I found this video a while ago, and I probably left it open in a tab because of the spindle-spinning technique that is shown for a few times (though only briefly). 

The whole thing is interesting to watch, however - so here you go: 

We have a red and a red-grey squirrel in our area, with both of them rather frequently seen on the trees in the surrounding gardens... and the red-grey squirrel also in our garden. It not only tries to hide nuts there in the autumn, it also sometimes visits the compost heap, as you can see in this slightly blurry and also not very good photo: 

The reason for this is an old, bleached bone lying on top of the heap. The squirrel goes there to gnaw on the bone (you can clearly see the tooth marks) - we think it might be for the calcium. We had a bone on top of the heap a while ago, by chance, and realised that it was a squirrel snack, so when one re-appeared in the compost (after being buried for a bit) I pulled it out and moved it up top. 

Where it was almost instantly appreciated.

So... I finally managed to send off one edit of a paper, and done some work here and there. Most importantly, though, we have green light for the date that I had pencilled in for the next European Textile Forum, hooray! I will try to get the CfP out later this week.

I'm still waiting on final news for the re-print of the gold embroidery book, but I do hope that will come tomorrow.

There's also been good news about the little hedgehog we picked up in the garden a while ago, it's now healthy again and ready to get back into the wild (with a little transition phase). 

And if I now manage to get my post done for the day, I'll be happy! (The last bits of a cold I had caught made me sluggish somehow. Hopefully I will now get rid of the last dredges of it...)

...you only get this photo of a busy bee: 

Enter your text here ...

A while ago, a fragment of a medieval Merlin story manuscript was found in Cambridge - as part of a 16th century binding. The fragment was left in situ and not taken out and flattened as would have been done, say, 30 years ago, because its re-use is, in itself, a thing of historical interest.

Instead, modern imaging technologies were used to record, digitise, and virtually unfold the parchment piece. You can see the results, and read the full report, here.

Preserving the find as-is has become more and more an option that is considered upon finding something - whether it's a manuscript fragment like here, or something else such as a belt buckle with mineralised textiles on it, or a textile with dirt on it. In some cases, it's necessary to remove dirt to prevent further degrading, but for the belt buckle... well. Unfortunately there's still too many textile imprints or textile residues cleaned off like they're just ugly and in the way, but things like this manuscript do make me hope that at some point, every artefact will be preserved as completely as possible.

From time to time, I dabble in medieval headwear. Especially... weird medieval headwear. 

Recently I've been involved in a project that, in turn, involves women's headdresses in the Late Middle Ages. And that means I finally got around to trying out this weird piece of headgear: 

I've seen it worn solo on a Rogier van der Weyden painting (Mary Magdalen), and since also worn below a mostly normal headcloth (exact way of draping yet unsolved). It seems to be not totally common, but also not a complete singular fantasy piece either.

Should you have found images of this, worn solo or underneath a veil, please let me know! I'm still collecting evidence. And I will keep you updated on the veil draping progress...

Sometimes, you know, sometimes I really don't get it. 

Let me start from somewhere further back. I am on Facebook, because of work. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.) Because I'm there due to work reasons, I will usually accept friend requests from people - I do a quick screening to see if they are just there to sell me things, or if they are too far out on the right-wing extremist spectrum, or similar, and if they pass that (really very quick screening) I accept.

This means that I'm "facebook friends" with a lot of people. Including some with, apparently, quite different world views. Now... one of them posted a video of a man doing hobby horsing, and I found that on my timeline today. (If you have not heard of that before, see here.) The reaction to the video? People going all obnoxious and hate comments about how awful and horrible and so on it was.

And this, folks, this I really can't understand. I mean he's not going out shooting children in a school. He's not even flashing minors in a park. He is just hopping around with a hobby horse, trying to do some hobby horse dressage. (The gallop, I'd say, needs work.*) It's not making noise, it's not inconveniencing people, it's not costing him oodles of money or polluting our environment. Why on earth do people need to hate on this? Why can't they just go "oh, nothing for me" or maybe even "I find that ridiculous, I wouldn't do it" and then leave it with that? Why criticise his hobby? I bet the people doing all the hating would not be amused if somebody hated on their hobbies, or their favourite pastimes.

I really don't get it. And, even worse, it makes me sad.

* I did a lot of "I'm a horse" when I was a child. Gallop always needs work.