If you happen to be in the Netherlands, you might be interested in going to see the exhibition in the Rijksmuseum that this video advertises. Especially if you are familiar with this painting:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="737"] Rembrandt's The Nightwatch.


If you do not happen to be in the Netherlands, you want to watch the video anyway. Trust me. It is a good minute of your life very, very well spent.

I've had a beyond wonderful time up in Scandinavia - but I can't tell you anything specific about the details of the project part at this time, as the team wants to have good, solid results from their tests before anything gets written about it on the internet. So for now, you're stuck with the abstract available on the CTR website... and the short video there. The team, by the way, was a group of utterly wonderful people, and it was pure pleasure to work together with them.

What I can tell you, too, is that learned a few interesting things about my spinning - for instance, that I move very little apart from what is necessary, and that I can actually spin decent yarn with a very small, very light spindle. The moment this small spindle clicked for me was a total delight, and I spent the rest of the day, and a good bit of the next one, marvelling about how workable it was. Mind you - I don't think I will become best friends with tiny spindles now, but we will be able to develop a good working relationship. Plus it made me reconsider park-and-draft as a production technique, something I had only seen as a method to use while learning and before progressing to "proper" spinning.

I've also learned that Swedish cinnamon rolls are the originals, with a different dough than the Danish ones; that the Danes are utterly incredibly good at making marshmallow puffs; that Scandinavia is so much more of paying with card and not cash than Germany; that both Copenhagen and Lund are very bicycle-friendly; that public transport there is, compared to Germany, quite affordable and very good; that there is a really nice bouldering gym in Copenhagen; and that bringing a tiny immersion heater and a few bags of tea along with my trusty thermos mug (that travels with me about anywhere) makes a huge difference to my comfort levels in the evenings, sitting on my own in a hotel room somewhere.

Now that the current sweater is finished and I'm travelling a bit as well, I obviously needed a new project, something nice and small to take along with me...

...and it didn't take me long to find one: I'm making toe socks.

A bit of background for that? Here you go.
I love walking with bare feet, and I rarely wear shoes or socks at home when it is warm enough to go without. In autumn and winter, though, it's not so nice to have free but cold feet, so I walk in socks without shoes most of the time. I also have a very slight tendency to develop a bunion, as some orthopedic guy told me years ago, so I try to walk shoe- and sock-free as much as possible and consciously spread out my toes, countering that tendency.

Most socks still tend to slightly mash the toes together, and they don't grant the full freedom of toe movement that you have barefoot. The solution? Toe socks. These are a funny-looking thing, and they are a little weird to wear at first, but I like the toe-spreading freedom they grant. Except... I only have one pair up to now, and that was given to me by a friend who knit these socks for herself, then found out they don't fit her at all. They do fit me better than her, but the little toe is a total mis-construction, as it is too small and the start of the toe sits way too far at the front of the foot. Basically, that sock construction starts all the toes on one straight line. That works with fingers for gloves, but toes are much shorter, and they do start along a curved shape on the foot, so starting them on one line will not work properly with foot anatomy.

Fortunately, someone else has already thought deeply about it and came up with a really smart pattern for toe socks, where you start in the middle of the foot, knit towards the toes, then pick up stitches and knit the rest of your sock toe-up. Here's the pattern on Ravelry, called Funky Five-Toe Socks.



It's a little fiddly (I use thin yarn and 1.5 mm needles), it involves a generous amount of hedgehog wrestling, the yarn has lovely colours, and I'm having a bunch of fun with it.

I have packed spindles and distaffs, comfy clothing and shoes, stuff to read on the train, something to knit and a busload of excitement - I'm off to Denmark and Sweden for the MoCap project!

There will be no blogging while I do my spinning shenanigans; I'll be back here next Monday, hopefully already with exciting news on how it went!

Here's not one, but two links on fun language stuff - the first one shows how very clear German is, in five tweets.

The second one is a list of old words that described certain specific things, but have fallen out of use. For some of them, I'm not wondering why at all - but others would certainly still have their uses today. So. Excuse me while I fudgel a bit more...

Just in case you are looking for an excuse to travel to sunny Spain in September, there will be the European Association of Archaeologists' conference. And if you happen to be interested in and researching about Elite culture, here's a specific call for papers for a session about this, that is session #431: “Elite culture in medieval and post-medieval archaeology” at the 24^th EAA Annual Meeting, which will be held in Barcelona, Spain from 5-8 September 2018 (https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2018/).

Session organisers are Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rainer Atzbach, Aarhus University, Denmark, PD Dr. Felix Biermann, University of Greifswald, Germany and Prof. Dr. Ulrich Müller, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, Germany.

Their session seeks to explore new ways to identify elites in the archaeological source material during the 12th until the 18th centuries. Elite is understood as a group of persons belonging to the upper echelons of society in a town, territory or dominion in terms of military, economic, religious or political power, and even education. This group of peers is characterised by being involved in decision-making processes in their homestead. Moreover, its network includes contacts to similar groups in other areas. The contributions in this session are invited to focus upon archaeological approaches available to identify remains of this powerful group. Therefore, presentations should discuss diachronic or supra-regional features and not just single contexts such as graves, monuments, latrines, or outstanding precious finds. Critical reviews of traditional approaches based upon import, prestigious goods, written sources etc., or new perspectives on these classic elite markers are welcome.

The session intends to discuss the following questions:
Theoretical background - what characterises elite? Staging and distinction – is elite defined by other societal classes and/or its members? How far is it possible to spot elite while tracing innovative or traditional products? In terms of norms and practice: is it possible to identify rule setters and rule breakers in archaeological source material? Do the upper layer of society and the elite group always coincide? Supply and demand: what is the relationship between procurement of exotic/import/vintage goods and elites? Between conspicuous consumption and understatement – what does elite show off?

The Call for Papers is now open at: https://eaa.klinkhamergroup.com/eaa2018/
For submitting your abstract you have to verify your EAA membership with your EAA credentials (EAA ID, username, password). For assistance with retrieving your credentials, please contact the EAA Secretariat at Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein.. New members, please sign up for EAA membership first at www.e-a-a.org. You can either pay your membership fees upon signing up or at any time before 31 March 2018 when registering for the Annual Meeting at www.e-a-a.org/eaa2018.

Deadline for sending your abstract is the 15^th of February 2018, 23:59 CET.

 

Somehow, the start of a new year is always special - even though it's just an arbitrary change in the number at the end of the date. I usually get a surge of motivation to clear out old things and take care of a few overdue projects, and try fresh starts on things that somehow petered out over time.

Which means that I am trying to get a bit more of a semblance of order in the cupboard that holds tools and materials, and trying to clear the desk at least partly again. There's a few more nooks and crannies that could use a going through and a throwing out, too. I've also gone back to tracking what I eat for a while, as all the travelling in the last few months has somehow whacked my sense of how many things to eat at what time out of alignment, and now I'm getting that back, too. Also, all the coffee (with milk, of course!) and a few more of a small thing here or there, in combination with travelling and stress and probably also way too much wheat have resulted in a weight slightly above what I like, so that is getting under control again at the same time. Whew.

Getting things back as they should be and being more orderly is not, by the way, my new year's resolution. I'm not doing the "I will do X in the next year" thing, actually - instead, I like to use the allover feeling of a possibility for a fresh start that the new year brings to try something new, or to do something better than before. That is sort of tied in with said motivational surge, and sometimes things did stick and sometimes they did not, but I am not beating myself up about them if the latter was the case.

I'm curious to find out how far the motivational surge will get me this year, as it, too, invariably peters out after a while. But then, I'm used to that, and I am determined to make the most out of it while it lasts!

Do you have a surge like this, too? Or do you do the classic New Year Resolution thing?