It's damson plum season here, and that means... cake time. Plum cake time! "Zwetschgenkuchen", as it is called here, is one of my favourite cakes ever, and there has to be some of it every single year when the damsons are ripe.

This year, I did some experimenting with the fruits on a shortcrust base, and accidentally stumbled across my new totally favourite shortcrust recipe. The secret's not in the sauce, but in the sugar:

450 g flour (I use spelt flour)
100 g mascobado cane sugar (I use the GEPA sugar)
1 large egg
250 g butter
pinch of salt

That's it - worked like the usual shortcrust pastry dough: mix flour and sugar, crumble in the butter so you have a homogenous mixture of small powder-coated butter bits, then knead in the egg until you have a smooth dough. Let it rest in a cool place for at least one hour.
Bake at about 175° C in a fan oven.

Shortcrust dough is lovely anyways, but the mascobado sugar adds a kind of rich caramelly taste that is just... wonderful. Normal brown sugar will alter the taste of baked goods, and mascobado does the same but to a slightly different taste, which I prefer a lot to the "normal" sugar. (I'm using this stuff for almost all my sweetening needs these days. Totally in love with it.)

Half of this amount of dough will be enough for one 26 cm round cake or 12 thin muffin-sized shells; the whole amount is enough for one baking sheet. Cover with halved damsons (at least 750 g for the round cake; you can fit much, much more if you set them almost vertical). If you put a little dry semolina on the dough before putting on the fruit, it will soak up juices and prevent the crust from getting too soggy too quickly. Bake for about 30-35 minutes... and enjoy.

[caption id="attachment_2586" align="alignnone" width="640"] A muffin-sized shell filled with damsons. There's my name written on it. (As in: I will definitely eat it this afternoon...)

There's been a nice surprise in the garden - suddenly, a red-blooming flower appeared:


We didn't plant this, and we certainly didn't expect it - but it is very welcome in its beauty. It's also blooming at a time when there is not so much else colourfully flowering around, so it is doubly welcome. Looking at the leaves, it might also have brought some friends in the same bed, though they are still a little shy and not showing any signs of a flower stem... yet. Maybe next year.

It's not looking quite as lovely and happiness-inducing on the peach tree: Of all the flowers and subsequent tiny little peaches, there is only one single peach left.


So I'm hoping that this one will continue going strong - that would mean a harvest of one peach, at last, some time later this year. Which would delight me no end!

Today is not as nicely warm and sunny as yesterday - the ideal weather to gear up with a cup of coffee or three and take stock.

I have a current count of things in stock, obviously, due to the webshop - but there's sometimes a little safety margin between the number of things listed in the shop and the things actually in stock - in case I need an extra because something gets lost in the post, or because something sold in real life versus via the online shop, for instance. Plus, from time to time, something gets lost or breaks while on an event... which means it's good to have a spare or two.

This, however, also means that occasionally I need to go through the actual, real, current stock and make sure that the numbers still match (or match as far as I intend them to). And since more fairs are coming up... now seems to be a good time. Especially since taking a look at all the things and counting them up means I can check their packaging, too - and in some cases re-pack into a smaller, or more sensible, or sturdier, or otherwise better way. Which is also a good thing to do before an event, as every big box takes up space, and space to store the stock is always, always less than it could be.

So you can picture my workspace cluttered with boxes and things in various states of packedness and unpackedness; with me and my list and my trusty cup of coffee in the middle of it. I'll spare you the picture of that clutter - instead, take this gratuitous picture of the sole sunflower that came up in the garden this year (even though I scattered seeds really generously):


It has grown into a very tall and very lovely plant - I'm just a little sad that it's the only one...

Here's another hodgepodge of things you will hopefully find interesting:

Springer has an ebook sale until August 1, where you can buy all books from the archive (from between 1842-2004) for 9,99 € with a coupon code. It is valid for the whole German language area, and it actually makes these books affordable, so you might want to check out this sale. (Archaeology books are under Social Sciences.)

On a completely different note, Con or Bust still has a few memberships for WordCon in Helsinki in 2017 (as well as a lot of other memberships), available to non-white SFF folks. Con or Bust aims to help non-white SFF fans attend cons - because more diversity is a good thing.

The EU VAT is still a topic, and whatever happens now after the referendum in GB, this chapter is not over for any seller in Europe. Here's an update from the Action Group, and maybe you can help, too, and take action as they suggest. Gratuitous bonus: Brexit comic.

CityMetric has a post about small changes that make huge differences in how women move and what they use in cities - a really, really interesting read.

Finally, there's a competition about creating spiral textiles inspired by a find - you can participate and create your own interpretation using historic textile techniques. More info can be found on their website spiraltextile.com.

First of all: Poppies!


These guys are trying to take over the garden, and I actually do not mind at all...

 
And now a few links:

Jim Hines has done some gender-swapping of texts from classical SFF works, and a corresponding blog post about the differences between writing men and women.

If you need a geeky t-shirt for the summer, getdigital has a selection of geeky and nerdy stuff like this "Batoro T-Shirt", printed on fair-trade organic grown cotton. Yay!

In other news, I've been busy sorting out things, washing wool and making new distaffs. I've also made a bit of progress on the two-colour renaissance shawl:


I've finished with all repeats of chart E (I did one extra), and now I'm slowly working my way through F (who'd have thought?). I have also more or less figured out where I want to change back to the night-blue colour, though there's still a way to go. And I'll have to print out the final chart again, as I have all the other sheets (even though they look... mangled, and sport more than their fair share of stains and notes) only not the last one, which probably got re-purposed at some point.

Now the big question is - will I finish this thing before our summer break? Or not?

Here's a stack of things you might find helpful...

Dark Patterns - this is a library of tricks that some websites use to trick you into buying things or doing stuff you normally wouldn't (such as subscribing to a newsletter or service). It explains the different techniques and lists examples from websites doing it. I was surprised to find audible.com on one of the lists...

There's a new book out, called Agent-based Modeling and Simulation in Archaeology (editors G. Wurzer/ K. Kowarik/ H. Reschreiter). The book was published in the Springer Verlag, with the typical high price point, as Archaeologik rightly criticises (link to German review. You can find English reviews here and here). Still - it might prove to be a helpful tool for archaeologists trying to model things (not in the clothing sense, obviously).

The EXARC Journal issue 2014/2 is now free to read online.

There's a startnext project running called "Schaf und Schäfer" (sheep and shepherd) with the aim of buying wool from shepherds in Northern Germany for a fair price, and getting it washed and spun in the region. You can support the project and get a stack of knitting yarns, too (though there's not much of the yarn reward tiers left).

Aisling has posted another list of tablet-woven bands on her blog: bands from Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages (in German).

Not as helpful as these links might be:


The little cat, picking my laptop as her pillow-of-choice. She also manages to choose different positions where she places her paw on the touchpad... which is just as non-helpful.

It's finally sunny again outside (yesterday and the day before we had rain like for the end of the world), and the garden... is looking like it's early summer. The poppies were in full bloom yesterday, but the night's rain has stripped them of most of their petals. The rest of the blooming things, however, are giving their all:

[caption id="attachment_2449" align="alignnone" width="366"] Nigella damascena - one of the German names is "Jungfer im Grünen", literally "maiden in the green". I really like these, and I'm happy they are returning every year in their little spot.


[caption id="attachment_2450" align="alignnone" width="359"] Iris, in blue. They are a little too tall for this spot to be seen from outside the garden (the willows are purposely stripped of any buds at their very base), but they are very visible from the inside.


[caption id="attachment_2451" align="alignnone" width="383"] More iris - this one is one of the take-over-the-world plants.


[caption id="attachment_2448" align="alignnone" width="533"] The cat, meanwhile, is utterly unimpressed and prefers to nap on the sofa.