Roman Britain had a multi-cultural population - including people with African and Middle East origins. This can, yay science! be proven by bioarchaeology - read more about it here.


While we're on the topic of Britain, there's a petition going on to remain in the EU, and it's being signed at quite a rate. You can have a look at the live update info site here (and marvel at the number of areas that are still voting "leave", too!).


The NYT has an article about Gucci making shoes that look a lot like Keen sandals, and Keen's reaction to this.
For those of you reading German, here is an article about a rare breed of pigs, the Schwarzes Alpenschwein (black alp pig). (If you don't read German but like piglet photos, it's also worth a click.)

And that's it for now - with proper links, as the blog is working for a change. Let's see how long that holds up...

Here are, for a change,
some art-related links for your (hopefully) delectation.

First of all, an article about reconstructed sounds of Ancient Greek Music - with, of course, sound snippets in a video!

And here's a piece from the British Library site about female actors taking part in Shakespeare's plays - from the first woman to play a (female) role in Britain to modern gender-bending interpretations.

I found both of them very interesting - it's always fascinating to me to see how art changes with the times, and with the changes in society. Back when I was in school, I was in the drama group, and it was perfectly normal for women to act, including some male roles - sometimes because it was a classical "Hosenrolle", that is a role now traditionally played by a female though portraying a male character; sometimes because there were not enough men in the group; sometimes because of our interpretation; sometimes because one of the women was better suited to do a specific character than one of the men. So yes, even in our society there's still a lot of bulshitty gender-related stuff around... but a huge lot of it has also died off over time, and that is a really, really nice thing.

The blog has still troubles - it seems I can post with a little workaround, though, which unfortunately does not allow links or images. So you're getting text only for the moment.

Things going on here? The car is emptied out and everything is back in place; there are only a few bits of after-fair-homework left to do.

I've also taken down the lightfastness test yesterday for a first look. After only about 7 days, there is a surprising amount of fading already! Which does mean that dyes classed as "very fugitive" are very fugitive indeed. Admittedly, our wintergarden glass seems to let a lot, if not all, UV through from how fast things faded, and there was quite sunny weather in the last days, but I'm still surprised at how fast this went. Pictures have been taken, of course, and they will get posted soon in the "result summaries" section of the Textile Forum homepage.
The birch-leaf-dyed wool strips, by the way, are fading a little already, which puts them into lightfastness class 3 to almost 4 (fading is less than on strip 3, but more than on strip 4). The recommendation for modern clothing dyes is class 4 - so they're actually not doing too bad for a dye that is generally deemed to be "not so very lightfast" among the professional plant dyers that I hang out with...

It's time for a stack of links again!

There's a "rare sheep breed wool challenge" going on in the US, started by The Livestock Conservancy. It runs under the delightful name of "Shave 'Em to Save 'Em", and you can read more about it here and here.

The Council of British Archaeology has a number of research reports online for free download, on a variety of topics. You find the list (including the Archaeology of York volumes) here.

Speaking of publications, here is an article about the completely fucked-up system that is academic publishing, where you pay to get access to publications on research... which had been paid for by the state (usually), and where the authors and peer reviewers do not see a penny for their work. Yes, really. It's a complete gnah situation.

And finally, an art project with knitted sweaters that let their wearers blend into the background.

Like probably everybody else with an email account, I'm getting spam, and sometimes plenty of that. Which is annoying (especially since legally, I'm obliged to check my spam to make sure it really is only spam...) but sometimes, there's a real gem in there.

Interestingly, for instance, I get a lot of offers to help me find sexy girls in my city - in a number of different languages, all of them not very grammatically correct. There was English, of course, but also (badly-translated) German, French, and Spanish. I am not sure how they know that I do read all of these languages, but do not realise I'm not into ladies (well, apart from all that happily married stuff, you know).

Recently, there was also a lot of those mails telling me that the sender had cracked my account, yadda yadda, long story short, I am supposed to send money in form of bitcoin. (Obviously, there was no account-cracking - it's just a spoofy mail to get people to send money.)

Those were all very similar, and all rather boring, semi-bad English. Yesterday, though, I got a really good one. Not only is the mail more elaborate, and the English worse than in the previous ones, it also has a P.S. And that actually is the most delightful P.S. that I have ever found in a spam note. Here it is:

P.S. You are not my single victim. so, I guarantee you that I will not disturb you again after payment!
This is the word of honor hacker

I also ask you to regularly update your antiviruses in the future. This way you will no longer fall into a similar situation.

Do not hold evil! I just do my job.
Have a nice day!

Now isn't that nice?

I'm a little late to the party talking about things that one might do during Lent, seeing that it's already more than a week since Ash Wednesday - but better late than never, right?

Fasting times such as Lent is one of the things that fascinate me in a way as they are obviously a religious thing, but can also have a very practical aspect. This time of year is one of scarcity - before we had canning plants and freezers and large climate-controlled storage facilities and an overall abundance of food available all year round, the time of year just before Spring proper was when food supplies were running out, but there was little or no fresh food available yet. So having a period of fasting with severe food restrictions in this time of year was actually less of a harsh restriction than it would have been at other times.

It does still serve, however, as an opportunity to look again at what one has, and what one may eat and drink. In turn, the release of the restriction still means some extra enjoyment and festive feeling when Easter comes around (with fresh foods as well) - so the period of restriction enhances the impact of the feast, helping everyone appreciate what is available again.

In our modern days, there's no scarcity due to the season anymore, so the restriction for Lent might feel harder today. On the other hand, having a restriction with more impact probably does a better job at reminding how comfortable life usually is - which is also why quite a few modern people do not follow the "traditional" Lent rules, where there is no meat allowed, but make up their own fasting rules. One of the quite popular choices is to drink no alcohol during this time, another to forego all sweets. The idea behind this is that something convenient, or dear, is given up for a while; something that feels hard to give up, as a form of penitence.

The BUND Naturschutz (which is one of the eco organisations in Germany) has taken this year's Lent as an opportunity to ask people to "fast plastics" instead of alcohol, or sweets, or meat (or, of course, in addition to that). Plastics, especially single-use plastics, are everywhere in our consumer society, and they pose a huge environmental problem. So the BUND asks us to look at what we buy, and use, with an open and critical eye for this Lent period: Is the stuff packaged in plastics? If yes, is there a way to avoid it? Maybe something packaged in plastic can be made at home, with little effort and for less money than when buying it; maybe avoiding plastic is as simple as bringing a canvas bag; maybe it's just choosing another brand. Some things, such as milk, are available both in a tetrapack and in glass bottles; yoghurt can be bought in glass jars instead of plastic tubs.
While there are some people who actually try to go "zero plastic", I find it really hard or impossible to non-plastic in some cases. So I still buy some plastic-wrapped stuff - but I am trying hard to reduce it, and even if I am still creating quite a bit of waste this way, every single bit of the stuff that is not used helps.

So... are you fasting? If so, what? Or trying to reduce plastic? Or both, even?

By pure chance, I stumbled across a curious and fascinating thing to do with books a while ago: Fore-edge painting.

You never heard about that? Welcome to the club - I had no clue what that meant, so I looked it up... and it's amazing. Let me try to explain.

When you open a book, the pages shift slightly, so that they are not completely stacked atop each other, but a bit staggered. Fore-edge painting means that you paint on these tiny staggered strips of paper that are just, juuuust on the edge of the page.

And here's the clincher: You gilt the edges of the pages, and when you close the book, the painting completely disappears. It's incredible, and there's almost nobody left who does this, but I can give you one link to a crafter in the UK: Foredge Frost. (There's pictures on the website. Enjoy.)