It's getting spring-timey in earnest - the cherry trees are in full bloom now: 

There's also a good amount of flowers doing their job: 

And the little cat is, of course, also enjoying the good weather. She's been having some health issues recently, some of them related to food intolerances getting worse as she ages, and some of them probably related to stress with other cats outside, so it's nice to see her relax and enjoy some sunshine. (We're working on both her health issues, and there's been some improvement already, but Madame does not find all the food that is good for her delicious enough for her palate. Sigh.)

If you like colours, especially those of the past, well, here's a Call for Papers for you: 

The CTR, The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, The National Museum of Denmark, and The Danish School of Conservation are jointly hosting this year's conference on Dyes in History and Archaeology (DHA 42) in Copenhagen from October 31^st to November 3^rd.The call for abstracts is open with the deadline being the 1^st of May of 2023, so please consider sending your proposal! 

Here is the link for the conference website with all the necessary information: Dyes in History and Archaeology 2023 DHA42

I'm very, very tempted every year to go to this conference... even though I'm no dye specialist. But, well, the colours! The chemistry! The magic! I won't manage to go there this year either, as it's way too close to the European Textile Forum week and I will be doing the necessary prep work at that time, but some day I will surely make it.  

Well, that time passed quickly...

There was colouring of eggs, and nice leisurely breakfasts, and some cooking, and some meeting with friends, there was the first ice cream parlour visit of the year for coffee and, you may have guessed it, icecream.

I finally managed to sow some more seeds, and there was even time for a bit of gardening. Like always, though, there's a bunch of work left to do, and the Easter holidays could have been twice as long without us getting bored.

Now it's back to work, but at least I have a nice view on the tulips blooming in the garden - the first ones are already sticking out of the lawn and in full bloom. (Since we are not really mowing the lawn anymore during spring and summer, I stuck some of the tulip bulbs that were not thriving in their former place into the lawn last year - and it looks like they are much happier there!)

There's a bunch of other flowers too, and the neighbour's bees are visiting them with gusto.

Oh, and speaking of bees - now is the time when they also need water, so if you want to help your neighbourhood bees, you can provide them with a source of water where they can safely land and drink. A flat bowl with rough surface will do, or a large jar with enough wood sticks or twigs stuck into it that the bees can land on the wood and crawl down to the water.

Just in case you, like me, are planning travels (there's conferences and workshops coming up, and I'm looking into options for getting there and back again) but would like to try and see how it would be Roman Style... here's a Route Planner based on the Tabula Peutingeriana, which is a medieval copy of a Roman map.

There you go. But don't expect the planner to provide you with routing to the nearest airport! ;) And if you prefer looking at the real thing, here's the digitised version in the Austrian National Library.

Things I did today? Sorting stuff, mostly. There was a new delivery of spindle sticks, which needed to be packed away in suitable boxes; there was some re-stocking of hand spinning kits, and checking the amount of spindle whorls that are left, and some re-organising of different wool kinds, and so on. Most of this is already in preparation of the Nadelkunst, which starts on Friday next week - so I have a few more days to get everything lined up and prepared. There's plenty left to line up and prepare, though, so it's not like I will be running out of work!

Especially not since there are a few other things that need attention, and rather quickly, as they are also on a deadline. That whoosh sound? That's the deadlines approaching... so I'd better get back to writing the email I still need to write, and do all the other things on the list for today. There's a newsletter to get out as well, which is 2/3 finished, thank goodness, but needs a little bit more attention before sending it off.

So if anyone has a few spare hours they don't need - I'd take them!

I managed to totally forget blogging on Friday - there was just too much stuff going on. 

First, I was being very adult-y and sensible and had a doc's appointment to check for skin issues (cancer screening and mole check); I'd gotten some weird light spots in the upper torso area, and I was actually steeling myself for a kind of skin cancer diagnosis when going there. Fortunately, it's just an overactive dermal yeast and almost purely cosmetic, so now I'm quite relieved (and equipped with a cream and a special shampoo to curb the overenthusiasm of that specific yeast). 

After that, circumstances called for a baking spree - I'd promised a cake as a birthday present. A Snickers cake, to be precise. Which is a concoction consisting of a bit of dough glued together with liberal amounts of buttercream in three different flavours - chocolate, peanut, and caramel. 

Pro tip #1: If you actually buy caramel, and not sweetened condensed milk by accident, you don't need to boil the milk into caramel as an additional step.

Pro tip #2: If you read your notes correctly, you don't leave the cake itself in the oven for double the time necessary. (It was still fine. Phew.) It was a little flatter than I had hoped for, which made cutting it more of a challenge, but I did manage. (It's baked in form of a long rectangle, then cut in half lengthways, then the two halves are halved again with a horizontal cut so you have, in the end, four very thin and long pieces of dough. When fully assembled with the buttercream layers inbetween, you get something more or less with the proportions of a snickers bar. Which, by the way, will not fit on a standard long cake platter as it is, you guessed it, too long.)

Pro tip #3: If you try to mix double the amount of custard into the butter, you will kill the buttercream. (It's a water-in-fat emulsion, and it can only take so much of the water phase before it flips and "curdles".) If you don't realise what you are doing, you will manage to do that twice.

Which leads me to pro tip #4: Don't take skimpy notes, write things down properly. There's no guarantee you will really re-bake the cake after a short time, still remembering the bits you did the previous time in detail.

So... I had a bit of trouble getting the cake all done, but in the end, it wasn't more ugly than my regular not-so-much-trouble cakes, and (most importantly) it tasted really nice. Makes a large, very solid cake that is rather easy to transport, but should be cut in slices not more than a centimetre wide, meaning it makes about, oh, 30 and a bit servings? It will also freeze rather well, which is a good thing, as it's rarely all consumed at once!

That cake is also one of the test opportunities for my (still ongoing) quest to find the perfect chocolate buttercream, by the way...

 There was considerable getting sidetracked today - I had planned on getting some different work done, but ah, plans never survive the first contact with the enemy...

The crucial bits got finished, though, and there were (the sidetracking) a few other things that I had planned to do soon, and now have done already. I've even been lucky with the necessary errands, as the weather was rather pleasant while I was running them.

Now it's gone back to grey with a bit of snow... so to counteract that, I give you the rainbow of colours you can see in the Guter Stoff exhibition:

 It's more beautiful in person, of course!