Today was finally, boringly, mind-numbingly spent on maintenance and sorting (and deleting!) stuff. Old programmes, old private mails, old stuff here and there. It's not all finished, but it does look much better already.

Also, as there's now the end of Win10 maintenance looming over my head, too (and of course my computer is not able to do Win11 out of the box, big surprise), the find-a-new-photo-database thing has again gained a little bit more pressure. The Most Patient Husband of Them All, who's been using digiKam for a bit now and is quite happy with it, has worked some magic ask AI the right questions stuff and it looks like there's a possibility to have a script that processes the .csv with the export data into .xmp sidecar files that digiKam can use. 

So there's a high probability of that happening, since most of the other things I'd found have at least one killer problem. (Many of them are DRMs with the unstoppable urge to pull all files into their own folder. Collector's management systems will only support a few items in the free version, and are cloud-based. Same base applies to a lot of general DRMs. Tropy, which I had high hopes for, does not do the watch folder thing reliably.)

Now I only have to do some more clean-up and tagging in FotoTime and then the exporting madness can begin. With testing. On subsections and with template test exports first.

Sigh. Wish me luck. 

The spinning workshop stuff is packed away and sorted away again, the orders are, for now, all sent out, I have replies on most of my requests - so the next things are some more Forum planning, and preparing a two-day workshop I will give in September at the Abegg-Stiftung. I'm already looking forward to that a lot!

In the meantime, I'm trying to polish up my French for the conference in Clermont-Ferrant this October. To my delight, we found out that the DVDs we have of the old TV series Babylon 5 had French dubbing - the perfect training to watch. To my even greater dismay, we found after finishing season 1 that all the others are only German and English; there is a French dubbing, but it's not included in the German audio DVDs. Bummer.

Now I need to find some other interesting, yet understandable, French audio stuff to watch. Preferably also with French subtitles (makes it a little easier to understand sometimes). Recommendations are welcome (especially if it's on the 'Net and streamable without hopping through too many hoops). 

A little while ago, I asked here whether anybody knew where the bowloom tablet weaving scene was from.

And, of course... that worked. (I love it when that works.) Not only this, I also got a bonus heads-up of my blog comment function acting up and not accepting the comment there, so I got this info, plus the source of the image, delivered into my inbox.

A big thank you to Carolyn Priest-Dorman at this place -  who was smarter than me and looked a little further on an old copy of Viktoria's blog, who had posted the mystery image in 2009 (it originated in a yahoo group, she writes, by the way). I had found out that the post contained that image - however, I had obviously not found the right copy of the post on the wayback machine, because at some point other than where I looked at... somebody solved the mystery. 

Or, to cite the comment in question:

Tuija Ainonen said...

We found the mystery image! I happened to tweet the image (https://bit.ly/3h8Z9fO) & prof Henrike Lähnemann knew of your search. (As this is an older post, perhaps you already found the reference?).

The image is from Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 185, fol. 35v (Lower Rhineland, 14thC). The manuscript has just recently been fully digitized by #PolonskyGerman project (see https://hab.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/en/ ).

You can find the image at https://bit.ly/3vNk4c7 and the catalogue description of the manuscript at https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_4553. The lower panel of the full page image depicts the education of the Virgin at the Temple, with her classmates being busy with various activities.

by Author

So thanks to Carolyn and her Search Fu, Vix's blog post, Prof. Henrike Lähnemann's knowledge, and Tuija Ainonen's comment, and actually also Beatrix Nutz who sent me the image and the "whereisit"-question... here we go. 

 I am, as I probably don't need to say, utterly delighted. 

I spent the weekend in Worms, at the Wollcraft Festival - meeting lots of lovely people that I get to meet way too rarely, and having a lot of fun. Some time was spent working - I had my own two spinning workshops to give, after all - but since it was the very first wool fair in my life that I actually went to without a stall, I also took the opportunity to just stroll around, have some ice cream, and look at everything.

For a while, I hung out with Cordula Becker, who had a "wind your wool for a good cause here" stall. You could use the skein holders and ball winders provided to wind your skeins into balls right at the fair, and I somehow got myself involved in helping some people who had not done that before to use the setup, and even wind a few balls for some folks. It was on give-what-you-want donation basis, and the donations will go straight to the current donation cause for kila mtoto.  Kila mtoto means "every child" in Swahili, and it's a small non-profit organisation with the aim of helping children in Kenya with projects that will give them a better life - such as providing them with school meals, hygiene items, books, and so on. The current donation run, however, is special: There is an ongoing collection for 14-year-old Sandra, who is in urgent need of heart surgery, at a cost of 12.000 € altogether.

Kila mtoto is a small organisation on purpose - because on that scale, the people running it can make sure that the things they work and collect donations for are sensible, sustainable, and what the communities there actually need. Cordula runs this with all her heart, and money donated there will always make a difference - so if you can, even though you didn't get to use the wool winders in Worms, please consider to help with a donation for Sandra, or maybe even by longterm sponsoring of a child.

(Or you could donate indirectly by buying the current charity yarn from Alte Künste, doadoa (sprinkled). (The Webpage is currently in German only, and there's no shipping to the US because of the tariff stuff, just like from my own shop, but if you're in Europe... there you go. I'm sorry if you happen to leave more money there than planned, but you're welcome.)

You might be familiar with the Dunning-Kruger-Effect - which can be more or less summarised as "people who are bad at something are so bad at the thing that they are convinced they are really good at it, and can't even see how bad they are". 

There's been some more tests done, with the results and the conclusions published at clearerthinking.org. The short version is that there's additional effects, both statistical and psychological, that may skew results when trying to learn about people's self-evaluation. 

I found it an interesting read, even though I missed a few of the effects that I personally have found to happen, at least as anecdotal evidence. At least in quite a few cases, I have found people who are extremely good at what they are doing to more or less downplay their skills. One reason for that, as far as I see it, is that they know the field so well to be very much aware of what they do not know. Also, very good people tend to have contact, and possibly compare themselves, to people who are in the same league, which can potentially skew self-assessment. Another reason for this can be a desire to stay under the radar. If you hop out and about telling everyone that you are really, really good at programming JavaScript, guess what will happen sooner or later? Exactly. So to avoid having to defend yourself from extra work, or having to do extra work, keeping mum about your skills is sometimes just the thing.

If you have thoughts - or personal experience with something that could have been a Dunning-Kruger - let me know! 

...and it's nearing completion.

That's from one of the publications where the needlelace used in the Lengberg finds is very nicely described and analysed.

However, I had to do a work re-drawing of the original drawing in the book... because there, it's all squiggly black lines and I was not able to see which line was doing what. And this, my dear folks, is why everybody needs a box of crayons somewhere. Because then you can draw squiggly lines in different colours and actually figure out which line is where, and what you are supposed to do.

I have one line of needlework left (and that's a simple one with one row only) and then one braid has to be attached to the row, and that will be it. I'm already looking forward to sending them off to their new place, and hope that they will see a lot of use during the exhibitions!

...the Source.

A colleague sent me this lovely image of a bow loom with tablets on, found somewhere in the Internet - unfortunately with no source given (or even the statement "source unknown"). I've done a little bit of looking, but was unfortunately (though also unsurprisingly) unsuccessful.

So. Has anybody seen the suspect, erm, image? There's a few versions of it around in the 'Net, but they all seem to be 10 years or older. From the looks of the image, it was scanned from some black-and-white book page. The Angel in the upper right corner of the detail piece is crowning somebody; my guess would be that it's Mary, because textile work is quite frequently associated with her. However I am no proper art historian and might be completely astray.

Should you have seen this image anywhere, please do let me know! It's a really beautiful rendition of a very simple weaving tool, and I have not seen this in an image yet. But just a copy from a random place in the internet is, well,... not the best foundation for waving this around and shouting "hey! rarely depicted loom type!" to peope.