I gathered yesterday that launching the call for papers for the Textile Forum shortly before Xmas season may have led to this going under - with all the other seasonal things to take care of and the end-of-year frenzy of work.

So here it is, again:
We will be having the next European Textile Forum in Mayen, Germany, with the kind support of the RGZM. Our focus topic will be "Metal in Textile Crafts", which we think is a very exciting and very interesting - and also very broad - topic, covering everything from the conservation processes of archaeological textiles by metallising via the use of metals in the embellishment of textiles or the use of metals in the mordanting and dyeing process to the manufacture, importance and use of metal in textile tools.
The Forum will take place September 10 to 16 in the brand-new Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology and will include the usual evening lectures, one extra lecture day, an archaeological experiment to find out about the possible influence of the lead dye pots from Pompeji dye workshops on the resulting colours, and of course plenty of time to work on projects and exchange knowledge, tips and tricks or complain about problems to colleagues. The full conference fee of 300 Euro covers full board and lodging in simple dorm rooms (lodging is of limited availability).

If you are interested, you can find out more via our website www.textileforum.org - there you can also register for the Forum. And if you are not interested, but know someone who might be - please spread the word!

We have finally wrapped up all the prelim discussions and clarifications, and now the Textile Forum homepage is updated.

As previously hinted and announced, the Forum 2012 will be held at the brand-new Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology, a new research facility of the RGZM. Our focus topic will be "Metals in Textile Crafts", and we are looking forward to an exciting time with this very wide and fascinating topic. You find the Call for Papers and more info about registration here.

As of now, you can also register for the event, which will take place September 10-16, via our registration page. And please spread the word about the Forum!

Or is it only three? Anyways, here's the news on three things I'm working on:

The Textile Forum. We are in the process of wrapping up the planning stage, and I'm already working on the update of the web pages so we can go live. And yes, that includes the call for papers, which will officially be sent out when the website is updated, and a brandnew registration form. Said form or rather its making and adapting, by the way, ate a good chunk out of my workday yesterday. Because I do basically not know how to do php stuff.

Connected with the Textile Forum, I have also finally changed my newsletter-sending software arrangement, which will hopefully end the weird formatting that newsletter recipients have had to endure the last few times. If you wish to subscribe to the Textile Forum Newsletter to receive announcements and the call for papers (and that's about all that is going over the list, so you won't be inundated at all), you can do so via this form.

And also connected with the Textile Forum, and the famous 2009 spinning experiment, I have further developed the method of how to measure thread thickness variations. The good news: Yes, it works, and will so very well. The bad news: I have to do some filter-testing and script-writing and macro-wrangling to really make it work, and my programming fu is about as nonexistent as my fu in all the other things that I actually don't really know stuff about but try to fumble my way through them anyways. (In German, I would call it "herumeiern", which is more or less wobbling around somewhere and not getting to the point, or traipsing around more-or-less-aimlessly. Just like an egg does when you roll it. And I love that word.)

At least it's Friday! So once my brain is in shambles due to too much pressure on the logic circuits, I will have all weekend to relax and recuperate.

Things are still busy here, and a good bit of that is due to a bit of additional research I'm doing on the Spinning Experiment data. And totally related to this, we have figured out most of the things we needed to figure out for the next Textile Forum, and I will be working to update the website during one of the next days, and writing the call for papers for the Forum.

If you are already thinking about it: We will be in Mayen, Germany, from September 10 to September 16, and the focus topic will be "Metal in Textile Crafts". Stay tuned to learn more about it soon!

For those of you who are waiting for news regarding the next Textile Forum, here's some good ones.

We are planning for the Forum to take place in Mayen, Germany, in the brand new Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology, from September 10 to September 16 2012. We also have a focus topic for the conference, which will be "Metal in Textile Crafts".





This is a wide topic that can include anything from metal tools necessary over the use of metal embellishments like threads or rings to the use of metal salts in dyeing processes and the role of metal corrosion in the preservation of archaeological textiles - so a huge range of techniques and materials that is covered by the focus topic. In addition to that, we do welcome other topics too (as usual).

We have not figured out all the organisitorial details, but we are planning to have the usual full board and possibility to sleep on site. If you would like to present a poster or paper at the Forum, or give a demonstration or workshop, please contact us at info(at)textileforum.org, sending your name, address, and proposed title of your presentation/demo/workshop. This would help us a lot in the rest of our planning - and of course you are welcome to spread the word about the Forum!

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!

First of all, our apologies to everybody who tried to register for the Textile Forum since the 8th of June - we had a server malfunction that I only discovered yesterday evening. If you have sent or tried to send a registration after the 8th,  please send me an e-mail to katrin(at)textileforum.org, and we will take it from there. To make up for the server problem, we have extended te deadline to the 19th (that's Sunday this week). We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience.

And now some plugging of a conference with a much better webpage - there's a small group in the Czech Republic who are doing a historic-clothes-centered conference on the  19th
November 2011 in Hradec Králové. The programme is mostly in Czech, with two papers announced in English, and the main aim of the group (mostly not scientists from the textile field) is knowledge exchange. (Now doesn't that sound familiar?) I'd love to go, but unfortunately my Czech language skills will barely get me a cup of tea and dumplings after saying "Good day", so I'm afraid I will have to pass.

For those of you interested in joining the seminar, their webpage sports a registration form. And for those of you not interested, but with a minute or two to spare - go there anyway and have a look at the website. You don't need to be able to understand a single word of Czech - just click through the six menu points and enjoy the most beautifully made conference website that I have ever seen.