Today's Friday. The so-called Black Friday.

Technically, it should just be a day like any other - but for years now, this day has been promoted to a day of wild consumerism, with deep discounts on many things. It's also being extended by quite a lot of companies or shops, mostly online shops, to a whole week, or at least several days.

I'll freely admit that in general I am happy, too, to get things for a reduced price. As a vendor myself, I also know that sometimes things have overstayed their welcome in your stock and should go, such as leftover bits or slightly damaged goods, and reducing their price is a good way to make everyone happy. I can absolutely get that, and I enjoy shopping "second-grade" or leftover stuff.

However, the price that is paid for the reduced prices on Black Friday? In most cases, I'd consider that it's too high. Someone, somewhere, has to pay for the discount, after all. Consider this: If a shop is able to give a discount of 50% on their goods, this means that either the shop owner will not make any profit anymore, or that the profit margin of the normal price is significantly more than 50%, or that the "normal price" never truly existed, but is just listed to make the discounted price more attractive. The first I'd consider kind of unfair, and it's not a sustainable strategy for the shop owner. In the third case, I don't really appreciate being lied to concerning the "normal" price. Both these do not exactly make me want to buy things at such a company, actually.

Selling a lot of things with a lower profit margin will generate profits, too, so I can see the appeal of catching people on a spending spree and selling them lots of stuff. For small vendors with limited stock and limited reach, that is not an option, though. So they might cut down on their profits hoping to gain new customers that will come back later.

Whatever is the case - joining in on the Black Friday madness means there has to be discounting, extra labelling, and advertisements. Local stationary shops are partly also joining in, and that means printed labels and printed ads and posters, also something with a rather significant cost and generating a good bit of waste, too.

So here we are, in a world racked by a pandemic, with a climate crisis on our hands that gets ignored by politicians everywhere; it's clear that the normal stationary shops that charge fair prices need our money to survive, and it's also clear that we need to consume less and repair and re-use more, unless we want this planet to become uninhabitable in the near future.

If you're reading this blog regularly, you have probably not expected me to join in on the Black Friday offers stuff - and no, I am not doing it. I try to set my prices so they are fair, and those who make things for me are paid a fair price as well. That in turn means that my possibilities of giving a discount are limited, and a deep discount would be impossible if I don't want to lose money.

So business will go on as usual here today, and the rest of the week. I will not do any more shopping than I would usually do on a week in November, and there will be no extra discounts in my own shop. I've seen quite a lot of people, and some shops, say outright that they won't do Black Friday, due to similar reasons - and I hope that this will spread, and eventually that day of discounts will be something of the past.

There's a National Championship in Science Slamming in our neighbouring country, Austria - and my dear colleague Karina Grömer has qualified for it, and will take part with a performance about prehistoric clothes (and textile archaeology).

The whole event will be livestreamed, and you can tune in after about 18:00 and enjoy some experiments in a show, before the event proper will start.

The title of Karina's performance (together with her co-slammer Andrea Krapf) is „Bronzezeitliche Unberührbare & Hallstattzeitliches It-girl mit Soundeffekt“ (Bronze Age Untouchables and Hallstatt Age It-girl with sound effect), and knowing Karina, who is a force of nature, it will be awesome. It's probably even worth watching if you don't speak German, just for the reconstructed garments and dress accessories.

[caption id="attachment_5678" align="alignnone" width="300"] During the Qualification Slam Performance in 2019 - Karina and her co-Slammer.


So - mark your calendar and watch the livestream on Friday evening, either at https://researchersnight.eu/european-science-slam/ or at http://www.scienceslam.at/ and enjoy some archaeological textile reconstructions!

Thank goodness it's Friday - somehow this week has both flown by and dragged out endlessly (probably because of the time spent editing...). Now it's the weekend, though. Hooray!

Fun fact: Because I needed the other computer for the editing, I had swapped work places with the Most Patient Husband. So now I know his workday homeoffice perspective... and I can tell you that I like my own desk much better. I can't tell you why exactly; probably a lot of it is just being used to, but it's nicer to sit here than there for me.

The cat probably agrees - she had her fave chair taken, then it stood in a different place even when it was not in use (and thus seemed far less attractive suddenly), and apparently my desk is much nicer to sleep on than the other one. Also my arm is in better position to serve as her pillow.

She'll have to wait a bit longer before I'm back properly at my workspace, though - there were remaining holidays still to be taken, and so we'll have next week off. Which also means there will be no blogging.

I'll see you after the break!

EXARC will host another textile chat, this time with the focus on spinning, on Saturday November 14! The chat will start at 15:00 CET.

It's free to join; you only need a discord account and then you can access the EXARC discord channel to chat with other people about spinning, spinning tools, and yarns. Find more information here on the EXARC page.

Well, we're certainly living in interesting times, aren't we?

If you had asked me this time last year about historic events in my lifetime, I'd have said "the fall of the German Wall and 9/11", and I'd have been fairly sure that that would be it for the rest of my life. They were, after all, both events with quite a lot of impact on how things went on afterwards. I wouldn't have dreamt of something like a pandemic coming up to turn all our lives upside down, in a way.

And now we're all waiting to see who will win the election in the US. Which will also have an impact, probably a huge one, on our collective future. No matter the outcome, I do suspect that there will be not-so-nice side effects, either because someone completely unsuitable to the job will stay at the helm of a whole freaking sub-continent with more problems than you can shake a stick at for another four years, or because said person will try to do exactly that even though the vote does not set him there.

I'm sort of following how the counting goes, and it is fascinating how far from the actual outcome some of the predictions were. It's also frightening in a way. I cannot understand how anyone could vote Trump again, after all the things that went pear-shaped during the last four years, but very obviously a lot of people are firmly convinced that he'd make the better president, or is the better choice, or whatever.

Which, again, means interesting times. I think I could have done with a few less world-changing events in my lifetime so far, actually!

 

I've managed, for a little bit, to mislay one of my knives. To be more precise: The knife I use for cutting notches into spindle sticks.

This cutting is something I do periodically, whenever one of the shapes runs out. Then I stock up on all the combinations: horizontal and spiralling notches cut into beech, pearwood and maplewood sticks. There's a simple, small knife that I always use for this, and as mentioned, it was mislaid.

So I was searching for it, at the places I suspected it might have gotten to. Now, there's no dearth of knives in this household, and for the two most urgent notches, I used another knife... which worked, but felt weird, and not as nice and comfortable as I was used to.



Because with the knife I usually cut the notches with, the process is familiar, and the knife fits my hand just so, and the blade has just the right shape, and I know exactly how much pressure is needed, and what angle to hold it, and how to scrape and cut and work. I am actually not sure whether this little knife is, objectively, the perfect tool for that kind of cutting. I am sure that it is very good, but there might be a shape even better suited, so using a different tool for the two "I need these right now" notches might theoretically have brought a revelation. (It didn't. I think I'm good with the old knife.)

Things like this are what absolutely fascinates me in regards to crafting. We use tools, and we use them often, and we get so familiar with them that they start to feel, at some point, not like tools but like extensions of our hands. In some cases, they are not perfect - or not perfect anymore - but the crafter has grown so accustomed to the specific tool and its vagaries that it's not getting changed out for something else. Maybe it is not getting changed out even past the point where a new tool might make more sense than going on with the old one... but because things develop (or deteriorate) slowly, and over time, and with the crafter adapting, that point does not get noticed.

Getting a new tool for something also always means a process of familiarising oneself with the thing, getting used to it. Breaking it in, so to say. I remember being told about how construction workers go about getting a new shovel: You fit the shovel to the wooden shaft, and then you work with it a while. Once it has all settled, and you feel comfortable with your tool, then - and only then - you take a hammer, and a nail, and you fix the shovel head to the shaft. Because if you do it straight away, it might feel crooked, and then you always have this weird feeling about your tool.

The little knife has turned up again, by the way. So now, soon, I'll sit down and do some notch-cutting - and I already know that I will enjoy the process more than usual, because it will feel so nice to have the knife in my hand that fits it just so!

Here's some random stuff for you to read:

Hoofprints Through Time - a blog about hoofed animals and their history (and also their current problems, concerning old breeds).

A post about the Victorian Hangover (which is not the hangover that you get from drinking too much).

A German article about the recent find of a 17th century shipwreck in the Baltic Sea.