This year looks much better for in-person, on-site conferences than last year - though there's nothing really secure still at the moment. However, not only the Textile Forum is betting on everything being good enough, EXAR is also planning a conference this year.

It will take place in Perl-Borg, in a Roman villa museum; I've been there several times for Reenactment fairs, and it's a really beautiful place with lovely people running it. The EXARC conference is scheduled for September 23-26, and the topic is "Experimental Archaeology in Science and Education 2021". The Call for Papers is open until July 31, and registration for the conference is open as well. You can find out more about the conference here, and also register for it.

Talks will be in English and German, with a yet unknown ratio of the two languages. The board asks that slides for the presentations should be bilingual or in the other language than the one used for speaking so that everyone can follow along somehow.

I'm absolutely delighted that EXAR is using this as their current solution to the language dilemma - the society has developed into a larger, more international one from a purely German start, and a lot of the older members struggle with English as a conference and conversation language. Mind you, some of that struggle is probably due to the fact that Germans often underestimate their abilities in speaking and understanding English, and are a bit shy to use a foreign language because they feel self-conscious for all their mistakes.

I'm a proper German in that regard as well, by the way. I like to get everything right, and I do have to tell myself all the time that making mistakes is not bad, not speaking or writing to practise the other language is bad - and if that means making mistakes, that's good. It has gotten better recently with my wholesale slaughtering of the poor Finnish language, and the medieval French lessons where I also enthusiastically threw around interpretations that turned out to be, um... not quite matching the original content of the text. There was lots of learning that way, though.

It did help that the others in the study group also ventured forth with things they were not sure about, too. So offering up tentative solutions, or trying to talk about something where you might be a bit creative with vocabulary or pronounciation does not only help yourself to learn - it also helps others to maybe be more courageous. Good things all around!

The Early Textiles Study Group has opened their Call for Papers for the next conference, which is planned for Manchester on September 9-11. In case in-person is not possible, it will be held virtually.

The title is ‘Legacy: textile studies, the past informing the present’. The ETSG is thus looking for papers that explore any aspect of the legacies of the study of early textiles. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Pioneers in the study and reconstruction of early textiles,
• Collections, their histories and their futures,
• Fresh insights gained by applying new methodologies to old collections and archives.

The CfP is open until June 1st.



Definitely virtually, and taking place this Saturday, is the next EXARC textile chat. As usual, you can find it on their Discord server, and it will start at 15:00 CET. This month, the topic is embroidery.

These are crazy times. Crazy, with a capital C, or maybe with all capital letters. But anyway, even though it's all crazy, and even though we don't know how things will develop from now onwards (at least not in the medium run, it's pretty clear what will happen here in Germany in the next two or three weeks), a bit of optimism might be what we all need.

So. I'm very, very excited to announce that we will try to have a European Textile Forum this year! If all goes well enough, we will meet in Tilff-Méry, Belgium, from August 9 to August 15.

Our focus topic this year will be "Sticks and Stones May Make a Loom", and we will explore weaving techniques and possibilities on "primitive" looms during the Forum week.



If you're a weaver, or a researcher, and that sounds interesting for you, you can find out more about it on textileforum.org, where there's the Call for Papers and the registration form online now.

Here's some stuff about places you could go at times when there are things that might be vastly interesting:

The CfP of the EXAR conference in Vienna, September 26 to 29 2019, is ending on June 15. You can send your paper proposal via their website.

If you are interested in Tudor clothing, there's a conference with a lot of event stuff around it called "Missing Persons". It will take place in Nottingham on April 3-5, 2020. You can register via the Tudor Tailor site; conference costs are 299 GBP (with an Early Bird registration until June 19 for 275 GBP).

The University of Sheffield will offer Zooarchaeology Short Courses in September 2019: Understanding Zooarchaeology on September 10-12 and Birds in Archaeology on September 13. The courses are directed to students, professionals and enthusiasts, no prior knowledge required, and the courses include hands-on practical activities. For more information, visit the website at the Uni of Sheffield.

The CfP for the European Textile Forum is also open; the Forum will run from November 4-10 in the Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology Lauresham, Lorsch, Germany. Focus topic this year is "Shared Warps, Shared Wefts", but other, non-weaving related papers or presentations are also welcome.

Finally, for those in Germany, I will be offering a two-day tablet weaving workshop on August 31 and September 1, teaching how to do tablet weaving patterns without a written pattern draft. As this is a system and we will start from the very beginning to learn the system, no previous knowledge about tablet weaving is needed. More information and booking possibilities are here via the pallia webshop.

It has taken a good while, but it's finally all settled - the European Textile Forum 2019 has a venue, and it will take place November 4-10 as planned.

Our venue for this year is the Lauresham Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology, connected to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Lorsch Abbey and a spectacular place to be. I have a lot of personal fond memories of Lorsch, having been on archaeological digs there several times, working together with lovely colleagues, and having some memorable moments. Like the one where one of the students found some coins right after the assistant prof promised a money prize for finding a coin. Like the one where I was staring so hard at the greenish-pinkish bands in the sand there, to find the line between an old trench and natural undisturbed soil, that I stopped seeing in colour and had to stare at a white wall for a while. Like assisting the technician in taking site measurements; he was a very, very special character, so working with him was sometimes quite exhausting (but I got treated to an ice cream sundae in the evening, which did make up for that). Best of all is that I was part of the student group that excavated in the so-called "Südosttor" area... and what had been thought to maybe have been the south-east gate turned out to have been the loo.

So I'm very happy to return to Lorsch, especially since I have not been there for years, and the whole Lauresham Laboratory is also new to me.

For the Forum, we are graciously given use of the Visitor Information Centre with several rooms, plus use of the facilities in the open-air laboratory itself. This includes houses and workspaces modelled after archaeological finds and ideal-typical monastery plans and descriptions from Carolingian times. Most important for our purposes, there is a dye house on the grounds, as well as a weaving house with three warp-weighted looms installed there plus one mobile warp-weighted loom. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am at how this all worked out, and I am so much looking forward to our conference!

I have also been promised that our group will get a tour of both the Abbey grounds and the Laboratory, which will surely include a visit to the 8th/9th century Gate Hall, the most famous building in Lorsch, and truly, truly spectacular.

So now, finally, it's time to send out the Call for Papers. As every year, we will have a focus topic, and this time it's "Shared Warps, Shared Wefts". You can find the CfP on our website, or you can download the pdf version here.

Last details regarding the conference still need to be figured out, so registration is not open immediately, but will be possible from May 27 onward.

For now, please save the date if you're planning to come, and spread the word about this conference if you know people who might be interested!