It's Monday, and we've had one hour stolen. Or something like that.

On Saturday night, there was the switch to German "Sommerzeit" - daylight saving time. And really, apart from it being rather unneccessary and causing trouble with timetables and whatnot, and also costing the economy quite a lot of money and making people like me cranky (and even more so on the switch back, when you suddenly have to re-adjust to completely different degrees of light at a specific time again), what's with that name? If there's any time in the year where it would be important to save daylight, because there's not so much of it, that would be winter, right?

Well. As you can tell, I might be a little cranky. In that, I will join the (still too chubby) cat who is Not Amused about her mealtimes suddenly shifting around again. Although she's not objecting too much that they come earlier now...

And now I'll get back to my work. Which is happening not quicker, even though I am told it's saving time. Or so. 

Aaaand... we're back at the gender discussions. Because there's been recent research about the scribes writing the medieval manuscripts - and in some cases, the scribes left a colophon, that is some information about the manuscript and its making. And in some of them, there's information about the scribes themselves. Including, well, their names.

So a group of researchers has looked at colophones for an attempt to quantify the role that female scribes played in the medieval manuscript-writing and copying. 

And... you can read the full article, open-access, here.  

The weather is nicer today - but in spite of that, I spent part of the morning in our wardrobe. 

We have a walk-in wardrobe (well, you can barely walk in, but still), and that's the spot I use for doing sound recordings. (Small spaces with lots of fabric are the recommendation to avoid unwanted sound effects.) 

Today, though, I was not in there for an Escape Artist story, but for a podcast with Kaptorga. There's a number of podcast episodes already online, and you can find them here (or in other places) - all German, though. And if things go well, there will soon-ish be another one where I join Adam in rambling on about textiles, textiles, and textiles. 

It was a lot of fun for me, and, well, maybe we'll even make a second one at some point...

... and even though it's grey and rainy here today, I will have to go out now to bring the post to the post office.

I'm quite sure that this will not better my standings with the little cat, who is being cuddled on my desk while I'm writing, and was generally not very content today when cuddle time had to be interrupted for some reason. (Like coffee. She was more gracious when the reason also included cat food, but since she's still on the rather, um, well-padded side, there's a hard limit on the amount of cat food available per day. Poor Madame.)

More, hopefully interesting, news might come tomorrow. 

In case you're wondering how green your country's energy is overall, or how it fluctuates with demand and supply and night and day, have a look at the electricity maps here. It's quite interesting - and yes, France is very green because of low CO2-emissions from their nuclear powerplants. But there's still the issue of the material you need to get them running, the incredible cost of building them, and the tiny little detail of how to handle both the ruins once they are out of order, and the nuclear waste left over.

If you ask me, I'd prefer solar and wind energy...

The University of York is offering a fixed-term, paid full-time job for a postdoctoral Research Associate in Textile Archaeology.

The placement is part of the project "Seeing the Dead", an AHRC-funded project which aims to investigate the funerary custom attested in Roman Yorkshire in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE of pouring liquid gypsum over the bodies of adults and children in stone or lead coffins before burial. The Research Associate in textile archaeology will examine all surfaces of the gypsum casings, complete and fragmentary, for fabric imprints that reveal structures (textile weave, animal or vegetable fibres, borders, and selvedges). They will document the casing details, identify the nature and function of the fabrics, the technical tradition involved in their manufacture, and the types of garments and shrouds chosen. Remains of embedded textiles in the casings or in the sediments of coffins will be selected and sampled for microscopy and spectroscopy for better visualisation and analysis. The Research Associate will generate new knowledge about the nature and function of the burial textiles and how they reflect the social status of the people in them. Deadline for application is March 31, the interview date is April 25.  

For more information see the website at Uni York.

If you're looking to learn about archaeological textile conservation and archaeometry, you might want to consider this summer school taking place in Rome: 

It's taking place June 30 to July 5 2025, and application deadline is May 29.