Today is one of the days to get things into order, and clean stuff, and rearrange things, and find new storage solutions. This has been in the pipeline for a while, but today's been earmarked for this for the whole week... and it has been off to a good start already.

The kitchen is dealt with, as is the bathroom, and a bit of the conservatory is still left to tackle, but it's mostly done too. The biggest part of today's reordering work, though, is finding a sensible system to stash all the goods I have for sale.

I've expanded the range of goods I sell quite a bit during the last year, and it has come to the point where I have more stock than my previous system can handle. This is exhilarating, and fun, and I feel very proud that the shop is doing so well - but it has also thrown my workspace into perpetual chaos, and it is time to finally tackle this. There's already been some shuffling of books and restacking of boxes to make a bit of space where it is needed, and if all goes well, I'll be done tonight and have the new system...

(This post was supposed to go up yesterday, but it looks like it misfired - so here you are. Surprise Saturday Blogpost!)

Today's a public holiday here in Germany, so you're not getting a proper blog post - just garden pictures instead:

 ...blooming lilies...

... blooming poppy...


and the Ecuador Purple Chili is doing its thing, too.

It's hot outside, by the way... and the sun is shining like there's no tomorrow. Once it has cooled off a little, I have gardening work to look forward to, but for now? It's time to relax, and have a coffee, and some strawberries, and a nice quiet afternoon.

It's the time of the year when the elderberry trees are blooming here, and I can smell their sweet scent through the open windows.

Elderberries outside the window... in full bloom.

Which means it's the time of the year for a very traditional food - fried elderberry flowers. They are known as "Hollerküchle" hereabouts, and the typical batter for them is made with beer:

2 eggs
100 g flour
125 ml beer
1 pinch of salt

all mixed together into a batter. If you don't like beer batter, you can substitute milk or even (sparkly) water. The batter should be enough for about 12 elderberry flowers - use them as fresh as possible. If you want, you can dip them in cold water until clean, then let them dry off. (I usually pick only clean ones and save the washing.)

Dip each flower into the batter, then fry in hot oil or (even better) hot clarified butter until golden brown. Serve hot, sprinkled with confectioner's sugar or a mix of sugar and cinnamon. It's a lovely dessert or, if you make more of it, a lovely sweet main meal.

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer have put together an issue of the New Statesman, and there were, let's say, "slight difficulties" concerning the cover. If you are at all interested, go read the piece on Neil's blog, it's worth it for the comic alone.

If you read German, Rainer Schreg has posted a very good reply to the concern that archaeologists (and the feuilleton press) are talking about the loss of monuments and cultural history that is going on in Syria and the Iraq. If you do not read German, here's the TG;CR (Too German, Cannot Read) short version:

If we are writing about the loss of monuments, it does not mean we consider stones as more important than people. We are concerned about the cruelty to people, but destroying their cultural heritage is part of destroying people and their identity. The effects of this will be felt long after the civil war, when new generations will ask questions about their own history - those questions will not be answered anymore with the lack of cultural heritage.
Loss of cultural heritage has been going on for many decades, all over the world, but it's only with the war and terror in Iraq and Syria that it has hit the press in force. However, if not in connection with these transgressions, when should we discuss this loss of our history? When the world is a beautiful, perfect place that has forgotten what war is like? If we wait until then, it could be too late. Let us stop discussing the merit of stones versus the merit of people and rather start asking why the rest of the world is just sitting there, doing nothing.

Over at archaeosoup, there's a video of Gary Bankhead (who recently stayed here to chat textiles and do some research) explaining about his work in Durham and the cloth seals he is researching.

And on a final note, going on in the Blogosphere in the near future: Gillian and I are planning a blog tour to celebrate the launch of the Beast (soon! very soon!) so if you happen to know of any blog who would be interested... let us know. (Gillian is especially looking for someone who wants to know how she knows so much about Old French insults, and I agree with her that it would be fun to tell about the issues of working together when you are ten thousand miles apart.)

The prototype of the gold embroidery kit I'm currently working on is finished. I documented the amounts of thread needed (though not how long I worked on it), and I made notes for the instruction sheet that will go with the embroidery kit.


It took a little less than ten metres of the gold thread, and the couching thread was used in two different colours, which is much more visible in the original than in the picture. It looks a little wonky in the picture because I digressed from the pre-drawn pattern during the embroidering, and it's much harder to do a straight line if there is no leading line on the fabric. Why did I digress?
I made one single drawing, but you can see that I tested two different possiblilities - one was letting the three leaves run together close to the band (as can be seen in the upper left part), the other leaving a gap between the leaves. Same applies to the leaves where they touch the band - bottom with a gap, top without. I like the gaps between the parts better than the run-together look, so the final version will have a gap between the single elements.

And here's how the backside of the embroidery looks:





You can see the different colours of the couching thread much better here - though the rest, obviously, is by far not as spectacular...

This week was taxes week for me - tax day in Germany is the last day of May, and it looks like I'll actually finish a day early this year! So tomorrow will be a very relaxed Saturday...

Apart from going over all the books and wrangling all the data necessary, not too much happened this week. I'm still waiting for more rain to refill the rainwater cistern (it drizzled a few hours ago, but that was all).

Friday? Really? Does that mean I'll get special treats today?

 
Planning for the gold embroidery kit is progressing, and now I'm waiting for some things to arrive so I can go into the next stage. The prototype is all finished - more on that on Monday!

We all make mistakes, small ones, big ones, some that are easily fixed and some that haunt us for ages. (Sometimes small, easily fixed ones can still be of the haunting sort, though.) Mistakes are not nice to make, but they are a part of life, and every one of them is an opportunity to learn, and do better next time.

Mistakes are also an opportunity to think things over, and maybe alter them to the better. There's no such thing as a perfect script, as any writer knows... finding mistakes and editing them is a process that makes the final manuscript a much better piece, since there will inevitably be stuff that is not a real proper mistake, but can do with some change for the better anyways.

You don't want to know how many typos we found in the Beast in the final big edit. Trust me. You don't.

But does that mean every mistake should remain visible? That is the suggestion of Guy Claxton, who says erasers are an instrument of the devil and should be banned from classrooms (all quotes in the following are from this article). Because, and now comes the point that makes me groan,

...schools should encourage students to acknowledge their mistakes because that’s the way the “big wide world” works...

Erm, excuse me? Mister Claxton, what planet are you living on, and how can I get there? The last time I looked around in the "big wide world" that I am currently living in, mistakes are not acknowledged, oh no. They are brushed over, or hushed up, or even rewarded with a hefty chunk of severance pay. When was the last time you heard a politician declare openly and publicly that he or she had fucked up, made a serious mistake, is very sorry and then actually did something to remedy the error? Or when did they obviously learn from a mistake?

There's massive protest against TTIP and CETA (go sign the protest if you have not yet done so, please); but do the politicians admit that it might have been a mistake? Nope - they are still trying to push it through. There's bees dying everywhere because of new pesticides, but does that lead to a ban on these chemicals? Ah no.

Don't even get me started on the EU VAT stuff. 2015 is half gone, the Digital VAT has proven to be a huge problem for small traders, many of which have closed their doors, but what is happening? Very very little, and very very slowly - and the plans to extend the new rules to all goods in 2016 still persist. (Please sign the petition if you have not yet done so, and spread the word so that others sign it, too. It's not looking good for small businesses at the moment, and that does include my own business.)

Do I need to go on? I don't think so. If we have a culture of standing up and admitting your own mistakes, and then openly correcting them and trying not to make a similar mistake in the future, I think it is hiding very, very well in this "big wide world" of ours. At least it's not the culture that our captains of industry, politicians and magnates are steeped in.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, professor Claxton said: “The eraser is an instrument of the devil because it perpetuates a culture of shame about error. It’s a way of lying to the world, which says ‘I didn’t make a mistake. I got it right first time.’ That’s what happens when you can rub it out and replace it.

Being able to fix your mistakes and make things better is not something, in my experience, that perpetuates shame about the error. On the contrary - I'd be much more ashamed about something that has to stand visibly for everybody to see. I do know that many of my colleagues feel the same about visible errors in their craftwork. If it can be fixed without trace, it should be okay to fix without trace; often enough, that is not the case anyway, because there will remain a reminder of the error that is at least visible to the person who made the thing. Life is hard enough without having to live with all your little mistakes visible to the world, too.

If you are not tired of reading about this topic yet, hop over to Another Damned Medievalist's blog, whose post in reply to the piece about erasers was the reason for this whole post. (I really just wanted to write a few words before linking to her, but then I got off on a tangent.) ADM's looking at the eraser-is-the-devil thing from a different angle and takes it apart with a little historical knowledge. (To whoever groused her at Leeds to blog more again: thank you!)