There's an exhibition opening this weekend - in Lauterbach, about the everyday life on Burg Wartenberg. The exhibition includes some finds that have never been shown before and are not published anywhere as images, plus some finds that have been newly evaluated.
Alas, I won't be able to go there, as I will be in Kamenz demonstrating spinning - but I do hope I'll be able to see the exhibition at some point!
I'm already looking forward to NESAT - this conference is always a highlight of the three-year-period that NESAT takes place. This time, it will be in Warsaw, Poland. I've been to Poland once already, many years ago, for an excavation, and I have a lot of good memories of these weeks, so it will be really nice to re-visit some of the local delicacies. And, of course, meet with the friends and colleagues from all over Europe.
The conference programme looks quite stuffed with interesting things - you can find it on the website, in case you are interested.
This June, there will be a German conservator conference, called "Neu verflechten", which will even be hybrid - so if you're interested, here is some more info:
27. bis 29. Juni 2024
Neu verflechten!
Textile Netzwerke und Perspektiven im musealen und archäologischen Kontext
Die Fachgruppe Textil und die Studienrichtung Textilien und Archäologische Fasern des Instituts für Restaurierungs- und Konservierungswissenschaft (CICS) der TH Köln laden zu einer gemeinsamen Fachtagung unter dem Titel "Neu verflechten"! Textile Netzwerke und Perspektiven im musealen und archäologischen Kontext" vom 27. bis 29. Juni 2024 an der TH Köln ein.
Die Tagung setzt sich mit den aktuellen Herausforderungen im Umgang mit musealen und archäologischen Textilien auseinander und soll dazu dienen, neue kollegiale Netzwerke zu bilden – zu verflechten. Das Tagungsthema ist bewusst offen gestaltet, um allen aktuellen Themen der Textilrestaurierung Raum zu geben.
Viele der Präsentationen und Poster sind interdisziplinär. Themenschwerpunkte sind vor allem die Textilrestaurierung in der Archäologie, aber auch in der modernen Textilkunst, sowie die Anwendung von Methoden und Materialien anderer Fachgebiete. Begleitend zur Tagung wird eine Ausstellung mit Vernissage (Textiles & Beyond. Positionen zeitgenössischer textilverarbeitender KünstlerInnen. Ausstellung am CICS, Raum 11, 17. bis 29. Juni 2024) angeboten. Bei einem gemeinsamen Abend mit Aperitivo haben wir die Möglichkeit für den Austausch und ein gemütliches Zusammensitzen. Am Ende der drei Veranstaltungstage bieten wir außerdem Führungen durch die Fachbereiche des CICS an.
Wir bieten unsere Tagung in diesem Jahr erstmals hybrid an, sodass auch eine kostengünstigere Online-Teilnahme möglich ist.
Mehr Informationen zur Tagung (Programm und Link zur Anmeldemöglichkeit) hier auf der VDR-Seite.
I will also be there, presenting our membrane thread project - and I'm already looking forward to this a lot!
I'm back, I've taken a bit of time off yesterday to make up for the weekend, and now it's playing catch-up with all the tasks left to do this week.
The weekend was lovely, and fun, and a little exhausting (for everyone, probably, not just for me). Friday morning, as I was ready to go to the train station, I got a message from the app that the train I was planning to take would be 98 minutes late... which, knowing how things go, means it would arrive even later by the time it was supposed to arrive, and I would not be able to catch the second ICE, and would travel at least double the amount of time scheduled.
Now... if it would have been a 2-hour journey, I would have considered doing it. But it would have been almost 6 hours as scheduled, so... no. Which meant I did take the car after all, and drove there, and I did that rather early to avoid getting caught in Friday evening rush hour traffic. (Plan worked.)
I spent a very nice afternoon and evening with the organiser of the workshop and one of the other participants, and then on Saturday I set out with them to make a lot of brain cells work hard. In theory, tablet weaving is very, very easy - you have to be able to tell light from dark and count up to two. In practice, putting all the things together and remembering all the new rules can make heads spin...
We started with warping (as I usually do in my workshops) and went on to explore threading and turning directions, stripes and monochrome surface weaving before moving on to diagonals and freestyle diagonal patterning.
As usual, I took way too little photos during the whole thing... I am always too distracted to remember to do so. This time, it was a little better thanks to "take photos" cues in my workshop script - which means that I can at least show you a photo of part of the room:
That was taken during a break, with everyone getting some nice food and filling up on coffee.
And in case you're curious: Installing the edge tablets did go quite well, but next time I will do the installation a little later, in hopes that that will make things a little bit easier.
After the end of the workshop on Sunday afternoon, I packed up everything, was gifted with a bit of food for the road and set off for home, tired but happy.
It looks like it's the time of year for announcements of textile events again! First of all, one for a conference in the UK in June:
And then, also in the UK, the Early Textiles Study Group offers a practical course. Here's the description, and if you are interested, go to https://www.earlytextilesstudygroup.org/etsg-courses.html for more!
Today was Warping Day. Well, Warping Afternoon - fortunately, the relatively small warps of limited length that we use in the weaving workshop are quite quick to make. So now I have this, waiting to be packed up:
On the left there's a few "oh no bad things happened" warps, prepared in case something bad happens and we need a quick new one. On the right... that's a stack of edge tablets, waiting to be installed at some point.
Edge tablets - usually all threads in one colour, and two or more of those monochrome tablets per edge - are an absolute fixture in historical bands. They make for neat edges, and if you weave patterns with my system, they are one way to tell which tablets turn in which direction.
However... adding edge tablets also makes warping a little more time-consuming, and it means one more thing to keep track of. That's why I did my workshops without edge tablets in the past. (Remember what I wrote about things evolving? That's one of them.) I've thought about a few different options on how to include them without making things too weird at the beginning, and I think I have found the solution and the hopefully impeccable timing for adding edge tablets: The point where they are actually helpful, and where the basic understanding stuff that does not require extra "empty brainless twisting" has already happened.
Next Monday I will know more. Now there's a tad more preparation to do, but the main stuff has all happened.
Oh, and due to the Bahn going on strike on Thursday and Friday... I will have to figure out whether I can go by train (probably not) or will have to take the car after all. Sigh.
I'm already looking forward to the next weekend - a group has booked me for a tablet weaving workshop, so we will spend the weekend twisting tablets and brains, and making straight and diagonal lines, and understanding where to look and why things work just as they work.
So I'm now preparing for the workshop, which includes prepping the tablets:
The workshop starts with warping tablets, and then we weave our way into understanding how patterns happen, and how to make them look just like you want them to look. It's the system I've developed that can be taken further into weaving 3/1 broken twill without a written pattern (though we won't go that far during this weekend).
All the tablets we'll need are now ready for warping, with all the punched holes empty and waiting to be threaded. I have a list of some more things to prep, and a few printouts to make, and some warping for the edge tablets.
Like all workshops, my tablet weaving workshop evolves over time - sometimes there's a chance discovery of something that works very well, or there's a "snag spot" where participants seem to struggle regularly, so these things get updated in my master script after a workshop, and are done a little differently next time. I really like to see how these things change and evolve and grow over time. And then there's the additional changes made to adapt the workshop to the group's wishes, so while the workshops are somehow the same, they also feel quite different every time... and part of the fun and joy in giving these is discovering their own specific vibe. (Plus, of course, the joy of seeing those little aha!-moments when something suddenly clicks.)
