It's hot outside, the Internet is in the summer slump, and it is time for me to take some time off for a summer break. This first half of the year has been full of wonderful and exciting things and events - running a fair booth with Margit at the Nadelwelt, demonstrating textile techniques in museums and at Living History events, working on new things for the shop - and the second half of the year promises to be just as exciting and eventful... and just as demanding.


So I'll be taking time off to take a breather, spend time with friends and family, and recharge my batteries. (And probably sleep an insane amount in the first few days.) I'll be off the shop and the blog for the rest of this month - and will return, hopefully with lots of lovely stories to tell, on August 1.

Have a wonderful summer break, if you are taking one - and see you again in August!

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.

There's good news and bad news today - let me start with the bad:

I will not be at the Hochmittelaltertreffen Jerichow. I'm very sorry that I had to cancel on such short notice, and I hope all of you going there will have a wonderful time - in fact, such a wonderful time that the event will be repeated in the future, and I will be able to take part and offer workshops there next year. (If you would like to go to the event, it is still possible to register for it; contact data is on the website.)

The good news?


The Middle Ages Unlocked, the book about England in medieval times that I wrote together with Gillian Polack, is coming out as paperback version on August 15! Gillian and I are both thrilled about this, and we're looking forward to holding the paperback version in our hands this summer. If you prefer hardback, that is still available, of course - as well as the ebook version.

Yay!

There's lots going to happen during the next three months - a bit of holidays, three larger events where I have to pack the market stall, and workshops. Afterwards, there's a bit of academic stuff coming up, followed by even more of the same, and then there's the Textile Forum in November... so I've been planning when to take care of what.

The plan is a good one. Unfortunately, I guess it will not hold up for very long, as plans tend to do. Especially when individual things on the plan tend to take more time than allocated to them...

... like my visit to the Rouge de Roussillon sheep today, where I was able to stock up on freshly shorn wool to replenish my stock. The sheep were lovely, and hanging out with the sheep and their caretaker was a lot of fun.


So... I'm a little behind in today's schedule. If I look at the rest of the sheep portraits, though? Totally worth it.

There's planning going on here - planning where your input would be more than welcome...

I've been discussing, with one of the organisers, the workshops at the Hochmittelaltertreffen Jerichow. I will definitely offer my spinning workshop and teach spinning with distaff and spindle, but there is ample room for more than one workshop during the week-and-a-bit that I will be there.

However, it's always hard to guess what people would like to see, or learn. I was thinking about a tablet-weaving class to teach brocading, or one that teaches the broken twill technique for tablet weave, but there's so many other options too... embroidery (including gold embroidery), loopbraiding, theoretically also netting (but only theoretically, since I don't have enough netting needles at the moment, and will probably not get more in time), ...

If you could have your perfect workshop - what would you like to learn? Or what would be your expectations? Please let me know in the comments, that would be really helpful for me. (And if you are going to the event, do tell me, too!)

I am (still) surrounded by stacks of things - things to pack, things to get ready, things to sort and things to do. Tomorrow afternoon is set-up time for the Nadelwelt, where Margit and I will be selling our things Friday to Sunday, so it's high time for me to get all the things done.

Meanwhile, here are some links for you...

VAT Moss (or VAT Mess) had a consultation (something like a public questionnaire) last year, and they have closed it now and are (hopefully) taking all the criticism from small traders into account. Here's a little bit of info about it, along with links to the raw data and some more articles.

The Glasgow Textile Conservation blog has an article about storage boxes for textiles.

Doug's Archaeology features a number of conference videos about archaeological mapping.

And speaking of maps, XKCD has a flowchart on dating an undated map.

That's it for today. I'll be off to the fair tomorrow, and I'll be taking off a few days afterwards to make up for the last two weekends, so I'll be back here and posting stuff on Thursday.

And if you're near Karlsruhe - drop by at the Nadelwelt fair and see me at stall F2.3!

I'm back from the weekend at the Adventon, and it was really, really nice. The Adventon settlement is a work in progress, with a lot of building activities going on (not this last weekend, though, when all the settlers were busy with the craft fair). It was nice to see the partly-finished houses, with the wattle for wattle-and-daub walls already installed and waiting, the place where wood shingles are made for the roofs, and many more things. (I have no pics, unfortunately - I left the camera at home...)

The Adventon is also home to a variety of animals, from cattle to a few different breeds of sheep and breeds of chicken. Two of the sheep, called Othello (who is a black sheep) and his lady Luise (white) wandered past my spot quite often, always on the lookout for interesting things to nibble, open doors to houses (Othello loves to go inside) or open chests to stick his nose in. A flock of chickens also came by several times - especially one of the chicks came and stayed forever right across the road from me, as there was food preparation going on, and she (correctly) assumed that a chicken who is not shy at all might wheedle some food out of the humans.

It was very nice to have this experience of domesticated animals and humans sharing the place, and naturally you'd throw leftover bits from food preparation to the chicks (as you do when you have chickens, and would have done in the Middle Ages). I was not so thrilled with some other animals who shared the spot with me, though... as I had ants in my tent.

I don't mind ants so much (except the really aggressive ones that my parents have in their garden, as they will bite you if you sit on their lanes), but it felt as if I had not just an ant trail through my tent, but more like at least three ant motorway junctions, so many were there. They were in my food and tableware chest (I was really glad that I had stuck my food into airtight boxes instead of just putting it into the chest and a basket, like I usually do), they were on my bench, and they were in my bed. The latter is the reason I was really, really, REALLY glad they were not agressive. They were also not active while it was dark, so most of the night went fine... and the only real issue I had with the critters was when early in the morning of Saturday, one single ant decided to venture boldly where no ant had gone before.

Into my right ear.

I woke from a tickling in my ear, and, half-asleep, reflexively stuck my finger in. Whether that pushed the ant further in, or whether it was already on its way to venture deeper, we will never know - but in any case, the ant was in so deep I couldn't get it out with my pinkie finger.

Only... the ant also couldn't get out anymore. In case you ever wondered what ear wax is for, apart from annoying you when it builds up and you need to clean your ears? It kills ants. Or, I presume, other small insects that end up in your ear. It was not a nice experience, though. I alternated between feeling sad for the poor ant who struggled and was doomed to die sooner or later and thinking "die already, stupid ant, I want to go back to sleep" - which I couldn't while the ant struggled. Ear wax, you see, is not only sticky and gooey, and protects your delicate inner ear from the wandering insect of choice, it also transfers vibrations to aforementioned delicate inner ear. Which means you can really hear the movements of the insect... loudly.

About an hour later, I could sleep again. (Good thing I had turned in indecently early, a luxury I love to have when I'm on events like this all on my own.) The ant, thanks to the mysterious workings of aural peristaltics, left my ear (with a little help from my finger) at some time in the afternoon. Dead, obviously.

Fortunately, there was no other ant incident in the next night.

There were lots of interesting chats with visitors and Adventon folks alike, and I even got to pack up a dry tent in the evening on Sunday, as there was rain and storm all around in the region, except in the park and its immediate surroundings, where we got to enjoy wonderful summer weather. (Unfortunately, the bad weather in the larger area meant that rather few people came to the craft fair, fearing the rain...) So it was a wonderful weekend - and now I get a little time off for coffee with a friend before I have to prepare for the next weekend: the Nadelwelt fair.