I mentioned the hose rabbit-warren, right? What I did not mention is that I am also trying to tag, sort, and order all the images that have not been tagged, sorted, and ordered yet (and no, you do not want to know how many there are). Some are doubles that I can delete, some are easy to sort as a chunk (party photos, for example) and some... well, some are tedious.

One of the images was without a caption, date, tag or anything, and it has been hanging out there since it was used as one of the images in my thesis. The original manuscript is the Codex Vindobonensis 1857, or known today as signature Cod. 1857 HAN MAG in the Austrian National Library.

Back when I was writing my thesis, there was digitisation going on, but it had not progressed as far - so in some cases, the way you'd get to see pictures was through facsimiles. They are intended to be as much as the original as possible. For the thesis, I thus took the image from the book in the library in Bamberg; if I remember correctly, I requested the scan, got it on a CD, and used the image.

So picture my surprise when I wanted to tag this image today and thought the nicest and easiest way would be to find the entry for the now-fully-digitised manuscript in the Austrian Library... and found this:

This is... clearly not the same guy. First thing, my copy apparently got flipped at some point so I have the mirror image. And then - the position is almost the same, but the face is quite different; the hands are different. The folds in the garments are different, with the shirt or braies especially obvious. The leg position is a little different. And the points, the whole point because of which I was using this image, are different too. They are  much darker and much more obvious in the facsimile version.

Now I am really wondering. Wasn't the facsimile supposed to look exactly like the original? Was there a second version of the manuscript? But then, why would the images be so close and yet different? How much egg do I now have on my face because of this? Questions over questions. I'm now planning to go back to have a look at the facsimile at some point to see if at least the flip only happened with the scan transferring to me.

And this, dear readers, is why one should never fully trust anything but the original itself, no matter what. Sigh. Also it's why digitisation is The Thing, because it means there's at least a few less steps inbetween - it's digitising the object, and then you can look at it, and if it's high quality you can look at it right down to the level where you see the pores in the parchment. So if you're pointed to a re-drawing*, or a reconstruction without access to the original... be wary.

*Re-drawings, in German "Umzeichnung" used to be a really big thing in archaeological publications, as you don't need a good quality image to use for your print prep and, even more importantly, you don't need to go and ask for publication rights. I don't know whether it was just laziness, or whether it was much more difficult than it is today (it was surely more involved than shooting an email!), or whether it was a cost issue either in printing the image or in procuring the rights, and it was probably a mix of those with varying proportions of the individual ingredients. Anyways this means that a lot of older archaeological publications are full of image references to show things related to the find in context, rendered as a little black-and-white line drawing (which admittedly was much, much easier to print in the text part). If you see these, I heartily recommend trying to find the original before believing all of it. Quite often, a digital image is available today with a little use of the search engine of your choice, and you can see how it really looked... because even if you try really hard, and do really well, a line-drawing will still be an interpretation.

I have the nagging suspicion that I will be hunting literature on new(er) finds, or their re-evaluation, for quite a bit of time. Today was spent on trying to hunt down some Spanish things with more details about the garments worn by the Archbishop Rodrigo Ximenéz de Rada, who happened to have very nice hose in his grave. There's an image and a short description in Vestiduras Ricas, but nothing more - and I would like to know more now.

So, literature hunting, someone may have ordered a book in the process (and downloaded things that now need sorting and checking out), and now the next thing is to find a copy of the Ärkebiskoparna Bremen book by Margareta Nockert - which I also, to my dismay, still lack.

There's not much else to report; all this finding and reading and digesting written stuff is slow work too. Which I now have to put aside for a bit to take care of some shop things as well, and probably also check up on the cat to give her a cuddle. The things you have to do, you know. 

I wrote about my medical shenanigans a way back, when I had an adenoma removed from the pituitary gland. I am happy to say that today's check-up (part of the aftercare) revealed no evil surprises, and all seems to be functioning as well as it should.

The only after-effect that I can really point out is that my nose feels slightly congested easier than before, which is a little annoying sometimes - but not too bad to live with. Having a lost or reduced sense of smell would have been much, much worse.

So I am good to go for another year and a half, until the next check. Hooray! 

There's been a design contest for new Euro banknotes, resulting in ten different designs that were shortlisted. Now there's a public survey on the ten options, and hopefully we'll end up with a nice new design.

You can read more about the redesign here, and click your way further to look at all the options and then take part in the survey. 

... maybe do like some medieval folks in Konstanz. Use it as ceiling in your house.

I'm not pulling your leg - that's the new and kind of sensational find recently made: A basement ceiling that can be dated to 1244 mostly consists of part of a ship. There's not so much detail to be found on the 'net yet, but if you read German, there's a little bit here at the SWR page. 

Sometimes, well, things sort of line up. This time, they lined up to lure me down the hole into that extensive rabbit warren that is late medieval to early modern legwear (men's legwear, that is). 

The things that lined up were a) the Alpirsbach project, b) the currently ongoing clothes-like-in-a-picture project,  and c) the almost-eternal updating and translating of the thesis project. 

The latter would greatly benefit from some more details in regard to the legwear reconstruction and development, both in the theoretical part and in the (very short, I know) practical results part. The first is skimpy as there was next to nothing known (now I know of a little bit more), and the latter is superdupershort because, well, it is toward the very end of the book and I was running out of time, and even more running out of steam.

There's this classical thesis writing timeline, you see. You start out and you're told that you should do it within three years, and at the beginning, that sounds like forever and a day, and you start, and suddenly the first year is over but well, you made progress and starting out is always a little slower, and then suddenly you are nearing the three-year mark but there is still so much to look into and tweak and to study and to read and to try and then you are close to year four (four! When did this happen!) and in some instant of painful insight you realise that really the only thing you want now IS TO FREAKING FINALLY GET FINISHED WITH THIS THING THAT IS EATING YOUR LIFE AND WILL NEVER STOP DOING SO UNLESS YOU MAKE IT STOP BY HANDING IT IN AND NO I WILL NOT LOOK INTO THAT BOOK AGAIN I WILL JUST DELETE THIS REMINDER RIGHT NOW HERE YOU GO CHAPTER DONE. Phew. 

This may be a little dramatic, but at times, that really was how it felt. I was told about this timeline before (as probably everybody starting out on a PhD is). And I did what everyone in that situation does, just like every author has to be convinced that their new book is the hottest shit ever and will sell like nothing else, and every editor has to listen to this and nod quietly and think to themselves "yeah, yeah", I was told about this timeline and I nodded quietly and I thought "yeah, yeah" and then, suddenly, well, see above. 

The legwear, at that point, was still sort of basic ideas and outlines only, and it did get elaborated on enough to pass, but, well, see above. By now, I have realised that there is enough material and open questions about just the development of male legwear throughout the centuries that it would easily merit its own PhD, so I won't be able to cover it all, but I'd like to have a little bit of extension to the short chapter in the updated version.

There's several stages in the development - at first, the hose are just getting longer but with no cut-out necessary for the crotch yet; then they have to get even longer and need some kind of crotch solution; then they cover the front as well, needing something to cover up the gap between the two leg parts. At some point, the two hose get joined by sewing them together, and that is probably only the butt first, and then there's the codpiece at some point getting added to both cover up the front (where previously breeches and shirt may have been seen) and also offering possibilities to have the construction a little easier in the lower butt and lower crotch area.

However... this hose development goes hand in hand with the shortening tunics in male fashion, and plenty of men in the not-so-fashionable strata of society just go on wearing the mid-thigh to knee tunic, and the old-fashioned legwear going with it. The other guys, well, we don't have a lot of finds, and we do have a good bit of images but they have this maddening tendency of only almost showing the bits with the crucial information. Argh.

So now I find myself pondering pattern developments (at least I have one new idea! Yay!), folding up little bits of paper, drawing on any sheet that is in reach while some question comes up, and even thinking of making small fabric mock-ups. Plus spending quite a bit of time staring at men's butts and legs in medieval art. Which is, admittedly, also kind of... fun.

Well, mess is a rather tame word for this, to be honest, but... we'll leave it at that for now.

I have promised you more about the shipping issues that many small vendors currently face, so here you go.

First of all, because most German social media posts about these problems currently are full of comments bashing the EU. (Notice that I write comments - it's not the posts themselves.) Personally, I do stand very firmly behind the idea of the EU. We are stronger together, and many, many of the things the EU does are really wonderful. I am also old enough to still remember the hassle of border controls, and the constant maths in your head of trying to do currency exchange calculations while shopping for coffee or food or souvenirs, and the problems of ordering something from a small shop outside your own country, with different currency and all. Joining up under an umbrella that helps us to negotiate better with other large nations like China and the US, and making things within the EU simpler and more harmonised - that's a great idea. Unfortunately all great ideas struggle with small-mindedness, and may also struggle with egoism, and that is surely part of why some things, intended for the very best, go horribly pear-shaped and suddenly find themselves rather brown in colour and on a rapid trajectory towards the next fan.

I am also all, all for the reduction of waste and environmental impact. If you've been hanging out on this blog for a while, you will know that sustainability and reducing unneccessary waste are quite high up on my personal list. We have numbers for the EU (well, for the whole world, but anyways), and packaging waste (especially single-use plastics) are a huge portion of general waste, so it is important to act in this respect. Whcich means... in general, the EU idea of unifying waste and packaging material treatments across all countries, and sequentially introducing more rules for better sustainability - it's great, and very, very necessary.

So where did things go wrong? Previously, we had different rules for each of the EU countries, with different thresholds for import, different costs for package waste licensing, different minimum amounts for that. Quite a few countries had a de minimis threshold, so you'd not need to bother registering for a handful of packages each year. We are talking literal handfuls here; like many other small sole traders, I am not sending more than at super-duper-most five packages per year to any one single other EU country*.

All these countries had established their own systems, and they are vastly different from nation to nation. Obviously, all countries were somehow convinced that their system is the bees' knees, and did not want to change it or adopt anyone else's instead. So, consequently, there was no agreement on new, EU-wide regulations. The only thing that happened was that there are the same labels in all of the EU now, and each country now works on the same baseline: They still have their national waste licensing system, and you are still required to enter it if you ship to that country, but there are no more thresholds with the intention to offer the same terms everywhere and to everyone. That, unfortunately, means that you have to register via a licensed, notary-confirmed authorised representative in each single of the 26 countries if you intend to offer selling into that country, and this starts at the very first package. And with this harmonised, they have not even agreed on the same fee structure or waste amount tiers, which means that one country you might have to register and it's a minimum amount of 100 kg of paper you pay for, and in another one it might be 30 kg.

If I could be sure to have a shipping volume of around 250 packages per year into any single country, I could add around 3 Euro to the cost in every shipping tier, and it would work out approximately (if the licensing fees are not too high in that country, that is). With less shipping volume, it's not even worth doing the maths for that country. 

The EU has planned some exemptions for small vendors, but their definition of a "small company" is one with less than ten employees and less than two million Euro turnover per year. They have been told, time and again and not just within the last few days, that these rules are way, way too much bureaucracy and way too much expenses for small traders. However, nothing has happened. Which means that the really small vendors, the solo entrepreneurs and similar tiny ones (in German you'd say we are a fly's shit), we're getting grouped in with companies just below two million turnover per year. This, dear reader, cannot work well, as anyone knowing and doing a little bit of simple maths will be easily able to understand.

Unfortunately, and this is where I do get a bit grudgy now, the EU representatives were not even able to agree among them all on a really ridiculously low de minimis threshold.  There's always be going to be malcontent people where they are just above a minimum line, but really, if we're talking about amounts that an ambitious granny could post to her family each year - even if it's only ten parcels free to other countries each year, that would already help the really small ones.

Because, and here's the next bit of irony: Many of the small traders whose statements I've read do say that they are happy and support the general idea of waste control and waste management. They are also trying to comply with the rules as best they can** - so consequently they are stopping shipping. Some are already very frustrated about all the rules and regs that, for instance, make it harder to re-use packaging materials on top of all the other stuff that you have to keep up-to-date with. Quite a few of them are holding a grudge, but I have not seen any of them state we need to leave the EU. That is done in the comments by some readers, mostly of the right-leaning-maybe-already-brownish tinged fraction that really have no understanding of how shitty that would be overall, and have obviously also not paid attention to what Brexit has turned out to be. (Spoiler alert: It has turned out to not have been a good idea.)

So where am I going with this text, apart from getting it all off my chest? One, hopefully you can understand a little better now why so many shops have stopped EU shipping. We fly-shit traders really want to have nice, fair rules that we can adhere to, and can't use more insecurities because of grey zones. Two, if you are unhappy about the situation (which I very much hope you will be), you have some options: Write to your EU representative(s), or call them up if you like phone calls better. Write to the EU commissioner Jessika Roswall. Leave a statement in the official feedback page (it has opened August 6 and will be open until September 10). Sign the (new) petition about this mishap. Tell your friends. And then... please do something that makes you happy, to balance out all this shit.

I can tell you that I have spent much, much more of my time and energy on this whole kerfuffle than was good for me. I have hoped against hope that I'd get heard along with all the other tiny shops. I have read the texts of the regulations, in English and in German, trying to find the exemption for the small ones. I have cried with frustration of having so, so many things that it is really hard to conform to, and you know that you are in a grey zone here, and there, and there, and there, and at some point it adds up and you lose the energy to keep up when the next one comes up where there's just no way around. There's also the little issue that many of the people I work with, and am getting goods from - both for the shop stock and for my museum work - are in some other EU country, and most probably they, now, are also stopping shipment within the EU. Something like the Alpirsbach hose project? The fabric came from Sweden - so nope (or add another c 500 € to the cost of the fabric). My dyeing expert? Lives in France. Some of my spindle whorls? From Belgium. If I have a regional source, I'll go for that, but many things are so niche that I'm over the moon if I can find anyone at all willing to do these things, and chances that they're outside Germany are very, very high. 

I am not sure what is to blame for this all going so utterly and senselessly wrong, but I am sure that it's something profoundly human (but maybe not very good-human) that is part of all this.

Having to stop shipping to UK because of Brexit, and to the US because of taxes and tariffs was frustrating already. Having to stop on what I had considered, more or less, the home turf hits much harder, and differently. So for now, I will let this thing rest, and hope that it will resolve itself in some way. If it doesn't do it quickly and you need something shipped from me, or from any other small vendor in a different country, your best bet will probably be to find a friend who lives in that country, and do the ordering and shipping via them.

Good luck, to all of us.

* At this volume, shipping abroad is basically customer service, and if calculated properly, I guess the work time invested overall in keeping up to date with shipping cost changes and shipping rule changes, plus the extra filling out of import forms probably more than eats up the revenue gained with these shipments - but I enjoy having my stuff travel the world, and I know the pain of not being able to get something just because you're too far away, so I have never done the maths on that correctly, on purpose. 

** It is, in fact, no small feat to even just keep up with the developments so you know what you have to change, or check, or amend, or look out for. There is no official channel that will give the stuff to you in somewhat digestible form - so you can either spend a lot of time trawling the EU and national rules pages, or hope that you're lucky and will hear about it in time, or sign up to some "vendor help" newsletters that will give you most of the news at some point, but always in a way to make you feel like buying some programme or service from them is your only sensible way to deal with the new shit. If you're a 200 employees company, you'll have someone dealing with all the law stuff and compliance shenanigans. If you're just one person... every hour that this research and the consequent adaptations for compliance eat up is time that you can't spend on your core business. And believe me, it's not done with one hour per change usually.