My bags are packed, tickets are bought and printed out and sit where I will not accidentally leave them, I have pens and paper and something to read and something to knit, and - the most important thing - my paper is done and polished and hopefully I will manage not to talk about too many extra things on the spur of the moment and in all the excitement and run over time. (It's amazing, by the way, how much prep time a 20 minute presentation can take. I think it's about the same amount of time as a one hour presentation, as you need to compress so much into so small a timeframe that every slide needs to be polished and scrutinised and polished again. And then sometimes cut after all...)

On Monday, it's off to NESAT, and I can't even begin to describe how excited I am. It's so nice to get together with so many other textile archaeologists, meeting again and chatting and catching up and learning oh so many new things. With one of these glorious conferences only every three years, there's also quite a lot to catch up on, and it's always a rather long wait for the next one.

So I'll be spending the next week in nerd heaven, and for me, the conference will even start earlier, as I'll be travelling together with three more colleagues going there. Hooray!

For you, though, this means no blog posts during next week - I'll be back blogging the Monday after, though. See you then!