Here's a short Pixar film about... well, about fitting in, or making oneself fit in, changing oneself, and changing things. If you've been the only woman in a group of men, some things might be familiar...


I hope you'll enjoy it, too!

The pandemic goes on, and numbers are rising about everywhere. Well, at some places they are not - The Most Patient Husband of Them All works in a company connected to the car industry, and their numbers of sales are currently (obviously) not going up so much.

Which means that he's going to be on Kurzarbeit throughout October. For those of you not familiar with that thing, Kurzarbeit means that the workers get to work less hours per week, they get paid a bit less accordingly, and the state supports the company with some money so that they can keep their employees instead of having to let them go.

The good bit about that? Someone's going to have long weekends throughout October. The difficult bit about it? There was Kurzarbeit for him earlier this year already, and I found out that having someone around who is getting a day off is really bad for my work morale (and nobody but me only is to blame for this). So I have very wisely decided to take the Fridays in October off as well... which means you'll get no blog post tomorrow, nor on the other October Fridays.

You're getting a progress pic from the cat embroidery today, though, to make up for it!

Well. Sometimes, things just happen. And sometimes, they happen and sort of, um, escalate.

A while ago, we were riding the bike somewhere and happened to come across a cloth bag lying on the street. It was wet and dirty and had been driven over multiple times, and we picked it up and brought it home. As you do.

It was mostly white afterwards. Mostly, with a few sots still on there. It also had a hole.

Some time later, I was dyeing a few t-shirts (with modern dye, in the washing machine...) and there was still dyeing space left, so in went the bag.

It came out spotty, but in a nicer colour. So... there's still that hole, right?

I was thinking about just stitching it up. Then I was thinking about sewing a contrast colour patch on it. And that, somehow, transformed into...



The design is inspired by a medieval manuscript marginal drawing of a cat, yes, licking its ass. Unfortunately I don't know exactly what manuscript this is from, but I don't really care too much about that at the moment - it's a cotton bag, it will be cotton embroidery, I'm not really transferring the thing exactly, and people won't (probably, hopefully) ask me all the time where the motif is from. (I do get that question a lot with some of the more historical sample things I drag around with me, and it's completely understandable that this happens - I know the source for these, of course.)

The hole, in case you haven't spotted it, is right on the nose of the cat...

On October 10, there will be a moderated text chat about historical textiles on the EXARC discord server - apparently there was something similar on another topic (brewing, I think), and that went so well and was so much fun for the participants that the idea came up to do the same with textiles.

So in case you're interested - it's free for everyone, no need to be an EXARC member. You will just need a Discord login (which is also free) to join the fun!

More information and the link to the EXARC discord server can be found here.

So now that I've more or less brought you up to speed on the summer break events, here's something completely different again... with thanks to one of my friends, who pointed me to it.

I like medieval music. I also like modern music. And I do enjoy a good crossover as well - at one point, me and a few colleagues had a lot of fun translating modern songs into Middle High German.

Here's a similar thing: Jolene, set into more archaic English, and nicely interpreted with appropriate instruments:


I also like the name Bardcore. Made me giggle!

It's time for my summer break - I'll be away from the shop and the blog from August 15 to September 13. I'm very much looking forward to taking a breather, spending time with friends, having a few days of holidays with the Most Patient Husband of Them All, and doing a bit of lazing around the house and garden (and maybe some pottering around as well). I might even get to squish some progress in on my Ink cardigan, who knows? If so, it might actually be wearable come fall...

So - I'll be back on the blog, rambling on about things, on September 14. Until then, I hope you will all have a glorious time!

It's baking here - but at least we got some rain again yesterday, when water came down in sheets to refill our rainwater barrels at last. We waited for the worst of the torrent to pass before we got on our bike to cycle home from where we were, but we got soaked through completely anyways. Something that I was happy about, as it meant water, much needed by the totally dried-out land. It was, according to our rainwater measuring gadget, about 32 litres per square metre, and enough to fill both of our reservoirs to the brim.

Which is very good, because it means I can keep on watering our plants with rainwater, and finish washing my wool. Though the last bits of wool will have to wait until after the upcoming summer break... which I'm very, very much looking forward to.

Tonight I'll have the pleasure of giving a spinning lesson, this time on supported spinning; then I'll have tomorrow and Friday to wrap things up here, and then it's summer break from Saturday on. With the current heatwave, that is more than welcome, I feel like my brain wants to go on heat-induced standby in these temperatures.