As of yesterday evening, I am the (middling) proud owner of a (mediocre, but functioning) model of a warp-weighted loom.
Well, to be honest, it's not completely finished yet - I need to fiddle with the position of the heddle rod brackets a bit more before fixing them.


It was made out of scrap wood that was hanging out in our basement plus two Y-shaped pieces of hazel wood, straight in from the garden. It's even set up already, and I have woven the first few wefts.



As you can see, the starting border is totally out of dimension in comparison to the huge loom size (about 30 cm width), as is the rest of the weave. That is the problem with models regarding textile - it's very hard or impossible to scale down the actual textiles, and that changes the overall look of both production models and garment models. In case you ever wondered why a small doll dressed up to model a set of garments looked ever so subtly wrong, that is probably the reason: if you don't scale down the fabric itself, the drapes and folds will be too large and too stiff.

In my case, however, that is irrelevant - I only want the small model to take along for workshops and seminars, to be able to explain the basics behind weaving and warp-weighted weaving. So scale, in this case, is not the issue.

(The starting border and weave is that narrow for a reason, by the way - not only because I wanted to save time in setting up the loom. It's the start of a form-woven tunic. I do not expect the piece to ever see the day of actually getting the body of the tunic added in... but it could happen. Theoretically. One day.)

I'm back home from the event, which was a truckload of fun, a wild mixture of all sorts of weather (we had a bad storm though we were spared the walnut-sized hailstones that came down a few kilometres away), and lots of old and new friends. Oh, and delicious food. Lots of that, too.

With the stormy night and then a full-moon night both in that week, though, I ended up sleeping very, very late today (hence the late blogpost). The storm flattened quite a few tarps and tents on the camp meadow, but nobody got hurt. The little TGV held up, too - though I lost a wooden peg that connected the upright pole near my bed to the top beam, and consequently spent about an hour holding it up myself before the wind had calmed down enough so I could make an emergency construction with the two poles that usually hold up the awning. This action was followed by some creeping through the tent to take care of stuff that had become wet, and to check on the other pole, and then - blissful sleep.

I'm still feeling sort of not up to full capacity, brain-wise, though. Good thing that today was scheduled as being a day off, which I am very much looking forward to.

Last week has been insanely busy, stuffed full with the doing of things I had wanted, or planned, to do for a long time. Not least of them my wool-display-making shenanigans! I also managed to give myself sore muscles due to willowing the washed, dried wool (yes, historical wool preparation can substitute a gym session).

This week is, normal-desk-work-wise, a very short one - it's just today and tomorrow, since Herzberg starts on Wednesday. So I am going to be quite busy wrapping up everything that needs to be wrapped up before Wed, packing my stuff, doing the last preparation for the two private workshops I will teach there (and I'm immensely looking forward to that, it's going to be much fun), and so on. The weather is forecast to be very nice, and I've already put "sun hat" on my list of things to take, along with a goodly whack of small and medium-sized projects that have been waiting for some attention for way, way too long.

I will now return to my regularly scheduled computer work... and already look forward to a few days without the machine, and with lots of nice people instead!

There will be a symposium about the textiles in the newly renovated Rijksmuseum Amsterdam in October, with lots of conservators and textile historians giving papers and an overview about the collections. The event will be on Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 October 2013, and involves curators and restaurators from the Fine and decorative arts department, the History department and external ones talking about the selection and the historical background of tapestries, textiles, costumes, kimonos and accessories, as well as about interior textiles which are used in the reconstructed 19th century style room, textile upholstery and 20th century sculpture textile.In addition, there will be lectures on the conservation, research, treatments and preparations that were needed for installation of the objects in the museum.

It does sound like a very lovely event, and registration is now possible via their website (where you will also find a link to the programme and hotel info). There's not too much information about how much medieval objects they have (and how much they will be spoken about in the conference), but my wild guess would be that the focus will be on more modern textiles - there is a lot of stunning medieval pieces in their collection, browsable (partly) online. (The English translation does not work for the actual data or the search mask - you can look for wol, zijde, katoen, weefsel, linnen to find wool, silk, cotton, fabric, linen. Or, as I did for the link, narrow down a timeframe via the advanced search.)

Not so very long ago (as in just a few hours), I did have a different idea about what to blog on than semi-random work-related stuff, but it has miraculously evaporated from my brain. Which is, at the moment, a tiny little bit addled by having heard construction-type noise for all of this week, with the extra serving (as in: in close proximity to me) yesterday afternoon and today. (We're getting new windows set in, which is lovely and very nice, but obviously connected to some work being done.)

In work-related news, I will be hunting for evidence of medieval furniture in England. Also: preparing for two short on-event workshops that will take place when I am in Herzberg, and I'm very much looking forward to this. Also on my list of things (exciting and nice things) to do: get an overview about our paper and workshop/practical session offers for the Textile Forum and update the website. I have been drooling over some pictures already this morning, and I can tell you - I'm really, really psyched about this.

Finally, and also Forum-related: You can actually pre-order our first volume, "Ancient Textiles - Modern Science", aka the European Textile Forum Proceedings. It's a collection volume of the last years, and not every paper given is in there, but it's a very nice variety and a good spread over times, materials and techniques. We hope that it will be successful enough to lead the way to a second volume in the future.

It's still raining outside, and by now, everyone and their dog and its fleas are hoping that the weather will improve soon. It would be okay weather for March, but not for the start of June! And all the rain has led to real problems around here, with floods coming to visit people in their houses.

Luckily, neither we nor our parents and family live in houses really close to water, or endangered by flooding. In case you have not seen pictures of the flooded places yet, here are a few.

It's supposed to dry up tomorrow, however, and then slowly become a bit warmer for the rest of the week. High time! And I guess that once the sun comes out and it's warmer, all the plants that have not died during the endless rain will go for an incredible growth spurt...

Now that I'm finished whining about the weather, here are some links for you. Cathy writes about the Lengberg Linens again; if you don't know her blog or have not been there for a while, don't stop reading after that article - there's more interesting stuff there.

While you are checking out blogs for their links - here's another one to take a look: pearl's blog (including links to the free online archives of Fennoscandia Archaeologia, Baltic Archaeology, and Czech Archaeologia historia).

Finally, if you're looking for an excuse to go visit Oxford in January 2014, the next Experimental Archaeolog Conference might be just what you need. The Call for Papers is already open and will remain so until July 31.

Somehow, the last few days, my schedule has been all over the place, and I'm not even sure why. I know that I slept way longer than usual today, and I all blame it on my furry biological alarm clock (aka the cat) - instead of insisting to get her morning treats, food, and being let outside, this morning she cuddled up to me for another almost two hours of sleep. No wonder this morning is so short, and this blog so late...

But on to things that might actually interest you. The first registrations for the Forum are in, and it looks like we'll have an in-detail look at some of the decorations on the Lengberg finds as well.Yay for decorated medieval bras!

Speaking of underwear, you are probably familiar with the Dove advertisements and their "real beauty" campaign? Here's an article about "the Problem with Dove". TL;DR: Dove is a part of Unilever, a company that is not about accepting different forms of beauty, and seen together with other stuff Unilever promotes, the campaign seems quite... weird.