I'm back from a wonderful and very fruitful weekend of planning for Textile Forum 2010 - and that weekend fully deserves to be titled a perk of the job.

We met with Johanna, the director of ArcheoParc Schnals, to have a good look at the premises, discuss planning details, have a look at the accommodation reserved for the Forum participants (real beds in en-suite rooms this time!), and meet some more people interested in the Forum idea.

So what can you expect? In case you have never been to Schnals in South Tyrol, let me give you the list.

A very nice museum with a unique concept, showing the connection between the alpine region and the lifestyle in this environment, with an intriguing architectural design?


Check.

An open-air area belonging to that same museum, with some outstanding house reconstructions that have no nails and screws in them?


Check.

Typical regional food that is amazingly, mouth-wateringly yummy? Like Schlutzkrapfen, Speckknödel and Vinschgauer Paarl with Brettlspeck, plus a huge variety of cheeses and wines that earn lots of praise? Food so wonderful that of course I was not even thinking of taking a photo, because I was busy with eating and enjoying?

Check.

(To make up for the lack of photos here, you can read this article from the Guardian. Or maybe you would like to prepare yourself for all the food of the region - go to this tourism site that also offers recipes!)


Lots of fun?


Check.

And last but surely not least, more breathtaking, amazing alpine scenery than you would be able to shake a spindle stick at?

Check.


Sounds good, eh?

There's a cup of tea standing beside me, Blogger is acting up and not letting me post like usual, and I have to both read as much as I can in the galley proof and prepare a nice little trip that will start tomorrow - to plan and organise things for the Textile Forum in September.

This also means that there will be no blogging for the next few days - regular blog updates should resume on Tuesday next week.

And I am totally looking forward to our planning trip!

Here I am, in reading land, working my way through the thesis again. This is the second proofread in preparation of print, and I do hope that nothing untoward will happen with the text when those last corrections and layouting tweaks are done - it would be heavenly if the next step would be for me to happily say "Yes, that's all print-ready, I found nothing more!"

However, I am glad to report that this time around, reading goes much, much faster, since I don't double-check things anymore. And maybe I was utterly out of proofing practice, too. I'm not so sure that I can finish all within the week, but at the moment I'm already a very good way into the stack of printed paper (and I hope that it will go a little faster in the catalogue part, too - with all the pics taking up real estate on the pages).

In other news: I have made the newspaper - there is a little snippet about me in the arts & entertainment section of the regional paper, the "Erlanger Nachrichten". Newspaper articles - or journalistic articles in general - are always an exciting thing in two ways. For one thing, it is of course exciting to be able to tell or show more people about what you do, and maybe why it is so great/important/wonderful, but the second part of the excitement is that you can never be sure if the article will actually sound like you tried to sound.
Well, in this case, I am more than happy with the little piece. I love the writer's voice, and I think he did a wonderful job in writing it. The article is online, and you can have a look at it here. If you don't read German, there's at least a photo for you.

In other other news: I'm still bitten by the knitting bug, I now have more knitting needles thanks to my parents (and splendid ones, too) and I have a new brainfart that is being translated into knitting. With an allover stitch pattern, lots of delicious maths*, beautiful curves and an almost-totally-invisible decrease that mesh together perfectly, I am totally excited about this. The knitting is coming along nicely, the pattern is a tingling mixture of relaxing and interesting, and I hope to have it up for testknitting soon. For those really obsessed with symmetry, there will even be a "perfect symmetry" option. (Which I am not using for the prototype, by the way: For once I actually decided to not do everything at once and in the hardest possible way.)

*Maybe I should mention right here that knitting the finished pattern will not include maths. Just counting. Easy counting.

I hang around on a few mailing lists and in a few groups, and usually I just lurk in there and read most of the posts. Sometimes I wonder whether it would not be a smart move to unsubscribe from most of those groups and lists, since I don't participate much and since there's often chatter that I find distracting. And then, once in a while, a real gem comes up that makes me glad again about my subscriptions.

A few days ago, such a gem turned up on the 75years mailing list, a list focusing on the years 1250-1325. In a conversation about SCA baron titles (which I almost didn't read, since it falls under "chatter" for me), Michael posted a link to his flickr album with pictures from the St. Louis shirt.

In case you do not know about this shirt, it is said to have belonged to St. Louis and is nowadays in Paris. There was a bit written about the shirt by Dorothy Burnham, but as far as I know, there is no in-depth research published yet.
As Michael writes in his post, the shirt is in the Notre Dame museum, on display and quite easy to see - and no-flash photography is permitted. That is what he made good use of. You can see the photos here on his flickr page - and thank you very much, Michael!

There is a German proverb that says "Gut Ding will Weile haben", which translates roughly to "a good thing needs its time".

Well, it has taken time enough, the planning for the Textile Forum 2010, and we can finally announce a place and time where the second European Textile Forum will take place. From the 6th to the 12th of September 2010, the ArcheoParc Val Senales will turn into a meeting place for historical textile workers. It will again be possible to share knowledge, experiences and problems with other enthusiasts and finally discuss all things textile (almost) 24 hours a day, without your conversation partner's eyes glazing over due to boredom. There will again be lodging with full board for the participants, keeping everyone fed and thus free to concentrate on the important thing only - talking and doing textile stuff.

We are working on the preliminary programme and will keep you updated - via the blog here, the Textile Forum Website and the Forum Newsletter. Stay tuned for more information on the programme, practical things and the Call for Papers!

An hour or two after I had blogged yesterday about the galley proofs being on their way here, the postman came and delivered.

So today is reading day! I am arming myself with a pot of tea and a red and blue pen and reading my way through the book (again). Fortunately, this time I need to focus less on finding all typos and on checking all footnotes, since that was all done last round - so I can just read to catch any bad remaining errors and to check if there are any layouting problems left. Which feels like a much, much easier job.

And I think I will be overwhelmed with happiness once this baby is out in the shops!

An hour or two after I had blogged yesterday, I received an e-mail from the layout lady at the publishing house telling me that the proofs are in the post, on their way to my place. So there's the second round of proofing coming up for today or, at latest, tomorrow.

In other news, the conference proceedings book from NESAT X is out, and date and main topic for NESAT XI have been announced - it will take place in Esslingen in 2011, focus will be methods in textile archaeology, and the poster session especially welcomes experimental archaeology topics. More info and registration form can be found on the official website www.nesat.org.