Random facts:

• I have finished spinning warp yarn for the large fabric, and am now doing the weft yarn. I overshot a bit on the warp yarn amount, but that's always better than cutting it too fine.
• The cat is not amused when she tries to sleep on my arm on my desk and said arm moves too much. It has to move in order for me to work, though.
• Our new printer does not print things 1:1, but loses about 2 mm in size on 10 cm. So if I have to print something to original scale, I have to enlarge it by 1.03 or something. I'd check, but the paper where I noted this is either underneath the cat, or in the other room, so in both cases currently inaccessible.
• There's a really amazing optical illusion presented in this video, even if it hides behind way too many ads when I try to view it.
• Xmas baking madness has started around here. We're late this year doing it. We also need to buy more flour, which might be done through a lengthy bike ride, but it's currently snowing outside and we have not decided yet if we want to brave the weather or not. (If not, we'll have to do something else, like a shorter bike ride or a walk - The Rule is to go out at least once per day, no matter what.)
• TAG conference is coming up! I'm giving a short presentation there on Friday morning. Registration is still open, and the conference is free.
• It's Blogiversary day today. Another year has whooshed past... and this will be post number 2759. Hard to believe, but the years sort of add up...

After the Textile Forum, there was a little bit of a breather, and then there was - NESAT! Only online, sadly. I had been looking forward so much to a trip to northern Finland with friends, and then hanging out and meeting in person all the lovely people that I only see every three years there... but due to the insecure situation with the pandemic, the conference organisers had opted for the online-only version.

Our presentations were all pre-recorded and available on the conference platform a bit before the conference proper started, and the sessions were discussion-only (with a very short summary of the papers to refresh memories). There was a large variety of topics, and it was really, really nice to at least virtually see the friendly faces of all the colleagues, and to hear about current research.

My personal conference was made so much better and more enjoyable by joining up with a friend to attend together - and we even managed to have some Finnish sweets and some snacks made after Finnish recipes, along with the obligatory too-large amounts of coffee that have to be drunk at every conference.

After the conference, some of the presentations were made public, and they are listed on the NESAT website - the presentation I did with Beatrix Nutz is among them, so feel free to enjoy some slightly weird tablet-woven bands from Early Modern mining sites. I also very much recommend watching the video about medieval seal bag textiles, which I found very, very fascinating!

This year looks much better for in-person, on-site conferences than last year - though there's nothing really secure still at the moment. However, not only the Textile Forum is betting on everything being good enough, EXAR is also planning a conference this year.

It will take place in Perl-Borg, in a Roman villa museum; I've been there several times for Reenactment fairs, and it's a really beautiful place with lovely people running it. The EXARC conference is scheduled for September 23-26, and the topic is "Experimental Archaeology in Science and Education 2021". The Call for Papers is open until July 31, and registration for the conference is open as well. You can find out more about the conference here, and also register for it.

Talks will be in English and German, with a yet unknown ratio of the two languages. The board asks that slides for the presentations should be bilingual or in the other language than the one used for speaking so that everyone can follow along somehow.

I'm absolutely delighted that EXAR is using this as their current solution to the language dilemma - the society has developed into a larger, more international one from a purely German start, and a lot of the older members struggle with English as a conference and conversation language. Mind you, some of that struggle is probably due to the fact that Germans often underestimate their abilities in speaking and understanding English, and are a bit shy to use a foreign language because they feel self-conscious for all their mistakes.

I'm a proper German in that regard as well, by the way. I like to get everything right, and I do have to tell myself all the time that making mistakes is not bad, not speaking or writing to practise the other language is bad - and if that means making mistakes, that's good. It has gotten better recently with my wholesale slaughtering of the poor Finnish language, and the medieval French lessons where I also enthusiastically threw around interpretations that turned out to be, um... not quite matching the original content of the text. There was lots of learning that way, though.

It did help that the others in the study group also ventured forth with things they were not sure about, too. So offering up tentative solutions, or trying to talk about something where you might be a bit creative with vocabulary or pronounciation does not only help yourself to learn - it also helps others to maybe be more courageous. Good things all around!

There's a conference about early archaeological textiles this weekend, hosted by the Institute for Christian Archaeology of the Uni Bonn - the timespan goes from Neolithic to Early Medieval textile finds, with a wide range of topics and geographical areas.

If that sounds interesting to you, you can find more information, including the programme, on the Institute's website. Because of the pandemic, the conference is mostly online - which means you can join in and attend via Zoom. If you wish to do so, email Petra Linscheid (her email address is on the conference programme pdf).

 

Things here are busy, busy, busy - but in a good way. There's sending out of goods ordered through the online shop, I've just sent back the corrected final proof for a paper (about spinning), and I've also sent out the results of a museum/writing project that I did together with Helga Rösel-Mautendorfer, my wonderful colleague from Austria. It's information about Iron age clothing, and how to make it, intended for use by schools to make these kinds of garments for the children.

There's also, to my great delight, more European Textile Forum planning going on. It does look like numbers are falling about everywhere, and that we can go ahead with our Forum plans. So there will be a newsletter as soon as I can manage, and a website update, and much more planning in the background.

Having the Forum to look forward makes the loss of the real-life NESAT a bit more bearable for me... a week or so ago, an email came announcing that NESAT would be online only. Finland is apparently quite restrictive regarding people coming into the country, and the organisers of the conference didn't want to risk issues with participants not being allowed in, or having to quarantine. So it will be a virtual conference only.

I'm really sad about this, though I can understand the reason behind it, and wouldn't want to be caught myself in quarantine in Finland instead of actually attending the conference. Hopefully there will be another chance to visit Finland at some point in the future, and there will surely be a next NESAT which, unless a new pandemic strikes, should be a proper real-flesh-and-blood one!

Even more online conferences: The Medieval and Early Modern Studies Festival will take place on June 17 to June 19. It's theoretically in Kent, but with the pandemic, this too has gone online.

There's a lot of interesting papers and two workshops, and participation is free - you can see the programme and register on their website.

 

There's an online conference to celebrate the anniversary of the CTR, the Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen. This was the place where my first NESAT took place, and I have very fond memories of the conference, the centre, and all the lovely people I met there and the wonderful times we had.

Now the CTR is celebrating their 15th anniversary, and what could be better for that than a conference? You can learn more about the online event, taking place June 14-17, on this website - and you can also register there.

Speaking of both online conferences and NESAT: Sadly, there's still too much insecurity about how things will look in August, so the NESAT which was postponed to this year from the last will, in the end, only take place online. I can see the sense in this, but I'm still really, really sad about it. I had been looking forward so hard to the trip and the stay in Finland and meeting all my colleagues again after four years. Sigh.

If you would like to register for the online edition of NESAT, you can do so on their website.