I like online resources for research - who doesn't? And occasionally, I stumble across a new one, which is always a nice thing.

My most recent discovery happened because a colleague was searching for a specific article, published as part of a book, that I thought sounded interesting. So I checked my own library database, but of course it was not in there. Then I did a bit of a search on the 'net, and there was a link to the Internet Archive (which you might know through the WayBackMachine, which I can totally recommend if you want to look at websites that once were but are no more today) and, more specifically, to their lending library thing OpenLibrary.org - where you can virtually borrow digital copies of books. Quite a lot of books, actually, including the one in question that my colleague was looking for.

Borrowing works if you have a free log-in for the Internet Archive, and then you can read for one hour in the book in question, with automatic extension as long as nobody else wants to read it. Some things can also be borrowed to your e-reader for a 14-day period.

So in case you're running out of things to read... you might find something there. I hope you have fun!

About every year around the same time, there's pictures of our willow fence, I think.

I've always liked the idea of a living fence - and even though we have a non-living additional fence around our place, the willow one is the higher one, and the more visible one, and the more exciting one.

It's also planted a little bit too close to the actual border of our garden, which, in retrospective, was not the brightest of all ideas. We had thoroughly underestimated how far the new shoots would branch out over the street, and how many of them there would be. We're handling this now by trying to guide everything as straight up as possible with the help of strings; the trick is to tie those in while the new growth is still green and fresh and very malleable.

We planted the fence back in April 2012, when it looked like this:



It's a kind of willow suitable for making baskets, which was important to us - after all, if you cut back the new rods every year, it would be sad if they weren't useful in some way.

Now it looks like this:



The fence, over the years, has taught me a few things. Among them, first and foremost: Even if willows are bendy, and even if you try to get the shapes all nice and even and just so, they are living things and they will react differently. Some will grow more, some will grow less, some will die off. Nothing will be just as accurate as planned, and planted. And in some places, you'll just have to live with something looking different because of a missing bit.

There's limits to what the trees will accept, and the more horizontal you try to make something grow, the closer you get to this limit. Parts of the tree may go up and die suddenly. The low arches are an issue every year, with plenty of them growing only to about the thirdway point, and then the tree puts everything into the new rods and we end up with a dead part beyond.



Another funny thing is when two trees meld together at their contact point. (That was what I had, in my youthful optimism, planned for all of them to do, by the way.) Sometimes, nothing extraordinary happens. Sometimes, though, the new united tree then decides some part of it is not necessary anymore... and there's another bit of dead wood for us to prune off.

What is really fascinating, though, is the difference between the "before" and the "after" harvesting the rods, and how much biomass this fence puts out every year.

Here's the before look:



And here the after, of approximately the same bit:



Every. Single. Year. Amazing, isn't it?

Here's this year's yield, all bundled up. Want to guess how many kilograms of willow?

It's still not Friday. Am I relieved, or am I disappointed? A bit of both, I guess - there's a stack of things left to do this week, and I feel like I'm way behind on many of them.

There is progress, though. Actual progress on all fronts - spinning for the Egtved blouse fabric and getting the new website version ready for a relaunch. There's also the February newsletter in the works, due out today or tomorrow. (Probably tomorrow.)

[caption id="attachment_6991" align="alignnone" width="225"] Flowers in the wintergarden! I'm still amazed that this plant can flower. My mum's specimens never did. Maybe it's due to the fertiliser provided at my place? Or more light in the wintergarden? Who knows...


There's also some garden work progress... it's the time of the year when our willow fence needs pruning and some care. We're more than halfway through with it, but the last part still has to be cut - and now, after the stormy winds have calmed down, it is time to work on this some more. With the side benefit of having some fresh air to clear the brain for a bit more work later on.

Today was mostly spent spinning - the Egtved blouse yarns want to be finished. I had, as was fitting, "help" from the little cat, who snuggled herself behind my back and snoozed.



That was comfy, and nice, and the only downside was that I had to get another sweater out of the closet afterwards, as the one I had planned to put on again was now lying underneath the cat... and no, I did not want to wake her by pulling the sweater out from under her furry butt.

Some things, it seems, never change. Such as the fascination of cats with turning spindles. Or, indeed, many other textile implements that move. That can make work quite, ah, let's call it "interesting"...

I'm rather fortunate in that our little-not-so-little cat is quite uninterested in textile works, usually. She will sit down on fabrics laid out on the floor, and on my note papers and scale printouts, but she is rarely trying to catch or eat or mangle the textiles themselves or the tools I use. (She will, however, try to bite the end of a pen when I am trying to write something while she hangs out on my desk. That, I can say, is also rather annoying and not helpful at all. It's even worse than her walking across the keyboard, which is over soon, or putting her paw onto the touchpad, which can be remedied by a slightly awkward but sustainable different position of my arms.)

Anyway - the fascination of cats with moving textile tools, and especially spindles, can also be seen captured in a manuscript dating to 1310-1320. A marginalia shows St. Gertrude of Nivelles, dressed as a nun, and spinning. With a companion cat. A very helpful one. The manuscript, Stowe 17, is in the possession of the British Library, and you can see the digitised image here. (I'm not placing it on the blog here due to copyright restrictions, though I'd have very much liked to adorn this post with the kitty directly.)

You're probably also getting them: Loads and loads of advertisements and promises of deep discounts and insane deals, coming up on Friday, or the weekend, or all this week, even.

I think I posted a similar rant last year, and I'm kinda tired of doing it again, but... but. I will still write about this.

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving (the US food coma holiday), and it's been made a retail and shopping madness day at some point years back. It has since spread over about all the world, and now people are getting loads and loads of ads and discounts and whatnots to tempt them into buying stuff and more stuff.

Now... I totally get the desire to have nice things, and new things. I'm not adverse to having something pretty, and having stuff is, for most of us humans, a quite basic desire. Stuff like food is a necessity, as is clothing appropriate to the time of year and climate. Then there's the social component, stuff that shows one's taste and preferences and social status. There's stuff that we need for work, stuff that we want for comfort, stuff we buy to make others happy. Stuff we get to repair other stuff. Stuff we get for future use (stash acquisition, anyone?) and stuff we get for future use though we strongly suspect while getting it that we will never actually use it.

I am, overall, fine with that. For myself, I try to stop and think before buying something new whether I will really use it, and do so in time. Do I really need this? Will it be useful? Am I sure about this? Then there's some secondary considerations, like how is it packaged? How much energy does it use? How long will it last? Can it be repaired? Does it have a fair price, and where does the money land that I pay for it - where the work has been done, or somewhere else?

Altogether, these things lead to shopping decisions that I'm usually happy with, not just after buying, but years and sometimes decades later. My thermos cup felt really expensive back when I bought it, back in 2012. I'm still very happy about the decision to get it anyways every time I pull it out of my bag to have a coffee on the road. It looks quite battered by now, but it's still working very well. Deals limited to a short amount of time, intending to put pressure on people to buy right now this instance or the opportunity will be gone make me deeply suspicious, though. As do deep discounts - because, well, if the sticker price can be discounted that far, either the seller loses money with the deep discount (which is not a smart business move), or the sticker price is way higher than it would need to be for the seller to make a decent profit. But if there's still money made with the deeply discounted price... how cheap is the item, actually, when they buy it? I'd really love to know the calculations behind these deals...

For now, though, I'll stick with not buying stuff this Friday. Just like most Fridays. Like most days, actually. And that's something I'm totally fine with.