After more gentle nudgings these past days, and generous application of treats, and the addition of one more "stair step", the little cat seems to slowly consider using the board. (The additional "stair step" is a wood ridge right at the bottom, because otherwise her hind paws slip when she tries to step up.) She actually put her front paws up on it today without prompting, then looked about a little, then stepped down again.

Some more nudging, placing her front end on the board again, and then providing another treat did see her up the stairs and onto her cat bed, where she's now sleeping. (Someone has to, after all. Cat beds are there to be used.) Even more importantly, she wasn't rushing up the board trying to get off that weird thing as quickly as possible, but more or less strolling up it.

So it's actually looking like maybe another week or so will see her using the stairs without a prompt - unless she feels like jumping... which may always be the case. I'm fine with her jumping, I'd just like her to have the option of getting onto the bed or desk without it for those days when jumping so high is too hard.

Today was one of those days where nothing went really wrong, but also nothing really went - it feels like I've not gotten around to anything I had planned to do, the list of things to do only growing and not shrinking.

It's been a non-sunny, rather drab day outside as well. Not bad, but also not really good. We're going to do a little round on the bike now, to keep our sanity and our health up, something we've found is utterly important in these times. These times, which are about to become interesting, or even more interesting, again. Here in Germany, hairdressers have opened since about the first of March, and as of today, if the numbers are "low" enough and "stable" enough, other shops are also allowed to open. I can't actually tell you the exact rules for what is allowed to open where and under what circumstances - but I can tell you that all the openings are allowed for incidence numbers way above the fabled 35.

Germany measures things in cases per 100.000 inhabitants in the last 7 days, and 35 was decreed as the first threshold, after which measures should be taken. That was a long, long while ago, back when the first wave had ebbed off. Back then, some of the scientists already said that it would be a rather high number for that first threshold, and that 20 would be way better. Now, as it is quite certain that we won't reach 35  - or in some cases even 50! - without a real, proper shutdown, there has been a change of heart, or of whatever, and now things are suddenly possible and no problem in the range of 50, or up to 100. The reason given is that "we have quicktests now! we can test! We can use a test strategy to make openings possible!" Well, if that strategy is about as good and solid as the vaccination strategy hereabouts...

So. We're opening things, and are taking back measures for curbing the spread of the virus, at a point in time when our numbers are not falling anymore, but already rising again. Slowly yet, but rising - this is almost exactly what happened back in autumn and before Christmas. On top of this, the more aggressive variants of the virus are definitely on the rise here, according to virus DNA tests... so my pessimistic self is just waiting for numbers to explode again, and for the next "lockdown" to happen, again way too late and way too lax to get things under control for a good while, and another Easter without friends and family.

Sigh. I would really like to go bouldering again, and sit in a café outside, and meet with friends... but the way it looks here right now? That's not going to happen anytime soon.

Oh, yes, and I do know that today's International Women's Day... but I'm not going to rant about that, too. Feel free to help out with that in the comments, though, if you feel like it!

I've been doing a bit of evening playing around research stuff recently - a colleague has sent me some images from braided bands attached to relic purses, and we're trying to figure out how these were done.

Loop-braiding remains absolutely and utterly fascinating for me. The ease with which it is possible to do complex braids, with different patterns; the mindboggling efficiency of this technique, compared to braiding with single ends; the possibility to have several braiders work together on one piece, making it wider and more complex - it's just wonderful.

I have also, in the tests and trials for these technique reconstructions, found out again that sometimes the simple approach is the one most likely to be the right one. There was a good amount of pottering around with just five loops for the first puzzle, moving them from one finger to another, until I finally realised that it was just a very simple braid which I have done gazillions of times before... that was a nice d'oh moment. I was smarter for the next one, though!

So here's two pictures of the current puzzle in progress, braided with seven loops:

They show front and back of the band; one of the loops is a bicolour one (grey and dark blue) to make things more clear for me when testing the effect of twisting the loop vs. taking it straight. It also shows how one single loop/element travels through the whole braid.

Can you tell I'm having fun with this?

I'm very happy to have something online again to look forward to - I'll be part of the Botanica Yarnfest this year! It is an online event taking place on Instagram, with a lot of demonstrations by yarn and fibre people from all over.

The website is already up and running, and I've handed in my info, so I'll be listed there soon, too:


I will be doing a demonstration of medieval-style spinning on Sunday. That will be exciting - and fun!

I found out about a conference about Jewish crafts by chance, and jumped in on short notice - which means that I have some catching up to do on the other work stuff now.

Which also means you get a cat picture instead of a proper blog post:

We've made good use of the beautiful weather in the last days and got the garden partly cleaned up for spring. The bushes and shrubs are all pruned, most of the leaves have been removed from the beds under the willow fence, and I've started clearing out unwanted things from under the raspberries. There will be need for fertiliser at quite a few places, and there's still a chunk of work left to do, but it begins to look a lot like Chrisma - no, spring, of course.

The neighbour's bees are also stopping by occasionally, and he's told us that all his hives have survived the winter. We've also seen at least one bumblebee queen - the white-arsed variety, probably Bombus Terrestris.

There has also been some spring cleaning in the wintergarden... and there, unfortunately, losses were quite considerable. The lemon tree and the two physalis plants made it fine. Of the three Ecuador Purple chili plants, one survived, one is dead, and on the third jury's still out, but it's not looking good.

[caption id="attachment_5878" align="alignnone" width="159"] The Ecuador Purple sprouting again!


I also suspect that the tomatoes are a complete and resounding nope... which is a pity, because they are so much earlier when you get them to survive the winter. Ah well.

The smaller of my dwarf pepper plants also survived, without even shedding its leaves:



The other, large one, is probably dead too. As are all my coffee plants. There's some avocado trees still growing happily - but of the Marconi Red pepper plants, none seem to have made it. I'm not sure if one or two of the noname spice rack chilis have survived, but most of these are crunchy as well.

On the positive side, all three of the Bishop's Hat pepper plants did survive, and are working hard on new leaves right now:



We got those seeds because the fruits look quite weirdly funny.



These are recently harvested, by the way, so they are from last year. And they are tasty as well!

So this year will see a lot of new, young tomato plants. And then, who knows, some of them might actually make it into the next year...

We're having wonderful, sunny, early spring-like weather here; so nice and sunny that it's possible to open up windows during the day and enjoy fresh, if still cool, air a lot.

Non-weather-wise, it doesn't look quite as good: numbers of new infections are already on the rise again, which probably is due to the new virus variants getting more and more widespread. The really obnoxious thing about all this is that as of today, some more things are opening again. Hairdressers, for instance, but also garden shops and garden markets. Schools have returned to some state of openness all over the country (though of course every single one of our 16 federal states has its own rules, and its own schedule). There are debates about opening up more, and quickly - and I am quite concerned that we'll be up in the 300 incidence area soon if that is really done. (We might get there even if it's not done. I don't trust the current curve.)

Meanwhile, there's weird distrust towards the AstraZeneca vaccine. Which is... argh. Even if it is a bit less efficient than the mRNA types, it's still offering solid protection. However, since about no single place has its logistics properly managed, there's hundreds of thousands of doses sitting in fridges instead of getting jabbed into arms. Can I repeat? Argh. Especially since there's enough people who would be happy to get dosed with AZ straight away. My arm would be offered in a jiffy, too!

I really don't get why the stuff is not getting offered to people further down the priority line instead of sitting there. Really, if time is of the essence when vaccinating, if someone refuses, they can wait for however long it takes for them to get whatever they want to have as vaccine, but there should be enough people registered already that those doses can get out. May I repeat? Aargh.

Enough with the ranting for now, though - let me offer you some links, because what is better to take one's head off of current stupidities than old strings and old shit, right?

So here's a thousands-of-years-old ball of string.

Here's an article about dirt in medieval cities.

Or maybe take a look at the documents offered by the Shoe Museum in Lausanne, which include information about the footwear of Queen Aregonde.