Friday before last, I had a Grand Day Out - I hopped onto the train early in the morning to go to Lorsch, or rather to Lauresham, in preparation for the European Textile Forum.

Usually, we have this little conference in Mayen, at the Lab for Experimental Archaeology, but this year, LEA is due for some construction works. As it was not entirely clear in time when those works would be finished, we had to find an alternative place to hold the Forum, to be on the safe side.

To my great delight, as I have fond memories of working on archaeological digs in Lorsch, the good people at the Open-Air Laboratory for Experimental Archaeology Lauresham offered us their place to be. Because going to the venue for a visit is always a good thing (you don't want to plan a conference blind!), after figuring out most of the things that needed figuring out via mail and phone, off I was to meet with Claus Kropp, the leader of the Lab.

The place where we will be for our conference (at least mostly) is the Visitor Info Centre, which looks a bit like a glass house:

When you are closer, you can see that it's actually not a glass house to grow plants, but to grow knowledge:

There are rooms in the blocks inside for working, and things such as conferences, or school events, or small exhibitions. There's also space for exhibitions in the corridor, which - with all that glass - is very light and spacious-feeling. We will be a very happy group in that place!

There is, of course, also a little museum shop where you can get all kinds of things: honey made by bees on the location (bees are important in Lauresham, not least because there is a manuscript with a bee-keeping prayer written in Lorsch in the 9th century), mugs with an artistic rendition of Lauresham, ceramic mugs and music instruments and piggy banks...

...and you can even buy a reproduction of a pin found directly in Lorsch, dating to the 8th/9th century:

Besides checking out this building, I also got treated to a tour of the grounds of Lauresham proper. It was absolutely beautiful - there's a small vinyard, there are fields tilled with reconstructed ploughs using the working animals in Lauresham. The grains that are farmed here are of course old and often very rare kinds, such as this special type of rye, Waldstaudenroggen:

There are also Valais Blackneck goats, a very old breed:

Lauresham, as an ideal-typical reconstruction of an early medieval manor farm also has a small chapel, with a door modelled after an original 8th century find from Germany:

More from my visit tomorrow!

... but they are both to spectacular things. Number one: A one thousand year old sarcophagus was opened in Mainz - here is the link to a short video report (in German).

Number two is more textile-related stuff: A report about the conservation of embroidered and textile book-bindings at the British Library. These stunning book covers are definitely worth a look!

You might know the "Kuckucksuhr", that typical German clock that has a bird coming out on the full hour, making a cuckoo sound?

Well, that is not the only type of clock with a figure declaring the time of day - and there's a virtual exhibition called "Tick Tack Trick - Schwarzwalduhren mit Figuren" (Tick Tack Trick - Black Forest Clocks with Figures). While the text is all in German, there's a little video for each of the clocks that are featured, and those are all without text, but with clock sounds - and thoroughly enjoyable!

While we're at the topic of time - tomorrow is a public holiday here in Germany, so you'll get no blog post. See you on Friday!

As one of the programme points during the Textile Forum, we went on an excursion to see the special exhibition "Expedition Mittelalter" at the Schnütgen-Museum in Cologne. If you can arrange it, I heartily recommend going there, as you will get treated to a lot of beautiful things usually buried in the archives. This includes, obviously, textiles.

Among them: a puzzling (at least to me!) embroidery of a horse or unicorn on a black (yes, black) linen background, dated to the 15th century. An incredibly beautiful reliquiary bag embroidered with silk in counted stitch and with a flat gold strip (also puzzling, because I have no real idea on how that strip was stitched in, and oh what would I give to see the back of that thing!). Plus a plethora of other textiles. Oh, and the Anno chasuble - a samite cloth dyed with real mollusc purple, dating to about 1000.

As opposed to most special exhibitions in German museums, in this case all the objects are from the hosting museum's own archives, and so you are allowed to take photographs for private purposes (no flash and tripod, so come prepared with a steady hand).

The only downside is that there is no catalogue. There's a comic book that you can complete with a kind of treasure hunt during the exhibition, which is nice and fun in its own way, but nothing even remotely helpful if you're trying to learn more about the individual objects. But yes, that's the only downside, and the pieces themselves are really making a visit worth its while.

The exhibition will run until January 28, 2018, so there's still a bit of time to travel there.

First of all, sorry for the blog silence yesterday - I was away from the computer most of the day, and during the time I did spend physically close to it, we had internet connection issues. These do happen here occasionally, and they are normally no big deal when they do, as they will be over after two or three hours at most... but yesterday, it did mean no access during the time window I had for blogging.

Today is a holiday in Germany, so I had planned to blog yesterday and tell you there'd be no blog post today. Well, plans and how they work out... anyway, this means you are getting this picture today instead of yesterday:


That was my setup on the Long Night for spinning in Dinkelsbühl. It was a wonderful evening with many, many people stopping by for watching the spinning and asking questions. The picture was taken during one of the rare and short moments when there were no visitors there, right at the end of my presentation.

Time really flew by, and the evening was over before I knew it! I loved all of it, and it gave me the opportunity to demonstrate how much of a difference the fibre and the fibre preparation made when spinning on the Great Wheel. I had rolags made from Eider wool (industrially combed, smooth medium-staple wool that I just rolled together with the cards), from Bergschaf wool (industrially carded, crimpier wool with a shorter staple that I rolled together with the cards similarly to the Eider stuff) and from Rouge de Roussillon wool that I carded up from the washed fleece myself. The differences were astounding, with the smoothest, most even thread coming out of the Eider wool and the clumpiest, least even one out of the Rouge. That was partly due to my bad sorting and carding of the Rouge fleece I brought with me, though, and I am sure that with a bit more getting used to that specific fibre, the thread would also have improved a lot.

Demonstrations like these always yield some thread, but they rarely result in wheel spinning output that I'd find acceptable or even good quality. Talking to people to explain the spinning takes away some concentration from the spinning itself, and while I can happily chat along when making my standard yarn on the spindle and distaff, the wheel does take more concentration for me to get a good thread. Another factor is the quality of the rolags that I work with during those demos.

Even though I explain to people during these demonstrations that textile work takes time, and patience is oh so important, I usually skimp on the preparation of the rolags to speed things up a bit. I also make a rolag or two, then spin them up, then explain something else, then make rolags again - and that results in differences each time, which also has an impact. Finally, the combination of explaining and trying to show off the spinning speeds possible with the wheel means I'm not making the best possible thread out of the fibre I have, and switching frequently between spindle and wheel plus carding and combing means it is hard to find the rhythm and workflow for any of these tasks - because obviously, explaining and demonstrating the individual steps and how they work together is much, much more important on these events than making the best yarn possible.

So in case you are at a crafts demonstration one day and have somebody demo-ing with a lot of explanation, you might get to see slightly sloppier work than they normally do, because the priorities have shifted - from working towards the best result possible with the tools and materials available to giving the best explanation and demonstration for you. And that, I'd say, is one of the best reasons that somebody can have for not working up to the usual standards!

I'll be spinning tomorrow night again - though not for a Forum experiment this time. It's Lange Nacht (long night) in Dinkelsbühl, and the museum Haus der Geschichte is participating.

Which means I will be there, spinning with my handspindle and the Great Wheel, from 19:30 to 22:00 h. The wheel is already in the car together with my spinning bench, there's a box of wool standing ready to be taken along, my spindles are lined up and eager for a spin - so everything is prepared for tomorrow.

And I'm looking forward to some happy spinning time in the utterly beautiful town of Dinkelsbühl!

One of the things I love, in general, is getting to go behind the scenes and see the things not everybody sees. Whether that is being backstage in a theatre, being behind the scenes in an event, or going into a museum depot - I just love to get a look around the nuts-and-bolts areas, to see how the mundane day-to-day things are handled, how stuff is stored.

Fortunately, doing museum presentations, giving workshops and demonstrating crafts at events means that I get plenty of opportunities to go backstage in the wider sense, and in a lot of different places. (Next up: the Adventon. I'm already looking forward to that.)

What is especially wonderful about the backstage-going are depots. Museums have most of their things not in the exhibition, but somewhere in storage, and these depots are absolutely fascinating. (They also serve a purpose - they are not only safe storage for historical items, but also help the museums to fulfill their obligation to further research; and not all items are in a condition that they can be on display continuously, so the depot and rotation of objects makes sure that they will last.) I have next to no pictures of depots that I can show you, though, only pictures of individual items - but then, different storage areas have as many different solutions as you can imagine, ranging from regular shelves to specialised drawer cabinets. And of course there's the good old space-saving solution:


I have no clue what these are really called, but they are basically sliding shelves that form a closed box when they are sitting right next to each other. Turn the handles (slowly - always slowly and carefully!) and a whole block of these shelves gently rolls to the side, letting you access the spot you need. These are... awesome. Absolutely, utterly awesome.