It's been quite a while since I wrote anything about the Covid situation - partly because, during the summer, numbers were low-ish enough to ignore things, and partly because there was other stuff to write about, but mostly because I'm tired of it. Like probably everybody else is as well.

Vaccination rate in Germany is still pretty low, as opposed to new infections and incidence numbers - they are sky-high, and still skyrocketing, thanks to the politicians doing, well, exactly nothing for way, way too long. Now we have 7 day incidences of over 1000 in some areas, overfull hospitals that cannot accommodate any more patients, overfull ICUs which is a danger to anyone suffering a stroke, heart attack, or having been involved in a life-threatening accident.

And why all that? Because, obviously, not a single one of the effing people supposed to steer this country has learned just a penny's worth from the pandemic occurrences in the past two years. I'd love to say now that if anybody would act as stupidly and irresponsibly in a company, they'd be fired at a moments' notice, but unfortunately that is not true either.

The thing that I find most disquieting about all this, though - it's actually that I am so tired of the stupidity of the politicians, and so tired of all the pandemic shithappenings, and so tired of all the misinformation, that the most I can do is go "meh" and move on. Like so many others, I've become so jaded - and it frightens me. We've been living with high incidence numbers, high death numbers, high numbers of people in ICUs for so long, with the politicians always saying "ah, it's not so bad, everything is under control, everything is fine, let's loosen restrictions some more" that slowly but surely they have been losing their importance, and they just seem so normal now that it's hard to remember how scared everyone was back in the first wave, and how outraged by the passivity of the politicians in the second and third wave. And now we've come to expect them, actually, to do nothing until things are far worse than before, and then act half-heartedly and go say "but look it's even worse somewhere else" and "oh who could have known" and "somebody else is to  blame".

In July, scientists predicted an incidence number of 350 for mid-November if vaccination rate would stay at 65%. Guess what rate we had? Guess when we hit the incidence of 350? And now politicians say "well, who could have guessed that!" I just feel so taken down the garden path. I also get the impression that no matter what most of the Germans would like to see done, or changed, in the politics of the country, the guys at the rudder just blatantly ignore it. Most of us would like a general speed limit on the Autobahn... right during the pre-talks for the new coalition after the elections, the group declared that there would be no general speed limit. WHAT?

All this makes me so mad, and so tired and hopeless at the same time, that I don't know what to do anymore. So I've been ignoring things for a while, which does not make it better either - and now I'm writing about it here, because, well, not talking about it is also not an option.

So. I'm jaded now, so jaded that it frightens me, while it feels at the same time that being frightened about my own jadedness is also getting less and less each day. That probably is a very useful psychological mechanism to help survive inevitably dire situations without going insane... but unfortunately, this situation would not have been inevitable if some people would just have listened to scientists and actually did what people who know their shit recommend. I also wonder if politicians are at all able to learn from the past, or not, and if the latter, why. Why can they not do sensible things, and make sensible decisions, instead of going "oh look there's a wall straight ahead, let's hit the accelerator!"?

Sigh.

Maybe it's a little better in your bit of the world - how are you feeling?

Once more, I'm not quite sure whether to rejoice - hooray, the week is over, the weekend is waiting - or to panic - the week is over, and why is there still so much work left at the end of the week's work time?

There's been spinning, and sending off goods from the shop, and cat-cuddling (wait, that's not work, though quite important too) and planning for future possible courses, and some (very little) weaving. More spinning is among the things on top of the list, but there is definite progress on that front. Which is good!

I'm also, due to a comment from Alex Makin on her Instagram, pondering the quirk of preferring one special tool over another. In her case, her favourite needle had to be replaced by another one which did not work as well. I know that effect very well - and now I'm trying to find out which of my tools has this effect the most. I know I mislaid one of my knives a while ago, and it was very uncomfortable to use a different one for the carving task I had to do. I also try different needles for sewing until I find the one that suits the fabric and stitches best at a given time, and I have a few favourite needles that get used most. Then there's some things that I feel are interchangeable, like my spindle sticks - no faves there.

For now, though, it's time to pack some things and go visit my gran, who is celebrating her birthday this weekend... her 100th birthday. Isn't that amazing?

I think there's not much of a comment necessary, the picture says it all:



This, dear friends, is really pleasant work in a pleasant place with very nice and butt-warming pleasant company. And a nice podcast to boot.

Calculations for the fabric that I'm currently spinning for are finished, and, well, what shall I say? Those bronze age fabrics are... big. BIG.

Which, consequently, means that even though they only have a few threads per centimetre (around 4, overall), they do add up. Which means there's a lot more spinning to do until I'm finished. Overall yarn requirement for the piece of fabric needed to make the Trindhoj find man's garments, consisting of some kind of wraparound tunic and a half-oval cloak, is about... 5700 metres. Plus a bit of wiggle room.

Even spinning quite quickly, and winding into hanks quickly, and wet-finishing several skeins at once (which is taking a lot less time than doing them one by one), that eats up a hunk of hours. So if you're looking for me, I'll be at my spinning place... making yarn. In very nice cat company.

Have you measured your production spinning speeds? If so, I'd love to hear about how much you spin in an hour.

If you haven't done it yet, but are curious - my recommendation is to use a stopwatch, and spin over several hours before measuring. Doing just half an hour or one hour can result in quite different speeds than production over more hours. (Don't ask me how I know...) Note down how long you were spinning for the sessions if your stopwatch tends to eat the current time (I have one that will turn itself off after a while, and then the numbers are gone.) For measuring, find out the circumference of your skeiner and count the rotations.

Then do the metres spun by hours division, and voilà, you have your production speed number for this yarn type and thickness with this tool and this type of fibre... which might be quite different from a different yarn. Which, I find, makes spinning an even more interesting thing!

If you're interested in historic knitting (which has its start in the Middle Ages, but its heyday in the Early Modern times), I hope you've already heard of the KEME database.

If not, let me fix this for you. The KEME database is a collection of knitted items, and the acronym stands for "Knitting in Early Modern Europe". Using the database is free, but you need to register for a login with password due to copyright restrictions. The database started with caps, which were one of the main pieces produced in Early Modern knitting, and there is a lot of them to find in there. It has recently been extended and now includes nearly 100 examples of knitted liturgical gloves - plus there are plans to add stockings in the future as well.

You can also subscribe to the KEME newsletter on that page. For the caps, there already have been Citizen Science projects as well, including a still-running one for the search of wool which will result in a cap texture and surface like that of the originals. Other projects might come up for stockings and gloves. Just in case you are a knitter with a love for history, and are looking for things to knit...

It's the time of year when citrus fruits are a Thing - at least here in Germany, they are mostly available in autumn and winter, and that's the time of year when they are best anyways. Mostly unrelated to this, we recently had a conversation about chinine and bitter lemon and from that started to wonder what chemical causes the bitter taste in grapefruit, which led to a visit to Wikipedia and... oh wow. I wasn't aware of grapefruit being such an interesting player when it comes to drug interaction!

I really like the taste of grapefruit, especially of the more mild, modern variations. I still remember that when I was a child, they were very sour and often also quite bitter, and generous amounts of sugar were added to the fruit. Which was eaten by cutting it in half, then cutting around the outer rim of the fruit with a special grapefruit knife, and then spooning out the flesh. After the addition of said generous amounts of sugar, of course. (These days I usually peel them and remove the inner skins between the segments.)

If you're taking medication, though, citrus fruits or their juice might not be the best choice - quite a lot of drugs (and caffeine) interact with the stuff. Or, more precisely, citrus fruit contents interact with enzymes and transport proteins in the body and can cause both underdosage and overdosage, depending on consumption and the type of drug. It's quite fascinating!

You can read more about the fruit on the grapefruit wikipedia page, and more about its effects on drugs on this page.

After doing a bit of spinning in teaching context, properly medieval with distaff and hand-spindle, I'm back to spinning with the slightly more modern method...

First task of the morning was using up the remaining small bit of weft thread for the corded skirt that I had on the spool, and afterwards spinning the last bit of yarn that will be necessary to finish weaving. That, as always, was done by guesstimating how much yarn I'd need and how long it would take me to spin according to my more-or-less known spinning speed for that kind of yarn, and then spinning the guesstimated time.

And afterwards, there was more spinning straight on - for the warp threads for the first of the woven items. Our test weave turned out with a bit too many warp threads per 10 cm, so I'm aiming to spin just a little bit thicker this time around... and hope fervently that it will be the right amount of extra thickness.

Spinning for a reconstruction is always a little bit nerve-wracking for me. There's lots and lots of yarn to be spun, and there's always a little bit of danger to slowly, gradually, unnoticedly (that should totally be a word) segue from the yarn that has the intended thickness, amount of twist, and regularity into a yarn that is just a little off, and then maybe even more off. That's why I do rather frequent stops to check if I'm still in the range, and typically have a "comparison yarn" put up and nicely visible at my spinning workplace.

Apart from that, spinning is a very pleasant job, and I thoroughly enjoy it. Which is a good thing, because for making fabric for garments, a lot of spinning is necessary!