The heatwave, for now, is broken (at least back to a manageable level), which is very nice, because the Little Cat is feeling well enough to hang out on my desk while I work, and that means a warm, furry, purring cat on my arm and against my body. Which is lovely, don't get me wrong, but it will get a little warm after a while.

Otherwise, there's lots and lots of the boring stuff happening now that the summer break is slowly coming nearer, and the exciting hose project is finished: Taxes, book-keeping (the second quarter is over, so yay, filing stuff), and finally sending stuff long promised and reading things that had also long been promised to be read.  

I've also done a few more tweaks to the website in preparation of the update, and I am hoping to manage some clean-up and housekeeping while I'm at this stuff. The current template that everything runs on is a third-party one, and while I'm not unhappy with it in general, it's also getting a little outdated... so I'm more or less decided now to use the core template in the future.

Which, however, means a good amount of poking and prodding so it looks similar to the thing I have, or, option b, decide how I would like it to look even better. As option a is possibly more tweaking work but less thinking work, I am currently tending to that.

But, lovely readers of this blog and users of this site, now is your chance to let me know what you love, hate, or miss on these pages! It would really help me to have feedback (even if I can't promise that I can follow through on everything).

It's gotten a good bit cooler here, though it's still plenty warm, and there's still a heatwave in the prognosis for next week - which is, well, not the best of things if you ask me.

The Forum mails have been sent out, there are the first registrations for the Forum coming in, and I am very profoundly relieved that this is running now.

The hose have arrived at the place where they are supposed to be, so all that remains now is to send off the paper with numbers on it (which has been prepared, and is ready to go out once I've finished blogging).

I am, however, still woefully behind on some other things, and I do need to do some more post packing today and early tomorrow. Unfortunately the Little Cat is still not really better; the infection has come back even though we have seen no obvious cause of extra stress. The last meds she had made her all drowsy and lose her appetite, which is not good, so now we are trying different meds and hope these will help. 

It's well possible that the heat was one of the factors, even though it wasn't a really obvious one. Whatever it was, we're now trying to give her some mussel powder that is supposed to assist with bladder issues, and lots of cuddles, and also sneaky treats to hide her pills in. 

To my great dismay, the ones that worked wonderfully last time still worked... until the package was empty. Then, alas, we bought a new one, but they smelled and looked differently, and the company must have changed the recipe sufficiently that she is not interested in them at all anymore. There we were, buying the other taste variant, same outcome. Meh all over.

Now, fortunately, we have successfully tested another snacky thing that is soft enough to hide a small pill in, and apparently tasty enough to be inhaled almost whole. Phew. So now we hope the new stuff does its job, and does it well, and she will be able to tolerate the meds sufficiently, and that we can get her stabilised afterwards. She is, after all, long past the generally expected lifetime for a little cat, which in general does not increase tolerance to stuff. 

No, not the video yet, I'm sorry. But you do get a screenshot... 

...and you only get this for a blog post today, because I was at a nice presentation with lunch afterwards, and the rest of the day slipped into this and that and now I'm sending out the info about the Textile Forum registration being online. Hooray! 

That was a nice weekend, with a guided tour through the fantastic exhibition in the Burg Trausnitz in Landshut about women's networks through marriage in the late Middle Ages (still running until start of August!) and then my sprang workshop for the eight participants (all women, very fitting for the talks about women and their networking, and their room where all kinds of tasks happened).

And to my great delight, the Textile Forum logistics issues are solved, we have a cook, I have an agreement with him, and thus the Call for Papers and the registration information are finally online. I still need to write the newsletter about this, but in case you are interested in geeking out one full week about knots as part of textile crafts in November, you can already visit the updated site here. 

Also, our wildlife camera caught two hedgehogs making new hedgehogs last week! If I can figure out how to post that video here, you might get a look at some point ; ) 

It's still way too hot here, the Little Cat is better (at least it looks like it to us), and I am getting the hose stuff ready to be sent off. 

Thanks to my lovely model whom you can see in this picture, you can now see how it could have looked when it was new, and still had its feet on, and the thighs were not yet worn through. It was definitely an adventure!

The hose will go to the castle museum in Urach, where it will be mounted so it looks nice as it chills in its own little place in the exhibition. But there will be a piece of the fabric to touch for the visitors, which is always something that I really appreciate.

So... this is done, and I'm looking forward to the weekend (where I will give a sprang workshop in Landshut), and then... the summer break draws near. And other, new adventures.

(Though it would be nice if they were coming with a little less heat outside. Have I mentioned that it's way, way too hot here?) 

So. Things are going on.

First and furriest of all, the Little Cat has a bladder infection indeed, but - as we suspected - it's due to stress and not a bacterial infection. (We got some sedative for her before the vet trip so the stress-induced bladder infection would not cause more stress by a vet visit without a little chemical assistance, especially as there would be an ultrasound, and guess who is not a fan of getting her very fluffy belly un-fluffed with a razor.) So she's currently getting drugs to relieve the internal itch and pressure, and extra cuddles. Plus extra treats to hide the pills in, and she is not at all opposed to that. Hopefully, her internal plumbing system will find a happy equilibrium again as soon as possible, so everything goes back to boringly normal again.

Other things going on are concerning the website, which still has its big update coming up. It does look like most of the big issues that I'd found will be solvable sort of easily. I'm also planning to tackle the dead images that I have hanging around here - after years of running this and migrating this and that here and there, and different blog softwares that had different ideas on where to store pictures, and whether to store different sizes or not, there's, well, extras. 

I have tried to sort a few of them out already, and they are probably mostly in the blog - but if you should stumble across a missing image link, please do let me know. (Well, it's appreciated at all times, but it's especially appreciated after some work on the site.) The big work will not be for a while, but I have a few things that can be done straight away before larger updates, and the plan is to do that - it's less work, and also less opportunities to mess something up, when the day of doing stuff arrives.

And now I will gently move myself away from the computer to do some preparation for the sprang workshop on the Saturday...

Two things for today: It's still too damn hot, and the Little Cat has some issue with her bladder and we have a vet appointment to go to. Hopefully it's nothing too bad...