This November, I'll be giving a presentation about embroidery at the Nobilitas-Akademie - an event for people doing Living History to meet and learn about a variety of topics.

It will take place in Korbach from November 4 to November 6, with a very varied programme - the presentations range from early towns to social and military aspects of town life to embroidery to local history of Korbach. If that sounds appealing and interesting to you, you can learn more about the Akademie here, and you can also register for it right away on that page.I'll be presenting after dinner on Saturday Friday, so I should probably try and find some extra weird or fun examples of embroidery, to keep everyone from falling asleep in the after-dinner-slump. What a nice excuse to make even more jokes in the presentation than usual! (I like to make jokes in my presentations and papers. One of the best tips I ever got about preparing a presentation, right at the start of my studies, was "Make jokes. An audience that is laughing is not sleeping." That is oh so true - plus everyone enjoys a presentation that makes you laugh, and isn't all bone dry.)

It's World Baking Day today (thank goodness for Twitter, which is letting me know about such incredibly important things) so I'll share a recipe with you. It's not a classical cake, but can be eaten as a dessert: Quarkauflauf (curd cheese casserole). Basically, this is rather close to a crustless cheesecake.

[caption id="attachment_2417" align="alignnone" width="452"] There you go: Curd Cheese Casserole, fresh out of the oven, with cherries on top.


I remember this being an occasional sweet lunch when I was small. It was only occasional partly because sweet lunches were just not the rule, and partly because my dad is no fan of curd cheese, and didn't much like this as a meal. All of us had some meals we weren't too fond of, and these would thus be only very occasional - so that nobody had to suffer too much under the taste preferences of the rest of the family.After I moved out from home, I more or less forgot about this dish - until I rediscovered it a while ago, when I was looking for something to do with a leftover pack of curd cheese. This time around, I completely fell in love with the stuff, as it can be eaten hot or cold, it freezes well, goes with a lot of different kinds of fruit, and is quick and easy to make.

• 2 eggs
• 250 g curd cheese
• one tablespoon starch or about 30 g protein powder (neutral)
• about 50 g sugar (or less, if you prefer it less sweet - I use about 20 g of unrefined sugar, as the fruit delivers enough sweetness for my taste buds, and I like the taste the unrefined stuff brings into the mix)
• one teaspoon baking powder
• 200-300 g of fruit (tangerine, apple, cherry or plum all work beautifully for this)

Put everything except the fruit into a bowl and mix to a creamy consistency. Place into a suitable casserole or several smaller forms; I split this mix into 3 small oven-safe glass forms. Add the fruit of your choice either on top of the mix, or layer it between two layers of the curd mixture.

Bake for about 15-30 min at c. 170°C (fan oven) depending on your oven and the form(s) you filled it into; it should still be moist on the inside, but golden on the outside.

(If you are wondering about the protein powder substitution - I'm still getting rid of excess weight, and this is a relatively easy way for me to get enough protein per day.)

Happy World Baking Day!

It's Whitsun - and thus a nice long weekend, isn't this nice? Even though the weather forecast doesn't sound so splendid, we're hoping to make the most of the extra day off.

[caption id="attachment_2409" align="alignnone" width="379"] Aquilegia in front of our willow fence. It's fascinating how quickly the willows grow at this time of the year!


 
Weather permitting, we'll be outdoors, enjoying the colourful flowers of this time of year...

[caption id="attachment_2411" align="alignnone" width="372"] This plant is called "Doldenmilchstern" in German - literally translated "umbel milk star". I like the English name better: "Nap-at-noon" (or Star of Betlehem, but I prefer the nap).


 
...as well as some time spent with friends.

Have a nice long weekend, and I'll be back on the blog on Tuesday!

I have a stack of links to throw at you again - but before that, here's proof that our garden knows which month we have:


These are called Maiglöckchen in German - which literally translates to "May Bells". The German language seems to like flower names with a time of year in them - we not only have "Easter Bells" (daffodils) and "May Bells", but also "Whitsun Roses" (peonies).

Cathy from Loose Threads has something else: a list of tutorials. I haven't looked at any of them yet, but they range from medieval things to Victorian, and you might just find something that amuses you - or might prove helpful.

Erik Kwakkel at the medievalbooks blog has a fascinating post about medieval scripts, including a picture of a scribe's advertisement sheet.

Aisling has a list of tablet-woven bands from the Anglo-Saxon and Viking period found in Great Britain and Ireland.

Rainer Schreg has some thoughts about the Vienna Statement about the threat to cultural heritage in the Near East and North Africa. If you want more about that topic and don't mind a gruesome read, check out Heritage for Peace's newsletter about damage to heritage sites in Syria.

To end with a lighter note: There's a new Jane Austen film, "Love and Friendship", coming to theatres tomorrow. It's a screenplay adaptation of "Lady Susan" (a short epistolary novel). Here's an interview with filmmaker Whit Stillman. If you'd like to pass the time until then with more Austen film adaptations, you might want to check out this list.

 
 

I'm back home from the long weekend, and it was a wonderful thing to hang out with this special bunch of friends - as most of us only meet once a year, for just this long weekend. The weather was lovely and sunny, and we managed to get outside to enjoy it, at least a bit... while most of our time was spent indoors, sticking bits of paper to bits of cardboard, with the occasional curse for various reasons (such as one of the bits not being the correct size, not being really true to the angles it should be in, or not sticking where/how it was supposed to be).

Something I find equally fascinating every single time we meet is how the individual preference for things done on that weekend has developed for each of us. We all started out taking the same course on basic hobby book-binding, with the same teacher (in that same youth hostel), some of us a few years earlier, some later - I was one of the last to take the course. So we all started out with the same knowledge, and a similar background. Now everyone has his or her speciality - some like to do books either from scratch or with pre-produced inner parts, some do lots of repair work on books. One of us likes to do a variety of things - boxes, photo albums, booklets, CD covers, with something different every year. One of us usually brings things she binds anew, for better useability, with little regard to how the book or catalogue (much of it are coin catalogues for numismatic purposes) looked originally - useability and practicability are priorities here. On the opposite end of that spectrum, someone else in the group repairs books, taking great care to keep the repairs as unobtrusive as possible, and to conserve as much of the original material as possible.

Me, I've been making at least one folder and at least one box per year for a long time now. I love boxes - they are sturdy, they are beautiful, and if you are making them yourself, you can have them any size and any colour and in any design. This year, I made four boxes in identical size:



I had a huge amount of fun doing these, using bits of paper that I like but did not have a lot of anymore... because, you see, these boxes are ridiculously tiny:

[caption id="attachment_2398" align="alignnone" width="414"] That is a 1-Euro-Cent piece hanging out with the boxes there. They are about 2.4 x 4.8 x 2.4 cm in size. See? Ridiculously tiny.


 
I'm not sure what I will put into these, or whether I will give some of them away. A small USB stick might just fit in one of them, or a small piece of jewellery. They are lovely, however, and I have to giggle whenever I see them, as they are so ridiculously tiny - but still proper boxes, with all the parts that have to be there for it to be a real box. (For the record, it's 7 pieces of cardboard for each of them, as the lid has two parts; plus 8 pieces of paper to stick onto and into the box (or more, depending on how you handle the inner wall coverings). Small boxes do take a little less time than large boxes, and those felt as if they were very quick to make, but they still do take a noticeable amount of time.

Well worth it, though, if you ask me!

There's a long weekend coming up, with a public holiday here on Thursday (Ascension day), and we'll make good use of this. Really good use as in "stretch it into a super-long weekend by sticking a day off to each side of the holiday".

Which means I will not be blogging the rest of this week - I'll be back on Monday. Meanwhile, you can amuse yourself with the Cat's Meow here, a study about the vocalisations that cats use. The project has just kicked off, so there's not too much on the site yet - but it might be really interesting to watch. And while we're at the cat topic, here is a fitting image from discardingimages.

You could also amuse yourself with thinking up questions - it's been a good while since I've done an "ask me anything", and I think it's time for this again. So if there is something you would like to ask me, put it in the comments, and I'll do my best to come up with an answer, and blog about it next week.

Have a nice (maybe also long) weekend!

Glasgow Textile Conservation has a blogpost about the conservation of an 1820s cap. More textile links? Aisling has posted about three different variations of a single pattern (in German, though).

Jstor Daily has a nice post about weird names of food.

In other news, the sun is shining, the cat is napping on the sofa, and I'll be packing stuff into the car now for the trip tomorrow. And finally - here's a gratuitous pic of the madder in the garden, growing nice and tall in the spring sunshine.
It is not alone, this little stalk. In fact, madder has a tendency to take over as much ground as it can - a bit like peppermint plants... only with more red in the roots. This autumn, I really have to harvest some of the madder roots, or there will be no space left for anything else!