I love tea. Especially at this time of year, when it is cold and dreary outside, a nice cuppa makes life so much better, instantly.

I also love to have the tea on a teapot-warmer - for some kinds of tea, especially black tea, this seems to keep the taste nice for a longer time, as opposed to putting the hot tea into a thermos bottle. (At least that's what it feels like for me.)

Teapot-warmers, though, need something to burn within them. Which, usually, means tea lights. Now, these come in handy little packages, each one in their little aluminum shell, and the wax is not the most eco-friendly stuff either. That always scratched on my green conscience.

So from time to time, I'd try different things. Beeswax tea lights. "Eco" tea lights with different wax. They all did not work properly, due to different reasons.

A while ago, though, I discovered an alternative and have now tested it for a bit: oil lights. They are basically a cork swimmer thingie, you insert a short little wick into that, fill something like a small, flat bowl with water, put some vegetable oil on top, place the wicked swimmer on it and light the wick. There you go. Small, lightweight, no aluminum waste, and just a bit of oil that hangs out in the kitchen anyways. Plus, the company that has been making these since 1867 is based here, in my region, and does all the production locally as well.

I would have linked to them here and now, but they do not sell to end-users, and the oil lights seem to be relatively hard to find. Which means... I am actually thinking about getting them into my shop. It has nothing to do with textile production per se, but it is a wonderful product, we all know textile people need hot tea (right?), and it might also be just the thing a few living history folks need. (There were hanging oil lamps in medieval times, which definitely need something to hold a wick. That would be another nice excuse...)

Just because it's that time of the year, and just because I can - in case you are still looking for some inspiration for your shopping:

The British Library would like to aid you with their list of things you can buy. (Nice stuff, though the quill they offer as part of the writing set triggers one of my pet peeves. The first thing you do before writing with a modified feather? Take off that annoying fluffy stuff. Writing quills are not supposed to look like feathers! They look like naked central ridges of feathers, maybe with a little rest of the vane at the very top. The rest of the vane? Gone. Look at any picture of medieval scribes. Or later scribes using quills.)

Or maybe you are looking for a different kind of gift? Something that will not accumulate dust? You could sponsor something like the research project for bat-friendly roofing membranes (will run for 6 more days), or the archaeological excavations at Sandby Borg in Sweden, or help the UCL museum to protect and conserve its collection of very special skeletons.

(h/t to ossamenta for these last three!)

It's time for some housekeeping again - well, housekeeping in regard to the computer. We have a lovely thing for keeping files safe and sound, since I have become an even bigger fan of secure backups when several hard disks died during my phd thesis writing. (I lost a bit of work each time, but not much, thanks to regular backing up.) So these days, we have a RAID 1, which is really cool, and with 2 TB, it's also quite roomy. For the non-computer geeks: RAID stands for Redundant Array of Individual (or Inexpensive) Disks. The 1 after that means you get two identical hard disk drives, and then you write all your data on both disks, so they should have identical content. The smart thing can check itself to make sure both disks are working and both have the same content - and in case one dies, you replace it and the thing mirrors the contents of the survivor to the empty replacement. It's not the securest thing there ever was, since there's no guarantee both won't die at once, but much better than just a single disk. (There's lots of more numbers for RAIDs that mean delightfully complicated arrangements of several disks to speed things up and make stuff extra-secure. But we stick with the 1, for now.)

Doing lots of backups, though, and with an inclination to rather copy a file once more than one time too few, duplicate files will inevitably accumulate. Which means that even roomy RAIDs will, at a certain point in time, not be so roomy anymore. So now and then, housekeeping is on the agenda. Which means that my computer has been running a duplicate search over night, and I just spent a little while checking what it has found, and generously deleting duplicates, triplicates and in some cases even quadriplicates. (That happens when you backup everything, then move a file to a different location, accidentally copy it again, and I have no clue where the fourth one came from.)

Just in case you are getting nervous now since your last backup has been ages ago: I use SyncBack as the backup tool, and AntiTwin to search and delete duplicate files. Both are free in their basic version. Go do a backup. It's the best way to make sure you might never need it - and if you do, well, then you have one!

For a change, I actually am remembering my blogiversary on the day this year.

On Monday, December 8, back in 2008, starting a blog seemed like a really good idea. It's Monday, December 8, 2014 now, and I would like to tell my past self that yes, starting a blog? Brilliant idea.

This morning, I looked at the visitor stats for the first time in ages - and I found out that I seem to have leveled out regarding both the views per year and the average RSS feeds that are taken from the blog. That means I'm at least interesting enough for a given number of people - and since you are one of them: Thank you for coming here (or getting the feed) and reading my blog! (Including enduring all the boring posts.)

Because without readers, a blog won't work. And meeting some of you readers is the best thing about blogging for me, by the way. When I meet somebody somewhere - at a conference, for example, or at an event, and somehow the blog comes up and the other person says "Oh, that's your blog? I read that!" I usually feel about 10 cm taller. Every time. (Good thing I only feel that way, or I'd be way past the record tallness for humans now.) It's nice to know that what you are writing goes out into the world, and even nicer that it is sometimes considered really helpful as well - posts like the one about untangling a skein of yarn or the series about fair prices in crafting get read again and again. (And now I'm possibly making them even more popular by linking them again.)

So. Thank you for reading. Thank you for all your comments, too, and for linking to this blog whenever I manage to do properly interesting stuff. I'm still enjoying the ride. (Or should that be "the write"?)

Here's to the next year of blogging - may my writing stay interesting enough for you to enjoy!

If you read this blog regularly, you'll know that I was at the Kreativ fair last month. Our time to walk around and have a look at all the other stalls in the hall there was limited, but it was enough to get an impression of things and to find a few very interesting bits and pieces. Or amusing bits and pieces - like the eyes that I bought for Cousin Itt, erm, my distaff:





There. Isn't that nice?

But I promised you stuff, in the title. So here you go.
One of the colleagues at the fair was a lovely lady who sold her own invention, a stainless steel sewing gauge. It's more or less the typical style used in Germany, without a sliding bit, which means it's resilient and will not take up a lot of space in your sewing tool stack.


Since it's made of stainless steel, you can use for marking hems and buttonholes (like you would usually do), but also for exact ironing of hems or seams. Or seam allowances - including those on curves. You can find sample pictures of this on her website (text in German).



I've watched Nannette demonstrate this, and were I a modern sewing person, I would have bought one on the spot. (I am not sewing in the modern style, at all. Which means that I also do not iron seams or hems. That, again, means that I have no use even for a nifty cool gadget like this.) 

If you are doing things to your seams and seam allowances using an iron, however, this might be just what your sewing kit is lacking.  Or if you are looking for a present for somebody who does modern sewing, that might be just the thing. The gauge costs 25 € a piece, plus shipping costs, and you can order it directly from Nannette by Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein.. (I checked back with her, since the website is German only: she's fine with shipping internationally, she will tell you how much shipping to your country will be once you emailed her, and it's also possible to pay her with paypal.)

Just in case you are still searching for things to delight friends, family, loved ones or colleagues with, now is the time of year to go read John Scalzi's blog. At Whatever, this year's Holiday Shopping Guide is live again, and you might just find something in the links that helps you with your finding-of-things quest.

In much the same spirit, the Yarn Harlot is also doing her yearly "Gifts for Knitters" thing again. (Scroll down a bit to find the gifts section.)

For both of these blogs, check back on them later - more stuff is going to be posted there. And even if you are all set with your presents already, they are worth looking at, if only for the curious things posted!

It's very grey and wintery outside these days, but we still have no snow - as opposed to where my parents live, they've already had some of the white stuff.

It is nice to slowly migrate towards the calmer time of the year, though. While there are still plenty of things left to do hereabouts, there is no more fair or show or market for now, which greatly reduces the urgency of certain things. And that is a very good thing, as I still feel like I could use some more days off to relax and regenerate.

For now, though, having some nice quiet time in the evenings and looking forward to the weekend will have to do. Oh, and motivational hot beverages help as well. Plus chocolate. And the fact that it is pleasant work, overall - even if it is still work.

Just in case you would rather like to learn something new (or old) instead of reading me rambling on about the weather and wanting some holidays, here's a website helping you learn Middle English. Chaucer, anyone?

Or maybe a gratuitous knitting pic? I've succumbed to the lure of all that yarn while at the Kreativ, plus it was cool in the hall - so I just had to cast on for a snuggly triangular scarf/shawl. It's made from one skein of sock wool in the "Jeans" colourway, dyed by Margit from Alte Künste. (Here's the shop link.) I finished it a few days ago, and I've been enjoying its snugglyness ever since.