The next medieval event is coming up - I'll be away together with Nobilitas at the Lamboy-Fest in Hanau the coming weekend.

Which means... that the time has come to prepare some more gold thread for sale by winding it on spools. And to check if everything I will need at the Fest is clean and in good condition, and pack all the demonstration stuff as well as the goods to sell.

And probably buy some sturdy nails as additional tent pegs, just in case... because last year, getting pegs into the ground there was not at all easy, and the TGV definitely needs pegs or it won't stand at all. And then I hope that the weather will be fine and that the Turkish club who sold the most amazingly yummy food last year is there again!

I am back from the longest Freienfels I ever had - eleven days away, counting the day for arrival and departure.

Freienfels was chock-full of things that would make blood boil either with pleasure and joy or with outrage. It was full, full, full of wonderful people with amazing talents, and there was beautiful craftspersonship to be seen, just as I had expected. More things happened than I can tell in this little blog entry, especially since I still have my heap of paperwork left to do from before Freienfels, but maybe I'll tell a story or two one of the next days.

Running my own little stall right beside the Wollschmiede meant that I did not find the time for a leisurely walk and shopping trip all over the market, though nevertheless I managed to spend some money for more or less needful things - we now have a good bread-box, made of birch bark, and I am the proud and happy owner of a "Zwirngefäß" after a find from Pfakofen:


It is a pot with a large  central opening and six smaller spouts all around; together with this go six small bowls. The setup can be used for plying multiple yarns together, but (as we were able to test at the last Textile Forum) it is also a wonderful help when warping for tablet-weaves. I had always lusted after one of these tools, and after testing it at the Forum even more - so at Tannenberg, I ordered one from Anke, specially prepared for fine, delicate threads. It is polished at all the places where a thread will touch the surface - and I am totally looking forward to testing this little darling.

Yeah, my very own Spouty Pot!


Picture from: Bartel, A. (1998). Das Tüllengefäss von Pfakofen, Lkr. Regensburg - ein seltener Fund aus dem frühen Mittelalter. Textiles in European Archaeology. Report from the 6th NESAT Symposium 7-11th May 1996 in Borås. L. Bender Jørgensen and C. Rinaldo. Göteborg, Göteborg University, Dept. of Archaeology. Series A, vol. 1: 139-150. Picture on p. 142.
   

As spring is creeping in and battling hard with the remainders of the winter, the weather is getting nicer and nicer and season start is rushing towards us, I still have to finish my new market stall. It is coming along - yesterday was bathing day, and the main part of the tent - almost four metres on seven metres - took a hot bath in our tub.

Now that it is getting closer to being a tent, one of the biggest concerns (my German expression of choice would be "die größten Bauchschmerzen" - literally "the biggest stomach ache") is how to get it waterproof. Seriously waterproof.

We bought heavy linen fabric in the hopes of it being waterproof due to its nature - some heavy fabric, pure linen, can soak up water and then get so dense and tight that it can be even used as a bucket. Totally waterproof. Unfortunately, it became very clear very soon that our specimen of heavy linen fabric is not like that. Yes, it is heavy, but the fibres will not swell up enough when soaked in water to get it completely impermeable to water, and thus I need some additional waterproofing method.

And that's my problem. I want to have the tent/stall as accurate as possible, but I will draw a line at non-secure waterproofiness. I need my goods (and myself, but the goods for selling are more important here) to stay dry no matter how hard it rains. And I am willing to compromise if this needs some modern trick - though I would prefer a period way.

So there are some possibilities now that I have already found, among them using linseed oil varnish; using oil paint from linseed oil varnish with a pigment/filler mixed in to paint the tent much as an oil-cloth (with the added bonus of decorative possibilities); using store-bought waterproofing liquids; it would even be a possibility to buy silicone at the hardware store and "paint" the cloth with that. I'm still undecided, I would like to test each of the methods but I am shying away a little from buying all of those things for a small test scrap of fabric, and am generally feeling quite uneasy about this part of the project.
And I'd be very happy about any input that you might be able to give.

I'm back home again, up and running - and blogging (even if it's slightly later than usual due to a much-needed battle against sleep deficiencies). So what have I been up to in these last two weeks?

First, there was Tannenberg. The traditional season's end market and, like Freienfels, usually resembling something like a fair to see different craftspeople and sellers of medieval tools and paraphernalia. This year, however, Tannenberg was rather subdued in atmosphere and with much less participants than the years before. We all wondered why - maybe all the fear-mongering about bad times and recession, combined with real-life struggling of craftspeople and participants, have finally had their impact on the modern middle ages as well. Still, we had a very nice time in Tannenberg, with quite good weather - only one day of rain and drizzle, and not much muddyness at all - and met and chatted with many of our friends and colleagues.

After return on Monday, it was unpacking, drying, sorting out of things and then, for me, preparing for Hungary straight away. Since I had to finish the presentation too, Tuesday was quite short for that - but everything got packed up in time, clothes stuffed into a bag, the trusty laptop bundled up, and off I went to a wonderful and truly memorable conference in Százhalombatta, a town some thirty km from Budapest. The conference was both the EXARC meeting and the last meeting of liveARCH, a project connecting eight archaeological open air museums from eight different countries. It was wonderfully organised by the Matrica Museum and archaeological park of Százhalombatta, including lodgings and transfer from and to the airport (what luxury not to book anything beyond the flight). It was everything I wish for in a conference: lots of people with different experiences and points of view meeting for good, interesting and sometimes thought-provoking presentations, many academic discussions, common meals, excursions to both stretch the legs and see something else for a while (including something typical for the country and/or region), enough coffee breaks with sweets (yes, the local sweets are actually something I enjoy maybe too much on a conference) and more long, varied discussions. Because everything except, of course, the excursions, took place at the hotel and meals were also organised by the conference team, everyone was kept closely together, and there was no scattering to different watering holes for meals and during free time. And that is another thing that makes a successful conference, to me: Keeping everyone together so that networking, chatting, joking and discussing is made easy, because all the others are quite within reach.

And because during liveARCH it became very clear to everybody that there is one single key to good cooperation and to success with networking, perfectly summarised during one of the lectures as "communication, communication, communication", every evening the "liveARCH Social Club" was opened for having a drink and a chat or five between friends. And every evening I got to bed later and later... explaining the sleep deficiencies and, thus, the lateness of today's blog post.

We are back home from a wonderful weekend at Cave Gladium, where I was lucky from beginning to end - wonderful sunny weather (even a bit too hot sometimes), what must have been the best place for a stall on the whole market (right on the "main street" between food area/toilets and the "Hurenweibl"*), incredibly nice colleagues and neighbors all around, and gazillions of people coming by for a question, a chat or a peek into my dissertation manuscript. The latter were so many and so frequent that we put a straw mattress on the ground behind my table and declared it "reader's corner".

And of course there were the requisite food stalls offering a wide variety of things (but I've seen no potato goods), a stage for music (far enough from the stall not to disturb us), there were oriental dried fruits like figs, dates with walnut and nuts, and the"Teezelt", a kind of oriental café that you get on about every larger medieval market in Germany to buy mokka with spices, mint or black tea and sweets to go with your beverage. And I just love to go there for a mokka after closing shop at dusk (because nobody can see my fine threads anyway once it starts getting dark). And a thing seldom seen: One wandering musician walking through the whole festival area playing pipe and tabor - the classical medieval one-man-band!

Taking all together, the Cave is a wild mixture of stalls selling tourist wares, stalls showing and selling wares for Living History, visitors, LH people and costumed people, and everything with a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere. And the Cave is big, no, huge even. I'd say if the Cave organisers take a little care during the next years that the tourist ware stalls don't take over, this festival will soon be as big and as important as Freienfels and Tannenberg, both events for the LH scene but open to tourists.


* The "Hurenweibl" at Cave Gladium is a tavern for LH folks only; there's a guard at the entrance allowing only historically dressed people to pass. (Cave Gladium also sports a "no-tourists-area", a meadow reached only over a little bridge with a guard posted before it as well.)
A Hurenweibel was the officer in charge of the Tross (the camp followers) of the Landsknecht armies. A lot of the tourists are a bit nonplussed by this tavern name or start laughing because "Hure" is the German word for "whore", and "Weib" today is still another word for wife, but in many German regions, its meaning has slipped somewhat from neutral or positive in former times to slightly derogatory. So people not knowing that "Weibl" is an old form of "Webel" as in "Feldwebel" often are misled by the tavern name.

I have finished my head-over-heels rush to meet all my deadlines (and it looks as if I can make it, hooray) and now I'm off to Furth im Wald, for three days of relaxing medieval market atmosphere at Cave Gladium.

Regrettably, there have not been enough registrations for the workshops, so those will not take place. (I'm not sure yet whether it was bad luck, not enough advertising/information or whether there is generally no interest to have a learning experience during a Living History/medieval market event.) Instead, I am planning to sit beside my table full of the new goods to sell and chat with people, relax, maybe sew a little bit and generally enjoy myself.

If you are in the region, the Cave is surely worth a visit - and if you are undecided yet whether you want to see the Drachenstich, this year is your last chance to see the experienced old dragon - because next year, the new dragon will take over!

The opening of yesterday's exhibition went really fine, and people came in all during the day to see the exhibition and look at the different textile techniques - so I call yesterday a success.
The Altstadtfest was very nice as well, with gloriously sunny weather and a lot of people strolling through the streets, eating, drinking, listening to music, watching crafts presentations, and generally amusing themselves.

Here are some photos from the exhibition:


Preparing for the opening - I'm sorting out my hairnet for demonstration of the technique, and you can see the demo band for tablet weaving (twill demonstration), still secured with a clamp and unattached, in front on the table. The brand-new wonderful table, by the way, that will accompany me to markets, events and any occasions I need a medieval table. I'm so happy about it!


This is a picture taking during my introduction speech for the exhibition - I was showing a snippet of spinning with the drop spindle to make people realise how much time is needed for making just the threads for weaving. This usually works very well, and it did also in Bad Staffelstein.


This picture was taken right after the official part, with the honorary guests and the gentleman of the bank who opened the exhibition. On the photo, you see two "royalties" at once - the "Korbkönigin" (Queen of Basketwork) from Lichtenfels, the German "Capital of Basket Making", and the "Thermenkönigin" (Queen of thermal springs) from Bad Staffelstein. And my colleague Marion, dressed medievally as well, who helped to draw people in and explain all day long.

So because yesterday was nice but exhausting, and I'm really tired today, I'm taking a day off. No work requiring brains today, hooray!