A good week ago, I received a comment/question on one of my netting posts regarding pictures of netting and the persons doing said technique (thanks Christina!).

As to who did netting - that is rather hard to answer. There is a bunch of netting finds from Sint-Truiden which might indicate it was done in a convent, but as usually, nothing is certain. There are not so many well-documented pictures of people doing netting either - which probably is partly due to it not actually being depicted, and partly to depictions being misinterpreted as another technique. I think I have seen netting labeled as "knitting" at least once.

That said, there are the usual sources to find pictures of netting ladies (it's mostly ladies, as far as I have seen yet). One good resource to turn to for a start, as always, is Larsdatter.

And then searching diverse picture and museum databases might yield things like this 15th century woman netting, actual nets like this one from Sint-Truiden, or pictures of nets used for fishing (very frequent due to the biblical stories around this) and hunting (like this one).

As usual, it is not too easy to find good pictures of someone doing the actual textile craft, and search terms "net" or "netting" will turn up lots of unhelpful pics as well. It may be worth a try to also look for "knitting" or "making garment" as well - there is a story about Jesus' tunic being seamless, and I know of at least one picture from the late Middle Ages where this garment is clearly made by netting.

Life hacks are little things that make life easier - and the best ones make you go "duh, why did I never think of that" and then use that little thing and wonder how you ever managed without it.

And from time to time, lists with life hacks pop up on the internet - such as this one. Some of those I already knew (and use), some of them are quite American, and quite a few just do not apply to me because I do not have the need (I can separate eggs like a boss, without a squeezy bottle.) But they are fun to look at nevertheless, I think.

We live in a world that has some really weird approaches to some things - such as thinking it would be possible to patent seeds. Unfortunately, this is exactly what Monsanto and its ilk are going for - which, if successful, would be restricting rights for farmers in ways that can only be deemed "not good".

The food, and with it the seed industry, have become something rather weird anyways. Food is shipped around half the world because it's cheaper to ship, process, package, and ship again than to just get it to a neighbouring facility and process it right in the country where it was grown. Or it gets weirdly imported: A good while ago, we tried to buy potatoes and onions in our local supermarket... only to find they offered onions from Egypt and potatoes from Egypt and somewhere else ridiculously far away. I'm living in Franconia, and typical crops here? Potatoes and onions. Really. So typical that folks living in Bamberg still have the nickname "Zwiefeltreter" (those that step onto onions - treading down the onion green a while before harvest was done to further improve crop quality). Why on earth would one want to import owls to Athens, or onions to Franconia? Oh, right - profit. How could I forget. (Fun fact aside: You know where we got those locally grown onions and potatoes? In the Turkish grocery shop. Take that, xenophobes!)

It's even similar for seeds for home gardening. I can totally get that not everyone is willing to grow and harvest their own seed material, and buying it is a viable alternative. But the stuff you can buy? These days, it's mostly F1-hybrids: plants that will not breed true, so even if you take seeds from them, you can end up with about anything. Which might be nice if you are experimentally inclined and like surprises, but not if you are going for a reliable crop of something with a taste you liked from the original produce.

Another weird story connected with the rights to using and distributing a certain variety of plant is the story around Linda. Linda caused an uproar back in the 2000s, because the protection on this variation ran out and the potato was to be taken out of agriculture. Taken out as in "it is not allowed to grow this potato anymore" - and Linda was one of the, if not the, most popular variety at that time. You can read the story here (there's links to two updates at the bottom of the article) or, in another version, here.

Long story short - this should not happen. It's weird, it's absurd, and it is cutting down on variety and possibilities to adapt crops to a region, as well as putting a burden, financially, on farmers. So please go and sign this petition for the European governments to close the loopholes that will still allow the big companies to patent crops and thus restrict access to them.

Yes, I know that this title is sort of a TYCO (Thank you, Captain Obvious) - there is never (or just very rarely) enough money for anything. But in this case, it could turn out to be dire.

Germany has a non-unified approach to cultural heritage management, as well as to handling the finances of archaeological excavations that become necessary due to construction works. Some are better from the archaeologists' point of view, some are not as good. All of them, however, tend to get a budget cut in times when resources are getting fewer.

Now Nordrhein-Westfalen, one of the federal states that make up Germany, is trying to cut funding for archaeology completely. You can read an English article about this here, nicely titled "Neanderthal birthplace kills archaeology funding".

There is a petition running against this, and you can sign the petition for a rollback of the change here (page in German only). Signing is done by stating your full name (Vollständiger Name), zip code and city (PLZ/Ort), street and street number (Straße/Hausnr.), email address and then clicking "Unterschreiben". If you check "Anonym unterschreiben", your name etc will not be shown, and if you need this how-to, you probably want to remove the checkmark at "Informationen ..." or you will receive German-language updates regarding this and similar petitions. Germany's archaeologists thank you for your support!

Edit: The society responsible for the petition has translated it into English - you can read the English version here.

Firstly, the proceedings of the Textile Forum are coming along nicely - the proofs have been proof-read by our very diligent editor, and currently the cover is being tweaked. Soon, very soon our little Textile Forum will have something more to its name than the website and the conference!

Speaking of which - we will have a meeting for planning our next Forum this April, and after that we hope to be able to get the Call for Papers out. Our Forum date and focus topic is already settled upon: Decoration on Textiles - dye, print, embroidery and paint. For more information, as always, go to our Forum homepage.

Now on to more proceedings: There were two sessions titled "Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the Middle Ages" in the College Art Association 98th Annual Conference that took place in Chicago, IL, in February 2010. Not only is the conference programme still available on their website, they are also offering an MP3-recording of the second session for download (it costs 25 USD). It's a pity they are not offering the first session, which would have been much more interesting for me.

And there is a volume coming out this summer:

Dimitrova, Kate ; Margaret Goehring (eds.).
 Dressing the Part: Textiles as Propaganda in the
Middle Ages. Turnhout: Brepols, (June 2013).
28cm., pbk., ca. 350pp., 32 color, 150 b&w illus,
210 x 275 mm. English text. ISBN-13 9782503536767 ISBN-10 250353676X
They are approximating the price at about 100 €, but it looks as if it's not really fixed yet. More info available via the publisher's website.

The next NESAT conference will be organised by a dear friend of mine (whom I got to know because she organised a conference that I attended, way back when).

It will be the 12th NESAT conference, and it's going to take place in Hallstatt, Austria - the place of the lovely, wonderful, and absolutely spectacular Bronze Age and Iron Age textile finds from the salt mines.

And now, since the preliminary organisation has all been done, it is time for the Call for Papers to go out:

Dear Colleagues,

 

The NESAT XII symposium will be organized by the Natural History Museum Vienna on 21^st till 24^th of May 2014 in Hallstatt, Austria.

 

Abstract submission deadline:         May, 31, 2013

You find more conference details, including details about handing in abstracts, on the conference homepage, www.nesat.de. The page is both German and English, the conference also has these two official languages. And there's a picture of Hallstatt and one of the textile finds from there right on the front page - so it's worth a look in any case.