Today's morning was spent outside, catching guys. One of them ended up in my pocket for a while, and then got a number glued to his back.

Have I confused you yet?

I was off to the next practical lesson in how to keep bees - and today's programme for our group was to check two hives for queen brood cells (to see if there's danger of swarming) and to catch a drone or two, to learn how to grab and mark a bee (so you can handle the queen, if necessary, without damage to her).

The not-so-willing subjects for this were drones, because a) they have no stinger, and b) the hive can stand to lose a few of the drones, who are not doing any of the hive work (except helping to keep it warm). So each of us in the group got to catch a drone bee and put it into a little cage to keep it safe for a while. (The cage then went into a pocket to keep the little bee warm.) After we'd finished checking the hives, we went off to practice marking queens - on the drones.

When you have a hive queen, it gets a little sticker on the back of the thorax. The sticker colour marks the year the queen is from, so you can tell how old the Grande Dame of the bee-hive is (which is rather important, since they live only for so long). There's special tools for holding the bee while you put a little bit of (special) glue on the thorax and then gently push the sticker onto the glue, which makes it much easier to do this (I'd have imagined it to be more difficult). Obviously you don't want to damage a young queen when marking it, so it makes sense to practice with drones beforehand, just like with the gripping.

To my inordinate joy, when my turn came up to stick a little green plaque onto the back of my little furry drone, one very special number was still available:


Meet Mr. The Answer, with his shiny new plaque stuck smack dab to the middle of his thorax. (And yes, I'm easily amused.)

 

Here is, again, a stack of things you might find interesting:

A 17th century manuscript tells you how to organise your land surveying journal. Or, if you'd like to read about something else, that site has a huge collection of Early English books!

Aarhus University Press has a new free ebook this month, and it is "Past Vulnerability. Vulcanic Eruptions and Human Vulnerability in Traditional Societies Past and Present", edited by Felix Riede.

Ask the Past tells you how to improve your memory, 16th century style.

Semi-Rad talks about being new at the climbing gym and trying new stuff in general - and yes, I totally agree that being new at things is a wonderful opportunity, and has its own very nice and special delights!

Somehow life feels like a whirlwind right now - so many things happening, coming up, or being under way that I sometimes feel like a child in a sweets store, with a wad of money held tight in my fist, hardly able to believe the bliss.

There's the NESAT coming up, for one thing - which means meeting up with friends and colleagues, travelling to the Czech republic, and getting a visit to Prague along with the deal. To add to the excitement, I'll be travelling there and back in lovely company, with one friend stopping by earlier to spend the weekend here (shenanigans ahead!).

Then there's the Textile Forum casting its shadow ahead from its November date, and several exciting things to look at - if all goes well, there will be a unique twined shoe to ponder, and some test runs on indigo dyeing on silk, among other stuff.

The air date of the children's quiz show where I will chat about spinning is also coming up at the end of this month... and there has been a phone call from another TV station, asking if I would be willing to take part in another project. This is not in a stage where I want to tell more about it, but I am already quite psyched.

I'm also psyched about another project - we're only waiting for the official green light to go ahead and get started, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will happen soon.

And on top of all that, a stack of small things - new boards for my shelf for the stock (more space, yay). The sun is shining today, and there are loads of flowers in the garden. There's my current knitting gauge swatch, which is almost finished (new pullover coming up!) so I'll get to measure and wash and re-measure soon... and then I can get started in earnest.

So. Whirlwind. A good one, though.

The fair is over, and as usual for events like this, it was wonderful and exciting and a load of fun and really, really exhausting all at once. Fairs mean pure frenzy for several days - it starts with the preparation, as in packing things, making lists, checking stock, preparing food to eat during the fair, and finally loading everything into the car.

(If you are wondering about the food part - yes, there are caterers at the fair, but since we're only two people at the booth, we don't have the time and leisure to toddle off and take a proper break to buy stuff and eat in peace; it's snatching a bite from what we brought when there's a lull at the booth. We don't mind that, not at all, but it means we do have to plan ahead and bring suitable things (including emergency chocolate). In the evening, we're way too tired to go somewhere or buy stuff, or think about what to cook, so that needs to be settled and ingredients bought and brought beforehand.)

Then it's driving there, and then setting up. That means lugging all the stuff from the car into the booth space and then putting up tables, decorating, and setting up things. This time we had the mirror-image booth compared to the one last year, as we were in a different hall, but the basic setup remained the same for us, which always makes it easier.

When I arrived, Margit had already covered the naked booth walls, so we could start setting up in earnest:


There's no picture of the complete and utter mess that happens when both of us are arranging everything at the same time, but this is how everything looked when we were finally finished:



And of course, I brought the spinning bench to demonstrate historical spinning! (It also served as our seat for taking a break, and as a welcome place to put aside skeins of yarn for those shopping):


I did quite a bit of spinning, as it's always fascinating for people to see the historical method - and some even came and directly asked to see it, as they had been told about my spinning by the also-spinning colleagues at other booths. That was really nice!

And thus passed three days of fair, with lots of interesting chats with visitors and colleagues, lots and lots and lots of things to see at the fair (we did a pre-opening-time round one morning so we could get an idea of all the things on offer), and then, Sunday evening, everything gets packed up again and loaded up into the cars, and then there's the drive home - about three hours in the car for me. You can probably imagine how much I enjoyed sleeping in on Monday, and not doing much the rest of the day - there was tea, and some chocolate, and I read a bit, and there was an afternoon nap, too.

Now it's back to all the things that need doing, though. NESAT is approaching, and there's a paper to be prepared for it. No rest for the wicked, eh?

I've been busy, busy, busy today, packing up for the Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe, with all the usual last-minute shenanigans that turn up when prepping for a fair. The whole flat, at the moment, is looking like a bomb dropped somewhere. Boxes are stacked up here and there, my to-do list has exploded (because I've jotted down all the small things that still need to be done, so I don't forget anything), and I'm in the usual before-the-fair frenzy. It's a bit like stage fever, and of course, when you're in the middle of the prep, other stuff turns up that has to be dealt with... urgently. (Hellooooo website issues. If you've been over in the shop section and had troubles - I'm sorry. I'm trying to deal with it as soon as possible.)

Overall, it's looking okay, though. There's a bit of packing and sorting still to do, which means I'll be busy some more, but I'm not desperate (yet), and it looks like I won't need to do an extra-long night shift.

Tomorrow morning, then, I'll pack all that stuff into the car, get some food ready for the fair days, and drive there. Then we'll set up the stall and probably have an early night to be fit for the three days of fair. So - there will be no blogging from tomorrow until Tuesday, when I will be back (and hopefully will have caught up on sleep a little bit, too).

If you are coming to the Nadelwelt, drop by at our stall and say hello! I'm sharing with Margit from Alte Künste again, we're at F 2.3, and we're always happy to meet blog readers!

Random stuff, for you:

I have had hayfever for quite a few years now, and coming with it a (very slight) asthma. (Our cat's asthma is much more severe...) So it was interesting to me to hear that today is World Asthma Day (is there something that there is no day for?). The day is intended to raise the awareness on asthma, initiated by the Global Initiative for Asthma. They have a website for that day, but it's not very informative - in fact, it mostly seems to invite people to tell about their activities. Well.

Raising awareness is also the goal of the website of the Bee Conservation Trust. Though they focus on bumblebee species in the UK, there is interesting information for those on the continent (or elsewhere) as well.

The neverending story about the Musée des Tissus in Lyon is going on; now there was an article about some investor eyeing the two museum buildings, with some misinformation about the probable costs of renovating said buildings. You can read the update (in French) here.

And that's it for today... now I'll get back to preparing for the Nadelwelt fair this coming weekend!

The Early Textiles Study Group is hosting a conference called "Precious Cloth and Court Culture AD 400-1600", which takes place at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, on September 16 and 17.

The conference will explore court textiles and furnishings from both European and Asian courts. It will examine precious cloth as symbol of power and authority across the medieval world. Individual speakers drawn from institutions across England and from abroad (and including prominent independent scholars), will explore many aspects of the chosen theme. They will examine weave, braid and lace techniques, iconography and symbolism of precious cloth motifs, the role of the public display of the precious textiles (ceremonial and ritual), and many further issues (social, political, ecclesiastical, and economic  impacts of precious cloth across cultures from the West to the Near East).

You can find more information about the conference, including the programme (which sounds very interesting) plus a booking form, here.