Call for Papers: European Textile Forum 2018 - Aspects of Weaving and Braiding.

The European Textile Forum 2018 will take place from November 5 to November 11, at the Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology in Mayen, Germany. The Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology is the experimental archaeology research center of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum (RGZM).

Our focus topic this year will be "Aspects of Weaving and Braiding - tools, techniques, processes, finishes".

Woven cloth is the basis for most clothes and furnishings, and woven fabrics come in an incredible amount of variations. From the simplest plain weave done on a few sticks with strings to the most complex patterned fabrics with several warps and wefts done on an elaborate loom, weaving itself and the tools and processes used is also a wide and complex topic. Braiding, just like weaving, can take on different forms and range from very simple over-one-under-one structures to complex patterned and multi-person braids; braiding tools can be just the hands or massive braiding stands. On some occasions, weaving and braiding can even be combined, such as in tablet weaves when tablets swap places, or in twined weaves.

For this year's Forum, we invite you to join us and discuss weaving, braiding, and their many aspects. Whether you would like to talk about different loom types and their usage, how complex patterns were derived, passed on, and woven or braided in historical times, how different materials will influence a weave, how to reconstruct possible braiding techniques for a given piece, or the difficulties of replicating a given fabric - all aspects and angles are welcome.

We invite you to submit your proposal for a lecture or presentation (about 20-50 minutes), followed by a discussion and, if possible, also followed by a practical session regarding the textile techniques or problems presented in the lectures. This combination of theoretical background and practice has proven very fruitful in the previous years and might include practical instructions in pattern drafting, exploration of "primitive" weaving tools, or tests for finishing fabrics. The practical part can be in form of a workshop, a demonstration, or something like a "hands-on round table". If you have a question that might be solved by several pairs of hands and several minds working on it together, this is the perfect venue for it.

If you have trouble bringing tools or materials for your presentation, please get in touch, and we will try our best to make things possible. We have working spaces both outside (weather permitting), in the lecture hall and in the workshops, so if you are planning on bringing larger tools, we will find space to work with them.

As always, while papers or posters about our focus topic are especially welcome, if you have another topic outside this focus that you would like to present, please do submit your proposal. The same applies if you would like to offer a poster presentation or a workshop/demonstration only.

We also have the opportunity to use the laboratory facilities for archaeological experiments. If you have an experiment you would like to run, please let us know about this. The LEA facilities, the duration of the conference and the expertise and support of the other conference participants have proven to be a wonderful basis for experiments.

For any questions, feel free to contact us directly via Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein..

With this Call for Papers, registration for the Textile Forum 2018 is now also open. Please be advised that there are very limited accommodation possibilities at the site. Due to the space available at the Experimental Archaeology Lab, we can accommodate about a dozen to fourteen participants on site only, and the conference will accommodate only a few more participants than that altogether. Due to these restrictions, we may have to consider registrations with a presentation before those without.

The RGZM is graciously supporting the European Textile Forum by granting us use of the simple, mixed on-site dorms. If you prefer a room in a hotel or pension, you can of course book your own accommodation in Mayen; some more information can be found on the Travel and Accommodation page.
Full board consists of breakfast, lunch and dinner; water to drink as well as tea and coffee will be available at all times. All meals will be served in the Laboratory. The conference fee, including full board and the option to sleep in the on-site dorm, is 325 Euro per person.

You can register for the Forum with or without a poster or paper presentation, using this registration form. Please submit your current area of research or interest as well as the title and abstract of your presentation, if applicable. If you would like to give a paper longer than 50 minutes, please let us know about that and we will try to make it possible. The Call for Papers is open until July 20.

Please feel free to pass this CfP on to others who you think might be interested!

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...

I didn't realise the tandem would be such an interesting thing, and get several comments right away! It is such a normal piece of life for us, and has been for years, that I don't think twice about it anymore. And yes, hauling stuff is very easily done with this contraption (but transporting wool was not the main reason we got it).

Back in about 2004/2005, the Most Patient Husband and I realised we would both like to go on bike holidays together, but our performance on bikes was, how shall I put it: slightly dissimilar. Slightly as in that famous race between the hare and the hedgehog, only without the hedgehog trick. (I was the hedgehog, by the way. Still am.) So the obvious solution was trying out a tandem, and we started right away to look for one with good luggage capacity to get holiday equipment onto the bike without having to add a trailer (which is the usual solution for tandem vacations).

We stumbled across a slightly unusual bike that way - the Hase Pino. Which was a semi-recumbent, and we'd never had contact with 'bents before, so it was all very weird and new. On this, you have the usual luggage rack that will fit three bags (two panniers and a topcase), plus an optional lowrider underneath that will fit another two large and two small panniers. Which sets you back a bit compared to two single bikes, but not so much.

So we went to our local bike dealer for special bikes, ZoxBikes - and he did have one of the tandems... so off we were for a test ride. The first metres were very weird, and the first corners doubly so, as the stoker (the one not handling the steering stuff) sits on top of the front wheel. Which means the captain (the one who does handle the steering stuff) has to guess where the wheel is, and the stoker has the feeling of going straight into a wall or the abyss that you can get when you sit in a bus right in front.

A little test round an a slightly larger test round later, we went home... and we got our tandem in October 2005.



It's a relatively pricey bike (you pay extra for exotics), it does have quite a few flaws (there are some technical details that are, well... questionable), but we haven't regretted our decision for a single second. We've gone on tours long and short, we've hauled all kinds of stuff with it, we've spent wonderful vacations in Spain and (most often) in England with this thing. We also use it as our main daily means of transport when we go somewhere together, year round - on spike tires in winter for safe riding.

So. That's the tandem story - or at least the first part of it. If you have questions, ask away in the comments, and I'll write more!

I've finally finished the five-toe socks! They still need to have the last ends darned in, but since it is currently too warm to wear them anyway, I'm not exactly in a hurry.



And of course I cast on for something else right away - Cushing Isle, with yarn that I bought some years ago, in a wonderful blue-greyish colour.



It knits up nicely, to a soft, and - for my standards - relatively loose fabric. I'm already done with the waist decreases for the back part of the cardi, and looking forward to the next part of the shaping... increases. Soon.

I like to drag my knitting along with me (who doesn't?), and my knitting bag contains, apart from the current yarn, needles, and stitches on the needles, a few extra things. These are, mainly, a crochet hook (just in case something needs catching), a little bit of emergency chocolate (because you never know), a needle gauge (because I never know), a row counter ring and, of course, stitch markers and darning needles. The latter just in case I finish a project unexpectedly quickly...

I used to keep the latter two in a tiny ziplock bag, until very recently, when the little bag refused to keep them in any longer, due to a split side seam. So it was clear I need something to replace it. Something sturdier. Something slightly larger (one of the darning needles was almost too large for the bag). And, preferably, something prettier.

So I had a little rootle and found things. Such as a zipper leftover from buying notions for another project (I decided on using a different one). A leftover bit of linen with 26 threads per centimetre, which makes it dense enough to securely hold small things. And to top it all off, a wonderful piece of patterned silk fabric that Gillian sent me in a little package a while ago... which, colour-wise, went nicely with the green zipper.

So what remained but putting them all together?

I started off with drawing out a pattern, and cutting it from both the linen and the silk.



The silk was just large enough for what I had in mind - lucky coincidence!

I tried to sew both layers together at first, but quickly found that this would not work - so it was the linen layer as the first step, and then the silk cover to go over that base.



I fixed the zipper to the straight edge of the linen first, then bent it around and sewed the curved top together. Nipping the linen made it much easier to get this done.



It still remained a very fiddly process!

After the linen inner part was done, I only had to cover it with the silk. Again, I did the straight line along the zipper first, then the rest.



And then... it was done, and ready to be filled.



It's small, yet roomy enough for all my stitch markers and darning needles, with space to spare for more. I'll probably add two tiny loops of silk fabric to the ends of the zipper for easier opening and closing, but altogether, I'm already very pleased with it!

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 recently stumbled across a site called The Public Medievalist, and if you are looking for some interesting medievalism-related stuff to read about, this might be just the site for you.

The first article I came across is about an incident in the SCA, where the Snartemo band caused some uproar due to its Swastika patterns. We had a very interesting paper and discussion about just this topic - the motif and the problems showing it may cause today - at the last Textile Forum, so it was a very interesting piece for me.

But there's a lot more to read on the site, and if you are interested in the topics of race and the Middle Ages, the currently running Special Series is just the thing. There's even an article about a medieval story possibly being the basis for a scene in The Last Jedi...