It's been a rather grey day here, and that makes me long for a bit of colour. Fortunately that's easy - here, have some small bit of cloth coming out of a cochineal dye bath:

Isn't that a nice shade? I'm quite fond of cochineal - I prefer cooler, darker shades of red to the more orange tones of madder, so I'm more a cochineal girl than a madderwoman, actually. (The combination of the two can be gorgeous though!) 

If you like Origami and are thinking about an alternative to a Chrismas tree, you might find inspiration here: 

That's definitely a very nice idea, and a stunning thing... though I suspect we will stay with our minimal decorating here! 

Well, you certainly can't say that the rose in our garden has not been trying hard until the end... 

She did manage to get one flower properly into bloom about mid-November, but the second of the late blooming attempts was really too late. So it got snowed upon and frozen out when it was just half open.

Still quite a feat, though, and somehow I find it very amusing. Shows that not just human beings can be a little too late...

In case you enjoy a bit of whimsy and don't necessarily stop that enjoyment at the end of the Middle Ages, you can have a look at this collection of fantastical animals. It's an online exhibition with text in German, but images will work in any language - and you'll see interesting critters from graphical artwork from the 15th to the 18th century.

Because we can all use some images of gryphons and dressed-up locusts, right?

Somehow it feels like it should have been Friday today - at least I feel ready for the weekend. Maybe it's because it has gotten quite dark and cold outside? Or maybe because the little cat has been spreading sleepiness waves? Who knows. Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow will be Friday! 

If you're not sure whether it's Friday yet and would like to check, there's the wonderful website isitfridayyet.net to help you. And since I last went there, many years ago, it seems like it has gotten an upgrade - it's not just "yes" or "no" anymore!

Stuff is accumulating here and there, I am checking the lists, getting things ready (such as filling liquids into all kinds of containers), doing a bit of writing work (with a lot of help from the little cat, who is hanging out on my desk and napping on my arm), and generally getting very excited about the things to come.

Most has arrived in time, or gotten finished in time, such as the Equisetum Arvense slurry (which was made according to instructions for gardening use, where it gets to shine as plant-strengthening potion, but in my case it's of course intended for mordanting tests) and the kermes (yes, there's actually a chance I will see kermes being used!) and the bran water (thanks to my trip to Romania, where I got the hints on how to make it). It looks like the bran has a pH of about 4 once it's nicely fermented, which is about what we got when we put the alum into our mordanting baths for the Pompeii dyeing experiment.

There's something like a rough schedule as well - knowing how dye experiments go, it makes no sense to plan it in excruciating detail. It looks like we'll have enough space and enough stuff if we figure out the logistics on site properly. (Run a little practical conference on dyeing, with a bit of an experiment here and there, and you might suddenly find yourself the proud owner of 50 lab glass beakers. You know. As you do.)

With that said... I will be off the blog tomorrow to give me a little more time for getting things sorted and packed up - and then, as you've probably guessed, there will be blog silence for the Forum week and some recovery time afterwards. I will be back on November 22! 

Things done yesterday and today? Found out that there are test strips that will give an indication of stuff in water, including the interesting bits such as copper, iron, nitrites and nitrates, lead, hardness and so on. There's some that will give you 6 values and some that give 14 and some that give you 16 - so we're going to have the 16-value strips for some indication of how different our water samples are.

These are, of course, not very accurate and not comparable with a proper lab analysis of water, but it will be a quick and dirty solution to get indications of differences, and have a rough documentation of them. And then it's always possible to take a bit of the water and hand that in for a proper analysis, should it turn out that it would be really interesting. (Tap waters in Germany usually have an analysis available from the water works, but that might not be the case everywhere, and for the spring waters and creek waters, well, there's no analysis of them anyways.)

So that bit of our experiment is now sorted as well; other supplies and ingredients are on their way, the experiment protocol/guideline and documentation sheets are being worked upon, details are discussed, tea is being consumed, oh, and I've packed some goods to send off so a post run is on the agenda now as well.

I can't believe that it's less than two weeks from now that the Forum starts...