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. 

If you're interested in historical weaving, this video by Marta Hoffmann might make you happy. It shows traditional weaving in Norway, recorded back in 1955; the tradition of using these warp-weighted looms there for this kind of fabric goes back into the 1500s at least.

If you're an archaeologist and you are digging somewhere else, or reading about a dig somewhere else, you might also find yourself digging for words in your brain. After all, you might know what a "Brandhorizont" is, but how do you say that in English?

In case you need some help with archaeological terms, you might find it here at the Grabungswörterbuch. There's translations between German and a number of different other languages (of course including English). If you're looking for a slightly larger one for English and German only, available as .pdf, you can find it here.

In case you're a knitter and enjoy looking at, and thinking about, different stitch structures and what a special move does to the surrounding stitches, you might want to check out Naomi Parkhurst's Stitch Structure series.  She's looking at increases and a cast-on technique as well as some other things like elongated stitches - with lovely drawings that make it very clear what is happening. I do enjoy blog posts such as that, and it's always nice to get this slightly different look at knitting!

Terminology is always an important thing - and especially in textiles, it can be a real nightmare. There's a lot of terms that are used differently in a professional and in a casual/everyday setting, and then there's regional differences, and then there's different uses of the same term in different disciplines, and that's not even starting with the issues that can arise in translations to other languages.

To make things at least a little bit easier, terminology lists and glossaries exist. There's several of them, of course, and they may also differ from each other. One of the probably better-known ones is the list compiled and hosted by the CIETA, the Centre International d'Etude des Textiles Anciens. If you think it might be helpful for you, or if you're just curious, check the lists out here.

By chance, I've stumbled across a new repository framework - called EUDAT. It's intended to help researchers, both institutionalised and independent, to save, store, publish and share their research and research data. That sounds fantastic, and it's now on my list of things to look at it a little more, and see if that might be a good thing for the Textile Forum data that's been accumulated.

As the documentation and info I've already looked at tells me, it is based on the Invenio software, which, to my delight, is also free and open source... and might be a solution for my (still unresolved) photo database problem. Another thing to look into. Seems like it will not get boring around here!

There's a fairly new digital museum around - the Digital Museum of Dress Accessories. As their first exhibition room, they are hosting a gallery about patch boxes (and, consequently, about patches) - a custom that came up in the 17th century.

If that sounds interesting to you, go head over to the DMDA website and have a virtual stroll through their gallery. I certainly found it interesting, even though it's way past the time I'm usually working on.