It's a good thing that it's Friday today - I have really been looking forward to the weekend all week long. And I have managed to get the deadlined thing done before the deadline (well, a day before, but that counts, right?) and will be able to really enjoy the weekend as a result. Hooray!

Textile Forum stuff is also in the works, and I hope to have all the stuff together for an update for the participants and an update to our website on Monday afternoon. Another thing to look forward to, and coming up as fast as Xmas has a habit of creeping up come November.

But for now... weekend!

We had a vet appointment yesterday, and now we have another one for next week - our poor little cat (who seems to be older than she lets on) has bad teeth, and at least three of her molars have to go. There's an inflammation, and fistulas have already developed. Poor little sod - she must be in a lot of pain, but she does not let on at all.

Plus she's going to be on a diet from now on, not because she's too fat, but because she probably has food allergies. It's a little tricky and not totally efficient to put her on an elimination diet since she's an outdoor cat and would be devastated if she had to stay inside for several weeks, but we will try it nevertheless. If we are totally lucky, it's only a food allergy - if not, she's also allergic to something else and will have to be treated with cortisone.

Oh, and her age? The shelter that took her in when she was found in February had estimated her to be about seven years old. Yesterday's X-Ray showed skeletal signs that hint to an age somewhat more between 10 and 12 years of age. We have an elderly cat lady sharing our home!

There's a conference in planning for 2013 about the connections between material goods from the Middle Ages and Gender. Now that's an interesting topic!

From their website with info about the conference:

The Conference will consider the gendered nature of social, religious and economic uses of ‘things’, exploring the way that objects and material culture were produced, consumed and displayed. Papers will address questions of gender from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, embracing literature, history, art history, and archaeology.
Themes will include:
• adornment, clothing and self-fashioning
• the material culture of devotion
• objects and materialism
• the material culture of children, adolescents and life cycle
• emotion, intimacy and love-gifts
• entertainment and games
• memory and commemoration
• pleasure, pain, and bodily discipline
• production and consumption
• monastic material culture
• material culture in literary texts

 The CfP is open until September 14, and the conference takes place in January 4-6, 2013, in Bath.

If you have been planning to visit Durham, you are in for a little bad luck: The Durham Treasures exhibit area is closed and the textiles that were on display are in storage for an indefinite period.

But there's some good news, too: 
The reason for this is that the Cathedral is embarking on a major development of its Claustral buildings, which will see the Shop move from its current location in the Great Kitchen into the Western Undercroft (where the Treasures exhibition used to be). A new sequence of exhibition spaces in which we plan to display many more of the Cathedral's collections will be created in the Monks' Dormitory and Great Kitchen.

You can read a little more about the project, called Open Treasure project, on the Cathedral website. There's also "News" (longer term stuff) and "Notices" (short-term info on closures, events and restrictions) on the site, so it's probably a good idea to check in there before leaving for Durham.

A friend pointed me to the existence of a small book called "The Manly Art of Knitting", written by Dave Fougner. It seems to be available used only, and that to a steep price - 90+ USD from the Big River Store, at least.

However, for those of you just curious about the contents, like me, with no actual need to buy it, there's a very nice review on the Historic crafts blog. (They have since moved to a new location, here on blogspot, and it looks like a nice blog, but unfortunately with no new posts done during the last year.)

Anyways - manly art of knitting. The book appears to contain instructions on how to knit a hammock, among other things (I like that idea). A hammock would be just the thing to lie in during this summer heat we have here (though that would also mean we'd need two conveniently spaced trees... which are not to be had in our garden).

Other (not so manly) links - on Medieval Silkwork, there's a post about female undergarments in written sources.

And I should be working on my article now, the deadline is looming up...

Cathy Raymond asked in a comment about my last Lengberg finds mention:

I blogged about that particular item awhile ago, pointing out its resemblance to the ancient Roman subligar which was worn by women, and an anonymous blogger commented that the Lengberg find had been identified as a man's garment. The blogger also claimed that a lot of 15th c German images show men wearing such garments.

The University of Innsbruck's web article on the finds agrees with my anonymous blogger--it identifies the item as a man's garment, and remarks, I believe, that it was found close to a wool fabric scrap believed to have come from a codpiece. Given that the Lengberg finds did not come from graves, I don't think that sort of association, in and of itself, is persuasive evidence. But there may be other evidence I don't know anything about that supports the identification of the garment as male.

Can you point me to any images confirming that men wore such garments? The English and French images with which I am familiar show men wearing briefs that look more like modern Fruit of the Loom briefs, but I'm not very familiar with 15th German miniatures or artwork.

These pictures are not very frequent, and most of the examples I have found are from crucifiction scenes where the two other guys are shown as well, or from similar martyr scenes. One example from a crucifiction scene, from end-of-15th-century Austria, is here in the IMAREAL. If you search for "Kreuzigung" with the timespan 1300-1600, there is at least one more example. When I'm specifically searching for those undies, I am thus looking for crucifiction scenes - though those only showing Christ will not suffice, since he's invariably shown with a cloth covering his nethers, no modern underwear.

Sometimes the corresponding undies are also shown in bed scenes or in "battle for the trousers" scenes. Those topics are usually searchable in most piccie databases, so I'd recommend them as search terms.

(Technically, you can also search for clothing - underwear or underpants on IMAREAL. However, the tagging is not always complete or correct, and that search will not necessarily find you all the instances. This is not intended to bash the IMAREAL tagging - I have a private, tagged, picture database and I do know how hard it is to do it consistently and correctly all the time.)

Oh, and regarding the male-or-female discussion: We have proof (picture proof) that these types of underpant were worn by men, but that does not exclude them being worn by women. We just have no picture (or other) proof for it yet. So personally, I would say that it's not very likely that a lot of women wore them, but that they might have been used by some, or in some circumstances as for controlling blood during menstruation, for example.

I hope that helps!

... so maybe you have the desire to look at pictures?

There is a large-ish list of picture databases and meta-search sites for pictures here on Wikiversity. The text is German (but the links are clickable from anywhere in the world, as usual), and lots of the databases are probably non-relevant regarding medieval textiles and costume, but have a look yourself. The last parcel is international sources, so at least they should also be available in English.

And if you find a real gem in there somewhere, please tell me!