I'm off to the EAA conference in Belfast! Which means that a) today has been a whirlwind of getting things sorted out so everything is ready for me to leave, and b) I will be off the blog for a while.

However, to keep you amused while I am gone, you can check out the brand-new publication now available as pdf about "Fashioning the Viking Age". That was a research project that included reconstructions of Viking Age textile tools and Viking Age garments - and the first two volumes are finished and downloadable for free on the project's web pages. 

And with this, I'm off to conferencey adventures, followed by some family stuff - so I will be back on the blog on September 12.

Belfast and the EAA are drawing nearer and nearer - so I'm packing and preparing. There was a bit more spinning of membrane thread today, to have a little more of a sample to show around at the conference, and some more packing and writing of lists and so on. 

 I've also done a little more other spinning - cotton this time, trying to reproduce a cotton yarn used in some non-European fabrics. It was very nice to return to cotton spinning (which I have not done very often), and a bit of a challenge to hit the right thickness (hint: it was not very thick) with the high twist required. It definitely is a rather slow process. Now the thread will go to my colleague, who will take a look at it and see if that would match her requirements, and then we'll see.

There was also some Textile Forum planning stuff (the preliminary programme has been updated, and you can find it here). I'm already very excited about all the workshops, we will be exploring so many aspects of the colour red.

And now it's time to wrap up the day, get some more packing done, and update the lists of things that have to be done before I leave for Northern Ireland. The presentation is already finished and only needs another practise run or two, the materials to show are prepared, and hopefully there will soon be a login for the conference app so that planning which session to attend where will be a little easier... because that, of course, is a challenge with about 40 sessions running in parallel, and a lot of interesting topics to choose from!

To our great delight, Jessica Grimm, fellow archaeologist and professional embroideress, has agreed to do some testing of the membrane silver threads we made. 

(Jessica also teaches embroidery, both in-person and online. Do check out her page if you're interested!

And... we got first results! One of the sample batches was, as expected, not holding up too well, but shed some silver. (I think we messed up with that membrane, as there was glue on it....) Another one also shed some silver - that was a sample silvered with no glue at all. The others all held up rather well, and the test also showed that these threads are much more supple than if they were done with solid metal strips. (Also not entirely unexpected, but then you never know...)

That is a very nice result to get before the conference in Belfast. Now I'll have to think about how to shoehorn in one more sentence without going over time!

Summer break is over - and with the weather in the last few days, it almost seems as if summer itself were over, too. We were lucky to have nice weather for our little holiday trip, though, when we went paddling down the Moselle river, with lots of vinyards to look at.

There were quite a lot of boats and ships on the river - freighters, river cruise ships, small sport motorboats, plus the medium-sized day-trip-cruise ships. Almost no paddlers, though. We had a very nice time and went home right before the weather turned bad (there was the forecast of thunderstorms and strong winds, both not really suited to canoeing). 

Now it's back to work, catching up on the things that have accumulated while I was on the break, and preparing for the upcoming exciting things, such as the EAA conference in Belfast (I have to finalise my presentation for this) and, of course, the European Textile Forum in November. So it's motivational hot drinks today (which, with the hard drop in temperatures, are quite welcome not only due to their motivational properties, but also due to their warmth) and, of course, getting started on sending out the orders that came in during the last weeks...

Summer break is almost upon me, and for a change, I am not frantically doing a hundred thousand things that have to be finished before the break - there's only one thing with a deadline left to take care of, but it's not a huge task, and two that should be taken care of but where it's not crucial to do it before the break, and otherwise I'm more or less set. Which is a nice change to some other years where I was really getting a bit of extra stress before the break... so it feels a bit like I'm winding down now, and that is very pleasant.

Which, mind you, does not mean there's not a lot that could be done. It's just that nothing will explode if I don't manage to do it before - and a lot of the other things are stuff on the "when I finally get around to it" that have been on said list for way longer than I'd like them to be anyways, so they are well used to waiting, and nothing bad will happen if they don't. But, after enough years of doing this job, I have come to realise that there are always things that would be so nice to do, or to have, or to start, or to make... and then there's something that does not line up, or stuff happens, and it's plainly not possible to do all the things one has ideas or plans for. Which is kind of sad, if you look at it one way, but on the other hand... imagine you only have so few ideas and plans and find so few things exciting or interesting that you get around to doing all of them? That would be a totally different, but at least as sad situation.

And to give you a picture, because they are nice, here's a complete non-sequitur that is not sad at all: 

This  is another case of a project that has eaten more time than initially planned - but oh, it has also delivered. I don't regret a single minute invested in the membrane gold thread project, as it brought me a lot of new knowledge, some new skills, a good amount of new contacts and pleasant time spent working together with wonderful people. 

And the result, as of now, is a method that would be absolutely workable for production. Plus some beautiful thread as the outcome - even though my skills in wrapping the membrane around the core are still not where they could be, it's gotten much better. There will be the EAA conference in Belfast at the end of August, where I'll do a little presentation about the project, and I am planning to do a bit more silver spinning before that. Overall, though - very, very content with the current state of things.

Today was set aside to finally deal with the yearly tax paperwork... and hooray, it's almost done. A few last checks to make sure nothing stupid has happened (like last year, when I managed to put a large number in the wrong field, messing up about... everything) and then it can go off, so that part of the yearly Bureaucracy Worship is done and dusted. 

Which also means that I'll be able to go back to all the other (nicer, and more interesting) jobs to do tomorrow. One of the other things I did today was harvesting the last of the woad seeds outside - after snapping a picture first:

I really like how they look, those seeds. They are somewhere between purple, black, and brown in colour, and they can even be slightly iridescent. The flowers are nice, but rather small and yellow, and the leaf rosette is pretty, but to me, the seeds are the most spectacular aspect of the woad plant. 

The only reason I don't leave them on the plant until they fall off is, obviously, the shop - because if you want to sell the seeds, you have to harvest them... and now this year's crop is available.  

If you're following me on Instagram, you might have seen photos of my Trusty Red Suitcase - one of my premium travel companions. (Technically, it's probably an item, but it is a) so important and b) so large that it counts as a companion. At least I think so.) 

We bought this suitcase about 6 years ago, and it has been my go-to luggage hauler for a good number of work trips by train and, occasionally, even by plane. It is large, and lightweight, and it came with four little wheels and when you gave it a push, it went "wheeeee" all through the room until it hit some wall somewhere.

That went for a while, and then somehow, it didn't go "wheeeeee" anymore. Quite to the contrary - it became rather hard to push or pull. Some closer examination quickly showed the reason: The plain bearings of the wheels had given up. They'd been made from plastic, and three of them had worn out, and the fourth had, at some place, gotten so warm through friction that it had half molten (so the wheel still hung in there, but quite lopsidedly). 

Quite clearly, the makers of these wheels had not intended them to run for several kilometers through city streets and train stations, bearing a suitcase with a weight of about 30 kg (which is the maximum of what I can still handle, and which also ends up being the total weight more often than not). Probably most buyers of that kind of suitcase don't go "oh, well, I have time enough, the weather is nice, I've just spent 5 hours sitting on a train, and it's just three kilometers to the hotel, I think I'll walk." (Which is how the little suitcase has racked up the kilometers.)

So... also quite clearly, something needed to be done. Wheels made for heavy duty were bought, with proper ball bearings, and got installed by the Most Patient Husband of All Time (whose patience did get tested, as the modifications necessary were quite a few). And then, lo and behold! the suitcase went "wheeeeeeee!" again when pushed. (So much that at some point it got little stopper wedges to secure it on the train.)

But now, on the way back home from the trip to Berlin... it lost one of its wheels. 

Apparently, not only the wheels in their original version were not intended to go for long rolls... there's also a limit to what the anchoring of said wheels would take. And, quite clearly now, that limit did not include hopping the suitcase up and down curbs while weighing, ah well, you know. (There's a technique to really easily get the suitcase to hop on a curb, provided that is not too high, but it's probably not the most, erm, gentle on the wheels. As you approach the curb, you give the suitcase an impulse by pulling on the handle so that the front wheels come up into the air, and then once they come down again and hit the ground on top of the curb, you do the same in reverse to lift up the back wheels. Works fabulously.)

I went back to search for the wheel that had gone AWOL, but couldn't find it again, and did not want to cut it too close with my train, so with a heavy heart, I abandoned it in Berlin Main Train station, somewhere on the way to platform 1 in the basement. 

Its companion on the same side of the suitcase also wobbles a little... which means there will be some more Frankensteining of my little-not-so-little red travel companion soon. We're considering the installation of some metal plates to make it a bit more sturdy. And then I'll be looking forward to many more years strolling through train stations, and faraway cities, with it!