I just realised that I somehow never got around to posting pictures of the chess-playing couple that I made for Hartenstein - so here you go, a few photos...

Closeup of the buttons on the blue dress (worn beneath the short-sleeved pink dress):

The man getting dressed. If you don't put the arms in first, it won't work, so they inevitably look like colourful pancakes with arms in at some point:


Last touchups on the fully dressed lady:

 Travelling to their new home in the car:

And sitting in their new spot at the museum:

I really like how those two turned out, and I'm still totally in love with the idea of showing a couple in a game of chess - showing a medieval pastime, a game, male and female clothing at once, and all that together with an intimate and romantic touch. Now I hope the people at the museum will also like it as much!

I will let you know when they will be officially made part of the museum and on view for the public, which will be very soon probably.

There's a whole page up since today at medievalists.net about the topic of Medieval Dress - with a nice list of textile- and dress-related online articles. The topic is not restricted to dress or clothing only, but also extends to dress accessories like pins, brooches and jewellery.

There are quite a few articles in that list I'll have to take at least a look at, and it's really nice to see a paper about wall hangings. If you are not of the textile persuasion already and want to have a nice overview of archaeological textiles and the problems of this field, you might want to read the article by Maria Cybulska and Jerzy Maik.

It turned out that in spite of the payment thingie always giving me the virtual finger (as in "your payment didn't come through"), the very first try actually had already succeeded. The next tries, though, didn't - partly due to my spending limit on the credit card which is ridiculously low on purpose, partly due to a security warning at the card issuing center. And I must say that even though I was a bit miffed at how paying didn't work as smoothly as I was used to, I'm happy to know that there is somebody watching over the card transactions and taking a closer look if something seems to be out of control.

So now it seems to be all cleared up, I'm booked for the conference, I booked a flight already as well, and I can go to Leeds. Hooray! Now I only need to figure out what to attend there out of the gazillions of different sessions, papers, and special evening events. I'll probably feel utterly lost at such a huge conference - by far the largest one I'll ever have been to.

The weekend is approaching again, and I have like a billion little things that I need to take care of before it is here - like sending off the paper version registration for the Leeds conference.

It turned out that my inability to register and pay with my credit card (or debit card, since that didn't work as well) must be due to some glitch in the general system that makes payment procedures seemingly uncompatible with my issue type of cards. Which is totally weird since I have used that card(s) for paying in the rest of the world (including England) before. However, all is well that ends well: I found out why it doesn't work, I will still get to register and pay by bank transfer, which should really work (keeping my fingers crossed),  Update: No, I'm still wrestling with the system. They did charge my credit card after all... and now I'm sending this blog post off come what may. I'll tell you how it all worked out on Monday (I hope)...

I'm one of those people who have the deep-seated wish to do everything correctly... so among the other things, I'm still working on getting my head wrapped around all the things that I have to be aware of in the future, tax-wise, and there's not every thing really clear for me yet.

However, I found some really interesting stuff around on the net, and even though most of you readers are not from Germany, I'll still share it. There's a totally amazing guide for freelancers called mediafon, and not only does it answer about every question that might come up, it's also written in a way that makes reading up on the stuff fun. And if you know how German law texts are written (probably the same for all law texts in every language), that really is an achievement. So between that and a call to my friendly official in charge, I'll probably be quite ok.

In other news (and I'm sorry again for the non-Germans), you might remember that back in June, I had a film team here and an insane amount of fun working with them. Well, the film is now finally not only cut and edited (has been for a while), but also furnished with an airing date. It will run under the title "Ritter, Gaukler, Heilerinnen (Faszination Mittelalter)" on BR alpha on the 28th of March, 16:00 to 16:30 o'clock. It's not up on their programme preview site yet, but will be in time.

We all know that The InternetsTM are a non-safe place, so I try to be as safe as possible. That includes the use of Firefox with the NoScript add-on, regular updates to safety-relevant programmes, and so on.

So I'm all for security. Unless... well, unless said extra secure methods keep me from actually paying for something over the Internet. Which is how I spent my morning (and which is why I am only blogging now, not two and a half hours ago as I had planned). I have succumbed to the lure of Leeds and now have been trying to register using the online form... and what can I say? It could be a little more user-friendly, maybe, as in not giving me a time-out that requires me to fill in all the forms again. Or a second time-out. Or forget everything already filled in when I log out. Or actually transmit my card data to my card issuer so that they can authorise the payment. Gah.

It does take a bit of stuff to get me pissed off, but I'm actually a little more than moderately pissed right now. Booking for a conference (or a flight, or whatever) is something that always sort of racks my nerves, so I like to have it run smoothly, not need to try it a gazillion times without success.

Well. I mailed the conference team with my woes, and I hope that it will get solved soon. Anyways (and if I have to mail in the .pdf and pay the extra process fee they charge for not using the online-booking system), I will go to Leeds Congress. Anyone else coming?

I have actually tackled the paperwork stack yesterday, and I did make quite good progress - not all done yet, but soon I will be through (and that includes sorting stuff for easier tax-paperworks, so that's really fine). However, this year, I will have to brush up on tax stuff and get a little more knowledge in additionally, so I will have a bit more quality time with the paperwork stuff...

Unfortunately, taxes in Germany are a bit of a jungle, and it's not always easy to find your way through. It already starts with the name: There's Umsatzsteuer (literally: turnover tax) and Mehrwertsteuer (literally: value added tax). Which is exactly the same, only that USt. is nowadays the official term, but MWSt. is still used more often. Then there's different VAT rates for foodstuffs, books, and normal wares; if you teach for a school or private school, your honorarium might be exempt from VAT, but at another school it might not be. So to make things easier, there's a possibility to just not do VAT at all, but that is only possible under a certain maximum amount of income. You see? Jungle. Must find my machete. (If you actually want to have a quick and very incomplete first overview about German VAT, look here.)

Why I'm actually telling you about this? Well, my closed season seems to be over, and I will have to do MWSt. in the future. Which is a milestone, really - so I'm not too unhappy about it, just very curious on how it will go from now on.