Here's a stack of things you might find amusing or interesting - or at least I hope so:

There is a woven and embroidered Game Of Thrones tapestry, modeled after the famous Bayeux original. While the base design was made on Jacquard looms, details have been added by embroidery, as this article explains. What an interesting project - and it does show that the Bayeux tapestry is still a force to be reckoned with, influencing modern day textile art and pop culture!
The tapestry is on display at the Ulster Museum, if you are in the area and want to have a look at it yourself.

More textile stuff - there's a free ebook about textile terminology available! You can download the pdf version of Textile Terminologies from the Orient to the Mediterranean and Europe, 1000 BC to 1000 AD here. It contains papers from a conference about textile terminology, which is a really interesting and a really big topic - and one that still has lots of unsolved problems.

Even more textile stuff, though much more modern: Speed hooks for rag rug hooking - a really interesting tool shown in this video.

And now for something completely different: Better lettering for comic book/graphic novel letterers. If you like to read graphic novels, or typesetting, or both, these might be interesting for you!

Once in a while, I stumble across gender-related stuff. Actually, I stumble across it rather frequently - but most of the time, I read it, possibly think a bit about it, and then that's it, even though it's a topic I find really interesting.

Most of the occasions when my attention is drawn to sex or gender differences are actually not when I read about it, but when we are bouldering, with most men being significantly taller than I am (thus giving them more reach) and having significantly more strength than I have (which also helps when climbing). In those cases, I sigh, try to deal with it (and try harder at the move), find a workaround that makes use of my rather good flexibility, or in some cases give up on that specific boulder problem.

Work-wise, I don't get much of gender issues in my own workspace. Archaeology is not a male-dominated discipline, and textiles and textile archaeology are rather female-dominated (though we do have a good number of men in the field, and that is a very good thing in my opinion). I've never felt as if I've been less valued or less accepted for my expertise due to being female in archaeology. I did have issues, though, in non-work-related things (bike shop people and car dealers are the two primary things that spring to mind).

I am really, really glad, from these relatively few experiences alone, that my work life is not really affected by such things - and that I don't have to invent a fake male coworker to make my life easier, or have to deal with sexism daily at work, or work hard at convincing clients that I am reliable, thus needing much more time for the same task.

And the thing is... this is still normal in so many spaces. Makes you wonder why?

Well. At least issues like this solve the question "Kirk or Picard?"

Looks like the "Kirk vs Picard" debate has finally been settled. pic.twitter.com/QQgWr1JlzS

— Јeff Үαuѕ (@foldedfish) 23. August 2017

There's two events coming up where I will give a presentation or paper: the European Textile Forum in November and, shortly after that, the Symposium to celebrate 30 years of Living History by IG Wolf, and I'm really excited about both of them.

The European Textile Forum, as a dear child of my heart and Sabine's, will be focused on silk, that lovely luscious material, and the preliminary programme is already rather lovely and varied. There's still a good bit of organising work to do for me, scheduled to happen during the next few days (whenever I'm not busy preparing for the fair at Bielefeld), but so far, everything is fine and I'm already really, really looking forward to it. The presentation I've planned means that I will have to sit down and do some more nice, brain-bending tablet weaving, too... something I'm also looking forward to. Yay!

The second one - IG Wolf is one of the groups doing Living History, and LH demonstrations, with lots and lots of attention to detail, and lots of love and enthusiasm to go with it. They have been going strong for 30 years now and are celebrating in style: not with a party, but with an actual symposium for a whole weekend, featuring a number of papers under the motto "Theorie trifft Praxis". I'll be talking about spinning and fabric reconstruction/recreation, with all the many problems that can (and probably will) come up.
You can have a look at the programme here - and if it tickles your fancy, there's good news: they still have space available and take registrations until September 15, so you can register here and join the fun!

 

While I was away having fun, things were going on back home. Garden things, mostly - the lawn growing like crazy, just like the willow fence. But also nicer, more edible ones:


The beef tomatoes (a variety I've had not much success with these past years) actually resulted in one plant with a decent yield. The seeds will be taken today, and I hope that there will be more of the same huge things in the future (note the rather large peanut included for something like a scale...)

Also, the peach tree is actually growing peaches this year, and most of them are still there, and growing. They will be ripe enough for harvest in a few days, I think - the first one has already fallen down, and it was still rather firm but already edible.


The other usual accumulated stuff? I'm still catching up on the last bits of it. Some of it was easy, like deleting a gazillion of emails from various social platforms and clearing out the junk folder; some were, as usual, quick to deal with through a short reply, and some need more work, so they are still sitting there, making the inbox a bit fatter than I like to have it.

There was also a rather large post-office run:


for which the Beach Rolly (originally bought for its primary* original purpose, which is canoe portaging) proved to be very helpful. Yay for multi-purpose tools!

*It actually has three original purposes as intended by the manufacturer: canoe portaging, hauling other stuff as a sack barrow, and serving as a comfy seat with backrest. It has seen use in all three of these, though the canoe portaging time is by far the smallest amount of the use-hours. Being used as a seat? By far the largest. It really is comfy!

As is usual when you travel, you discover things that are very different from home, and things that are similar, and things that are almost the same.

In some ways, Finland seemed very similar to here - the people are friendly, but a little bit reserved as well, and they do like their privacy. You pay with Euros, and a lot of things in the touristy places are written in English as well as in Finnish and Swedish, so it's not hard to find one's way around.

Some things really prodded at our weird-receptors, though. Bakeries and hairdressers were one big thing. When you walk through a town or city here in Franconia, you come across a bakery about every second step, or so it feels - well, at least there's a lot of them. Whereas when you need a hairdresser, yes, you will find a few - but they are spread rather far apart, and you might have to search for one for a bit.

In Helsinki, this was reversed. We found about one single bakery that was similar to what we would have here, and that was it - there were cafés selling baked goods, but nothing like what we are used to from home. On the other hand, every third shop seemed to be a hairdresser's, sometimes a wellness or beauty shop something, and quite often there was a shop for evening and bridal wear right beside it.

Speaking of bakeries and thus, implicitly, cake, prices for baked goods were a real shock to me. You can get a small piece of cake for about twice or three times the money that will buy you a large piece here. Yes, in a café. Which means I still grin when going to the bakery after coming back home, as it is so nice to get really affordable bread or cake!

Lunch buffets, though, are a thing in Finland, and they are quite good value for money; buffets actually all tended to be good value, especially compared to the prices for single dishes or single snacks bought in the same places. And just like our guidebook had warned us, it was not so easy to get traditional Finnish food in a restaurant. We also were curious about the non-touristy restaurant-y traditional food - so we did what people living there would do: shop in the supermarket and buy TV dinners.


That was a fish dish with potatoes and a dish from cabbage, rice and minced meat. I liked both of them a lot, and they were definitely Finnish (at least the package promised it).

We also went bouldering in Helsinki, and that was another thing with a good dose of weird, as the walls there were... smooth. Slick. Laquered wood. Which meant that instead of getting some resistance when placing your foot on the wall, you'd get... nothing, except a squeaking sound. That, plus the many kinds of holds we were not used to at all, plus them being rather small and bad, and lots of reachy moves made it very, very hard for me to get up the routes. I did manage a few, but wow, it does make me appreciate our home bouldering gym a lot more now!

[caption id="attachment_3321" align="alignnone" width="490"] Shiny walls at the bouldering gym in Helsinki. Note the light reflection on the right side of the wall!


 

After the WorldCon, we had a bit more than a week left in Helsinki - plenty of time to get to know the city a little better. So we went to see the sights.

There were, of course, churches, among them the famous one below ground, set into the rock, and the cathedral.

[caption id="attachment_3318" align="alignnone" width="922"] The Cathedral. Big, white, shiny - but mostly from the outside.


We took walks around, enjoying the many green stretches (always with rocks in!) and the lots and lots of bike paths (even though we didn't rent bikes).


We also enjoyed the beautiful houses in the Finnish Art Nouveau quarters - that definitely is a distinctive variation of Art Nouveau, just like the guidebooks promised.


To us, it seemed like sort of regular Art Nouveau mixed up with a slightly romantic "Castle Architecture" - think fairytale or Disney castles.


And we also visited Suomenlinna, which is a chain of small islands right before the coast of Helsinki, once used as fortification. Part of it is still in use by the military, and the rest is mostly museums and cafes or restaurants. The museums include a submarine, which we also visited (as the Most Patient Husband of Them All has never been inside one before).


We also got to see barnacle geese!

All the sitting and standing in line at WorldCon, by the way, meant prime knitting time for me - and I think I haven't ever had two weeks of holidays in which I have knitted so much.

I left the mostly-finished Moyen Age sweater at home, because a knit-in-one-piece-seamlessly thing, even in a small size, is not a good thing for travel knitting. Instead, I packed up the blue silk yarn I bought back in July, together with a print-out of a simple pattern for a jacket with a bit of a very basic lace pattern, and that was my holiday knitting.

The knitting necessities for that (and just that) - the pattern, a crochet hook in case of Bad Things Happening, a darning needle, a measuring tape, stitch markers, a key to tighten the screw-on tips (because if you don't bring one, they will loosen up), my row counter ring, and of course needles and one ball of yarn went into my little Exploding Tardis knitting bag. (Usually there's also a piece of emergency chocolate in there, but I ate it before the journey. It had gotten rather old, and needed to go.)


So there was knitting - on the way to the airport, in our apartment in Helsinki, in cafés, and in the lines at the WorldCon as well as at the Stitch'n'Bitch they had there. And in most of the panels I went to, as they were talking people only, and if you're not tall and seated quite far in the back, you can't see the speakers anyway.

The choice of pattern proved to be a good one for knitting like that, as it is really quite simple - no waist shaping, very little armhole shaping, and the lace pattern is basic and easily remembered, not needing much attention at all. I did change the shoulder and neckline shaping a little, based on the Vignette cardi, as the original pattern just binds off straight, and that seemed a little bit too boxy to me - but these things were rather quickly done, and did not need too much attention either, or were knit when I was able to concentrate.

Which means that I left home with the pattern and six balls of yarn, and came back with the body of the jacket all knit, and parts of the first sleeve, too.


It got a bit of blocking for the body parts, and here they are, partly sewn up already - waiting for the sleeves to go in and the neckband to be knitted on. And in case you were ever wondering whether blocking is a good idea, or really changes things? Here's a picture of the unblocked sleeve beside the blocked parts (folded up):


Even though it doesn't change the measurements of the finished piece, it does make a world of a difference appearance-wise. About one hundred more rows to go on the second sleeve, and then... more sewing together, and knitting the neckband. Yay!

The pattern, by the way, is called Baton Rouge. Which meant I had an earworm many, many times!