I like birds of prey - all of them. Which means I was delighted to find out that there's a webcam installed in a place in Germany... inside a nesting box used by a pair of kestrels.

The NABU (a German organisation for the protection of nature) has the livestream on their site, and you can find it here.  Breeding already started on May 12, so the chicks are expected for mid-June... not very long now!

Stuff for the Germans - I hope you'll enjoy this!

If you're in the Munich area from tomorrow to the weekend, you might want to have a peek into the Eisernes Haus, where there's an exhibition of modern artisan wares, including textiles from Sylvia Wiechmann's Damasthandweberei. Vernissage is from 17:00 on Thursday, May 12.

 The Germanisches Nationalmuseum has a very nice article (in German) about pictures in museums, their use on social media, and other aspects of taking photos in museums. You find it here on their blog.

If you've come across the phenomenon of people feeling "triggered" by apparently small things, and have sometimes wondered if there's a general trend to being more sensitive, or complain more about things, you might be interested in this article from the Süddeutsche.

That's three tabs less that are open in my browser ;) 

By pure chance, I found out this weekend that there is something called "World Naked Gardening Day". There's really nothing that does not exist, right?

Apparently the aim of this day is to make people feel connected with nature, and get out (or do inside) gardening feeling the breeze on every spot of the body, and making the world a better and a bit greener place. It's always on the first Saturday in May, so it might still be rather cool outside... 

If you want to learn more, you can find out about it on the official website https://wngd.org/

For me, I can tell you that this is definitely not a World's X Day that I will participate in - I am quite fond of coverage by clothing, especially when outside in the sun, where sunburn at this time of year can also be an issue...

Tomorrow is a bank holiday here - the first of the Easter holidays. We're looking forward to a few nice days off, seeing family, relaxing, and having a generally good time. Hopefully also with decent weather. The forecast did look rather bad until today, but has improved now, so there might be some delicious spring sunshine.

So with this image of a wild bee on our very recently flowering cherry tree, I'm off into the long weekend...

I'll be back on the blog on Tuesday - for a day or two before I'm off again to a fair, followed by a textile workshop in Vienna.

(Even though the pandemic still isn't over, general happenings here in Germany, like in most other countries, happen just as if it were. And, well, I'm still wary of some things, but like so many others, I'm really craving personal meetings and input, and proper human-beings-in-a-group interactions. So... it's the fair, and then the workshop, and there's some more events coming up and I am looking forward to them all.)

Sometimes you just need to have something... fun. So.

Not so very far from where I live, there's a company named BIG, and they make stuff. Among that stuff are small toy vehicles called Bobby Cars. Now, if you're in Germany and a child, you will know these things - they are small, sturdy plastic cars, classically in red, that you sit on and you push with your feet to get them moving.

Some people half-joke, half-conspiracytheorise that the cars are sponsored by manufacturers of children's shoes, because when you give the car a good push and it rolls forward, chances are high that the toebox of the shoe will drag across the ground... and if you do that on asphalt, you have a good chance of ruining your shoes very, very quickly.

I did mention that these little cars are quite sturdy, right? They will easily carry an adult as well, though adult-length legs (even if they are rather short) are hard to use for pushing when you are sitting so low. Which means that usually, you put one knee on the seat and then you can sort of get along. (Why would you do that, you ask? Well. Because it's fun, and it might bring back childhood memories, and why should only toddlers enjoy the Bobby Cars, anyway?)

Speeding along with the too-long legs we grownups have remains a bit uncomfortable. Unless, of course, it's going downhill. Then you can just sit on the thing... and go. 

Apparently there's enough people who find that appealing that there is a number of events for Bobby Car Racing. 

Some of the cars have brakes, but a lot of people just brake with their feet. Like you do on a Bobby Car, usually. (Did I mention this shoe industry thing?)

There's also this guy who got himself a scaled-up version of a Bobby Car: 

Lauresham is always good for some interesting and exciting projects - and their most recent one is "A Year on the Field". This is about crops raised in historical times, and this year's crop is flax (linum usitatissimum). 

For their project, Lauresham is looking for participants who have raised flax in the past years, or are joining in to grow it this year. Especially welcome are farmers, open-air museums, museums, or living history places - but they also look for scientists and crafters who work with linen and are willing to share their knowledge and insights.

You can learn more about the project (and get into contact) here. 

Just in case you are wondering, I won't be joining in. My preferred gardening technique is "demented squirrel", as in "I put things in the ground and then forget about them". Flax is a crop that needs a minimum of care, or so I'm told, and, well... the tomatoes and woad and, this year, fuller's thistles that I am growing are more than enough for me to handle. I will be keeping an eye on the project, though, I find it is a wonderful idea!

I'm nearing the end of the ring-making for the Egtved skirt, and like things often seem to take longer towards the end, this does too. At times it feels like a stunningly boring job. The actual making of the rings is not so bad, but the prepping of the fibre rolls, while not taking a lot of time, somehow feels like it has supernatural mind-numbing powers. Still. There is an end in sight, and I'm already very much looking forward to stringing them all up!

There's also definitely more rings in my skirt than I found in one of the estimates of the number of rings in the original. Now I'm wondering if they were counted? Or if it really was just an estimate? There would be an easy way to find out, as the full skirt image is available, and it's large enough to download and scroll across and count the little buggers.

But somehow, I feel like I'll currently rather spend my time on finishing the rings that I have on my piece...