Yesterday was a really long day - but it was absolutely, utterly wonderful, and a lot of fun. I left home at 7 in the morning, drove to Darmstadt, set up my table in the museum, and did the demonstration of neolithic textile techniques straight into the afternoon.

Here I am at my table, just before the museum doors open:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640"] In the main entrance hall of the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. The green thing in my hands is a piece of willow bark, freshly stripped from the stem.


A lot of people stopped at my table and asked a lot of questions - including the usual difficult ones that are hard to answer because we have so few textile finds. I had many really interesting chats, and a number of visitors tried their hands at twining bast into cords. Two boys even tried to spin yarn after that (because obviously that must be much, much easier than twining bast - turns out it wasn't).

After the demonstration, I got to take a little stroll around the museum and meet up with a friend to enjoy a nice cup of coffee before driving home again. With the partly rather dense traffic and the oodles of construction sites along the Autobahn, that took a while longer than the same way in the morning, so I arrived home at half past nine - really a long day.

The car now sits in the garage, waiting to be emptied out. Also, I now have a plied bast string that is about 2 metres long... and did I mention that I had a lot of fun, and a wonderful time?

Spindle whorls are lovely things... whether they are made from ceramics or from glass. Or from stone. Or bone. Or antler. Or lead.

Speaking of which - I've been selling ceramic spindle whorls for a good while now, but these are just a small part of the picture. So I'm really happy to have found, quite recently, two crafters who are willing to make spindle whorls from bone and spindle whorls from stone. Which means I get to broaden the material selection of whorls on offer a little.

Which also means I have to pick out whorl shapes and whorl types for these crafters to make. That's a task I like - but I also know that it's not easy to get a good overview over spindle whorl finds, and that tastes can vary a lot. So - if you are a spinner, and you know a specific spindle whorl find from stone, bone or antler that you would love to have replicated: do let me know about it. I cannot make promises at this time, but if it's not too outlandish in shape, size or weight, it might become part of the new stock! (If you have specific ceramic whorls that you'd like to see for sale, I'll be happy to hear about these too!)

So... any wishes?

 

There's an interesting project for the possible protection of dyed textiles going on - tests into how filtered light influences the fading of dyes. The pilot project is described here, and it's scheduled to run for 12 weeks - so we might hear something about the results fairly soon-ish.

If you're a professional researcher and have received emails from students asking you stuff, you might be interested in reading this open letter to science students and science teachers. I haven't had problems with requests like that yet, but in general, I do agree with that letter - asking questions when it is necessary is a good thing, and can be the start of a helpful discourse for both parties. But contacting somebody just to have contacted a pro in the field? This is stealing everybody's time, to no real avail.

That's it on the link front. Somehow, it feels like we're already in the slack season - or my find-interesting-links-fu has deteriorated. Hopefully there will me more nice stuff around again soon!

 

There's a nice list lying in front of me (right underneath the cat, who had to conquer my desk again for some cuddles), a box of things already collected and made ready for Sunday, and I spent the last hour in the wintergarden doing some more prep work... including things like this:


Twining with bast is an incredibly interesting technique, and the oldest textile technique (or proto-textile technique, depending on your definitions) there is. It's really fascinating what you can do with a bit of bast and your fingers alone, and the resulting items are incredibly sturdy and can be mind-bogglingly fine.

All that was, by the way, done in preparation for the demonstration at the Landesmuseum in Darmstadt this Sunday. I'm almost finished, though; just a few last-minute things need to be added to my box of stuff.

Which means I will have no excuse tomorrow not to sit down and finally tackle the taxes...

It's World Baking Day today (thank goodness for Twitter, which is letting me know about such incredibly important things) so I'll share a recipe with you. It's not a classical cake, but can be eaten as a dessert: Quarkauflauf (curd cheese casserole). Basically, this is rather close to a crustless cheesecake.

[caption id="attachment_2417" align="alignnone" width="452"] There you go: Curd Cheese Casserole, fresh out of the oven, with cherries on top.


I remember this being an occasional sweet lunch when I was small. It was only occasional partly because sweet lunches were just not the rule, and partly because my dad is no fan of curd cheese, and didn't much like this as a meal. All of us had some meals we weren't too fond of, and these would thus be only very occasional - so that nobody had to suffer too much under the taste preferences of the rest of the family.After I moved out from home, I more or less forgot about this dish - until I rediscovered it a while ago, when I was looking for something to do with a leftover pack of curd cheese. This time around, I completely fell in love with the stuff, as it can be eaten hot or cold, it freezes well, goes with a lot of different kinds of fruit, and is quick and easy to make.

• 2 eggs
• 250 g curd cheese
• one tablespoon starch or about 30 g protein powder (neutral)
• about 50 g sugar (or less, if you prefer it less sweet - I use about 20 g of unrefined sugar, as the fruit delivers enough sweetness for my taste buds, and I like the taste the unrefined stuff brings into the mix)
• one teaspoon baking powder
• 200-300 g of fruit (tangerine, apple, cherry or plum all work beautifully for this)

Put everything except the fruit into a bowl and mix to a creamy consistency. Place into a suitable casserole or several smaller forms; I split this mix into 3 small oven-safe glass forms. Add the fruit of your choice either on top of the mix, or layer it between two layers of the curd mixture.

Bake for about 15-30 min at c. 170°C (fan oven) depending on your oven and the form(s) you filled it into; it should still be moist on the inside, but golden on the outside.

(If you are wondering about the protein powder substitution - I'm still getting rid of excess weight, and this is a relatively easy way for me to get enough protein per day.)

Happy World Baking Day!

It's Whitsun - and thus a nice long weekend, isn't this nice? Even though the weather forecast doesn't sound so splendid, we're hoping to make the most of the extra day off.

[caption id="attachment_2409" align="alignnone" width="379"] Aquilegia in front of our willow fence. It's fascinating how quickly the willows grow at this time of the year!


 
Weather permitting, we'll be outdoors, enjoying the colourful flowers of this time of year...

[caption id="attachment_2411" align="alignnone" width="372"] This plant is called "Doldenmilchstern" in German - literally translated "umbel milk star". I like the English name better: "Nap-at-noon" (or Star of Betlehem, but I prefer the nap).


 
...as well as some time spent with friends.

Have a nice long weekend, and I'll be back on the blog on Tuesday!

I have a stack of links to throw at you again - but before that, here's proof that our garden knows which month we have:


These are called Maiglöckchen in German - which literally translates to "May Bells". The German language seems to like flower names with a time of year in them - we not only have "Easter Bells" (daffodils) and "May Bells", but also "Whitsun Roses" (peonies).

Cathy from Loose Threads has something else: a list of tutorials. I haven't looked at any of them yet, but they range from medieval things to Victorian, and you might just find something that amuses you - or might prove helpful.

Erik Kwakkel at the medievalbooks blog has a fascinating post about medieval scripts, including a picture of a scribe's advertisement sheet.

Aisling has a list of tablet-woven bands from the Anglo-Saxon and Viking period found in Great Britain and Ireland.

Rainer Schreg has some thoughts about the Vienna Statement about the threat to cultural heritage in the Near East and North Africa. If you want more about that topic and don't mind a gruesome read, check out Heritage for Peace's newsletter about damage to heritage sites in Syria.

To end with a lighter note: There's a new Jane Austen film, "Love and Friendship", coming to theatres tomorrow. It's a screenplay adaptation of "Lady Susan" (a short epistolary novel). Here's an interview with filmmaker Whit Stillman. If you'd like to pass the time until then with more Austen film adaptations, you might want to check out this list.