Do you know that feeling that the plan of the year slowly emerges out of fog and nothingness? January and February are the two months when plans are made and dates are fixed, and the calendar becomes spattered and sprinkled with colourful spots all over. It's an exciting time every time it comes around!

And for 2014, there are a few things fixed that I am really looking forward to already.

As usual, I will be in Freienfels with my market stall. Freienfels this year is April 30 to May 4, and the market is open for all visitors during the weekend.

Next on my calendar is the International Museum Day on May 18, which I will spend at the Stadtmuseum Bietigheim-Bissingen, demonstrating spinning technique both with distaff and spindle and with the Great Wheel.

Right after that comes the NESAT in Hallstatt, a conference I've been looking forward to for, as usual, the last three years.

Next up is a semi-private medieval event in Herzberg, running from June 27 to July 6. The event after that is the exact opposite to private, however: Together with Margit Ströbele from Alte Künste, I will be running a dealer's table at LonCon3! I will also give a paper about textile techniques on the academic programme there. If you are at LonCon, make sure to drop by!

If you want to learn a textile technique or need assistance in tailoring a garment, I have course dates planned for September 6-7 and October 25-26. As usual, details and booking info can be found on my shop page.

And the last date already fixed and agreed upon for 2014 at the moment is our next Textile Forum, which will take place 3-9 November, again in Mayen (we love it there). If you want to keep informed about the Textile Forum, you can subscribe to our newsletter on the Forum homepage.

And if you want to keep informed about my upcoming events and dates, you can always check the list of them on my homepage.

As you can see, the year promises to be full of interesting events already, and I am looking forward to maybe meeting a few more of you this year.

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.

Somehow, these last few months have been more crazy and subjectively much shorter than they should have been. Life is, somehow, crazy - even though there is not that much going on (or at least that's what I tell myself). However, my to-do list is growing faster than I can cut it down to size again, there's workmen in the house this week to fix some windows (consequently making some noise, that's not helping), and I'm sadly behind on my reading. My day needs more hours! (Or my hours need more productivity... but I'm not doing so very badly, my timetracker says.)

Maybe I just need to wash my brain into total complete productivity mode. Speaking of washing: There's a Viennese living history group wishing to tackle exactly that. The "Wienische Hantwërcliute 1350" have a nice (German) article about washing in the late Middle Ages on their blog, and they got a colleague to make them a washing paddle according to medieval sources. Nice!

While you are thinking about clean, white fabric now (at least I am, sort of), Teffania thinks about white dresses that are not white dresses on her blog. White garments like these are definitely candidates for a good wash if you wear them on events with rain!

I'm back, the car is (mostly) unpacked, and we even managed to get everything loaded into the car dry(ish) so there's little residual work apart from the usual checking, cleaning, and storing away again.

This year's event was sort of a mixed bag, weather-wise: rain when we set up, rain on the first days, then sunshine mixed with bouts of rain again. At least it got dry and sunny enough to dry everything that had gotten wet during the first days, and that the ground reverted from muddy to firm yet bouncy again. Otherwise, it was a mixed bag as well: I enjoyed meeting with all the friends and old acquaintances once more during the event. The last years, however, have seen a trend in more and more market stalls that sell stuff I would not expect on a medieval market, ranging from cheap mass-produced spoons and wood implements for the kitchen to colourful wax candles to all kinds of jewellery (modern or fantasy) and garishly brightly coloured clothes that have as much to do with medieval clothing as I have with driving race cars. Plus there are more and more stalls serving food and drink - it's a small wonder if each of them will make profit enough to keep coming.

All this together is a development into a rather unexpected direction, seeing that Freienfels is one of the really big markets for Living History folks, and had the reputation of being one of the one-stop-shops for medieval gear. If the development continues like that, I think it will only be a few more years until it will become less and less attractive for the LH folks - I've heard from a lot of them that they are only coming to meet old acquaintances these days, because the event has changed so much. A pity, really!

Planning the season has progressed enough for me to set a few new workshop dates!

These are, in short:
A workshop in Piacenza, Italy, in English language on April 13/14;

two single-day embroidery workshops in German language in Erlangen, on May 18 (counted work) and May 19 (picture embroidery);

a two-day workshop to tailor a garment in Erlangen, October 19 and 20.

For the workshops in Erlangen, you can book your place starting now - just follow the links for more information and booking possibilities. And if you have a special project or a group of like-minded friends, why not arrange a private lesson or a private mini-workshop? Contact me per email if you are interested!

Since a lot of you readers are involved in Living History or Archaeology in some way, this might be interesting for you: Roeland Paardekooper is looking for a discussion about food. Here's his request for submissions:
 

For a BBC program in 1954, Sir Mortimer Wheeler tasted a reconstruction of the Tollund Man’s last supper, which turned out to be a tasteless mush. This led him to announce: "I believe that the poor chap of Tollund committed suicide because he could stand his wife's cooking no longer!"

While archaeology inspired cookery is an important and attractive way of involving the public, it also has some drawbacks. How authentic can we be? What about health and safety? Should we only cook what the public will like? Please discuss the questions and issues with ancient cookery that often arise, either when cooking as demonstration or experiment. Send your reply, between 100 and 400 words to: Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein..

And if you like, post your reply in the comments to this post as well - then we can have a second discussion here as well!

You will probably all know, or at least have heard of, the project in Guedelon, where a medieval castle is being re-built using materials and methods available in the 13th century.

Guedelon does seem to be a success, at least in terms of being well-known and visited. And now something similar-but-different is planned in Germany, called "Karolingische Klosterstadt" (Carolingian monastic city).

The project is to re-build the famous plan of St. Gallen, the idealistic layout and plan for a monastery. There's an official project website that does not offer very much yet, but there's one English pdf presenting the project idea - and some very interesting thoughts about how interpreters should be trained.