I am somehow still struggling to get the heap on my desk a little smaller. Meanwhile, some new ideas and half-finished projects are queing up in my life. Has anybody got a second pair of hands and a second brain to spare? Or tips on more efficiency? Because I think I am in the trap that I despise most: brain-lag time.

Brain-lag time are those days (or weeks, even) where nothing seems to get finished and I have the feeling that I am only dragging my feet, no matter what. All things take (seemingly) all eternity to do or I imagine that they will be no use after all, so they sit and sit around before getting tackled, and there's a bunch of additional stuff that needs to be done that is stacking up and up and up. And letting all that stacking happen is dangerous, because it might lead to that feeling of being totally overwhelmed and not able to cope with all the situation. I know that just saying "aaargh!" and burying one's head in the sand is no help at all, but sometimes it is tempting. I have learned by now that these brain-lag times are perfectly normal and just occur from time to time, but they still make me very, very nervous - especially since they have an awful sense of timing and occur whenever they are worst. (Or maybe they are always worst because of their nature? Just like there's no good time to fall ill?)

So... if you know this symptom and have any techniques that you use successfully to cope with brain-lag time, I'd be very happy to learn about them!

It really is the same procedure every year: I dread doing my tax-related paperwork; I wait and procrastinate until I am slowly running out of time, always thinking that it wasn't as bad as I dreaded the year before (or the years before, nowadays).

And then, one day almost at the end of the period, I finally sit down with the tax programme and get started. And it really is not as dreadful as I feared, and usually goes rather quickly, and I try not to fuss about the details... and I am done after much shorter time than I feared I would be.

So every year after finishing the taxwork, I think to myself that it wasn't necessary to dread it so much - and that next year, I will just sit down and do it instead of procrastinating for so long... wonder if I'll manage that next year!

I get the feeling that it is finally, finally summer here: My early-summer hayfever has worn off, it is warm enough outside that you can ride a bicycle through town at half past nine wearing a t-shirt and not freeze to death, and I am tremendously enjoying to sit at my desk with the window open and fresh air coming in. (One of the neighbors is refurbishing with the windows open, so there's no glorious quiet to work in - but eh, I've stood on a building site often enough to more or less ignore that.)

Although yesterday was incredibly slow work-wise, my taxes are almost ready to hand in, and I do count that as progress. I have some proofreading for a colleague and friend on my desk too - and I'm actually rather looking forward to it today. So I guess that (and the rest of the taxes) are on the schedule for now...

We spent a most wonderful and deliciously lazy long weekend, and I am a little sorry that it is over already - since the weather is still fine and warm and sunny, just like during the last three days. And it is amazing how much like a holiday it can feel if you are hanging around having breakfast and coffee with friends, sitting out in comfy garden chairs and seeing green all around you.

And for the first time in what seems like ages, I have found the leisure to take up the knitting needles again, starting to work on the "Skew socks" with a delightfully teal-coloured variegated wool.  Unfortunately that sock is not designed to work on feet with a very high instep like I have - so after working the heel on the sock, I found I had to rip back to the beginning of the instep, and I will now try stretching the gussets with extra plain rows and starting them much earlier.

But data doesn't mine itself - and that means back to the computer, and nose back to the grindstone. And today, in addition to data mining, an update to the Textile Forum website is due - so hop over there later today or tomorrow to find the preliminary programme!

I'm back from spending a very instructive and very nice (though also quite exhausting) time in a textile laboratory, measuring the lengths of all the thread samples. For this, I had the use of a thing called "Weife" - a special, very accurate reel with thread guides and a counter, turned with the help of a hand crank. Two full lab days were needed to measure all the thread samples, and I can probably still do the sequence of motions in my sleep: Open small bag, take out thread sample and label, smooth out label, replace empty drinking straw on the "spool-holder" with the sample on its straw, turn crank until counter stands at next full 10 metres, note down the number it stands at (I filled one whole page on a notepad with number after number), search for the spinner questionnaire of that session, double-check that it is the right questionnaire.
Fix end of thread to the reel, start turning the reel (all the while taking care that no snag on the sample spool changes the tension too much or leads to thread breakage). Once the red starter thread turns up, stop cranking on. Temporarily fix the red thread end somewhere to maintain tension and keep everything in place. Read the amount of full metres, then measure the rest down to the last centimetre. Write down amount in metres on both label and spinner questionnaire. Secure the skein with the red starter thread, take down from reel, fold together securely and put back into small plastic ziplock bag together with its label. Place spinner questionnaire on the "done" stack, place finished sample into large ziplock bag. Repeat until all samples of spinner are done, then put stack of questionnaires into large bag too, close bag, put into box, take out next spinner's bag. Start early in the morning and repeat until lab closes.

While this might sound very, very tedious, I actually did still enjoy myself. It would probably have been the most mind-numbing thing ever if that had not been "my" spinning experiment - but as it is, I had a lot of things to discover and marvel about. One of my pastimes was finding out again who had which spinner ID letter - some I did remember at once, and some I needed to read one or two questionnaires. And then, of course, the data! The metres spun! The different thicknesses (though I did not see much of these turning the reel, that blurs up everything). And, most interesting to me, the fact that a spinner complaining about bad, slow spinning in the questionnaire does not at all mean that the thread had to be bad or short - quite on the contrary: Complaints usually meant nothing in regard to thread length. My guess is that a "badly running" spindle will automatically require more concentration and thus a higher output compared to an undemanding one.

Some tidbits of the data: least amount spun was 2,90 metres, maximum length spun was 72,69 metres. Overall, the least amounts were spun on the 15/5 (the spindle from Hell with almost no moment of inertia) and on 52/41 (the thick cylinder whorl with a very high weight compared to its moment of inertia). However, this does not mean that these spindles were not also used productively by some spinners - 60,00 metres and 66,98 metres were also done on those two (by th same spinner, by the way).

Spinner output is influenced by the spindles used, but not in a similar pattern over all spinners, and with the more experienced spinners, there is not as much variation as you might expect given the very, very weird "spindles" used in the experiment. And thread thickness ranges are another very interesting thing: Some spinners seem to have a "thin range" and a "thick range" with a distinct gap between those two.

These are just the very first results, and I hope to get some (or even much) more out of that. There are lots of possibilities now to look at all the variables - which means doing all sorts of different sortings and of course different graphs to see if something can be seen.

It's all very, very very very interesting. I'll be off to play with yummy data some more now...

Today is a holiday here (which I totally forgot to mention yesterday), and though I am blogging today, it is only to take this day off - and the next few days as well: The most patient man of them all has taken tomorrow off, making it what we call a "Brückentag" (literally: bridge day) to extend a holiday on Thursday into a four-day weekend*. Since I'll be working on Saturday at the "Long Night of Museums" in Dinkelsbühl, I'm taking today and tomorrow as my weekend.

And in addition to tomorrow, there will also be no blogging as usual during the next week, since I am off to make the thread analysis for the spinning experiment. I don't know yet how long this analysis will take, so expect me back when you read me, and meanwhile, have a wonderful time!


* I am totally amazed that this seems to be unknown in the US, according to Wikipedia. Whoa, no Brückentage? Oh horror!

Each year in late spring/early summer, the time to eat rhubarb has finally come. I'm always looking forward to this time of year - I love rhubarb, especially as part of a cake with lots of other good stuff in it.
Since this wonderful "vegetable" is only in season until the middle of June, I am a little late for starting off the season - but then the early spring weather around here has not exactly been promoting lots of growth, and this shows.

So yesterday was partly set aside for eating rhubarb cake (with Streusel, of course) and for having a tiny celebration of the book and its first success moments - at the Uni where I wrote most of the thesis. And I'm having only a very moderate bad conscience about that, since a celebration and some thank-you cake for the people there were clearly very much in order, and I only have some very few photos of the experiment samples left to do anyways... which is what I will be doing now. To my very great relief, all the samples are in wonderful condition, nothing untoward has happened (no unexplainable falling out of their bags and mixing up samples and tags, no disappearing of things, no stealth moth invasion through several layers of plastic - yes, I did have weird nightmares about things like that) and thus I am very much looking forward to the analysis. I will be allowed to do the length measurements by myself, and after that we will have to look how much else I can do or if there are things that need to be done by professionals, and work out some good solution. All very exciting!