The fair is over, and as usual for events like this, it was wonderful and exciting and a load of fun and really, really exhausting all at once. Fairs mean pure frenzy for several days - it starts with the preparation, as in packing things, making lists, checking stock, preparing food to eat during the fair, and finally loading everything into the car.

(If you are wondering about the food part - yes, there are caterers at the fair, but since we're only two people at the booth, we don't have the time and leisure to toddle off and take a proper break to buy stuff and eat in peace; it's snatching a bite from what we brought when there's a lull at the booth. We don't mind that, not at all, but it means we do have to plan ahead and bring suitable things (including emergency chocolate). In the evening, we're way too tired to go somewhere or buy stuff, or think about what to cook, so that needs to be settled and ingredients bought and brought beforehand.)

Then it's driving there, and then setting up. That means lugging all the stuff from the car into the booth space and then putting up tables, decorating, and setting up things. This time we had the mirror-image booth compared to the one last year, as we were in a different hall, but the basic setup remained the same for us, which always makes it easier.

When I arrived, Margit had already covered the naked booth walls, so we could start setting up in earnest:


There's no picture of the complete and utter mess that happens when both of us are arranging everything at the same time, but this is how everything looked when we were finally finished:



And of course, I brought the spinning bench to demonstrate historical spinning! (It also served as our seat for taking a break, and as a welcome place to put aside skeins of yarn for those shopping):


I did quite a bit of spinning, as it's always fascinating for people to see the historical method - and some even came and directly asked to see it, as they had been told about my spinning by the also-spinning colleagues at other booths. That was really nice!

And thus passed three days of fair, with lots of interesting chats with visitors and colleagues, lots and lots and lots of things to see at the fair (we did a pre-opening-time round one morning so we could get an idea of all the things on offer), and then, Sunday evening, everything gets packed up again and loaded up into the cars, and then there's the drive home - about three hours in the car for me. You can probably imagine how much I enjoyed sleeping in on Monday, and not doing much the rest of the day - there was tea, and some chocolate, and I read a bit, and there was an afternoon nap, too.

Now it's back to all the things that need doing, though. NESAT is approaching, and there's a paper to be prepared for it. No rest for the wicked, eh?

I've been busy, busy, busy today, packing up for the Nadelwelt in Karlsruhe, with all the usual last-minute shenanigans that turn up when prepping for a fair. The whole flat, at the moment, is looking like a bomb dropped somewhere. Boxes are stacked up here and there, my to-do list has exploded (because I've jotted down all the small things that still need to be done, so I don't forget anything), and I'm in the usual before-the-fair frenzy. It's a bit like stage fever, and of course, when you're in the middle of the prep, other stuff turns up that has to be dealt with... urgently. (Hellooooo website issues. If you've been over in the shop section and had troubles - I'm sorry. I'm trying to deal with it as soon as possible.)

Overall, it's looking okay, though. There's a bit of packing and sorting still to do, which means I'll be busy some more, but I'm not desperate (yet), and it looks like I won't need to do an extra-long night shift.

Tomorrow morning, then, I'll pack all that stuff into the car, get some food ready for the fair days, and drive there. Then we'll set up the stall and probably have an early night to be fit for the three days of fair. So - there will be no blogging from tomorrow until Tuesday, when I will be back (and hopefully will have caught up on sleep a little bit, too).

If you are coming to the Nadelwelt, drop by at our stall and say hello! I'm sharing with Margit from Alte Künste again, we're at F 2.3, and we're always happy to meet blog readers!

The Early Textiles Study Group is hosting a conference called "Precious Cloth and Court Culture AD 400-1600", which takes place at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, on September 16 and 17.

The conference will explore court textiles and furnishings from both European and Asian courts. It will examine precious cloth as symbol of power and authority across the medieval world. Individual speakers drawn from institutions across England and from abroad (and including prominent independent scholars), will explore many aspects of the chosen theme. They will examine weave, braid and lace techniques, iconography and symbolism of precious cloth motifs, the role of the public display of the precious textiles (ceremonial and ritual), and many further issues (social, political, ecclesiastical, and economic  impacts of precious cloth across cultures from the West to the Near East).

You can find more information about the conference, including the programme (which sounds very interesting) plus a booking form, here.

As every year, sometime in the spring, planning starts for that certain week-long event in November that makes me exhausted, happy, incredibly tired, stressed out and full of old-textile-y bliss all at the same time. Oh, and full of coffee and chocolate, too.

I am, of course, talking about the European Textile Forum, which will again take place in November this year, again in beautiful Mayen on the premises of LEA. This year, we'll be looking at silk as our focus topic (but as always, we're open to other topics as well). The Forum week will be November 6 to 12, as usually with a mix of theoretical and practical. The Call for Papers is out now, and registration is open, too.

I am really, really looking forward to getting to know more textile people, learning more on different aspects of silk and possibly also getting an experiment or two under way again. Waiting for registrations and paper proposals to come in always feels a bit like waiting to open a present!

So - I'm all happy, pleasant anticipation for now. If you want to know more about the Forum, or (even better!) want to participate, you can read more and register via the links above.

Aaaah, Textile Forum. One full week of lovely textile madness... coming right up.

Time for a post about interesting things, some of which you can participate in!

If you are in the Southampton area, there's a project about dexterity in flintknapping:With motion capture. How cool is that!

If you're more on the other side of the globe, there's the meeting of the Society for the History of Technology October 26-29, where there's a session about textiles and early industrialisation in planning. You can read more about the Society and their conference here.

There's also a conference about "Embellished Fabrics: Conserving Surface Manipulation & Decoration." It is the 11th North American Textile Conservation Conference, taking place in Mexico City, Mexico, November 6-11, 2017. The website is www.natcconference.com, and it will provide more information in case you're interested.

And another conference, this time in Poland, in June: Dynamics and Organisation of Textile Production in past societies in Europe and the Mediterranean. International Conference, Łódź, 21-22 June, 2017. The preliminary programme looks really nice and interesting!

For those of you who understand German (or for the adventurous of you who don't), there's a TV show where one guy participates in a club for one day, looking at the stuff people do in their spare time... and one of the clubs is a Living History group. You can watch the half-hour show here.

Some more interesting things - Jim Hines has done a survey about novelist's incomes. So if you've ever wondered whether writing a novel will make you rich, you might want to read his long, really interesting multi-part blogpost, starting with part 1 right here.

In 2011, a tunic was discovered in a Norwegian Glacier, and it has since been reconstructed. You can read a bit about the reconstruction and watch a video here. (I'm not totally happy with the spinning part of the video, as you might guess when watching it...)

And that's it for today. Hope you find something you enjoy among these!

Here's another little gem regarding the measurement of twist angles: the Human Factor. As in "different people get different results".

I had been suspecting it for a while, and the last Textile Forum gave me the opportunity (and the willing participants, a big thank you to you all!) to do a little test.

If you'd like to play yourself, here is the photo of one hand-spun thread. What twist angle would you read out for this one?

Once you're finished, scroll down... and see what others measured.


Done?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here you go:


As you can see, measurements of the eight participants of this mini-study range from between 20° and a bit to 48° and some, depending on where the measurements were taken... and who took them. Several people took measurement in a similar spot (there are two small black dots about in the middle of the thread), but even then, results range from 31° to 48°.

So. Twist angle. Hello there. It would have been nice to have a reliable, measureable something to describe threads with... right? Describing fabrics or threads with words is hard in any case, but this just seems to make it even harder.

Sigh.

As of today, registration for the IMC in Leeds is open, and there is even a late call for papers. Registration will remain open until May 14.

I've been to the IMC once, and it was an utterly glorious time (even though it was clearly not an archaeology-heavy conference). This year, it is on July 3-6, and the special thematic strand is "Otherness". If that tickles your fancy, and you can go there, I can heartily recommend it - the IMC is a huge, huge thing and a really interesting experience, with the opportunity to meet lots and lots of people from different mediaevistic strands of research. (Also, you have the IMC to thank or blame, for the fact that the Beast actually got finished at some point in time.)

If you'd like to know more about the conference, you can read the latest newsletter on their site with all the information necessary, or if you've already decided to go, venture straight to the registration page.