The stacks on my desk have shrunk a bit (at least enough so that I don't get an instantaneous flight reflex when entering the room), the cat is happily draped over my forearm again, putting her paw on my touchpad at the most inopportune moments, and most of the stuff that I dragged half across the country is back in its proper place on the storage shelf.

Not that I'm out of things to do, mind you - there's more sorting to do, the stack of emails is still towering, and of course after the season is before the next one. Which means there's planning for events, planning for markets, and planning for the next Textile Forum.

Especially the latter is interesting, as we're considering making a few changes to the programme structure, and to the conference as a whole. The aim of these changes will be to become more accessible to participants who can't spend a whole week at a conference. Of course, we want to get it right, so I'm currently working on a little survey to send around. There are also plans to slightly re-structure the website and to add some more things as information about past experiments, tests, trial runs and topics. It's all very exciting, and I hope the survey will give us a good amount of feedback on which to act, so that our little conference can saunter on into the future, doing an even better job at connecting people from the practical side of historical crafts to researchers looking at the actual pieces.

Like everything, making a survey turns out to be a time-eater, though. And even if I'm tempted to go on straight away working on it... I've already done enough survey drafting for today - I need to get a few other things done.

Such as putting the remainder of the goods into their place. And finally finishing an article that is due...

I'm back at the work desk, trying to battle my way through stacks of paper that needs to be taken care of, as well as stacks of email that has to be dealt with. It's amazing how many mails can run up in just a few days of not-really-in-the-office time!

The symposium last weekend, by the way, was an utterly wonderful thing - not only did I get to meet a lot of lovely people again that I meet way, way too rarely, there were also a number of new faces to finally connect with the names I've been reading here and there, over and over again during the last years.

Add to this a number of really interesting and well-presented papers, a concert featuring medieval music in the beautiful Marienkirche with its astounding acoustics (and I still have a selection of earworms from that), a wine tasting with wines made from old grape varieties (including the wine that saved Oswald von Wolkenstein's life as he held on to the barrel when shipwrecked, and a wine that has been processed following exactly the instructions in the Capitulare de Villis, down to reconstructed tools), common meals both in the conference place as well as in the evening, and you have a wonderful event that I would call wildly successful - and I do hope that it will not have been the only or last one of its kind!

Now, though, the season of events and conferences is finally over for me, and there's hope of things becoming a little calmer again. Which includes a chance of actually getting back on top of the things stacked here, both physically and virtually...

Seven years ago today, the Most Patient Husband of Them All and I had a party. To celebrate.



As you do when you are getting married.

So guess who's not doing any work today? And celebrates, again, instead?

Because finding someone you can talk to, and laugh with, and share all your ups and downs with; someone who copes with your small and large faults and peculiarities; someone who is happy when you are and would like to lift you up when you are down - finding someone like this is the greatest thing on this planet, and it should be appreciated and cherished day by day.

Obviously you can't have a party every day because of it. But you definitely can once in a while. Also a great reason for having some cake! (If you need a reason for cake, that is...)

My bags are packed and I am off again once more - the celebratory conference of IG Wolf is taking place this weekend, starting this evening, and it's promising to be a really interesting programme. The conference includes a concert and a wine-tasting evening with old grape breeds, plus a variety of different papers during Saturday and Sunday, and I'm very much looking forward to meeting a whole lot of old friends, acquaintances and colleagues there that I only get to see quite rarely.

My own presentation will be on Sunday morning, I'll be back home on Sunday night, and then I am just as happy to not be travelling for a while. If it feels like you've been living out of a bag for weeks, it's probably time to slow things down for a bit and not rush around through half of Germany for a while!

I am back home from the Forum, and it was wonderful - a whirlwind week, as it usually is. Every time, I am surprised at how quickly time flies past when we are in Mayen, and every time I'm delighted with how much is happening. Little detail problems are suddenly thrown into the spotlight, and then people throw themselves at the problems and try to figure out how something was made, or why something might look as it does.

This year, we had an array of really interesting discussions and tests. The effects of the de-gumming on silk when dyeing was one of them, and first results were really interesting - the de-gummed silk takes on less colour than the gummy silk. A number of little test skeins were dyed, and they have gone home with Ruth, who will do light-fastness, wash-fastness and rub-fastness tests with them in order to see how well the dye sticks to the various samples.

[caption id="attachment_3461" align="alignnone" width="304"] Silk being dyed...


[caption id="attachment_3460" align="alignnone" width="465"] ...and the skeins after rinsing.


We also had some reeling of silk, some tablet-weaving and, to my great delight, some hacking of slits into pieces of silk to explore the pinking and slashing techniques. That was not only extremely interesting, but also a lot of fun - and the slashing does explain why some fabrics might have been woven in just the way they were done.

There were also really good discussions about swastika motifs in tablet weaving and the problems this motif can lead to today (especially if you are based in Germany), and discussions about the terminology of wild vs. domesticated silk.

And of course there was lots of coffee. There was chocolate. There was the traditional stroopwafel spinning...



it was a wonderful week!

I'm here, back from a little break, and I'm still working on stuff. Like the tablet weaving thing - here's the current status:



You see some bits of wild playing around, followed by the start of weaving a coat of arms. You can also see the width difference between plain tablet weave (the diagonals) and twill, which is a good bit looser and thus the threads snuggle closer to each other, making the band narrower.

What you cannot see is that there is a mistake in the last pick, which needs, thusly, to be un-woven. What you also cannot see is that I did get a few more lightbulbs, but there's still a crick in my brain when it comes to finishing the coat of arms with the stuff that comes on top... well. I'll be working on that some more in the next days. I still have a few of them left.

I will probably not manage to do this and find the time (and brain!) to blog, so - while I'm sorry to announce a bit of blog silence right after a bit of blog silence - I'll say, for my sanity and peace of mind, that I will be back after the Textile Forum week and a bit of recuperation. Which means November 16.

Somebody really packed my calendar full of stuff...

I'm back from a really wonderful weekend, teaching tablet-weaving and hand sewing and fingerloop braiding and spinning, and having nice chats and lots of interesting questions and discussions, in splendid company and with a lot of coffee.

I've also gotten a little brain fart for a motif I could try on my brain bender tablet weave... the Franconian coat of arms.

And now I'm in the home run stretches for organising the European Textile Forum, and getting my presentation ready, plus handling the usual in-the-background work stuff - and realising that there's a lot for me to do, in not so much time.

So I'll be taking a little break from blogging, and I'll be back telling you about things again in a week, when I'll hopefully have dealt with all the urgent stuff!