I like buttons. Maybe I don't like them just as much as 14th century fashionable folks liked them, but I do like them.

And that's a good thing, because I am going to spend a chunk of today making cloth buttons (unstuffed, with no core, just out of a bit of cloth) and sewing them to the edge of a sleeve opening. And then I'll do the buttonholes. And then some more buttons and buttonholes.

And then, on the second dress... you guess what? More buttons! Because I can't let these two here...


... be dressed non-fashionably, can I?

I'm back home with the slight residue of a cold I caught somewhere during the last two weeks (fortunately it was a light one), a brain full of new information, project development for the winter season already started (it was a long drive home, with plenty of time to plan together with Sabine), and - as usual - a nice backlog of work and stuff to be taken care of.

The OEGUF conference was wonderful, though it had a few minor drawbacks: Our room was getting quite stuffy quite soon, there was no conference coffee point (which seriously cut back on the usual coffee socialising), and that in connection with short breaks due to the programme being stuffed very, very full, there was just not enough time to catch everybody I wanted to catch to chat or comment or discuss with. But apart from that, there was lots of laughter, oodles of fun, and a very large amount of presentations that were brand-sparkling new (at least to me) and of a very high quality - archaeologists and craftspeople alike meticulously looking at tiny details and working out things about bell beaker making, salt mining, and music instruments, to name three topics among many. The spinning experiment presentation was very well received too, and I did get quite a few comments about it, including one from a skilled statistician who offered to also take a look at the database and see if he might be able to see something in addition or something different from what I found when staring at all those numbers.

I met with some folks that I had not seen for a longer or shorter time, and it was wonderful to reconnect and see them again; and I also have some new acquaintances among the colleagues. There were two excursions, and during one of them I had the opportunity to make contact with the caretaker of a herd of museum sheep, a special old Hungarian breed - wonderful wool for historical spinning, and amazingly well suited to dye them coptic black, since the wool is already almost black. With all these things together and stuffed into a few days only, it's no wonder that my brain sort of ran on stand-by on Monday and still during part of yesterday, also an indicator that it was a good conference.

Socialising, learning about stuff, getting new and weird ideas, and carrying home material for textile works - have I mentioned already that I love conferences?

Since I'll be in a string of out-of-office-events from tomorrow on, today will be partly dedicated to organising myself (read: prepare the different outings) and trying not to forget anything (read: write a bunch of lists). Plus print out some other stuff, backup the computer, iron a blouse for the OEGUF conference in Vienna, and pack some work stuff together to take with me.

And since I'll be up and away, this means a blogging break - regular blogging will resume on November 3. Sorry for the long break!

 I'm still working hard on all the different bits and pieces for Hartenstein, including getting enough things prepared that I can take sewing work with me when I'm out of office from Wednesday on to the end of October. Which means that I am doing extra-long hours currently - which for me always means that I need something to relax with, and that is usually books, films and, since last year, knitting.

So here's what is currently happening (at least some of it):

Sleeves are getting sewn in and fitted to the Lady's blue dress...


... the man's mi-parti hood in yellow and blue is getting dagges cut and edge-finished with beeswax...


... and to relax, I'm knitting leg warmers in Kauni rainbow-coloured wool.


As usual, I'm knitting two at the same time, which saves all the hassle of counting and writing down the counts, and I'm just past the knee. The leg warmers are fully fitted, because I have rather pronounced leg muscles, and that makes for a lot of shape and circumference, and I even have to increase rather generously for longer socks, let alone leg warmers.


I like the colour scheme and the long, slow changes of colour very much, and I think it's also nice that the two pieces start at a different place in the colour sequence. (Also makes two-at-once knitting dead easy, what with the different colours and so.)
That said, I'm most probably not going to buy that wool ever again: The colour repeats have a different length, so I'm ending up with green knees on both legwarmers. I can live with that, though - what really irks me is the quality of the yarn itself. The yarn is very irregularly spun and quite badly plied at times, changing from the thickness I would have expected to very, very thin plies - more like sewing-thread thickness at the thinnest bits. Were it my own hand-spun wool, I'd be quite ashamed of it, and it makes me rather fearful how long the material will hold up to being used as an item of clothing. And actually, I'm wondering why I never heard about that quality deficiency before - I heard that Kauni can have lots of knots, but so irregularly spun yarn?

Since there's not so much foam-filling work left to do now on the two figures, I can concentrate more on my sewing work now - and I'm really looking forward to make bright yellow hose for the man, and a mi-parti yellow and blue hood.

I've also done a few first test-prototypes of the chess figures to see how to treat them to get a good finish and good colours - either red and white or dark and white, I have not decided that yet. But for now - until the test pieces have dried out completely - I'll just focus on the fabric stuff...

... just more of the same work: Filling in the figures, attaching arms and legs, and preparing for the garment cutting and things.

And while I'm working, you can share the Ohrwurm that I had all day yesterday. An Ohrwurm is a piece or snippet of music that gets stuck in your head and you hear it over and over again - which might be annoying if you only know a very short snippet. (By the way, the literal translation - earworm - seems to make its way into English language.)
Fortunately for me, yesterday's Ohrwurm was more than a snippet, I didn't mind it at all, and I made things even better by finding this karaoke-subtitled version of it on Youtube:



Enjoy!

The two plastered folks in our conservatory are coming along nicely - and they should better, since I spent yesterday and Monday both almost exclusively working on them.

Here's a current snapshot of how they are looking:


Isn't that a nice decoration for a table? Bit space-consuming, maybe, but well...
One of the four arms is already attached, and the upper torsos are both mostly filled, too. What remains is attaching the other three arms and reassembling, filling and finagling a coupling into the male's legs, as well as filling the female's legs. And, of course, making the two heads for the two folks and finally closing the seams and open parts with plaster and, after that has all dried out, giving both figures a coat of varnish for protection. But a good part has been done, and now I can take measurements off the almost-finished lady and start cutting her dress and overdress. And if all goes well today, I'll get the male's legs mostly together so that I can cut his hose tomorrow.