If you have a completed PhD in Archaeology, Experimental Archaeology, or a related discipline, and are looking for something to do now, you can apply for a Postdoctoral Fellowship, starting October 2017, at the Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture, at UCD School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland.

You can apply for this, which is part of the Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme, from October 12 to November 30, and the results will be announced in April 2017.

To find out more, check out this page of the UCD Archaeology website, and if you think it could be for you, get into contact directly with Aidan O'Sullivan.

Well, not as much knitting progress as I would have liked - I had been hoping to take the finished piece with me the coming weekend, but unless I will stumble over miraculous amounts of extra time, I can't see that happening.

There is progress, though - the first row of nightblue yarn is in:


And here's a closeup of the edge with the nightblue yarn:


I'm really looking forward to find out how it will look once the current chart is finished (three more rows only, counting the return rows) and the last one is done as well. The orange and dark blue make for a stunning contrast, but whether that will end up being a stunning piece overall with the colour changes... that will only be seen once it's done. Probably not before the end of next week, though...

I'm usually somebody who takes a good look at things, and sometimes a second good look. Or a good sniff. That, by the way, is something I probably got from my mum, and the cause of a goodly amount of amusement for the most patient husband of them all.

Imagine having something that needs an odour check. A sock, for example, that you are not sure about. Or some food that might have gone bad or might still be fine... obviously, someone needs to sniff it and decide. So. You bring your nose close enough, and in some cases... well, let's just say that in some cases, it is really not something you want to have in your nose for a second longer than necessary.

However... my mum has this weird thing where, when she has something that falls into this "smells abominable" category, she actually takes a second sniff. Just to make sure that the thing really smells as badly. And I seem to have inherited that habit... hence the cause of amusement. Especially since I don't really want to sniff it again, but it happens so fast my brain (fogged by the horrendous fumes from the first inhale) only kicks in after the second breath.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="393"] My consolation for this double-smelling is this XKCD comic. At least I can feel sciency when going "uargh!" for the second time.


Looking is much less of a thing in that regard, obviously. And many times, that second look is not necessary - but whenever I slack on that, it seems like something is always lurking to hit me with it.

Two cases in point: Yesterday, I finally sat down and did a batch of small updates to the website - one general update to fix a possible security issue, and a few smaller extension updates. Usually, I'm always taking a look at the site after this. Yesterday... I didn't. Which means I only found out this morning that everything looks dandy and fine in the backend (where I am most of the time when I am using the site, obviously, since that's where the work happens), but the frontend, which is the actual important bit of the site... only shows a blank page. Grrr.

(The fact that you are reading this now shows that I have fixed the issue in some way.)

Also yesterday, I was buying a set of two knickers... and found out at home that the one I tried on had the correct size. The other one, though (on the same hanger, as they were supposed to be a set) is a size larger. Sigh. So it's back to the shop now...

And the moral of the stories? Don't slack on your double-checks, or it might bite you in the behind. And that is never a nice thing.

There's a fun quiz over at Ask the Past - if you always wanted to know whether your etiquette for the end of the 1880s is up to scratch, you can test it there.

In case you're not one of the typical social science folks and work with TeX, there's a collaboration thingie available now called Papeeria. It allows you to edit TeX documents together with other people, and if you are only working on one private project at a time, you can use it for free.

discardingimages has a rabbit warrior from the end of the 13th century. Proves (again, after Monty Python) that rabbits are fierce, dangerous creatures that should not be underestimated.

And finally, there's a long and interesting article about the ethics of accepting student volunteers over at Doug's Archaeology.

I've been washing wool - and since I buy the wool from my suppliers, and sell it on after washing, sorting, and fluffing it up, I need to make sure to do the maths so my prices are okay. And I can tell you... wool maths is special. Also, it tends to make me grumpy, due to all this specialness. Want to share some of the grumpiness? Here you go.

Let's start with the basic inbuilt fudge factor that wool has. This lovely fibre can take up a lot of water before feeling moist, and while this is a glorious thing when you are wearing wool garments or sweating into them is a nasty thing when you are trying to weigh it. I try to make sure my wool is dry, and the weather is not humid, when I am weighing wool or portioning it out - but sometimes, there is no choice, so you have to estimate how much moisture is in the fibre.

So even clean wool can have weight differences due to different levels of humidity in the air. When you have raw wool, though, there's even more fudge factor.

One of the things the raw wool contains (apart from vegetable matter, which in the best case should not be relevant for weight at all) is lanolin. Then there's sheep sweat. In the bits that are usually removed, there can also be feces and urine. And there's also dirt, sticking nicely to the lanolin that coats the fibres.

So when you are buying a raw fleece, you are paying per kilo of fleece - and you might get a much, much lower yield out of your purchase, weight-wise, if things are unfavourable. For instance, if you buy a very dry skirted fleece (all the really dirty bits removed) with no vegetable matter, little lanolin and very little dirt, you can end up with a washed fleece that is about 15 or 20% lighter than the raw one. If, on the other hand, you pay for a fleece that still has a good bit of humidity inside, contains a lot of lanolin and a lot of dirt and has not been skirted fully, you can end up with a lot more loss in weight - up to 50%. That's half your raw fleece weight in washed fibre... which, if you have been counting on a specific amount of fibre to work with, can make for a nasty surprise indeed.

Just the amount of dirt and lanolin alone, by the way, can account for a lot - I've had a well-skirted fleece of about 3.8 kilo lose 1.3 kg of dirt and lanolin through washing; that's almost a third of the raw fleece weight.

Which means if you are buying raw wool, check it out thoroughly: Has it been skirted? Is there a lot of lanolin and dirt trapped between the fibres? Is it dry weather (cool temperatures are always less humid than warm ones) or is it humid? Count on a weight loss of at least 25% from raw fleece to washed fibre to avoid nasty surprises, and remember there will be some more loss when you are prepping the fibre for spinning or felting. When in doubt, do as usual when buying yarn or fibre for a project: add a generous amount on top, as a safety margin.

Wool maths. Grrr.

The cat is sleeping on my desk again. It must be a wonderful place to sleep (maybe I should try that some time, too?)

The stock-taking is not quite finished, which is due to things being replenished as I find out I'm running low... and there's no sense in counting up things like the spinning pack before making some more, right? (They are counted now. I did make some more. Next up: More tablet weaving cards. And more spindle whorls...)

Humid weather means that washed wool takes an extra-long time to dry out far enough so that it can be packed away safely. Sigh. It's not looking like the humidity will go down soon here... plus the frame I'm using to dry the washed wool on is slowly disintegrating more and more. I might need to make another one. Or find out how to fix the old one. In a way that works better, and lasts longer, than my previous attempts to fix it.

There's actual palpable progress on the Renaissance Shawl knitting - it stayed at home while I was away on holidays, but I've happily taken up work on it again. I'm now almost past the part that I find the most boring one on this piece - the gridwork below the big holes.


It's not getting less boring by the fact that I added more leaves in the previous parts - as that means more holes. And thus more gridwork. It does look spectacular, though:


Well. It would look even better fully blocked... but that will take a little more time. I'm planning to switch back to the nightblue yarn after this grid bit is done. Then it's just one more chart to go, plus the bind-off - and the shawl will be done!

(After that... I have this wool for a sweater project all stashed up. I sense a sweater in my future.)

It's the time of year again when the Perseids are treating us to shooting stars, so when you find yourself outside in the evening (preferably some place where it's really dark, with little light pollution) and have some time on your hands... go watch the sky for a bit. (In Germany, there's the belief that if you see a shooting star, you can wish on it - but you must not tell anybody else what your wish was, or it will not come true.)

If you're looking for some more info, here's an article about the Perseids. Other recommended reading for the topic (well, more or less the topic): Neil Gaiman's Stardust.