Whenever there is something new for the shop, I have to take a photo of it... for which I have a photo tent that gets a blue (indigo-dyed) background. Everything gets placed in there, pictures get taken, and then I can put the photobox-tent-thingie away again.

Except this time... it did not unfold as well as it should have. It had probably been stored a tad too long, or twisted somehow differently than normal - it did unfold, but not completely. So I decided to let it sit open for a while longer than it takes to photo the new things.

Which, naturally, led to this:


The cat, however, will not get a place in the shop... even if she tried her best to be a photogenic cuddly model.

You mean you did not want to look at cat pictures? You can look at the Codex Manesse instead - it's completely online and downloadable, all 871 pages of it - here. There's a big and a small version for the download, and it's free. Or, if you just want to browse the pictures, click on the link Bilderschließung in HeidICON which brings you to just the pics, and all of them. All praise the Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg who made this possible!

There's links hoisted off on the Internet by Phiala of the String Pages, and I totally suggest you go and follow at least the link to a cat's footprints in a medieval manuscript and the piece about folks burying butter in a bog to preserve it (and then taste-test it).

While you are at that Nordic Food Lab blog, you might as well read a few other articles - they are doing interestingly weird things with food there.

Also: Oldest Board Game tokens ever found.

Silk textiles from Persia in the Oseberg ship.

Fold your own trowel (archaeogami).

And last but not least: best coin ever spent.

Technically, today is a holiday - but I am planning to sneak some textile-related, not entirely non-work into my day. Such as finally working some more on that hairnet that is not quite finished, but coming along nicely. And some more spinning.

Speaking of which - I have tried out a new spinning technique that I finally got to understand well enough to give it a go the day before yesterday. It's the one described in Kathelyne's blog (hint: I watched the videos, and that's what made it click for me).

I am absolutely, utterly in love with that technique, so much that I spent quite a bit of time spinning yesterday. This morning, I made a benchmark test similar to the spinning tests I did before - I have not looked at the spinning angle yet, but I have managed to spin 18 m of thread in half an hour, with high twist. That's not too bad for a technique that I started out with just two days ago, and I have quite a bit of hope that speeding it up a bit more will be possible...

Finally, the photo is taken, the description is written, and everything else shop-wise is done. And may I present to you the newest thing on offer chez pallia:






- the little brother (or sister?) to the spindle stick you already know.

It's inspired by a lathe-turned stick find from York, made out of maple wood and in the quality you are used to from its bigger sibling. With only about 17 cm in length, though, it is at the shorter end of the spectrum we know from finds. It still is a beautifully working stick, fits about any whorl (thickest part of the small stick is only slightly slimmer than on the large one, with about 10 mm) and it is small enough to slip into your pocket for a project on the go.

I've given one of them a little test run, and while it looks a bit unaccustomed at first if you are used to the large variant, it does spin beautifully. Unfortunately, I have some other things to do today as well, not just spin...

There are a few other things I am planning to add to the shop, but this was the one most dear to my heart - and probably the one that will get you most excited of the new kids in the shop.

I am busy writing and taking pictures and thinking and getting stuff reorganised in my brain. There are also things lying around on tables and floors, waiting to get sorted and put away, but they will survive (as I will) if I only get around to it tomorrow.

Just in case you are interested in what makes me so busy - three writing projects have come to a state of progress that makes me quite, quite happy (and means I have to apply my time and brains to them for a bit, too). There are another three, or four, or five depending on how you count in the wings, waiting - they shall have to bide a bit more time.

Some of the picture-taking planned for today is not for papers or other publications, though - it's for the online shop. I have a few new things to add, and if all goes reasonably well, I will be able to reveal them to you tomorrow. They are nice and exciting things, I think - and I hope you will think so, too!

I've gone through my list of things that I might want to blog about, and as usual, the list is long... but not all of the topics make for a quick blog entry, or a link list.

What is in there of potential interest to you, though, is this: Plans for making a tape loom. They are from a magazine that was published a while ago, and then went through bankruptcy. It's a relatively simple tape loom, though not as simple as my contraption (which is basically a stick in a board with a holder for the rigid heddle).

If you haven't tried band weaving yet, but get the chance - give it a go. It is a really nice pastime, a rather quick way to get some tapes or bands, and since it's quick and does not use oodles of material, it is a nice possibility to try out some funky colour combinations, too.

I am back from taking my breather - just like every year, we went to the Spiel in Essen together with a bunch of friends. That is a fair all about boardgames, and we spent the days there looking at an enormous amount of games, checking out the rules of lots of them, having a still impressive number explained to us and played a few (at least for a few rounds, so we could get a feel for it). For example, we got to try out "Firefly - the game". If you just look at the game mechanics, it's a fairly simple merchant simulation with lots of bad things that can happen to your ship and your crew... but the game manages to catch the spirit of the series really beautifully.

We all managed to escape without con-crud (in this case, we non-lovingly term it the "Essen-Pest", the plague of Essen). We did, of course, not escape without games - there was an expansion out for "Flashpoint", which we currently play a lot. I also consumed way too much chocolatey stuff (if that is possible at all, that is).

If you are tempted now to go to the Spiel yourself one day, boardgamegeek.com has an Essen FAQ here. I am quite exhausted, gaming-wise, after the four days of the show and the drive home, but I absolutely love it. It really is an experience!