming up - I'll be away together with Nobilitas at the Lamboy-Fest in Hanau the coming weekend.

Which means... that the time has come to prepare some more gold thread for sale by winding it on spools. And to check if everything I will need at the Fest is clean and in good condition, and pack all the demonstration stuff as well as the goods to sell.

And probably buy some sturdy nails as additional tent pegs, just in case... because last year, getting pegs into the ground there was not at all easy, and the TGV definitely needs pegs or it won't stand at all. And then I hope that the weather will be fine and that the Turkish club who sold the most amazingly yummy food last year is there again!