It is a truth universally acknowledged, that when things come to happen, they do it in masses.

Ahead of me are three-and-a-half very full weeks, where I'm mostly away from home, doing things - giving workshops, holding presentations, doing museum inventory work, and, to balance out the work, having a few days off with the Most Patient of All Husbands inbetween. (I'm quite sure they will be needed...)

It's wonderful and exhilarating to be off and about and among people once more, though I admit I'm also a little anxious about this. There's still a pandemic happening, even though it is getting easier to ignore it all the time. I have masks, though (really well-fitting for a change, I'm quite amazed) and have just tested negative (something the Spinntreffen organisers were asking for, to self-test before going there), and I hope that I will have a sufficiently effective combination of being sensible and being lucky.

At the moment, I'm in the last bits of prep for the Spinntreffen of the Handspinngilde this weekend, and that means packing the car, printing out lists, and finishing putting together the workshop tools and materials. So once this post is done, I will hop out into the garden and cut some willow and hazel rods to serve as bow looms.

If you're interested in my presentation for the Hansemuseum Lübeck and the FGHO, it will be streamed live on YouTube on October 11, starting at 18:00. There's also still tickets available for those of you who prefer to be right in the room with me in Lübeck.

I will be back on the blog on October 24, when all my away missions are done and I'm back home - and I hope you will have a good time until then!

There's a newly opened exhibition, running until March next year, in Liebenau: 

The exhibition is based on the finds from excavations that took place between 2015 and 2019 - with the focus not on the finds themselves, but on what these finds might tell us about the life about 1000 years ago.

The exhibition is open on Sunday afternoons; you can find out more about it on the (German) website here.

I'm delighted to travel to the North again, for a presentation in Lübeck. The Forschungsstelle für die Geschichte der Hanse und des Ostseeraums are hosting a series of talks each year, and I have the pleasure and honour of starting off this year's series with a talk about the production of textiles and clothing in the era of the Hanse. That will be on October 11 - which means I've started working on the presentation. Writing and preparing these always takes a good chunk of time, and I like to have a few days to let ideas mature and settle in my brain inbetween; I find that this helps immensely.

You can find the full programme here; the talks are all in German. They are free to attend in-person in Lübeck, but you need to register for them due to restrictions on the number of people.

I'm very much looking forward to this already. There will be inside stories about making textiles - and probably a lot of moaning about what we don't know anymore. (The German term for inside stories is much funnier, by the way, especially in this context: it's "aus dem Nähkästchen plaudern". The literal translation for that is "to talk from inside the (sewing) workbasket".) I'm also planning to bring a distaff along, because, well, you can always use a distaff! 

There's an online symposium about "Thy Father's Instruction: Reading the Nuremberg Miscellany as Jewish Cultural History by Dr. Naomi Feuchtwanger-Sarig", hosted by the Goldstein Centre, on September 14. It's to celebrate a book launch and starts at 18:00 Israel time, so you might want to check your timezone if you'd like to attend; it's free but you will have to register. Read more about this on the Centre's website, where you can also register. 

Not online, and not free, but well worth it if you're in German Living History and interested in the topics covered: the Nobilitas-Akademie. Nobilitas is a group to preserve old crafts - which means they also organise crafter's markets, or events at museums that involve historical crafts. They also try to spread knowledge, and help people exchange knowledge and network, and one of the possibilities to do that is their Akademie. 

It takes place in a castle-turned-youth-hostel, and this year's academy is on November 11 to 13. There's talks about medieval cooking, fighting, Cisterciensians, technical knowledge of the Middle Ages, and more. Apart from the presentations, there's time to talk and network with the other participants, and the last time I've attended, there was also some medieval gaming. Check out their programme on the Nobilitas website, where you'll also find their registration form.

Autumn is coming, and with it the Textile Forum is drawing nearer, and that always marks my own personal Season of Madness - as things are getting sorted out and planned and organised. 

There's long lists of stuff to check, or pack, or look into - and since this year's focus topic is "making threads" which includes splicing technique, there was a little bit of nettle harvesting today:

These grew on public ground, and quite obviously on a piece of public ground that they found pretty nice, as some of the stalks are more than my height in length. Now I'll have to figure out what best to do with them until we need them in November. Ret them? Let them dry? Freeze them? Hm... 

If you're interested in the complex weaves Taqueté and samite, there's a workshop at the Haus der Seidenkultur in Krefeld coming up in September. It's held by a lovely colleague of mine, Barbara Thomas, and she's doing it once in German and once in English.

The project "Ancient Silk Splendour – recreated" led to the development of a weaving class, designed by experts from the German Textile Museum and the House of Silk Culture from Krefeld. The class teaches the theoretical basics of ancient patterned weaves, but also how to practically recreate them.

The dates are 19.–23. September 2022 (for the class in german) and 26.–30. September 2022 (for the class in english). The fee is 635,- € per participant, with a maximum of 8 participants per class.

If this sounds interesting for you, you can find out more about the workshop and how to register at the Haus of Seidenkultur website. 

Part of this day was spent on doing things for the European Textile Forum. We do have a date (November 7-13), we have a topic (spinning and making thread in the wider sense), we have a location (we'll return to Mayen), but there's a few things that have to be organised in a different way this time around. Biggest of them all is our catering - the company that used to provide us with food (including very creative uses of canned pineapple in a lot of dishes where I would not have expected it) seems to have gone under during the pandemic. Which means... getting a new caterer.

That's not quite as easy as it sounds, as options in a small place are limited, and we have specific requirements that have to be communicated properly. That is under way.

Another bit that has to be set up again is the registration form - the software that I used previously is not compatible with the current version of Joomla that the Forum website runs, so I've had to find a new one and am now getting acquainted with it. And building the form - so registration can finally happen. 

There'll be a bit of a price increase for this year's conference, as everything has gotten more expensive. I'm a little sad about this, but, well, it can't really be helped.

So... it does look like I've figured out and tested that form thingie, and the updated cost estimate, and now all that remains is finishing the info bits and the CfP, and then the thing can actually go online. Hooray!