I spent yesterday doing research stuff in the library, and today is earmarked for getting things finished - things like getting the fibre sample packs into the shop.

This is how the almost-done stage of that task is looking:



A huge heap of bags, ready to go into even more bags (so I have the sets nicely held together for direct sale) or boxes (if you buy it in the online shop).

In other status news: One of my backup disks in the RAID is failing, so there's IT stuff to be taken care of. I've finished knitting the right front of my Cushing Isle, which means there's currently nothing on the needles until I get to cast on for the first sleeve. (Which will happen, at the latest, on Saturday.) There was rain during the last days, which means I can go on with my wool-washing spree. I'll have two friends visiting, one after the other, during the next week... and a summer break is coming up, and I'm so, so much looking forward to that!

I have bags! Paper bags!

They are white. They are cheap. They are flimsy. They are not very large... and they come in large quantities only.



Those large quantities are subdivided into packs of 100 each, neatly threaded onto a bit of string...

and they are just the right size for wool samples.



Which is exactly what they are going to hold.

Because, you see, I have all those wonderful rare sheep breed fibres, and I have them in packages of 100 grams, which is a nice amount if you want to spin a little or felt a small item, and it's also a good base amount to order multiples of, if you have a slightly larger project. But maybe you don't want to have a full hundred grams but still are curious about the fibres, or you would like to have just a handful of locks for some small projects, or you are not sure which one to take and would like to try a little bit of them all first, or you would love to have a sample of different ones to see (or show others) how very different the wool from various breeds can be.



And now I have the solution for that - sample packs of the fibres I have in the shop, a handful of each, which is enough to get you a taste (or rather a feel) of how the fibre will work and behave.

The actual sample set will have one more bag, but the Walliser Landschaf fleece (another dark one) is not dry yet, so no stuffing in bags of samples of that one at the moment. If the weather holds, though, next week should see these sample packs in the shop - and I plan to do a second set of sample packs with carded fibres, too.

So yay for these white paper bags!

I've been wrapping up the GDPR things in time (which included software updates and some more reading) for the website and the Textile Forum website, worked on the CfP (which you will also get here, tomorrow) washing wool, getting ready for doing the taxes (which means getting the bookkeeping up to scratch first), and marveled at the strong rain falling down the past days. It's as if nature tries to make up for the too-dry first months of the year now!

There's still a good number of things I feel like I'm way, way behind on, but at least some of the urgent stuff is out of the way now and I can move on to things that are on that list now. And, hopefully, make some progress before the next thing comes barrelling in to destroy all my well-made plans.

So. Let's see what the next weeks will bring...

Now that it's warm outside again, and there has been some rain, it's time again to clean some wool... and I'm beyond excited that I managed to get my hands on another rare breed's fleeces: I now have Waldschaf wool!

The Waldschaf, named for its origins in the Bavarian and Bohemian Forest as well as in the forested regions of Austria, is an old breed that goes back to the medieval Zaupelschaf. It has a three-part coat, with long, coarse hair, medium-length and fine underwool and short, bristly kemp. It's an absolutely fascinating fibre, promising to result in very interesting (and sturdy!) yarns, and the first batch of the few fleeces I could get is currently soaking. Once I have the first batch clean and dry, it will go into the shop and add to the rare breeds assortment of fibres that I have. (One of these days I will cave and do sample packs of the rare breeds fibres...)

This, by the way, is regionally sourced wool from a society for the preservation of rare breeds - and this is how the wool got from their place to my workspace:



That was a fun bike ride!

I'm trying to get on top of emails, get some writing done, wrap up stuff for the preparation of the next Textile Forum, cope with the GDPR things for the Forum website, and I need to get started on the tax stuff, too. Holy Bureaucracy, be gentle with me.

So while I am doing all those things, have a gratuitous sheep picture of Valais Blacknose sheep, courtesy of my brother-in-law:

One of the recurring questions about my spindle sticks, especially from modern spinners, is "Why don't they have a hook?" followed by "why don't they have a notch?" and "how do you fix the yarn without hook or notch?"

Finds of medieval spindle sticks are not too common (wood has that tendency to rot, and can be burned, and a spindle stick is not very spectacular so you'd want to carefully preserve it somewhere like you would a wooden altar, for instance) and they are published here and there, so putting together a good collection takes some rootling around. Even with surviving sticks, they are not always complete (the tips are often broken off), and then they may not be published in detail, with a drawing of the tips.

However... it does seem that the plain, un-notched and un-hooked spindle was very, very common, and I personally usually spin with the plain tips and am very comfortable with them.

There are instances of notched spindles in the medieval finds, though, and since I've been asked time and again about notches, I have finally looked through my sources, sharpened my little knife, practised some more... and am now offering optional notch cuts with my spindle sticks.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="900"] Notches! From left to right: plain un-notched tip, horizontal notch, diagonal notch for z-spun yarn, diagonal notch for s-spun yarn.


They are available both in horizontal, where they will very securely keep a half-hitch for either spinning direction, and in diagonal, where they will either keep a half-hitch, or, if the thread is thin enough and you wind it around the spindle in the right way, hold the thread all by themselves. I've tested the diagonal notches, and they usually need a bit of getting used to, but then they work fine. They accommodate a thin thread, and the notch sort of latches onto the thread to hold it securely enough for spinning. It's not as secure as the hitch, though, so the probability of the spindle slipping out and falling down is a bit higher throughout.

When it works, though... it's really, really fun!

Ah, the EU. As much as I love it (the Euro! free choice of where you want to live and work! no border controls when travelling! easy buying and selling of stuff!), sometimes the rules and regulations and bureaucratic bullshitty shenanigans really drive me crazy.

Most recent in this line: the new data protection laws. If you have subscribed to any newsletters, are registered in any forum or something similar, chances are you've already received at least a few emails telling you that privacy guidelines have been updated, or that you will need to confirm again that you want to receive the newsletter. That is due to the regulation coming into force on May 25.

So I, too, have been working on updating my privacy statement on the website (the German one is done, but I still need to do the English one) and making sure that everything is okay according to the new rules. Fortunately, there's very little that needs changing or updating on my site.

It's still a pain in the neck, and it still ate up a good chunk of time. Time that I'd rather have spent on some of my other ongoing projects, but oh, well, Saint Bureaucratius needs his worshipping time, right?

My bitching about this aside - I actually do think that the new rules are a good thing. They do require everyone handling personal data to make very clear what is handled, why, and for what purpose(s). I'm not sure it will actually help against unsolicited mails and newsletters (I have quite a few of those turn up, and I'm pretty sure I never handed them my mail address), but ah, one can hope. And if I've made you curious, you can read more about them here. Or have a youtube explainer video here.