I've been busy as a bee these last few days with preparations...


and now the car is packed with goods, there's a cold box with food in there (I'm already looking forward to the barbecue evening for all the traders on Saturday), plus tables and tablecloths and all the odds and ends that are needed for a sales table - I'm off to the first event of the season!

If you go and visit the IRM, make sure to drop by and say hello; I'll be in Room 8 (which is one of the bathrooms, very nice and cosy).

First of all, here's how the red-and-yellow tulips look today:


They are lovely, and they seem to be really robust - several years ago, a friend brought us ten red-yellow bulbs, ten black ones and ten white ones. There's one small white tulip left from that planting, the black ones have all disappeared by now, but the red-and-yellow ones are going so strong that I even had enough bulbs for a second cluster somewhere else in the garden last year. (I'm a little sad about the white and black ones. I really liked them!)

In other news, I've been busy working on one project which I cannot disclose yet, plus preparing for both the IRM (drawing closer and closer) and the Internationaler Museumstag, taking place on the third Sunday in May (so this year it's May 22). I'll be in Darmstadt on that day, demonstrating really early textile techniques - think neolithic times. This is a bit earlier than my normal focus time, so I'm extra excited and happy to do something different this time around, and have been doing some preparation work for it. (That will include taking a few photographs for the programme and PR, which is on my to-do-list for tomorrow.) Some more prep work is also planned - I'll have to harvest a few samples of plants that were used for these proto-textiles, but this is a task better done nearer to the actual event. Speaking of which - the programme for the day in the Landesmuseum Darmstadt is not online yet, but I've had a sneak peek, and I can tell you that it is chock full of interesting things!

You're getting the promised blog post, even though you're getting it very, very late... today was completely gobbled up by lugging stuff out of the car (with plenty of help from the most patient husband of them all) and getting the book-keeping up to date, including sending off the taxes for the past quarter.

That on top of the post-fair exhaustion, and the blog post almost got forgotten!

Sabine and me behind our sales table in the former carriage shed.

The fair, by the way, was in an extremely lovely place, with brilliant weather on both Friday and Saturday. The baroque gardens showed themselves at their very best, the castle staff had prepared special guided tours with more textile information than they give usually, and we had lots and lots of very interested visitors. Sunday was rainy, unfortunately, and thus more towards the drab and grey side of autumn, but it did clear up in the afternoon.

I had a lovely time at Weikersheim, and I've already heard that they are planning to do this again. Not next year (that is already booked with events), but probably in 2017, and if my schedule will permit it, I'll definitely be there again.
 

It's already September - I have a hard time believing that. But I'd better, since my calendar is adamant about this.

Which means there are barely four weeks left to prepare the things for the Nadelkunst in Weikersheim... I have to make new spindle whorls (which need enough time to dry, and then they have to be fired), and I also have to sit down to do some embroidery today. The pictures for the instructions are all done, apart from the title picture with the finished fleur-de-lis embroidery... so it's high time to finish that off.

Here's the slightly-advanced state of the piece at the moment:






So - on today's agenda: finish at least one side of the thing, and get some of the missing writing for the instructions done. Time flies like an arrow (fruit flies like a banana)...

(There's also two other things in the works for the Nadelkunst, both of them involving natural dyes, and one of them involving knitting. No pics yet, though... we're still working on it!)

One of the things I have learned in the last year-and-a-half is that I am having a lot of fun going to fairs. Not just medieval fairs, but actual trade fairs. LonCon was the first one that was not a medieval or historically themed event, and our time in the dealer's hall was pure, pure fun. (Chatting with Robert Silverberg about old scissors. Packing a bag for Ben Bova. Getting a ninja gig from Talis Kimberley. Those were grand times, and make grand memories for me.)

Then came the Kreativ in Stuttgart, and Backnang. And now I'm looking forward, very much, to the next fair: the Nadelkunst at Schloß Weikersheim.


I will be there with Sabine from the Wollschmiede - and I'm already excited about the event, even though it is still several months until October. But I've been told that the premises are beautiful, we will get to stay with friends (that I see far too rarely) who live very close to the castle, and the organisation team is very nice and extremely helpful.
The best thing, though? The first item in the requirements sheet for participants is "no sale of items from industrial mass production". There you go. That alone, I am sure, makes this event very much worth going to.

I'll be there - come and see me!

Freienfels was uncommonly picture-heavy - as usual, we stood together with a few friends, one of them a woodworker. Who was in need of a few nice pictures of his equipment and himself while working... so I took the opportunity, brought my camera, and had a lot of fun documenting different woodworking techniques.

Working with a drawknife...


there's a very special kind of beauty to really sharp tools doing their thing with wood.

There also were axes, protected by sheaths made after a find from Haithabu...



... and irons of different sizes and shapes for finishing troughs.



Of course there were also a few photos that I did not shoot myself, such as this one - spinning on my bench with distaff-holder, in front of my trusty little market stall.


And a closer look at the table with goods:



I did a lot of spinning this weekend, trying out a theory regarding spindle whorls. Added bonus for this? A very special photo - the light and shadows of spinning!

It's sunny outside, the evenings are getting milder, and spring has fully sprung. This is the time of the year when the season starts - as is traditional for us, it does so with Freienfels.

So we'll be off to spend a few days there, starting tomorrow. Which means if you need some spindle sticks or whorls or fibres or a netting needle or other stuff, you can drop by at my market stall and get them there.

Blogging, therefore, will be on hiatus for a few days, and I'll resume my daily woolgatherings here on Tuesday.