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Miriam Griffiths A Little Help...
27. November 2024
Perhaps more "was once kinda good and then someone added AI"? I'm getting very fed up of the amount ...
Natalie A Mysterious Hole...
26. November 2024
Oh my! I cannot tell what the hole's size is, but I expect someone is hungry and may be going for ea...
Katrin Very Old Spindle Whorls?
25. November 2024
Yes, the weight is another thing - though there are some very, very lightweight spindles that were a...
Katrin A Little Help...
25. November 2024
Ah well. I guess that is another case of "sounds too good to be true" then...
Miriam Griffiths Very Old Spindle Whorls?
22. November 2024
Agree with you that it comes under the category of "quite hypothetical". If the finds were from a cu...
JUNI
13
0

Procrastinators of the World unite! Tomorrow.

In case you're prone to procrastination, there's an article in Nature that might be interesting for you - it is about the influence of one's outlook (optimistic or not so optimistic) on whether procrastination is more of an issue or not.  

Me, I'm not going to procrastinate right now by reading that article. The Little Cat needs to have her food supply stocked up, so that is on the list of errands to run today. Because we can't risk the furry thing going hungry, right?

(And that also means that should I need something tomorrow to do instead of some task I'm really not so keen on doing... I still have the paper. Muahahaha.)

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JUNI
12
0

NESAT pictures.

If you'd like to have a peek of how the NESAT looked like, you can find a few photos up on the website. My own photos from the conference are still not all sorted and labeled, though there has been some progress. And here's one of my bad selfies, in front of the Marie Curie Statue:

I had to take a picture with her, of course - after all, there's an actions scheme with funding run in her name, and I've heard "Marie Curie" more than once in connections with textiles. Also, apart from that, she was an awesome researcher! 

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JUNI
05
0

Citizen Science Project "Deep Time"

A citizen science project called "Deep Time" has led to the discovery of a large number of archaeological sites. The project was made in collaboration with the National Trust, and was a large-scale analysis of LiDar scans.

You can read an article about the project on the Guardian's website here, or visit the digventure site to learn more about this and other projects.

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MAI
28
0

Medical Shenanigans.

So... I am back from my time off, and back from a wonderful NESAT. The health stuff has been taken care of at the start of May, and it was definitely an experience.

I could have gone on living very well without being medically interesting, but in things like that, well, you don't always get a choice. I was very, very lucky overall, however.

What I had goes by the lovely name of Cushing's Disease - and if a condition has "disease" in its name, usually that is not a good thing to have. My diagnosis happened more or less by a chance discovery of abnormally high DHEA-S levels, so I did not have any real, noticeable symptoms yet. Cushing's Disease is a rather rare condition; most people, however, have heard of Cushing's Syndrome, which has similar symptoms and is much more common. 

Both conditions are characterised by an excess of cortisone in the system. Cortisone is a good thing to have, in general (you need it for the flight reflex, for instance, or to handle other stressful situations both physical and psychological), but too much of it for too long is very much not-so-good. In Cushing's Syndrome, the excess cortisone can come from anywhere, for instance from a therapy with cortisone. In C's Disease,  it's all home-made stuff. In my case (which is the most common variety of CD), it was a little adenoma (a benign tumour) on the pituitary gland. That tiny booger had nothing better to do than sit there and secrete ACTH, which is the signal stuff telling the adrenal glands to get going on making some more cortisone. Because, well, the booger thinks it's a good idea. (If it thinks. Anyways.)

There's only one good way to fix this, and that's to cut out the adenoma. How this is done is fairly straightforward, literally - you go in through the nose, then make your way through the sphenoid bone, open up the bottom of the sella turcica where the pituitary gland sits in, cut out the adenoma, and that's it. (Well, you place the insides of the nose back where they belong on your way out, of course. The septum gets temporarily pushed to the side, which means two small incisions inside the nose, but they can't really be seen from outside.) Going for the brain through the nose is not a new idea either, as the old Egyptians did that already. (They may not have been so specific and precise with what they took out, though. I was quite determined to only do this kind of reenactment in a very much modernised and very watered-down version.)

So. First bit of real good luck: Diagnosis before the onset of any noticeable symptoms. Second bit of real good luck: One of the best clinics in Germany for this kind of surgery is in Erlangen. Third bit of real good luck: Everything went very well, without complications, and I had the best team, best nursing staff, and best roommates imaginable in the clinic for my recovery.

Now I have a lot of high-res images of my brain, with and without the booger in. There will be another check in about three months where I get to lie down on the really expensive wellness lounger again. (Pro tip: If you have to go for an MRI, bring a blanket or ask for one. I almost turned into an icicle my first time; the bed itself is heated, so you're warm from the bottom, but there's a cold air flow inside the machine, and that does mean business. I was afraid that I'd start shivering and would ruin the images! Second time I asked for a blanket and it was really nice and comfy.) 

I will also get the questionable treat of a lot more visits to the doctor in the future than I was used to, as hormone levels of all kinds need to be checked regularly for now. Time will tell whether my pituitary gland will take up its job again to produce ACTH - as it has been on pause for a good while, it might be a little miffed and not willing to do the work just now. (The surgeon said that for them, it's nicest if the gland never starts up again, as that means the tumour is gone and has not come back. Once production starts again, checks have to be made to see if it's legit and done by the gland, or if something has grown back.) So for a while, I'm now depending on meds to keep me going. That is a little scary, actually... but I'll get used to it for a bit, and I do hope I will be able to wean myself off the pills at some point. I can report that there was no problem at all with my dosage even hopping through Warsaw for the NESAT conference, which I was able to attend without problems. The only thing that happened was that I got very tired rather quickly in the evening, and a bit earlier than usual, but then, everyone was tired after the very intense days of the conference.

(Side note: It was a very good thing that I prefer the train to the plane and had arranged for a night train trip to Warsaw and back - you're not allowed to fly for three months after a surgery that goes inside your skull. So I was very, very pleased to have travel plans compatible with after-surgery guidelines!)


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APR.
29
1

Blog Break .

The month of May will be full of different appointments for me, including one for a surgical procedure, which also means that I will unfortunately not be able to go to the Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe. Because I'll be off to NESAT following that, I'm putting the shop on hold for a while, and orders coming in will be sent off after May 28, when I will be back.

I'll also be having a blog break during that time, so I can take all the time necessary for recovering and don't need to squeeze in blogging between coming back home and going off to NESAT. 

So I will leave you with this image of my test weave for the fabric reconstruction:

The lower part is the one that's the best fit to what we are going for. The little test piece was done weaver-tensioned, and my selvedges are still, well, let's phrase it kindly and say they are offering a lot of room for improvement. But it's doing okay for what it was intended for, which is answering the questions "how will it look, approximately" and "will we get into the right range of thread density" and "does the amount of twist in the threads look about right". 

And then, just like with knitting swatches... you go for the big thing, and you hope. Which is what will happen while I'm off the grid, or a bit afterwards, depending on how things go, timing-wise. Keep your fingers crossed all goes well!

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APR.
23
2

Experiment!

And now for something completely different... I found this very amusing, and I hope you do, too! 

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APR.
09
0

Morels! What-is-that-critter-app!

Somehow this post didn't get sent off properly yesterday - so you're getting the black morel photo today: 

These are, apparently, not very common anymore. They are also edible - though I think I prefer looking at them if they are rare, instead of eating them. (Especially not eating them rare.)

These mushrooms are also the first thing that had the rating "selten" (rare, probably, in the English version) in the ObsIdentify app. That is a recent discovery the Most Patient of All Husbands made - it's an app where you can upload images of (wild) plants and animals, and it will compare them to a database and tell you what it is, and with what probability. Observations that are made with surety can then be uploaded. Your uploads help with monitoring where what species are found, and thus for tracking biodiversity. The app will even recognise caterpillars, so it's a really cool help in finding out what critter you have somewhere.

You can find out more about the app here on their website, or search for Obsidentify in your app store thingie of choice. 

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