Over on the Stringpage blog (which you should totally check out in case you still don't know it), Sarah posted a link to the new Virtual Library at the Getty Museum of Art. Like the Met before it, the Getty has made out-of-print backlist publications available for download, free of charge.

Hooray for these two wonderful museums and the books they offer us!

The phone, I blame the phone for eating up almost all my morning! Now I'll quickly give you today's links:

De Gruyter has bought up Versita, now called de Gruyter Open. This part of dG will offer open access articles and journals, their start page is here.

And, to (semi-)quote* the webcomic Questionable Content: Baking is science for hungry people. If that makes you hungry for some baking science, head over here to learn everything you ever wanted to learn about chocolate chip cookies.

* It's a semi-quote because there is merchandise with that phrase, but to my knowledge, it doesn't turn up in a comic.

I have just finished the first piece for the project I am working on currently - male and female clothing in the style of the Codex Manesse. First piece was the woman's undergarment, and it's now hanging to dry after a quick rinse, all sewn and neatly hemmed, the tailor's chalk rinsed out, and thus ready to be worn. (Well, except for being dripping wet yet.)

Next pieces in line will be the man's undergarments - and then, once the wool fabrics have been dyed in beautiful, bright colours, the real work will start.

For the rest of today, though, I am going to immerse myself in books, as it's time for a library visit again. There's books waiting for me on several different topics and for several different items of writing - so I should get myself into the car and get going to have a productive day!

A while ago, I went to a monthly spinning meet-up for the first time. That was fun.

A month later, I went there again... and fell in love with some fibre. It's not that I do not own enough fibre for spinning. (Seeing that I have fibre to sell, that would be sort of weird.) It's also not that I don't have enough spinning projects already, or things and techniques I should (or want to) try out, or improve in. And I also own more than enough sock wool for the next few years worth' of sock knitting, seeing how slowly I knit. (Intermittently, and that is probably mostly to blame. Even if your actual knitting speed is not snail-like but only on the low end of mediocre, leaving a knitting project in a bag for a few months because there just is no leisure for it means that making a pair of socks will take ages.)

That fibre... it sang to me. It was dyed, modern-style, in blues and greens with a dash of teal and a dollop of grey in it, and it looked too, too lovely. Long story short, after a while of considering and getting a snippet of the fibre to test-spin, I caved. I bought the fibre and took it with me to spin it during our post-Christmas time with friends. (They know me. Neither of them did blink an eye when I turned up with my spinning wheel in tow.)

I divided the dyed top into three parts, length-wise, and spun each part in my normal thickness and my normal amount of twist (and that's lots). I plied it up three-ply, feeling very generous with my time and very modern, and came out with almost sock-yarn thickness. (It's about as thick as normal sock yarn if you stretch the normal yarn a little.)

When I was finished, I knit up a little sample... which I then tossed into the washing machine, the normal cycle that we use for our clothes. Twice. It came out a little softer than it had come in, but unchanged in size.

And then I started knitting socks from it.






I am insanely happy with this yarn (even though I could have added more plying twist in a few places, and even though the colours from the three plies don't exactly match up).





The different colours and the mixing of them, however, make for interesting patterning.





And I'm looking forward to the time when both socks will show a share of green and blue...


because at the moment, it looks a bit as if I were knitting one sock each from two different wools.





I don't really mind, though. I am very happy watching my hand-spun wool knit up, and looking forward to having new socks at an unspecified time in the future.

Professor John Munro, who has written an immense amount of publications about economy, with lots and lots about the importance of textiles in economy, has passed away on December 23, 2013.

Here is his obituary from the University of Toronto; here is his life story. He was a very interesting man for sure, and I'm sad that I never got to meet him.

I hope that the university will keep his homepage accessible; there are links and downloads to many of his papers, working papers, and course notes available on the page, and I've found a lot of things of interest there.

In spite of an early morning walk and coffee, I'm not feeling so much more coherent this morning than I was yesterday. The Project G, as I shall name it from now on, is a little bit delayed, through some unfortunate circumstances and not to the fault of my fabric suppliers. So I'm still waiting for part of the fabric to portion it out and send it off for the dyeing process. Meanwhile, I can take care of other things, though.

Such as reading. And sorting some stuff. And getting started on the undergarments (where I already have the fabrics, and said fabrics do not need dyeing). And planning things - it has been decided that I will go to LonCon together with some friends, and we're in the hot planning phase for this.

There's also an update on the next Textile Forum due - we have been sorting out possible focus topics, and have decided. There's only some few things to clarify before we can set out to finalise our planning for this stage. Whew. (Staying in one place definitely has its huge advantages for the planning and organising part!)

If you've read all this, you are probably due some links to keep you amused - here they are:
A long list of digitised manuscripts is here; the (very funny and fabulous) blog that posted the list also asks for your support with a nomination for a UK blog award.

For those of you interested in some of Scientology's history, you might want to watch this. (Consider watching it anyways, if you're not interested in the topic but like to see good storytelling - that guy really knows what he is doing, with all the bells and whistles on.)

Or maybe you'd like to read snark about stock pictures? Getty Critics, then.

Finally, for those of you doing yoga (or something else where you use a mat) - if you have ever wondered whether your mat has a name, this handy guide will tell you what it is. (Once you found out, tell your mat hello from Sergeant Magic Thing, who is hanging out rolled up in the next room.)

The weekend is over, a new week has started, and I have already managed to get some of the paperwork stack cleared from my desk. That's nice. Unfortunately, it's also just a drop on the hot stone.

There's the Big Project going on, which has hit a bit of a snag at the moment, and part of today will be set aside to clear that up. And otherwise, this phd comic sums it up pretty much at the moment.

I have a long list of things to do, issues to clear, stuff to sew, other stuff to organise, and things that I ought to write, and pretty soon. Also, the cat wants to be cuddled. And if you are lucky, my blogging will be more coherent and more interesting tomorrow... when I hopefully will have coped a bit.