By pure chance, I stumbled across a video by Sally Pointer yesterday, and it led me to the wonderful discovery of an 18th century trinket - the bergamot box. Just in case this holds no meaning at all to you: Bergamot is a citrus fruit with a rather thick rind, and in the 18th century, some people (in the region of Grasse, if we are to believe the Musée du Parfum) used the rinds of these bergamot fruits to make little boxes. Basically they are taken off the fruit, turned inside out, shaped, dried, and then "covered with cardboard" which I'd suspect means like a papermaché layer, and finally painted. 

You can find images of one example here, dating to the 18th century. There's probably lots more hidden in some museum databases, but unfortunately "bergamot" is one of the words that are hard to search-engine-search, as you get flooded with ads for perfume and, to a lesser extent, Earl Grey Tea. They look beautiful, and I had not the slightest inkling that this was A Thing in the past. Or even that it was possible!

But now for the fun part: Sally's video. Good thing that it's orange season here now!

I made my way to my wardrobe today for a short interview with the ÖRR - providing little snippets of history, in that case answers to school children's questions. That was fun (and I will let you know when it's on the air...).

Otherwise, much of the same going on, plus a visit from a handyman because of some issues with our heating. Interesting issues, due to the building's history (even if it's not that old yet), and hopefully they will be solved soon. 

...there's some writing, some sorting, some preparing in the background for future projects - and I'm trying to get some long-outstanding software updates done.

I also tried to install an advent calender from an abandonware portal (Löwenzahn, which is a German children's TV series that I used to love when I was young) and found out that it is too chatty for my taste (and no, turning off the sound is not the solution as you need to hear what is said in some cases). 

So - nothing much happening. Hopefully, though, the switch to the new software version pretty soon!

It's baking season again! For a few years now, I have been tweaking a recipe for Spekulatius, and I think I'm getting there now. 

The reason for all this, well... in Germany, one of the traditional seasonal sweets for winter and Christmas are Spekulatius. They are crunchy cookies with some spices, the spice mix resembling that used for gingerbread, but not quite the same. They are sold in packages big or small, but, of course, inevitably including plastics. So the quest to avoid as much single-use plastic in our lives (which obviously includes plastic packaging for foods), the logical step was to bake them at home, no plastics required.

The thing about Spekulatius, though, is that traditionally they are made with forms so they are shaped, and show something. Like, very typical, a man, or a windmill, or a donkey carrying something, or an elephant. Which means they are only half the fun without this.

Very obviously, my next step (after picking a recipe to try) was to take out the box with old dentist drill bits and buy a rolling pin and look for easily draw-able medieval marginalia (knowing both my drawing and my woodworking skill limits) and go for it. 

There were issues with the dough, and with the handling of the pin, and with the depth of the motif "carvings", but after a few years of tweaking (because you can only eat so many test pieces per year), I have something that I would consider fairly satisfying.

In case you are wondering, yes, the motifs go heavy on the axes and less heavy on realism.

This year, however, a friend pointed me to a website of someone making forms for another very traditional German baked good: Springerle. They are, in their original form, very much aniseed flavoured so there's those that love them, those that hate them, and those that eat one or two and have enough for the rest of the year (that would be me, by the way). The way the forms are carved, though... it's really beautiful to watch. And the best thing? You can have a look at it yourself here:

I am really looking forward to the weekend - to some hanging out with friends, some baking, some bouldering, and not as much time spent in the rather frigid office... which is frigid because there has been a change to our heating system with some repercussions that have only been found out about a few days ago. So while we usually didn't turn off the radiators but there was warm water circulating in the pipes under the floor, this circulation is currently not taking place, with the result of the office being colder than usual. 

So... we would have turned on the heating. Except we found out it doesn't work. It's a good thing we are used to having not so very warm rooms during the winter time, but it is a little too cool to be really comfortable even then. There is betterment in sight, though, as the root cause of the problem is known, and it should be rather easy to do at least a temporary fix.

But, well. Weekend in the warmer rooms. (Especially the kitchen, when there's a bunch of baking going on!)

Just in case you feel like it should be Friday already and are in dire need of seeing something that is really quite, um, senseless, I give you... the Hessian Christmas Tree Cannon.

In case you missed it (I certainly did for a long while), Alex Makin was interviewed in the podcast "Around the Table" back in September, where she talks about medieval embroidery (including, more or less, her origin story).

If you want to listen, you can find it here on spotify (or you might be able to find the podcast on some other platform). 

I've also been listening to stuff on my podcast waitlist the past few days, as I was (and actually still am) trying to sort through things, arrange the stuff in storage a little more intelligently, and try to figure out what to do with some of the projects or ideas that did not turn out to be the greatest thing ever. (Well. At least they got their chance, right?)

It is always kind of amazing to me that some things really take off, and some things just... don't. One of the examples was the larger embroidery kit I made, a long time ago. The first step was having the gold thread in stock (which happened due to reasons of its own, and I do not regret anything). Then I thought it might be a nice idea to have a sort of mini-kit - some gold, some silk, some instructions - so people could give it a try without buying larger amounts of both gold and silk. 

The most frequent thing I'd hear from almost-customers or potential customers when looking at that kit was "yeah, hm, but I don't know what I could do with it". So my brilliant idea was to make a larger kit, with a motif pre-drawn on a little bit of nice dark fabric and nice, longer instructions with photos. It... I wouldn't say it tanked, because there was interest, but it was definitely not the solution to the problem that I thought it was. Maybe I was trying the wrong solution. Maybe I was looking at the wrong problem. Maybe I just don't have access to the people who would love to buy such a kit. 

There have been surprises like that over the years, again and again. Sometimes it was a museum going for the super-detailed option that I had not expected them to go for. Sometimes it was an item I was over the moon about, and it just sat there and looked a little forlorn. Sometimes it was a group of folks going like crazy for a certain item. Sometimes it was more material than needed for a workshop idea, as the amount of workshops and/or the amount of material needed for them was much lower than I had planned for. 

What I have learned from that, over the years, is to not trust me when the little excited bit of my brain goes "woah, best thing ever, it will sell like crazy!". Most of the times, I do the project anyways, maybe with a little lower numbers than I used to, but still. Because, quite often, it's not just the product. It's also my joy of having found someone who still (or again) makes these things, putting in care and research and skill, and I'd like them to stay afloat making their goods, too. It's my desire to offer the option to others who get the same joy out of it (and can afford the items, because I'm well aware of the fact that my goods are not in the low-price range). 

It means, however, that I have to rearrange stuff now and then, and try to figure out what to do with the leftovers. The failed attempts. The samples, or small orders, that did not turn out to be the quality I wanted. And that is somehow, well, a little sad.